Free Republic

If you want to know who’s running the State Department these days, it helps to peruse the website of a relatively new, conservative-leaning organization called the Ben Franklin Fellowship.The group’s roster includes Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau, top officials in bureaus such as consular affairs, and even an acting undersecretary or two. The fellows include current and former members of the foreign service, as well as other international affairs specialists. And while the Fellowship describes itself as nonpartisan, its right-of-center views are obvious: It emphasizes goals such as border security; opposes typical diversity, equity and inclusion practices; and advocates...

Trump pal and former modeling agent Paolo Zampolli has been fired from his position of special envoy at the State Department following a bizarre year-long war over email leaks, Politico reported. A U.S. official told Politico Thursday that Zampolli’s “status as an envoy has been terminated and he is no longer a government employee.” Zampolli’s firing appears to be the culmination of a nasty feud between the special envoy and the deputy secretary of State Christopher Landau. According to Politico, the two top appointees “have been embroiled in a monthslong fight that includes accusations of leaks to the media and...

The son of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sent a rage-filled letter to U.S. President Donald Trump claiming that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Deputy SOS Christopher Landau had acted in a Hitlerian manner by revoking his tourist visa as part of a political witch hunt aimed at targeting his father and Mexico’s ruling party MORENA. The letter by Andres Manuel Lopez Beltran, AMLO’s son, adds him to a list of more than 50 Mexican political figures, most from the MORENA party, who have had their visas revoked by the U.S. government. The U.S. government has not...

Leftists have long held no qualms about assassination against their rivals, and in Colombia, where narcoterrorism is also a problem and left-narco alliances are common, it has started up again.. But at least we have a secretary of state who is wise to what's going on. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a high-level delegation to Bogota after a leading Colombian presidential candidate, conservative Sen. Miguel Uribe, died of his wounds in a June shooting by a criminal known as a 'sicario' or hitman who obviously had a sponsor. Rubio seems to know who that might be, though,...