Free Republic

The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Togo and Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace. The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security branch, focusing on embassy protection, before being summoned to Washington last year to lead a new initiative — the Office of Remigration. Since then, Ehrhardt, 41, has crisscrossed Africa, trying...

Cuba experienced a total power failure Friday, according to the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The embassy said the failure was due to the "collapse of Cuba’s electrical grid." According to Cuban regime media, the reason for the collapse is under investigation and the timeline to restore power is unknown." "All U.S. citizens in Cuba or planning to travel to Cuba should be aware and plan accordingly. There are reports of cellphone and internet outages," the embassy added, noting that Cuba’s electrical grid is "increasingly unstable," which has led to "multiple" nationwide power outages in the last few months.

Explosions were heard in Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh late tonight... power grid collapsing in Cuba... Trump signing the sanctions legislation...aimed at Iran and Russia... the Turkish banking regulator revoking the operating license of an Iranian bank branch... The US lifting sanctions on the nation of Eritrea...across the sea from Yemen's west coast... AI issues surrounding US-China relations... an incident where AI led the US military to believe a Chinese vessel was carrying nuclear... Yemen War air attack alerts...multiple parts of Saudi Arabia... investigation into diversion of parts for the US F-35 warplane to Hong Kong... Nations allied with the US...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

A group of Cuban doctors claim they were effectively sold into slavery by their country’s regime and are asking for $129 million in damages in a lawsuit. The legal filing says 3,500 doctors were sent to Brazil between 2013 and 2018 and claims the Cuban regime earned more than $2.3 billion for their services but paid them “a small fraction” — less than 10 percent — of their earnings. The doctors, now living in the US, claim that when dispatched abroad they were never informed 90 percent of their wages would go to the Cuban government. They also say that...

Known for his seemingly perpetual litigation against the Clintons, Larry Klayman is turning his sights on the group he founded, charging in a lawsuit that his successor has "hijacked" the government-watchdog Judicial Watch for personal gain. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, Klayman charges, "sent out false and misleading fundraising letters, misused donor money, disparaged Klayman with supporters and the media, and took other actions which increased the damage to Judicial Watch, the donors and Klayman." Fitton issued a statement to WND stating Klayman's "ridiculous lawsuit is full of lies and distortions which Judicial Watch will address in court. " He...

Sun Tzu made an observation, some 2,500 years ago, that modern coalition politics seems to have taken to heart, though no one credits him for it. Paraphrased loosely: an army does not need every soldier to want the same outcome. It needs them moving in the same direction until the battle is won. The Red and the Green appear to have absorbed the lesson without ever reading the book. Almost nobody asks what happens once the battle ends and there's no shared enemy left to hold the army together. The Red is the socialist left. The Green is political Islam....

You know, we're still pretty fresh off the Cuban missile crisis that was still only like 15-20 years before, so it's a tumultuous period ... it was really scary.

Everything the Left doesn’t like is genocide

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Hugo Chavez has been accused of using Venezuela's oil riches to meddle in Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua. Now, Peru's president says the Venezuelan leader may be doing it here by funding militants and anti-poverty centers that preach populist revolution. In recent weeks, Peruvian police have arrested nine people the government alleges are militants bankrolled by Venezuela. And the head of a Congressional investigatory committee accused Venezuela of supplying funds to outreach centers he says agitate against the government. President Alan Garcia supports the ongoing investigation into the centers. Venezuela and allies Bolivia and Ecuador "want...

On Wednesday, after Democratic socialist candidate Angie Nixon was victorious in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, MS NOW reporter Alex Tabet worried that Cubans in Florida would not vote for Nixon because of Republicans’ “incorrect conflation of communism and Democratic socialism.” Tabet joined new MS NOW host Peter Alexander’s show, State of Play, live from Florida after the primary. Alexander asked about Nixon, whom he called an “unfamiliar name,” and wondered if Democrats were “bullish about her campaign or anxious about what it may mean in a red state.” Tabet responded and said there was a “skittishness here on the ground...

President Donald Trump shared a striking social media post on Tuesday declaring the Strait of Hormuz to be American territory. The post featured a graphic image of the strait labeled "New United States Territory," a move that raises significant legal and diplomatic questions. The declaration comes amid ongoing tensions with Iran and American efforts to control the strategic shipping lane through which approximately 20 percent of the world's oil flows. While Trump has previously claimed the United States maintains "absolute control" over the strait, this latest statement represents a notable escalation in both language and policy positioning. That being said,...

The Democratic Socialists of America website called deceased Cuban dictator Fidel Castro a “stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination,” while denouncing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as genocidal. In a tribute to Castro on what would have been his 100th birthday Thursday, the DSA website commemorated the “historic significance of both this day and the man.” The fast-growing socialist organization that’s made strong inroads in Democratic Party primary elections over the past year, said that they have “a long history of solidarity with the Cuban people, their revolution, and their self-determination.” The DSA statement said that it used the...

Sandy Cancino began his professional career as a successful independent Cuban audiovisual producer, but since 2018, he has become an influential leader and social organizer within civil society. That year, he founded the Havana Pastoral Unit (Unidad Pastoral de La Habana), a structure linking the social work of denominations boasting tens of thousands of followers across the island. He was also a key figure in the “For the Original Design” (Por el Diseño Original) campaign, which opposed restrictions on economic and religious freedoms — as well as on the family — contained in the 2019 Castroist Constitution. That campaign achieved...

“. . .there is no saving the Left. There is only saving America from them.” — Sasha Stone. The polycrisis of 2026 whirls like a demon-infested storm overcoming this human project of ours like a medieval panorama of the world’s end. Everything is fraught, tilting toward hazard, menace, ruin. Even under a summer sun, the mind sees only darkness everywhere it looks. Apocalypse now, it seems like. You almost can’t blame the doomers, the black pill-ers, lost in their transports of dread. But I tell you, we will get through this. Is it a surprise that the IRGC has a...

Cubans across the island nation banged pots and pans in a mass protest event against the regime on Friday and Saturday nights, demanding an end to the communist regime as the nation’s elites prepared to celebrate the anniversary of Fidel Castro’s first large-scale terrorist attack. July 26 marks the anniversary of the 1953 attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba by a terrorist cell organized by Fidel Castro, at the time an unpopular law student attempting to elevate his political profile. The attack killed 54 people and was, at the time, a massive failure for Castro’s movement,...

Amid Cuba’s months-long fuel and electricity crisis, one of the island’s most iconic exports is feeling the pinch: cigars. Retailers say the industry is facing one of the worst supply squeeze in history as blackouts, fuel shortages and shipping disruptions make it nearly impossible to produce luxury cigars and get them off the island in the temperature controlled conditions they require. “I’ve been telling clients, ‘Listen, it’s been months since I can get them,’” said Manu Harit, a London-based cigar specialist whose business is almost entirely built on Cuban cigars. Over the last year, he said, orders have been filled...

It’s notoriously difficult to prove vote fraud. But there are some huge red flags here. In President Trump’s prime time address on July 16, he revealed newly declassified evidence that (Mainland) China had spent a mint to acquire considerable election data for the 2020 election, including the full personal data sets on 220 million eligible and/or registered American voters. As many reporters point out, we don’t yet have all the data to tie up in a neat little bow proving how this data was used to commit vote fraud. That would require other, very different types of information. It’s notoriously...

Dear America, from an immigrant Cuban tastes freedom for the first time in his life

**SNIP** Now another person with close ties to Swalwell appears to be using his campaign account like a personal slush fund. That's Adam Gray, who was co-chair of Swalwell's failed gubernatorial campaign. Gray, who was once a member of the California Assembly, had a reputation in the state legislature for taking charter flights and staying at luxury resorts. When he was elected to Congress, he reportedly kept living large, running up campaign expenses for limousine services, Uber rides, and more than $16,000 on Major League Baseball (MLB) tickets. FEC documents show that Gray's campaign spent more than $5,000 on limousine...