Free Republic

King Charles is expected to meet New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York during his visit next week, according to two people familiar with the planning The unlikely duo will both attend a wreath laying at the 9/11 memorial in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday. The event will also be attended by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other New York government officials, according to the two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private plans. Mamdani, son of one of world’s most prominent postcolonial theorists, will have a camera-ready moment when he greets the man whose forebears oversaw...

UNITED NATIONS — Europe alone is not responsible for helping Ukraine bring an end to its war with Russia, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned Thursday. That is particularly true when considering President Donald Trump’s pledge to halt the fighting, she said in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. “He was the one who promised to stop the killing,” Kallas said. “So it can’t be on us.” Her comments come as Ukraine and its allies try to divine the meaning of Trump’s sudden about-face on the war between Kyiv and Moscow. In a Truth Social post...

As President Donald Trump privately mulled joining Israel’s campaign against Iran this month, one member of his Cabinet sent what he viewed as an audacious attempt to steer him in the opposite direction. At 5:30 a.m. on June 10, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a cryptic, three-minute video warning that “political elite and warmongers” are “carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers” — and that the world is “on the brink of nuclear annihilation.” Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according...

An influential group of GOP hawks has launched a behind-the-scenes lobbying offensive pressing President Donald Trump to not only back off his administration’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran, but greenlight an attack on Tehran by Israel. The campaign is raising alarms among Trump and his allies, who have launched a counteroffensive to keep the president’s diplomacy on track. During a private lunch with the president at the White House last Wednesday, conservative talk show host Mark Levin told Trump that Iran was days away from building a nuclear weapon, an argument Trump’s own intelligence team has told the...

With four hats, including national security adviser, the former Trump rival is defying predictions he’d be a weak player. Marco Rubio is doing big things under President Donald Trump — way more than nearly anyone expected. The secretary of State was once thought of as one of the weakest players in the Trump orbit, a man who wouldn’t last long in the Cabinet because he faced many internal rivals and had major policy differences with Trump and the MAGA base. But Rubio has deftly earned the president’s trust, enough so that Trump this week gave him another powerful job as...

Donald Trump’s team has told European officials that the incoming US president will demand Nato member states increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, but plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine. During his White House campaign, Trump vowed to cut off aid to Ukraine, force Kyiv into immediate peace talks, and leave Nato allies undefended if they failed to spend enough on defence — spooking European capitals. But in a boost for allies deeply concerned over their ability to support and protect Ukraine without Washington’s backing, Trump now intends to maintain US military supplies to Kyiv...

Ukrainian troops have reported outages of their Starlink communication devices on the frontline, hindering efforts to liberate territory from Russian forces, according to Ukrainian officials and soldiers. Thousands of Starlink terminals, made by Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, were purchased by the US government and crowdfunded by donors to help Ukrainian troops operate drones, receive vital intelligence updates and communicate with each other in areas where there are no other secure networks. The systems which connect a small antenna to a 35-centimetre-high terminal also provide internet for Ukrainian civilians. Some of the outages led to a “catastrophic” loss of communication in recent...