Free Republic

A Winchester man has been sentenced to 15 years to life in state prison for supplying the fentanyl that caused the fatal overdose of 30-year-old Calin Sender, marking one of the few fentanyl-related murder convictions in California, according to the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors said Quinn Aaron McKellips, 38, provided the lethal dose of fentanyl that killed Sender in January 2020. Evidence presented during trial showed McKellips had been selling multiple types of narcotics to Sender for several months before his death. Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said the sentence reflects the seriousness of the crime and...

An alleged Sinaloa cartel leader who was wanted by US authorities on suspicion of operating the “world’s largest known fentanyl production network” was killed by the Mexican military on Sunday. Pedro Inzunza Coronel, better known under the alias “El Pichón,” allegedly attacked members of the Mexican Navy during a drug raid in the northwestern state of Sinaloa, Omar Garcia Harfuch, Mexico’s security secretary, wrote on X. Harfuch wrote that Coronel “lost his life” during the raid, though the exact manner of his death is unclear. In May, the US Department of Justice charged Coronel and his father, Pedro Inzunza Noriega,...

Attorney Greg Joseph has filed a “Memorandum in support of petition for postconviction relief” on behalf of his client Derek Chauvin—the former Minneapolis police officer involved in the arrest and death of George Floyd. In the 71-page petition filed in Hennepin County District Court, Joseph stated that “this case simply never made sense.” Among several key arguments, he pointed out how few murders “take place before a crowd of witnesses” while officers are working with dispatchers and requesting an ambulance and emergency response. In speaking about the case for the first time since it was filed on Thursday, Nov. 20,...

The Department of the Interior today announced the successful seizure of more than 37,000 fentanyl pills during a coordinated drug interdiction operation on the Pueblo of Isleta Reservation in New Mexico, led by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Division of Drug Enforcement and Pueblo of Isleta Tribal Police. The operation, which also included the Homeland Security Task Force, resulted in the seizure of approximately 37,300 fentanyl pills with a street value of nearly $1.5 million and $37,877 in cash. "We commend the law enforcement teams from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Pueblo of Isleta, and all of the other...

DENVER – The Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Field Division (RMFD) has announced the seizure of approximately 1.7 million counterfeit fentanyl pills from a storage facility in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch. This is the largest one-time seizure of counterfeit pills in Colorado history, and the sixth-largest, single seizure of suspected fentanyl pills in United States history. “This played out like an episode of a TV show, where a winning bidder legally bought a storage unit and unbeknownst to them, the unit contained 1.7 million counterfeit fentanyl pills and another 12 kilograms of fentanyl powder,” said DEA Rocky Mountain...

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Tuesday that China would cease manufacturing fentanyl precursors, which are the chemicals used to create the opioid that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past decade. During a press conference, Patel told reporters that the Trump administration has “been fighting hard to seize and stop drug traffickers,” which means it “must attack fentanyl precursors, the ingredients necessary to make this lethal drug.” The director explained that addressing this issue was the impetus behind his visit to China. Eliminating these chemicals would “suffocate the drug trafficking organization’s ability to manufacture fentanyl in...

In a speech before the House of Commons on May 13, 1940, referencing the war against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill stated, “What is our policy? … To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime.” The Prussian military theorist Karl von Clausewitz once observed that “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” Various political and moral interpretations exist regarding what constitutes a “just war.” That usually depends on one’s point of view. As the saying goes, one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. What if there were a country...

War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Tuesday another lethal strike against a drug trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific. Two were killed in the attack. According to NewsNation, at least 66 people have been killed in at least 16 strikes since the United States campaign in South America started in September. This strike came “the same day an aircraft carrier began heading to the region in a new expansion of military firepower,” per NewsNation. Hegseth wrote in a statement on Tuesday, Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a...

Russia's foreign ministry denounced on Saturday "excessive military force" by the United States in the Caribbean Sea deployed as part of a drive against drug trafficking and reaffirmed its support for Venezuela's leaders. "We firmly denounce the use of excessive military force in carrying out actions in anti-drugs operations," foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a commentary on her ministry's website. "Such actions are in violation of both U.S. domestic legislation ... and the norms of international law." (snip) In her comments, Zakharova said Russia "confirms our firm support for the Venezuelan leadership in defending its national sovereignty."

"The scream of sirens is unrelenting."

Behind a large glass wall, a worker in full protective gear watches as hundreds of tiny glass bottles whizz by every minute, sterilized, filled and packaged by a ballet of robotic arms. Inside each ampule is the substance at the heart of the geopolitical strife between the United States and China: fentanyl, the deadly opioid set to be top of the agenda when Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping meet Thursday. NBC News got exclusive access to the headquarters of Yichang Humanwell Pharmaceutical, the largest producer of the drug in China, and indeed Asia, at its sprawling complex in the...

There are dangerous drug wars south of the U.S. border. American presidents ceremoniously appoint powerful drug czars to wage war on illicit drugs. President Trump and our secretary of war Pete Hegseth are attacking drug-carrying vessels off the coast of Venezuela. But the crucial question is, why are Americans such a receptive, exploding market for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, fentanyl, and cannabis?A major cause of America’s drug abuse epidemic is the relentless erosion of our American character structure. To paraphrase Pogo, “We have found our enemy in the war on drugs, and it is US.” The affliction is internal to America,...

When I arrived in Minneapolis, the frost had just lifted, and gray clouds hung low over the horizon. I had come to make a pilgrimage to George Floyd Square, where the revolution of 2020 began. It has been more than five years since Floyd lost his life and became a patron saint of the Left, and I wanted to see what had happened here since then. The square is situated in a run-down intersection that now features a statue of a clenched black fist in the central roundabout. On one corner stands a minimarket called Unity Foods—formerly Cup Foods—where George...

I found a body on the streets of Portland. 911 was called and it took them two hours to arrive. He was clutching tinfoil meaning he died of a fentanyl overdose. I guarded the body because multiple Homeless were trying to go through his pockets. This is not unusual. I find bodies all the time. This is the sad reality of the streets.

This is not a war zone, a riot didn’t happen here, and no a bomb didn’t go off here This is Los Angeles, California in a location that used to be full of stores. Busy traffic still drives by and Gavin Newsom wants to be President… “You know I love exploring but even I got my limits when I’m by myself”

President Donald Trump has ordered troops to be sent to Portland, Oregon, a Democratic-run city he described as 'war ravaged' and besieged by left wing 'domestic terrorists'. He made the announcement Saturday on his Truth Social account and said the move was necessary to protect ICE facilities under attack by Antifa, a loosely organized far-left movement that is against fascism. 'I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists,' Trump wrote. Trump also said he...

Nate Robinson spotlights fentanyl’s devastation with a stark Philly video.Former NBA guard Nate Robinson recently used his platform to shed light on the devastating impact of fentanyl addiction. On Instagram, Robinson shared a disturbing video from Philadelphia that showed individuals slumped over and staggering in public, their movements eerily resembling “zombies.” The clip was set to Rae Sremmurd’s hit song Black Beatles, the same track once associated with the lighthearted “Mannequin Challenge.” The mix of the upbeat song with such grim scenes made the footage even more jarring. “Man who put this music over this post? Smh. Swaelee the song...

President Donald Trump announced a third strike on a drug boat on Friday, which killed three alleged “narcoterrorists.” Trump said he directed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to conduct the strike. An accompanying video shows a boat cruising through the water before being blown up. “On my Orders, the Secretary of War ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking illicit narcotics, and was transiting along a known narcotrafficking passage enroute to poison Americans. The...

Money laundering isn’t new — and neither is China’s role in it. Millennia ago, Chinese merchants developed schemes to “clean” the profits of commercial trade and avoid taxation. Today, their successors are doing much the same. Only now, they’re laundering billions through the U.S. financial system and fueling one of the deadliest fentanyl-fueled drug crises in American history. In a step in the right direction, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (known as FinCEN) issued a sweeping advisory on Aug. 28 warning that Chinese money laundering networks now represent “one of the most significant money laundering threat actors facing...

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Judge Jeanine Pirro said on Fox News Thursday that federal authorities seized one of the largest drug precursor shipments ever headed for the Sinaloa Cartel. The Trump administration ramped up its cartel crackdown after President Donald Trump authorized military strikes Tuesday, with the latest operation off Venezuela’s coast killing 11 alleged Tren de Aragua members. In an appearance on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Pirro said her office — working with Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, the FBI, and the DEA — intercepted 1,300 barrels of methamphetamine precursors shipped from Shanghai and bound for...