Free Republic

The European Parliament has approved an urgent procedure to fast-track legislation that would revive the EU's expired “Chat Control 1.0” rules. This development sets up a decisive vote on July 9 over whether online platforms may once again be allowed to voluntarily scan private user communications for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). MEPs voted 331 in favor and 304 against using the urgency procedure, allowing Parliament to bypass the usual committee stage. The procedural vote does not itself reinstate the law but accelerates consideration of a proposal that would effectively restore the temporary legal framework that expired in April.

Two American allies, Germany and Japan, already have permission to build the American interceptors, a license that President Trump says he will also grant to Kyiv. In 2022, as fears mounted over Europe’s missile defense capabilities against Russian strikes, the Biden administration granted permission for Germany to build a factory to manufacture state-of-the-art Patriot air defense interceptors. That factory has yet to produce a single Patriot — a sign of the time it can take and how difficult it can be to ramp up production of American weapons abroad, even after winning approval from the United States government to do...

Prosecutor General's Office hasn't established Ukraine's involvement in the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, prosecutors said on July 9, adding that the investigation and evidence collection are still underway. The statement comes a week after Germany's federal prosecutor filed charges against a Ukrainian national suspected of sabotaging the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022. The suspect is Serhii Kuznietsov, Ukrainian veteran who was extradited to Germany in November 2025. Ukrainian law enforcement is investigating the case as part of criminal proceedings into Russia's war against Ukraine and other alleged offenses. Investigators are reviewing information...

A New York mother, who moved to Ireland with her teen daughter, was beaten to death inside her home as police launched a search for a “person of significant interest” whom she knew. Jamey Carney, a 43-year-old Westchester County native, was found covered under her bedsheets, suffering from multiple head wounds inside her rented home in the Irish town of Killarney on Tuesday... Blood stains were splattered around Carney’s room and the killer allegedly used a duvet to cover Carney’s wounded torso and face before fleeing... Results of the postmortem examination were not publicly released, but officials upgraded the case...

President Donald Trump said Iran “called a little while ago” and “wants a deal so badly” after the United States launched a second consecutive night of strikes against Iranian targets, but questioned whether Tehran is “worthy” of an agreement while warning that any future attacks would be met with overwhelming force. Speaking aboard Air Force One while returning to Washington from the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday night, Trump said Tehran had reached out after the latest round of U.S. strikes, which reportedly marked the first American attacks on Iranian infrastructure since the April 8 ceasefire and followed Iran’s...

Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig Rama Duwaji, wife of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is co-hosting an expensive spiritual retreat in Corsica, honoring Jesus' mother Mary as a "Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation". Tickets range from around $3,000 to $5,000 for a trip of prayer, lectures, and food, all to distort the well-documented truth that Jesus was Jewish. For such an expensive propaganda trip, one can only hope they receive a decent gift bag.

The funeral of Ayatollah Khamenei is the Islamic Republic’s biggest political ritual since the funeral of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 and one of the most consequential political events in the Islamic Republic’s history. Coming after the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, it marks both the end of one era and the beginning of another. Every aspect of the funeral has been carefully choreographed. Its scale, symbolism, religious rituals, foreign attendance, and even the route of the procession communicate different messages to different audiences. Like other major state ceremonies in the Islamic Republic, the funeral serves not only to honor the dead...

For decades, the economy of the Falkland Islands has relied mainly on squid and sheep. Now, however, the prospect of an oil boom stands to transform the tiny overseas territory — and reignite sovereignty tensions between Argentina and the UK. Construction has begun on the infrastructure needed to drill Sea Lion, an oilfield 220km to the north of the Falklands. The first oil is expected in March 2028, reaching a maximum of 50,000 barrels per day in 2032. While relatively small among offshore oil projects, Sea Lion has the potential to triple the Falklands’ current GDP. The peak taxes and...

‘My whole life, all I do is deals,” President Trump said Wednesday, but Iran’s regime “is from a different school,” he had to admit. “They’re liars, they’re cheats, they’re sick people.” Mr. Trump cited the tens of thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime in January and explained how its word has proved worthless. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” he said.The President is so mercurial that it’s impossible to know if he’s serious that the cease-fire is “over,” as he said. He could declare it back on tomorrow. But he’s right that Iran’s regime has been wasting...

President Donald Trump flew home from a NATO summit in Turkey on an old baby blue Air Force One plane instead of the new Qatari-gifted and retrofitted red, white and navy blue jet he arrived in, a surprise swap that came as the U.S. and Iran once again began trading strikes. Trump offered little clarity on the swap, instead saying he would fly on the legacy aircraft “for old time’s sake,” and indicating that both aircraft would make a previously unscheduled stop on the way back to the U.S. at Royal Air Force Mildenhall, a base used by U.S. troops....

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent delivered a remarkably important speech on June 23 at the Economic Club of New York. Yet neither Wall Street nor most of the economic profession seems to have paid it enough attention. By laying out what until now seemed more like haphazard policy measures, Mr. Bessent put down a marker for how the United States plans to operate in a changing global economic system. In the process, he elevated both the scale and the scope of a systemic change that started in earnest during President Trump’s first term, was sustained by President Joe Biden and is...

Some of the UK’s top judges are hearing arguments over whether a Trinidad and Tobago court had the legal right to overturn a 2018 ruling to remove colonial-era homophobic laws that criminalise anal sex between consenting men. The country’s “buggery law”, often referred to as its “sodomy” law, was created in 1925 and was written into Trinidad and Tobago’s 1986 Sexual Offences Act. In 2017 a Trinidadian LGBTQ+ rights activist, Jason Jones, challenged the law, and in 2018 a high court ruled that it infringed upon his constitutional right to privacy and equality. Last year a court of appeal quashed...

President Donald Trump has landed in Ankara, Türkiye, for the NATO Summit 2026 aboard the new Air Force One. Watch the dramatic arrival as world leaders gather for one of NATO's most consequential meetings.

Rupert Lowe is a British politician who has served as the member of Parliament for Great Yarmouth since 2024 and the leader of Restore Britain.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered an investigation into a Texas hospital Tuesday after it confirmed to Fox News that it advertised Spanish-language "Birth Packages in South Texas" on billboards in Mexico promoting childbirth services to pregnant foreign nationals near the U.S.-Mexico border. Mission Regional Medical Center confirmed to Fox News that it was responsible for the advertising campaign, which promoted deliveries starting at $3,950 for a natural birth and $5,525 for a C-section, and directed viewers to a website, havemybabyinTEXAS.com, which has since been taken offline. The billboards also displayed a telephone number beginning with "001," the country code used...

Iran’s terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed on Wednesday that they had targeted 85 allegedly “American military facilities,” in reality launching sweeping bombing campaigns against neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain. The IRGC’s aggression follows Iran bombing various vessels attempting to navigate the Strait of Hormuz, reportedly ships linked to Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Iranian regime’s attacks prompted U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to resume targeted strikes on Iran’s terrorist infrastructure to protect free navigation in the strait, which the IRGC used as its reasoning for bombing Kuwait and Bahrain. The IRGC’s statement, as shared by the Iranian government’s Islamic Republic...

President Donald Trump appeared to confuse Iran with Japan during a jaw-dropping verbal slip at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, telling reporters that the “Islamic Republic of Japan” had fired more than 100 missiles at a U.S. aircraft carrier as he touted the effectiveness of Patriot missile defense systems.

President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday he would grant Kyiv a license to make its own critically needed Patriot air-defense missiles, joking: “This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough.” “One of the things I think we’re going to be talking about today, a little birdie told me this, about the fact that we’ll give them the right to make Patriots,” Trump said ahead of his closed-door sitdown with Zelensky on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey. Patriot missiles have long been in short supply, but now are running critically low — forcing...

President Trump said the U.S. would likely launch more strikes against Iran Wednesday night, telling reporters at a NATO summit in Turkey "we hit them very hard last night," and "we're going to hit them hard again tonight." Earlier Wednesday Mr. Trump said, "as far as I'm concerned, it's over," when asked about the ceasefire with Iran. After an exchange of strikes by both countries, Mr. Trump called Iran's leaders "sick" and declared it "a waste of time dealing with them."

President Trump said Wednesday that he believes his memorandum of understanding with Iran is dead after he ordered overnight airstrikes on 80 targets after Iranian forces attacked three commercial ships. “I don’t like them at all. And frankly, I think we wasted a lot of time with them, I think we should just do our business,” Trump said in his first public remarks after ordering the airstrikes. When asked by a reporter if the preliminary peace deal, which Trump signed June 17, was dead, Trump replied: “To me, i think it’s over. I don’t want to deal with them anymore....