Free Republic

Two days ago, the global media rushed to declare that the Iranians had outplayed Donald Trump and his blockade of Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. The IRGC's proxies in Yemen seized strategic turf in the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, damaging Saudi Arabia's pipeline and sending oil prices higher. The Telegraph reported that the IRGC was "hitting [Trump] where it hurts," while insisting that the Red Sea action effectively countered – or at least paralleled – the US Navy's total blockade of Iranian sea traffic:Iran's leaders were never going to passively submit to slow strangulation. Facing Donald Trump's blockade of their ports...

A small village in Oxford has voted to secede from the UK in protest of Government plans to house more than 1,000 asylum seekers at a disused military site nearby. Residents in Piddington cast their ballots in a symbolic independence referendum held by Piddington Parish Council on Tuesday (September 15) after the Government announced plans to house up to 1,256 (Illegal Immigrant) male asylum seekers at an MoD (Ministry of Defense) site between Piddington and Upper and Lower Arncott. The result of the vote was announced on Wednesday morning, with locals voting overwhelmingly in favour. Susannah Parden, vice chair of...

"The new Russian strategy, and ...specifically jet powered drones, are leading to much greater losses on the Ukrainian side. My Ukrainian partners inform me that lately, the monthly death toll has reached 27000... With this trend, winter in Ukraine could indeed turn out to be catastrophic."

The war with Iran revealed just how much influence the world’s biggest oil importer has over prices and other countries’ supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel. One of the most important lessons from the war with Iran is one that few saw coming. The conflict has made clear that China, which has long been highly vulnerable to oil supply shocks, has managed to transform that weakness into a surprising source of geopolitical power. The country made that big shift by stockpiling huge amounts of oil, building extra oil refining capacity and investing in coal and other alternatives. And in...

In early March, U.S. President Donald Trump said that the United States had already “won” the war against Iran but still had to “finish the job.” Months later, as fighting escalates across the region and diplomacy is stalled, the “job” remains unfinished with no end in sight. Trump on Wednesday said that “hopefully we are toward the end of the war” and suggested that Iran wants to make a deal. But that optimism is belied by what’s happening on the ground—and there’s little evidence that Tehran is eager for an agreement. The United States has had military successes in the...

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is scheduled to address the annual gathering of world leaders on Wednesday. The Trump administration has agreed to let Iran’s leaders attend next week’s high-level United Nations meetings in New York, even as the two countries remain at war. “Consistent with our host country obligations, the core delegation from the Iranian regime will be able to attend UN General Assembly High Level Week,” the State Department said in a statement. The granting of travel documents to the Iranian delegation means that its members will be able to attend the United Nations General Assembly, which begins Tuesday....

Coalition wins 54 seats in survey, opposition Zionist bloc just 52, but neither side has clear path to coalition; Herzog says he’ll do everything he can to prevent a second round of voting. In a turnaround, a new poll projects that parties supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would make up the largest bloc in the Knesset if elections were held today.The Channel 13 survey was the first among the major news networks to indicate a result of this sort since the start of the election campaign. At the same time, Netanyahu did not have a clear path to a Knesset...

The White House came out swinging against a United Nations-sponsored investigation that found “reasonable grounds” to conclude the US committed war crimes in Iran and should pay “full reparations to victims.”“The UN Human Rights Council has accomplished nothing for human rights while spouting unserious nonsense for decades,” said White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly. “The only party in this conflict that has committed war crimes is the Iranian regime, which has murdered thousands of its own people, killed Americans overseas, executed acts of terrorism in the Strait of Hormuz, and launched indiscriminate attacks against its neighbors in the...

Swedish pop star Zara Larsdotter lashed out at the White House this week, calling officials “FOXTROT losers” after the administration used her song “Midnight Sun” in a TikTok video showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detaining and restraining a group of men. The clip, posted to the White House’s official TikTok account, carried the caption “Never ending deportations” — an apparent play on the song’s lyric “never ending midnight sun” — and showed roughly a dozen men in handcuffs and leg restraints. Ms. Larsdotter responded in her own TikTok video, saying the footage left her “really sad” and accusing...

The Iran war could reshape the midterms as Democrats, Iran’s regime, dissidents, and Kurdish rebels weigh the political and military stakes of the next 50 days. Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom. The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration. High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has suggested that churches and family members of refugees could sponsor and fund people's relocations, as he calls for an end to federal welfare benefits for refugees, some of whom remain on benefits long-term.Paul appeared on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show” Tuesday to discuss separate lawsuits filed by major American cities and 22 states over a pending rule that seeks to prevent immigrants who would be dependent on government assistance from entering the U.S. “We actually have laws on the books that [say] if you come here illegally, you’re not supposed to be eligible for...

The government announced a major tax reform at the Canada Investment Summit that will allow businesses to write off investments. The productivity mega-deduction will allow companies to expense the total cost of new investments across a number of sectors, including machinery, equipment, clean energy, zero-emission vehicles and more. "Our goal is simple — to make Canada the most attractive place in the G7 to invest," Prime Minister Mark Carney said at the summit. The program is an expansion of the government's earlier productivity super-deduction outlined in last year's budget, which initially extended to a limited selection of investments in things...

The bloc’s offer of “associate member” status to Ottawa shows how U.S. allies are pulling closer together. But their plans face significant obstacles. The European Union’s invitation Wednesday for Canada to become an “associate member” of the bloc shows just how intent these traditional United States allies are on pursuing a more stable future by binding closer together. “We must urgently reimagine our partnerships,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, a beaming Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada sitting just to her side. But there are no guarantees they...

Democratic and Republican U.S. senators asked President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday to declassify and release all information about a proposed agreement with Saudi Arabia on civil nuclear energy, including two ​classified “side letters” reached with Riyadh. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco ‌Rubio and Secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, which was seen by Reuters, the senators noted that the government has reached dozens of these so-called 123 nuclear agreements with other countries without withholding such information. “Access to the full text is required for the Senate and the public to have ‌a ​clear understanding of the commitments...

Washington — For the third time, the House voted Tuesday to block President Trump from taking further military action against Iran, with seven Republicans breaking with the president. The vote ended in a 220 to 204 tally, marking a symbolic rebuke of the president over the largely unpopular war. Tuesday's resolution drew more GOP support than the previous two efforts to limit Mr. Trump's war powers in June and July. Three new Republicans voted yes: Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn of Iowa. The four who supported the prior resolutions were Reps. Tom...

A Kosovo war crimes tribunal on Wednesday found former President Hashim Thaci guilty of war crimes committed during the 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia. Thaci, a former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) commander, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for crimes including murder, torture and illegal detention. He was tried along with three other former KLA guerrilla leaders in The Hague.

A transgender policewoman has confessed to raping a 15-year-old girl in a McDonald's toilet in Germany. Maja S., 55, confessed before the Traunstein Regional Court wearing handcuffs and leg irons amid the ongoing trial. She will likely face three and a half years in prison, according to Judge Andreas Bartschmid, in exchange for the confession. After her arrest, Maja S. was initially held in the women's section of the Bamberg prison in Bavaria. For the past five months, however, she has been in the men's section of the Stadelheim prison. Her lawyer, Peter Dürr, told BILD: 'This is a serious...

New photos obtained exclusively by CBS News reveal for the first time the widespread damage and destruction of buildings and vehicles at multiple U.S. positions across the Middle East, as a result of Iranian missile and drone attacks. The Defense Department's inspector general this week released a fresh report on the war in Iran that revealed "equipment losses" worth up to $3.7 billion — including nearly 60 aircraft. In a first-of-its-kind mandatory report to Congress, the inspector general added that U.S. Central Command reported Iranian strikes at U.S. bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman and Jordan.

For Americans who follow the Russian-Ukrainian war, the past few months must look very strange. In the first half of summer, the story from Kyiv – and the many western media outlets that repeated it – was that Ukraine was winning. Then, not long after the NATO summit in July, Kyiv announced it lacked the interceptors to prevent a winter disaster. The country needed 300 missiles to survive, we were told. Even if these 300 missiles arrive, they are unlikely to protect a country as large as Ukraine from the sheer volume of Russian ballistic attacks and glide-bomb strikes. Now...

Using his social-media megaphone to roil the waters, the tech entrepreneur is promoting a new anti-immigration party; ‘civil war is inevitable’ LONDON—On the eve of becoming the world’s first trillionaire, Elon Musk was fixated on political turmoil an ocean away from SpaceX headquarters.In one X post, he called the mayor of Belfast a “betrayer of her people.” In another, he called a British political leader “a scumbag and a traitor.” And a post from a once-obscure politician named Rupert Lowe—whose nascent far-right party Musk had declared the only hope for salvaging Britain’s future—got more than three million views after Musk...