Free Republic

A federal judge in Ohio has ordered the Trump administration to resume processing certain immigration benefit applications, delivering the latest legal setback to a broader effort by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to freeze or delay immigration cases. U.S. District Judge Algenon L. Marbley granted a preliminary injunction Monday in a case brought by 25 foreign nationals who said their applications for work authorization, green cards and other immigration benefits had been stalled under USCIS and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) policies tied to countries covered by President Donald Trump's travel restrictions. The decision could affect immigrants seeking green...

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s debt-fuelled spending not seen since Germany reunification. Germany plans to borrow more than €800bn by 2030, breaking with decades of fiscal restraint to bring defence spending to levels not seen since the cold war. Next year alone, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government plans to raise more than €200bn from markets, 12.5 per cent more than this year, the finance ministry said on Monday. Between 2027 and 2030, Germany is expected to borrow about €838bn, according to projections. The budget marks a sharp break with the country’s deep-rooted aversion to debt and with Merz’s own party line on fiscal...

Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces (SBS) carried out a large-scale overnight strike on July 6, hitting 47 Russian military targets, including two fuel tankers transporting gasoline to temporarily occupied Crimea, two S-400 Triumf air defense launchers, an oil depot in Kerch, and a Nebo-U radar system. SBS Commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi on June 6 described the operation as one of the most significant recent strikes against Russian military infrastructure. According to Brovdi, among the most significant targets were two tankers from Russia's so-called shadow fleet operating in the Sea of Azov. The vessels were transporting fuel from the area of Taganrog...

A University of California, Berkeley professor killed in a violent custody dispute in Greece has left behind grieving family members and 11-year-old twin children, while his relatives now face a separate battle in California to remove alleged squatters from his East Bay home. Przemyslaw Jeziorski was shot and killed in Greece in July during a custody dispute that turned deadly. Authorities say the boyfriend of Jeziorski’s ex-wife later confessed to the killing. His ex-wife, Nadia Michelidaki, later died by suicide in a Greek prison in May.

HAVANA, July ⁠6 (Reuters) - ⁠Cuba's national ⁠electric grid collapsed ​on Monday at ‌midday, the country's ‌grid ⁠operator ⁠said, leaving around 10 million ​people on the Caribbean island ​nation without power. Cuba has ⁠for months ⁠suffered ⁠from hours-long, ​and more recently, days-long ​power ⁠outages linked in part to an ⁠ailing grid and a U.S. imposed oil ⁠blockade that has cut off the island's fuel supply.

To use language to obscure reality is to show ‘indifference regarding the truth’— to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens as equals.” —Justice Clarence Thomas Now that the grand 250th USA birthday party is over — the speeches, the shrieking warplanes, the dazzling fireworks, the speeches and strawberry shortcake — there is only one way this thing can go. What thing? The war for the soul of the nation. Some mysterious somebody is behind the surging “Democratic-Socialist” craze. Somebody is paying for it. It’s a last-ditch drive to marshal the disaffected, under-employed young voters, choking...

The Ukrainian Air Force says a "serious shortage" of interceptor missiles meant none of the 23 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at Kyiv on Sunday night were shot down. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed for allies to take "strong decisions" at this week's Nato summit to provide Kyiv with air defences. After the strikes, he said the Ukrainian military had been successful in intercepting cruise missiles and drones – but not ballistic missiles. Zelensky warned that Moscow would continue to hit residential buildings as long as defensive Patriot missiles "remain in our allies' stockpiles".

President Trump restarted his feud with Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni over the weekend, deploying a meme-based attack to imply that she is obsessed with him. On Sunday, Trump posted an image of Meloni gazing up at him with a beatific smile under the caption “Restraining order needed,” recalling their stunning war of words that erupted last month following the G7 summit in France. The president had disparaged Meloni in an interview with Italian broadcaster La7, saying: “She’s probably happy I talked to her. She wanted a photo with me so much. I wouldn’t have even done it, but I...

In brief: Czech opposition party SPD has called for Ukraine’s Zelensky to be stripped of the Order of the White Lion, the country's highest state decoration, following a similar decision from Poland after Kyiv named a military unit after a controversial WWII military formation that Warsaw viewed as responsible for massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. A Czech opposition party has proposed stripping Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of the Czech Republic’s highest state honor, arguing it “cannot stay silent” after Kyiv named a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). According to Ceske Noviny on Tuesday, the...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched waves of missiles and drones targeting Kyiv overnight into Monday that killed at least seven people, authorities said, hours after Ukraine’s president warned that another large-scale attack was imminent.Another 24 were wounded, said Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s City Military Administration in a post on Telegram.A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, he said. In the Darnytsia district, several multistory buildings were damaged and people were believed to be trapped under the rubble. “These are residential buildings. Places where people slept and lived their ordinary lives,” he said. The attack, which was...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was the Trump administration’s frontman for waging war on Iran during weeks of kinetic operations aimed at decimating its nuclear threat. Since President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran to end the war, without securing significant concessions on its missile or nuclear stockpiles, Hegseth has said little about the shift in strategy — as Vice President Vance takes the spotlight in defending the tenuous diplomacy. The public positioning of the top Trump advisers reflects reporting on their private counsel to the commander in chief, with Trump saying in March that Hegseth was “the...

New supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei still absent from public view as his three brothers stand beside father’s coffin Beside the coffin of the assassinated former Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei at a packed prayer hall in Tehran on Sunday there were calls for the killing of Donald Trump. Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions ⁠for Khamenei, who was killed along with other members of his family on the first day of the US and Israeli war on 28 February. The funeral was delayed because of the war. The funeral prayers for the former supreme leader and four...

An underground church pastor has been released from prison in China and has arrived in the United States, less than two months after President Donald Trump publicly raised his case with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Ezra Jin Mingri, who founded Beijing’s fast-growing Zion Church, was detained in October last year along with 17 other church leaders in what was one of China’s largest crackdowns on a single religious congregation in decades. The U.S.-based advocacy group ChinaAid, which monitors religious persecution in China, said Saturday that Jin had arrived in Los Angeles following his release. Jin’s detention drew international attention in...

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s slain supreme leader, had seemed immovable for decades, a man whose authority had become so deeply woven into Iran’s political and religious life that imagining the country without him felt almost impossible. Now Tehran — the capital from which he ruled, where he was killed and which had shaped his life — is the center of his final journey, filled with mourners for funeral ceremonies taking place across several days, which are part farewell, part spectacle and part turning point. In the days leading up to the first public mourning, the city changed. First gradually, and...

On paper, the US constitution is a thing of beauty. But the would-be emperor in Washington has revealed its great weaknessAmerica’s big birthday has come at a bad time. On Saturday it will be a divided nation that marks 250 years since 13 North American colonies declared their independence from the Great Britain of George III. Many will be anxious that the republic they established that day is fragile – not least because of the would-be emperor in the White House.Some will console themselves that hope and angst have always been intertwined in the American story. From the very start,...

Lukashenko said Caracas can always count on Minsk, calling bilateral ties ideologically resilient, as Maduro remains detained in New York since January 3.MINSK – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko marked Venezuela’s Independence Day on Sunday by congratulating Acting President Delcy Rodriguez and making explicit what Minsk’s position is on Nicolas Maduro’s detention: it wants the Venezuelan president home as soon as possible.“We welcome the consistent efforts of the government headed by you to preserve peace, constitutional order and the earliest possible return to the homeland of President Nicolas Maduro Moros and his wife Cilia Flores,” the congratulatory message read, as quoted...

China’s leader draws from autocrats’ playbook to expand power, oust potential rivals and lay groundwork to rule indefinitely Chinese leader Xi Jinping is employing the sort of autocratic tactics once wielded by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to stamp out opposition and stack the leadership with acolytes as he prepares to extend his reign. In a throwback to the most powerful Communist leaders of the 20th century, Xi has purged dozens of senior officials—even his own protégés—overseen the growth of a cult of personality and demanded absolute loyalty. His goal: dictate China’s destiny for years to come in order to...

RESTRICTION SUMMARY: ASSOCIATED PRESS Johannesburg, South Africa - 30 June 2026 1. Various of crowd at protest 2. Wide of protesters and police vehicles during protest 3. Various of protesters marching

Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel launched a series of controversial criticisms and predictions about AI and Western democracy during remarks at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado on Tuesday. In his most provocative statement, Thiel accused Pope Leo XIV of serving the interests of China with his stance on AI.CNN reports that Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and PayPal and an early Silicon Valley supporter of President Donald Trump, accused Pope Leo of inadvertently functioning as a Chinese communist agent by advocating for AI regulation. He also warned of what he described as an impending democratic-socialist takeover of the United States...

The wife of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) did something "bizarre" three days after he was hospitalized for a possible heart attack, according to a new report. Elaine Chao, Transportation secretary during Trump's first administration and McConnell's wife since 1993, left the country, the Daily Beast reported Saturday. Chao flew to Beijing to discuss China-U.S. relations with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 17, according to the Daily Beast and Chinese media. This was three days after McConnell, 84, was reportedly found "unconscious" and rushed from his home in Washington to the hospital, reports show. Want more breaking political news?...