Free Republic

As cities and towns across America reckon with power-hungry data centers, the Chinese Communist Party is sowing division. As small towns across the United States reckon with power-hungry data centers springing up, the Chinese Communist Party is muddying the waters and sowing division. By tapping into the tensions around water usage, power demands, and environmental costs, the regime is trying to widen the wedge using an old playbook: influence peddling and propaganda. There’s no discounting the groundswell of anger in American towns about data centers in their neighborhoods. Local resistance has blocked or delayed at least 75 data center...

Russia has attacked Ukraine with ballistic missiles and drones, killing at least 21 people, as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky said interceptors "could have saved lives". Kyiv and the surrounding region experienced the deadliest strikes it had seen this year overnight, with 17 people reported dead. Attacks in Kharkiv and Donetsk also killed one and three people respectively. Ukraine, who has consistently urged allies for more US-made Patriot missile interceptors to defend against Russian ballistics, has not reported intercepting any of the missiles in the overnight attack. Zelensky added delays in receiving anti-ballistic systems from partners leads to "horrific casualties and...

Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed a joint defence agreement, saying an attack on one of them would be seen as an attack on all three. The pact was announced at a meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the Saudi city of Mecca. The three countries have been looking to strengthen security ties as the war between the US and Iran has drawn in Saudi Arabia and disrupted maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil shipping channel, and the Red Sea. Saudi...

The year is 2019 and, after almost a full term in office, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government of right-wing and religious parties heads to a general election. Opposing him is a former IDF chief of staff heading a new centrist party which quickly soars in the polls, making him the main challenger for prime minister. That challenger was Benny Gantz. Gantz formed alliances, fought elections and got caught up in the paralysis of Israel’s 2019-20 governing crisis in which nobody was able to form a coalition. Facing the threat of the Covid-19 pandemic, Gantz agreed to a deal with Netanyahu where...

The maximalists wanted regime change, the minimalists wanted nothing, and the doubters see only waffling. Carafano’s answer: the victor gets to define victory — and everywhere you look, the region is moving Trump’s way. Iran War Turns into Trump Middle East Triumph: We are about to see the biggest reshaping of the Middle East since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt. Like the pharaoh, who missed every warning sign up to the parting of the Red Sea, the critics and questioners of Trump’s tug-of-war with what’s left of the Iran regime seem obtuse to the prophetic truth that the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A former U.S. Marine jailed in Russia since 2022 and allegedly tortured and injected with mind-altering drugs, slipped into a stupor in June and may be close to death, according to two hostage advocacy groups and his sister. The White House and the State Department have urged Moscow to release Robert Gilman, 32, so he can receive urgent medical treatment in the U.S., said Eric Lebson, chief strategy officer of Global Reach, an advocacy group representing his family. Gilman is being fed through a tube, he said. A source familiar with the matter told Reuters they had...

The world is focused on Iran. Dr. David Wurmser says the real threat is much bigger. In this urgent conversation, he explains how China, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, and a weakened Iran are aligning against Israel and the United States, why containment may fail, and what could finally bring the Iranian regime down from within.

Preliminary proposal reported by Iran’s Tasnim agency would also block Israel-linked cargo, demand compensation from ‘hostile states’ and fine violators up to 20% of cargo value; separate Iranian report says Tehran and Oman are discussing service fees and a jointly managed shipping corridor Iran’s parliamentary National Security Committee is reviewing a preliminary “strategic plan for managing the Strait of Hormuz” that would bar Israeli and American vessels from the critical waterway, according to a report Thursday by Iran’s Tasnim news agency. The reported proposal would also prohibit the passage of Israeli-linked military and civilian cargo, demand compensation from countries deemed...

At least 17 people were killed in a heavy Russian missile strike on Kiev and its surroundings, the Ukrainian Air Force said on Wednesday, exposing Ukraine's current inability to intercept ballistic missiles. The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia fired 28 ballistic missiles of various types overnight. Not a single projectile was intercepted. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the shortage of air-defence weapons.....

AUSTIN, Texas - Texas announced on Friday that Discord has agreed to a temporary injunction that will require the messaging platform to implement in Texas the same age-assurance and default safety features that it already provides for users in the United Kingdom.

Donald Trump clashed with Pete Hegseth over a claim that a US munitions shortage could limit his options in the Iran war, according to reports. The US president confronted his defence secretary at Camp David, his country retreat in Maryland, demanding to know why he had been misled about the missile shortage. The clash occurred on the sidelines of Mr Trump’s cabinet meeting on Friday, at which he said that he thought the missile issue “had been fixed”, two people familiar with the matter told the Washington Post. The White House dismissed the claims as “fake news”, denying that the...

The headlines focus on negotiations, but the war’s real story is this: Iran is steadily being broken by sanctions, isolation, and relentless military pressure. One day, the United States seems ready to unleash a Curtis LeMay-style devastating bombing campaign of Iran. The next, it appears trapped in endless haggling with Iranian dissimulators. Of the roughly 150 days since the first strike, about 90 have passed without major military operations. Iran believes time is on its side. The Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted, gas prices are too high, and antiwar House Democrats seem poised to win the midterms and bring Trump’s...

Anger over depleted US weapon inventories broke into the open at Camp David, where President Donald Trump pressed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on why he had been kept in the dark regarding severe missile deficits that are now restricting military maneuvers against Iran, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing two individuals familiar with the matter. According to the report, the tense interaction occurred on the sidelines of a Friday Cabinet meeting. Trump reportedly expressed sharp irritation, indicating he assumed the supply deficit “had been fixed", according to sources who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity....

While Germany's debt spiral is accelerating ever faster, Argentine President Javier Milei is steering his country in the opposite direction. Germany's statists will soon be left looking foolish once it becomes obvious that the German model has failed. Only contrast reveals one's own mistakes. Javier Milei is the antithesis of Germany's political class, and the comparison could hardly be starker. While Germany continues to expand the state, Argentina is slashing subsidies and radically reducing the size of its public bureaucracy. While Berlin piles up enormous amounts of public debt, Buenos Aires is posting a primary budget surplus. Friedrich Merz believes...

The House Foreign Affairs subcommittee chair invoked nearly $200 billion in U.S. support as attacks around Kazakhstan’s principal oil-export route forced production cuts and sharpened questions about Europe’s response. Representative Bill Huizenga has warned that further strikes affecting the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal will not be tolerated, explicitly linking Ukraine’s obligation to protect legitimate allied energy exports with the scale of American support for Kyiv. Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on South and Central Asia, was asked by The Times of Central Asia what immediate diplomatic steps the administration should take to safeguard Kazakhstan’s...

From Ceuta to Cuba to Tehran — and increasingly the American left — the same destructive ideas keep proving that reality is no match for ideological zeal. I’m looking around the world right now, and what I see isn’t all bad. In fact, there are lots of indications of positive things happening or about to happen. What strikes me, though, in seeing the hopeful signs, is the contrast between those and the, er… other things going on in the world. For example, the Moorish invasion of the Spanish town of Ceuta. Much of the reporting, particularly on social media, that...

The US military has exhausted nearly 80% of its interceptors for a key missile defense system as senior US military commanders are warning that the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile is “dangerously low,” according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. Stockpiles of key air defense systems have been particularly depleted during the war with Iran. The US military has burned through nearly four-fifths of its THAAD missile inventory compared to pre-war numbers and roughly half of its Patriot interceptors since the start of the war, according to two sources familiar with the latest inventory report. The disclosure of the low THAAD...

The lobbying group has more than doubled its spending on political campaigns, while rarely mentioning Israel. It has placed a large financial bet on today’s Michigan Senate primary. In less than five years, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has become one of the biggest spenders in American elections, flooding the airwaves in congressional races across the country. Since its first involvement in elections, the amount of money AIPAC-affiliated political action committees have spent on campaign advertising and outreach to voters has more than doubled, from $29.3 million to $67.2 million, with much of it spent in Democratic primaries. The...

President Donald Trump cast doubt in recent days on allegations that Russia is helping Iran target U.S. forces, even as members of his own administration acknowledge Moscow and Beijing are supporting Tehran in other ways. Trump dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claim that Russia supplied Iran with satellite imagery of U.S. military installations in the Gulf, saying any assistance would have been "very unimpactful" given the damage inflicted on Iran's military. "We’ll find out if that’s true. I’ll ask Putin. We’ll find out," Trump told reporters at the end of July.

Sunday saw the 10-year anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling against China’s nine-dash line. Fourteen countries reacted by reaffirming the ruling. China, predictably, reacted with saber-rattling. To recap the case: In 2012, prompted by a standoff at Scarborough Shoal, the Philippines sought international arbitration. China refused to participate in or recognize the process. It went ahead anyway, and the court ruling eviscerated China’s position, ruling its infamous nine-dash line invalid and faulting China on other points. China still refuses to recognize it and has tightened its grip over the area via salami-slicing gray-zone tactics. But the ruling stands....