Free Republic

The president said earlier this week that he imagines the communist government will “fall fairly soon.” President Donald Trump signaled in a new interview that he could take military action to topple Cuba’s communist government before he leaves office. “I want to get Cuba done before I leave you,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday when asked if he would order the use of military force against Cuba to free the nation. Trump said his administration is “watching it very closely” and Cuba is “doing very poorly,” calling it a “failed” country. The president said he would...

Five people, including two children, have been rescued after spending nearly three months stranded aboard a small boat in the Pacific Ocean, ending an extraordinary ordeal that began with what was supposed to be a brief trip between islands. The survivors were among nine passengers who departed the Micronesian islands of Murilo and Ruo on July 30, according to Fox News. The group had planned to make the roughly one-hour crossing, but a sudden storm pushed their 20-foot skiff off course and left them drifting in open water, according to reports from the Australian Broadcasting Corp. and The Times of...

Bush recently registered as an agent of a Brussels-based foreign principal organizing anti-Israel tours in the Palestinian territorie Former "Squad" member Cori Bush, now a foreign agent hired to lead anti-Israel propaganda tours in the West Bank, has been blocked from entering the Jewish state, she announced in a Friday video filmed from the airport. "My visa is now revoked," Bush said. "I tried to go through the TSA checkpoint and they were having problems letting me through, and the person asked me for my visa, I pulled up my visa, my visa to Israel is revoked." Bush attributed the...

A new migrant caravan of approximately 2,000 to 3,000 people—mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Haiti, has left southern Mexican and is heading for the U.S. border.Members of the caravan are hoping last week’s Democrat midterm victories will lead to reopening the border and make it easier to enter the United States.Here we go again. Hundreds of migrants are already forming a caravan heading north because they saw the midterm results and think the border is open. But the real question is, who is actually funding this? Who is coaching them on where to go and what to...

* Lutnick agreed on Thursday to testify voluntarily before the Senate Banking Committee, Lutnick spokesperson Kristen Eichamer told NBC after chair Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., sent letters to Lutnick and Huang requesting they appear on Dec. 3 and Dec. 10, respectively. * Scott’s letter asked Lutnick to testify publicly “regarding recent public reports about Nvidia and the Department of Commerce’s role that raises national security concerns.” * The request comes amid a multitude of reports that Lutnick resisted new regulations to prevent Nvidia’s chips from being used by Chinese companies and the Chinese government to get an edge over the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration says it has returned more than $12 billion, or almost 99%, of the revenue obtained from the sales of Venezuelan oil since it ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro in January. In a broad energy deal reached with the country’s interim authorities, according to the report. As of Sept. 30, the end of the 2026 budget year, $168.6 million remained in an escrow account managed by the U.S. Treasury Department, the report said. Under the terms of the deal, Venezuelan crude is sold on the open market, with proceeds going into the U.S.-managed account. Venezuelan officials...

The world’s fertility crisis is more severe than is commonly understood. Last year, humanity’s total fertility level dropped below what demographers call the replacement rate—that is, the average number of children that a woman must have to keep a population constant over the long run. This has never happened before. There have been periods when the human population declined because of wars or epidemics, such as the Black Death, in the fourteenth century, or the diseases brought by Europeans to the Americas in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. But now, simply as a function of their choices, humans will see...

Israel’s political transition has triggered a confrontation over national security, with Prime Minister-designate Gadi Eisenkot warning outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against launching new military operations against Iran before a new government takes office. In a letter sent Wednesday, Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and a former Israeli military chief, urged Netanyahu to exercise restraint in security decisions that could expose Israel to further military escalation. “Deploying security forces in the absence of a direct and immediate threat that cannot be postponed could have devastating consequences for Israeli democracy and for citizens’ trust in the institutions of government,” Eisenkot...

Russia has effectively given up its effort to replace the dollar with the yuan in foreign trade because of U.S. secondary sanctions, Bloomberg reported. Russia began shifting aggressively to the yuan after the start of its full-scale war with Ukraine and the imposition of Western sanctions. By 2024, the currency accounted for nearly half of the country’s foreign trade settlements, became the most traded currency on the Moscow Exchange, and overtook the dollar in bank deposit volume. The situation began to shift after the U.S. tightened secondary sanctions against banks in June 2024. Fearing restrictions, Chinese financial institutions started cutting...

Beijing targets California’s tech, research and innovators in its quest for superiorityOver the last half a century, Chinese spies have taken aim at a wide swath of California targets.They have worked as a Boeing aerospace engineer and a naval engineer at defense contractor Power Paragon to obtain highly classified information on U.S. space shuttle and Navy projects. They have assumed the roles of electrical engineering professor at UCLA and software engineer at Google and even worked as a driver and aide to the late U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein when she chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.Intelligence experts say that China continues...

Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun stood before a federal judge in Manhattan on October 8. He admitted to four felony counts: conspiracy to violate US export controls, conspiracy to smuggle goods out of the country, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice. Prosecutors call the 44-year-old contractor a "fixer," a label that undersells what he's accused of actually doing. That's the headline fact. Here's why it matters beyond one contractor's sentencing: Sun was charged alongside Supermicro co-founder Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, who pleaded not guilty. Liaw's trial, originally set for November, was pushed back to March 2027 after his lawyer...

He previously said he was open to the vice president restarting talks with Tehran, but now says a deal isn’t necessary WASHINGTON—President Trump said Thursday that the U.S. didn’t need a deal with Iran and would prefer Vice President JD Vance, who has taken the lead in negotiations, work on investigating American cities run by Democrats.“I have asked Vice President Vance to focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.,” Trump posted on social media. “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have...

Winter is coming, and in Germany, officials are scrambling to prepare coal plants for emergency operations as gas supplies and storage levels are low. Germany has waged war on coal plants for years in pursuit of its green agenda, relying instead on gas imported from Russia and elsewhere. The nation wants to be "climate neutral" by 2045 in accordance with the Paris Agreement. Coal plants were phased out, as were nuclear plants, with the last one closing in 2023. On November 2, Clean Energy Wire reported that the nation missed winter gas storage targets to have them at least 70...

Jensen Huang is out at Nvidia. The embattled CEO resigned Thursday over reports of two extramarital affairs—one with an alleged Chinese spy, the other with a company exec who reported to him, reports the Wall Street Journal and the BBC. His scandal has rocked the world of technology given that Nvidia is vital to the AI industry and Huang is vital to Nvidia. Finance chief Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO, but the path to picking a permanent successor is murkier because Huang had no clear second-in-command. Nvidia shares fell 10% on the news, on top of earlier losses...

A Chinese university with links to the country's military bought two of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips last month despite being on a U.S. export blacklist, according to Reuters. Northwestern Polytechnical University purchased the chips for 874,700 yuan ($123,000) on October 21 through a local supplier, Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, rather than directly from Nvidia. The university is among China's so-called Seven Sons of National Defense, a group of institutions with ties to military research. Based in Xi'an, Northwestern Polytechnical conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The H200 is one of Nvidia's most powerful processors for training...

This is an excerpt from an opinion article by former U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. America has crossed the Rubicon with Iran. There is no going back to the world that existed before this war, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. We have attacked Iran’s military infrastructure, inflicted enormous damage on its economy and demonstrated that the United States is prepared to use overwhelming force. Now, at precisely the moment when we have gained the upper hand, Washington seems increasingly preoccupied with how quickly we can declare victory, bring down gasoline prices and move on.

brief: Ukraine is seeking long-term Western funding to maintain an 800,000-strong army after the war to deter future Russian aggression. The proposal contrasts sharply with Moscow’s demands to limit Ukraine’s military, including a 2022 proposal to cap its forces at 85,000 troops. Trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi are also addressing NATO-style security guarantees and Europe’s future security architecture. Ukraine has asked its Western allies to finance an 800,000-strong army for at least 10 years after the war with Russia ends, seeking to deter another Russian invasion. The request was raised during discussions on security guarantees at trilateral talks between Ukraine,...

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he wanted Vice President JD Vance to focus “his complete and total attention” on any crime and corruption in Democratic-run US cities, saying that effort could save more money than a deal with Iran. “Our Budget could be quickly BALANCED with the correction of this large scale criminal activity. CORRUPTION is in the Democrat Leadership’s blood!” Trump wrote on social media. “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!” Vance has participated recently in outreach...

Australian drivers have increasingly turned to electric cars, with EVs' share of new car sales having tripled in the past year. Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries figures reported by 7NEWS put battery EVs at 23.1% of new car purchases in October, compared with 7.3% a year earlier. Over that span, every Australian state and territory recorded growth in EV sales. Tesla alone notched 4,050 sales, a 342% increase from the previous October, while sales of gas and diesel vehicles declined. Peter Khoury, the NRMA head of media, pointed to growing frustration with fluctuating fuel costs as the primary reason for...

WHY RUSSIA'S YAKOVLEV FACED A BANKRUPTCY PETITION DESPITE STATE BACKING Russian aircraft manufacturer Yakovlev , responsible for the MC-21 and SJ-100 passenger jet programs, is facing a bankruptcy petition filed by a steel supplier over unpaid debts. The case has attracted attention because the company is controlled by the Russian state and plays a central role in the country's efforts to replace Western-built commercial aircraft. The Moscow Arbitration Court accepted the petition from Izhstal, a steel producer belonging to the private Russian industrial group Mechel, on October 30. A hearing has been scheduled for January 18, 2027, when the court...