Free Republic

Strategic patience for the win? Iran's regime leaders thought they could force the US to buckle by strangling the global economy at the Strait of Hormuz. The US, however, has an actual blue-water navy, and that tends to matter in blockades involving a country entirely reliant on sea trade for its only valuable export economy. As the Wall Street Journal concedes, Donald Trump's Hormuz blockade is a lot less "leaky" than the IRGC's. And as Trump himself pointed out yesterday, the Strait may not matter for very much longer anyway:By squeezing the Strait of Hormuz, both the U.S. and Iran...

US President Donald Trump's top negotiators have met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, as efforts to end the war in Ukraine gather pace. Footage released by the Kremlin showed Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner being greeted by Putin, who said the current situation "is not so easy". Witkoff thanked Putin for agreeing with Ukraine to halt strikes on each other's capitals for three days. On Sunday the envoys will travel to Kyiv for more talks - their first such visit to Ukraine's capital. On Friday, Trump said Witkoff and Kushner were "bringing with them a proposal to end the...

An MS-13 gang member convicted in a savage execution-style murder is out of federal custody in California after a federal judge ordered his immediate release, igniting fury from the Trump administration. U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta ordered the release of David Antonio Aviles Perez, 35, aka "the witch," after finding that immigration officials held him for five months without giving him a bond hearing or determining whether he posed a danger to the public or a flight risk. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin accused the Biden-appointed judge of putting the public in danger by ordering Aviles Perez’s...

Oneel Bou Saab keeps a photo of her father in his army uniform. Lieutenant George Bou Saab was killed serving in the Lebanese Armed Forces in 2013 during clashes with an extremist group in the southern city of Sidon, and for years his death sat inside a familiar civic story: a soldier who died defending "all of Lebanon," as his daughter puts it, not any one sect or faction. That story cracked open again this August, when parliament passed a sweeping new law that automatically reduces the sentences of people convicted in cases like the one connected to her father's...

I thought this was important given the leftist judge setting free Kahilid Sheik Mohammed. The video damns us and our future here and now Do not miss

Nicaragua approved a constitutional reform that bars the opposition from participating in elections and extends Daniel Ortega’s term in office, a measure aimed at securing a presidential succession within the family of the octogenarian former guerrilla leader. Ortega and his wife and co-president, Rosario Murillo, tightened their grip further by pushing through the amendment, which closes the door to a political transition after two decades of rule marked by the concentration of power and harsh repression. What was approved? The National Assembly, controlled by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), voted Tuesday to prohibit “traitors to the homeland,” people linked...

“We need your voice,” Abdul El-Sayed told a sex offender who had been sentenced to prison for sexually soliciting what he thought was a 14-year-old girl online and then for “distributing child sexually abusive material and multiple counts of accosting children for immoral purposes.” The sex offender had reinvented himself as an activist against incarceration and claimed that he had suffered, “I was only allowed to have the type of phone without a browser, and several times had my phone confiscated” and argued that the answer “is to address the root causes of crime… address the real problems… like education,...

In one of his Truth Social bombs, President Donald Trump insisted we should rename Lake Ontario to Lake America after Canada refused to accept his trade negotiation terms. It obviously echoes his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. It's easy to find these whole geographic kerfuffles unnecessary. But the media hated the first one so much that the Associated Press found itself restricted from the White House press pool for refusing to accept the new Gulf terminology. What they hate is anything Trump does to add a patriotic pro-America tinge to something that they associate...

One thousand days is a long time in politics...When I wrote about Javier Milei’s first 100 days in office, Argentina was embarking on yet another attempt to break free from a cycle that had become painfully familiar: fiscal excess, monetary financing, inflation, capital controls and, eventually, crisis. Markets were optimistic, but they had been optimistic before. Argentina has a habit of disappointing even its most enthusiastic supporters.At the time, Milei inherited an economy in severe distress alongside a reform agenda that many viewed as politically impossible to implement. Today, as Argentina approaches the 1,000-day mark of his presidency, investors can...

If you've looked at gas prices lately you already know the conflict with Iran is still having a big impact on prices at the pump. However, there's a genuine disagreement over how much oil is currently making it through the Strait of Hormuz. This week the Trump administration has claimed that the total amount of oil passing through the strait is approaching pre-war levels. Here's a CNN report from yesterday.The US military escorted 40 commercial vessels carrying 18 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, marking a wartime high as Iran and the US exchanged a new round...

New York City's socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has spent much of his brief political career being treated by the national media as some kind of irresistible force, a fresh-faced wunderkind whose progressive appeal stretches far beyond the activist left and into mainstream America. He's the future, they tell us. [Insert needle scratch noise.]There's just one not-so-tiny problem with that narrative: Americans don't actually like him very much. A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll lays it all out in black and white. As RedState's Nick Arama reported Wednesday, there was some good news in that poll Republicans heading into the midterm elections....

The US recognises Britain's administration of the Falkland Islands but remains neutral over the competing sovereignty claims. US President Donald Trump has suggested Washington may not support the United Kingdom in the event of a future conflict with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Speaking to GB News, as reported by the BBC, Trump criticised Britain over its response to the US war with Iran, saying the country had "not been there to help me". He later acknowledged that the US military had not required British assistance. Trump's comments come as Argentine President Javier Milei renews his country's longstanding claim to...

Hungary has blocked Ukraine’s EU accession process for a third time, with the government saying it will only lift its objection if Kyiv makes progress on the rights of the country’s Hungarian minority. The latest dispute emerged at the European Council’s Working Party on Enlargement and Countries Negotiating Accession (COELA), which held its first meeting after the summer recess on Tuesday, 1 September. According to Ukrainska Pravda citing European Pravda’s sources in Brussels, Hungary refused to approve the screening results for Ukraine’s second and third negotiating clusters. Without unanimous support from all 27 EU member states, the Council cannot move...

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s executive order ending birth tourism. The other order bans birthright tourism, the practice by which people travel to the United States solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child on our soil. President Trump, earlier this month, signed two executive orders on birthright citizenship and birth tourism, following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Trump Administration’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. During the Oval Office signing, Trump decried the “very, very unfortunate” Supreme Court decision, adding, “So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.” “This was done right after the...

Trump's unpredictability has been previously cited as a key reason as to why the Netherlands should remove their gold from the US. The director of Goudwisselkantoor – a Dutch auction house that specialises in auctioning gold, jewellery, diamonds, silverware, coins and banknotes – said in January that Trump could 'refuse to extradite [the gold reserves], impose additional tariffs, or delay the repayment for decades'.

Russia has been secretly supporting Iranian missile development since 2023, according to a report in the Financial Times on Tuesday.The goal of the program, codenamed C430L, was to help Iran develop missiles capable of taking out US Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East.In particular, they aimed to develop a ramjet propulsion system that would allow Iranian missiles to fly at several times the speed of sound. Fast, low-flying missiles would give Western air defences less time to react increasing the impact of such an attack. The transfer of advanced missile technology would have required approval from the highest political...

BERLIN—Germany accused Russia of being behind a plot to send explosive drones to a German airport last month and pledged to retaliate against Moscow, a rare public attribution of blame in the widening campaign of incursions and sabotage across NATO territory. “We do not consider ourselves at war but we are the daily target of hybrid warfare,” said German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, announcing the findings Tuesday from an investigation into the incident at Germany’s Leipzig airport last month, for which he said Russia was responsible. The drone incident marked a serious escalation in what European security and military officials...

An entire batch of Russian low Earth orbit satellites, intended to help create Moscow's version of Starlink, has failed to reach or remain at their anticipated altitudes just over a month after launch. The 16 Rassvet-3 satellites, launched on July 19, were originally supposed to orbit the Earth at an altitude of roughly 500 miles, according to the company developing the constellation, Bureau 1440. But publicly available US Space Force data shows that, as of Tuesday, the Rassvet-3 satellites are instead orbiting at altitudes of between 190 miles and 250 miles. Atmospheric drag at that altitude significantly shortens a satellite's...

NATO member Turkey would consider taking its relations with the China and Russia-led security bloc, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, to a higher level, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday. "Turkey's prospect of (full) membership to the organization does not imply a breakaway from any other bloc or from the West," Erdogan said, according to a transcript of remarks he made to journalists on his return flight from Kyrgyzstan. Erdogan attended a summit of the SCO, of which Turkey is a "dialog partner," in Bishkek on Tuesday. Erdogan also said on Wednesday that a mechanism is needed to permanently ensure...

Raúl Castro turned 95 years old in June, so this isn't exactly a big news flash, but if rumors are true, he's not doing too well. Various Miami-based Cuban exile media outlets have reported that a source inside his inner circle says he has had a stroke and is in the hospital in critical condition. Some are even reporting that he's intubated and that machines are keeping him alive. Dr. Andy S. Gomez of Local 10 in Florida has also confirmed that Cuban sources tell him Castro is hospitalized, but he refused to say more or speculate about his condition....