Free Republic

The reappointment comes as part of Macron 's bid to avoid plunging France into another political crisis. However, it has not been well received.French President Emmanuel Macron has reappointed Sébastien Lecornu as prime minister. This decision comes days after Lecornu announced his resignation from the post. However, this sudden reappointment has been witness to backlash from key political allies as well as the opposition. The reappointment comes as as part of Macron's bid to avoid plunging France into another political crisis. In the past two years, Lecornu is the fifth prime minister to have taken the office. Since Elisabeth Borne's...

Just one day after the two-year anniversary of the horrific October 7 attack by Hamas, it was announced that Israel and Hamas accepted the terms of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war. It was a feat that then-President Joe Biden could not accomplish. In fact, it was a feat that no other world leader could accomplish in the course of two years. And yet Trump, in 10 months, has ended a devastating war. Such a breakthrough would certainly warrant the Nobel Peace Prize.But on Friday it was announced that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the award....

Mexico’s proposed 8% tax on violent video games.The Mexican federal government has announced a new 8% excise tax on violent video games. The justification? That violent games are responsible for violent behavior. Violence is indeed a heavy problem in Mexico, and organized crime has left significant parts of the country in a state of terror. But attacking video games seems a poor policy-choice that echoes the moral panics of the 1990s—when games like Mortal Kombat triggered congressional hearings and headlines about the corruption of the youth that led to the creation of the ESRB system. Such panics gain political traction...

Most Democrats left President Trump conspicuously unmentioned as they cheered a potential end to the conflict, reflecting the tricky politics around the war and their party’s deep hostility to Mr. Trump.When President Trump announced a deal that could end the Israel-Hamas war, most Democrats were quick to cheer the promise of an imminent return of hostages and the close to a catastrophic conflict.But few were willing to credit Mr. Trump himself, reluctant to praise a president who has said he hates them and wants them jailed, and whom many of them regard as complicit in Israel’s brutal strategy in Gaza.“I...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. will host a new Qatari air force facility in Idaho, where pilots will train to fly F-15s. Hegseth said the Trump administration has signed the letter greenlighting the building of a Qatar Emiri air force contingent at the Mountain Home Air Force Base located in southwestern Idaho. Qatar Emiri air force is the air arm of Qatar’s armed forces. “Location will be host to a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability,” Hegeseth said Friday. “It’s just another example of our partnership.”Mountain Home Air Force...

An illegal immigrant from El Salvador was sentenced to 30 years in prison for repeatedly raping an 11-year-old girl in Virginia Beach. On Wednesday, the Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office shared the mugshot of 35-year-old Ricardo Lionel Mejia, who was sentenced on Tuesday. Mejia was booked into the Virginia Beach Correctional Center on October 9, 2024, after pleading guilty to three charges of raping a victim under the age of 13, indecent liberties with a child under 15, and statutory burglary. The sheriff’s office stated that he will serve a 30-year sentence at the Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) facility on...

Brick by brick, President Donald Trump is building a wall around the world’s largest economy. As America’s tariff barriers on everyone else have gone up, so has the drawbridge, making it harder for migrants to enter the country. The president wants to turn America into a fortress that keeps out foreign incursions. In fact, he is cutting America off from the very goods and talent that helped make its economy the envy of the world. Already the damage is starting to show; once wreaked, it will not easily be reversed. That is not how investors see it. In the six...

The stuffy global elite is simply too self-congratulatory to recognize that their time is overOf course, Donald Trump has not won the Nobel Peace Prize. The Scandinavian grandees on the committee wouldn’t dream of honoring him. It was silly to think that they would. The award has gone instead to María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition figure, so well done to her. Still, it speaks to the fundamental vanity of our age that the Nobel is today’s big story, as if the complexity of world affairs can be boiled down to a yearly episode of Peace Has Got Talent.The headlines...

As Robert reported earlier today, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the Nobel Peace Prize. My personal opinion is that if couldn't have been Donald Trump, this was the next best choice. Machado is the face of the movement that is looking communism in the eye in Latin America and telling it to take a hike — something that will eventually benefit every one of us here in the U.S. if it's successful. She's worked tirelessly at taking down the country's illegitimate narco-terrorist regime for years. As Robert reported earlier today, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado won the...

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Peru’s Congress voted early Friday to remove deeply unpopular President Dina Boluarte from office as a crime wave grips the South American nation and quickly replaced her with 38-year-old lawyer José Jerí, the legislative body’s leader. Lawmakers had set up a debate and impeachment trial late Thursday in the 130-member unicameral Congress after voting to accept four requests for a vote to remove Boluarte from office over what they said was her government’s inability to stem crime. They requested that Boluarte come before them shortly before midnight to defend herself, but when she did not appear...

Israeli forces completed a pullback of troops from Gaza on Friday after Israel's Cabinet approved a plan for a ceasefire aimed at ending the devastating 2-year-old war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a brief statement early Friday that the Cabinet had approved the "outline" of a deal to release the hostages — a key part of the initial agreement. "The government has now approved the framework for the release of all the hostages — both the living and the deceased," the statement read. It did not detail other more contentious parts of the pact hammered out Wednesday....

CHICAGO (Reuters) -On a chilly morning outside Nash Elementary School in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, teachers greeted students with the usual high-fives and hugs, while handing out sheets with red-bolded words proclaiming in capital letters: “Defend your rights under the threat of occupation.” Four weeks into President Donald Trump's "Operation Midway Blitz" deportation drive, mass arrests across the city - which have swept up parents on their way to school and entire families - have induced fear in immigrant communities and protectiveness from educators, according to city leaders, the teachers' union, parents and immigration advocates. "My Latino students, they're fearing...

Curbing forced marriages is another target of the legislation. Conservative Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has introduced legislation in Parliament against ‘Islamic separatism’ that, among other things, would institute a ban on the burka and niqab in public places. The Telegraph reported: “The prime minister’s ruling Brothers of Italy party put forward a bill imposing fines of between £260 and £2,600 for wearing the face-covering garments in schools, universities, shops and offices. The party called it a bill against ‘Islamic separatism’ aimed at combating ‘religious radicalization and religiously motivated hatred’. It introduces criminal penalties for virginity testing, while strengthening punishment...

The committee chose to focus on Venezuela in a year where U.S. President Donald Trump featured heavily in speculation as to the overall winner, given his unceasing efforts to bring peace to a variety of conflicts around the world. Trump said previously it would be an “insult” to the United States if he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize and he has been backed in his quest by a host of other nations, as Breitbart News reported. “She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela, and for her...

KILIFI, Kenya (AP) — The daily grind of putting food on the table is stressful for people the world over, especially for women, who still provide the bulk of that work. A changing climate adds to the anxiety. Kaloleni in Kilifi County is one of Kenya ’s poorest areas. Women carry buckets of water for miles through the dusty landscape. Homes are mostly built of mud and have no indoor plumbing. Maize plants wither in the heat. “These communities are struggling to grow their crops and have to spend money on food,” said Zul Merali from The Aga Khan University,...

While defending his decision to perform at the controversial, state-sponsored Riyadh Comedy Festival in Saudi Arabia, Aziz Ansari said he planned to donate “part of the fee” to “causes that support free press and human rights,” listing Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, which has long been critical of the comedy festival and the Saudi regime. But in a statement to Variety, a spokesperson for Human Rights Watch said the organization “cannot accept” donations from Ansari and other comedians who have “generously offered to donate part of their performance fees.” (Jessica Kirson said “I deeply regret” performing at Riyadh...

President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that Spain be expelled from NATO over its failure to match the higher defense spending requirement he has engineered. "We had one laggard, it was Spain," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "They have no excuse not to do this, but that's all right. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO frankly." In June, the 32-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to massively boost defense spending over the next decade under pressure from Trump, who at the time threatened to punish Madrid on trade for resisting the new target of five percent of...

Donald Trump is on a roll. He not only wrangled Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu into submission, but also the terrorist organization Hamas, which has apparently agreed to release all remaining hostages. The war in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 67,000 Palestinians, looks to be coming to an end. On Thursday evening, Trump took a victory lap as Israel and Hamas, who have been negotiating in Egypt, assented to the first phase of his 20-point peace plan. “I am very proud to announce that Israel and Hamas have both signed off on the first Phase of...

On a season eight episode of The Simpsons, newscaster Kent Brockman interviews a man who’s woken up from a 23-year-long coma, and lets him know that Sonny Bono is now a Congressman and Cher has won an Oscar. The man dies soon after. If someone were to wake up from a coma today to find out that Donald Trump, who 23 years ago was hosting The Apprentice, is now the leading candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, it would have a similar result. But who else deserves the award? If you can give Peace Prizes to Al Gore and Barack...

The United Nations will begin slashing its peacekeeping force and operations, forcing thousands of soldiers in the next several months to evacuate far-flung global hotspots as a result of the latest U.S. funding cuts to the world body, a senior U.N. official said. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting, briefed reporters Wednesday on the 25% reduction in peacekeepers worldwide as the United States, the largest U.N. donor, makes changes to align with President Donald Trump's “America First” vision. Roughly 13,000 to 14,000 military and police personnel out of more than 50,000 peacekeepers...