Free Republic

Republican Sen. Rand Paul blocking codification of Obama-era military deal with Israel. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is blocking U.S. military aid to Israel. Paul, who has previously called to cut defense assistance to Israel, recently put a hold on the U.S.-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018, which codifies into law the $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over 10 years that was negotiated in the final days of the Obama administration. A hold is a parliamentary procedure that allows senators to prevent a motion from reaching a floor vote. The Senate passed the act in early...

President Trump vowed to reduce foreign aid to Central American countries whose citizens are marching toward the U.S. border, saying Sunday that the money "is probably just stolen" by corrupt leaders. "We pay these countries by the way -- Honduras, El Salvador -- we pay these counties hundreds of millions of dollars, which by the way we will be stopping very soon," Trump said at a campaign rally in Georgia. "They don't do a damned thing, they don't do a damned thing for us," Trump said. After a crowd of thousands of asylum seekers entered Mexico, Trump announced in an...

President Donald Trump said Monday the U.S. would begin “cutting off, or substantially reducing” aid to three Central American nations over a migrant caravan heading to the U.S. southern border. Trump tweeted: “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S.” The three countries received a combined more than $500 million in funding from the U.S. in fiscal year 2017, though it was not immediately clear how much Trump is seeking to cut. The Monday morning tweets marked the latest escalation by the president,...

It looks like the “Meskin” government actually listens to President Trump’s words, and does what he says, unlike most branches of the US “feral gummint”. You think I am kidding, I know. Yet, judging from what happened today, the POTUS has more control over the governments of Latin America, with an emphasis on immigration policies, than he does over the US government. At least, he’s controlling the Mexico border, or so it appears. Here’s from USA Today: The government of Mexico dispatched two 727 Boeing planes filled with federal police officers to its southern border with Guatemala on Wednesday to...

Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) criticized President Trump’s threats on Wednesday to cut off aid to Honduras over an immigrant caravan. Espaillat said that taking such an action “is not going to work” because it signifies a much larger, global issue. President Trump warned if Honduras' government didn’t stop a caravan of migrants headed to the U.S., the Trump administration would withhold funding to the country, “effective immediately.” “That’s not going to work,” Espaillat told Hill.TV co-hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton. “Guatemalans migrate to Mexico, Mexicans migrate to the United States, Africans migrate to Spain and Italy, Libyans migrate to...

Trump's telling the leaders of Honduras that if they don't turn that caravan around that's headed to the US, he will cut off all aid to them. BEST PREZ of my lifetime and I'm 56y/o

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday threatened to withdraw funding and aid from Honduras if it does not stop a caravan of people that is heading to the United States. "The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!" Trump said on Twitter. Up to 3,000 migrants crossed from Honduras into Guatemala on Monday on a trek northward, after a standoff with police...

When delusions and fantasies are substitutes for reporting. How did the Washington Post cover the end of America's UNRWA Funding?Here’s how: The United States will no longer contribute to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinian refugees, the State Department announced Friday [August 31], amid widespread Palestinian outrage charging that the decision violates international law and will aggravate an already dire humanitarian situation, particularly in Gaza. The Washington Post should explain to readers, if it can, what “international law” the “Palestinians” claim has been violated. I do not think there is any. Contributions to UNRWA are voluntary. In any case,...

The Trump administration has decided to cancel all U.S. funding of the United Nations aid program for Palestinian refugees, part of its determination to put its money where its policy is as it seeks a recalculation of U.S. foreign aid spending and prepares its own Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. In an announcement to be made within the next several weeks, the administration plans to voice its disapproval of the way the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, spends the funds and to call for a sharp reduction in the number of Palestinians recognized as refugees, dropping it from more than...

The Trump administration announced Friday that it is cutting more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians, following a review, commissioned by President Trump, of U.S. assistance projects in Gaza and West Bank."At the direction of President Trump, we have undertaken a review of U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority and in the West Bank and Gaza to ensure these funds are spent in accordance with U.S. national interests and provide value to the U.S. taxpayer," a State Department official said in a statement to reporters. "As a result of that review, at the direction of the president, we...

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s administration has quietly started cutting scores of Pakistani officers from coveted training and educational programs that have been a hallmark of bilateral military relations for more than a decade, U.S. officials say.

SNIP One way is by marching today in Washington and around the country to proclaim that families belong together. Many Americans will do this. We must, however, address the immigration issue comprehensively and humanely through evidence-based policy change. There are concrete actions that Congress and the administration can take to improve both the policies that affect immigrants after they arrive at our borders as well as materially diminish the factors that drive people to seek safety in America. For 32 years in the Foreign Service — in Africa, the Middle East and the Balkans, including as U.S. ambassador in Azerbaijan...

<p>Now think of all that aid that we give some of these countries, hundreds of millions of dollars we give to some of these countries, and they send them up.</p> <p>Well I'm going to go, very shortly, for authorization that when countries abuse us by sending their people up, not their best, we're not going to give anymore aid to those countries. Why the hell should we? Why should we?</p>

President Trump announced Wednesday that the U.S. will begin to deduct foreign aid from countries whose residents illegally enter the United States. "Many of these countries we give tremendous amounts of aid to. Tens of millions of dollars. And we're working on a plan to deduct a lot of the aid," Trump said at an event in New York denouncing the Salvadoran gang MS-13. "We're going to work out something where every time someone comes in from a certain country, we're going to deduct a rather large amount of money from what we give them in aid, if we give...

The United States is by far the largest donor of financial aid to the Palestinians, with this assistance touching nearly every aspect of life in the Palestinian Authority. But US President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to end this aid to the Palestinians, angered by Ramallah’s refusal to cooperate with the US’s efforts to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after he declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel in December. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state. Trump tweeted on Tuesday that Washington was paying the PA hundreds of millions of dollars a year “for nothing,”...

President Donald Trump threatened Friday to cut off aid and slap sanctions on countries that refuse to accept nationals the U.S. tries to deport. Trump said during a briefing with Department of Homeland Security officials at the Customs and Border Protection National Targeting Center in Virginia that he knows how to change the trend. “If they don’t take ’em back, we’ll put sanctions on the countries, we’ll put tariffs on the countries,” Trump said. He added: “They’ll take ’em back so fast your head would spin.” He’s also threatened to cut off aid to the countries, which include China and...

According to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), America spent $468 billion on foreign aid over the last decade (years 2007-2016). This averages out to $46.8 billion annually (obviously). The figure includes both economic and military funding, but does not include America’s contribution to the United Nations and its affiliate organizations—which costs America an additional $8 billion annually—nor does it include direct military assistance in the form of permanent US garrisons. Including these costs would bring the total to just over $2 trillion (more on that soon). This is a lot of wasted money, but thankfully things are changing....

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, has declared himself mystified by US threats to cut off funding, saying that US financial assistance was “very, very insignificant” and that Pakistan was “on the forefront of the war on terror”. In an interview with the Guardian, Abbasi said that reports that the US was considering cuts of up to $2bn in security assistance were bewildering because the total aid Pakistan – civilian and military – actually received was a tiny fraction of that amount. “I am not sure what US aid has been talked here,” Abbasi said in his office in Islamabad....

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it would suspend nearly all security aid to Pakistan, an across-the-board freeze that is the most tangible sign yet of Washington’s frustration with the country’s refusal to crack down on terrorist networks operating there.The decision, which could affect as much as $1.3 billion in annual aid, came three days after President Trump complained on Twitter that Pakistan had “given us nothing but lies & deceit” and accused it of providing “safe haven to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan.”The move underlines how swiftly relations with Pakistan have deteriorated since Mr. Trump...

Full Title: Trump withholding $255M in aid to Pakistan, as he accuses country of giving 'safe haven' to terroristsThe Trump administration has decided to withhold millions in military aid to Pakistan as the president accuses the Muslim-majority nation of harboring terrorists and telling “lies” to the United States. “The United States does not plan to spend the $255 million in [Fiscal Year] 2016 Foreign Military Financing for Pakistan at this time,” a National Security Council official told Fox News on Monday. The official added, “The president has made clear that the United States expects Pakistan to take decisive action against...