Free Republic

US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder has said that Ireland and the US have “similar interests” that are among key issues for the relationship between the two countries. Mr. Pudzer is in Dublin to discuss priorities ahead of Ireland’s upcoming EU presidency, which is due to begin in July. “I think one of the one of the key areas would be what we call deregulation, what you guys call simplification,” he said on RTÉ’s Six One News. “I’ve had a conversation with the Irish ambassador to the EU, and I know that simplification is going to be on the...

A fallback plan to ensure Europe can defend itself using NATO’s existing military structures if the U.S. departs is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany, a long-term opponent of a go-it-alone approach. The officials working on the plans, which some officials are referring to as “European NATO,” are seeking to get more Europeans into the alliance’s command-and-control roles and supplement U.S. military assets with their own. The plans—advancing informally through side discussions and over dinner meetings in and around the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—aren’t intended to rival the current alliance, participants said. European officials are aiming to preserve deterrence...

Pedro Sanchez, the current Prime Minister of Spain and Trump's most vocal critic in Europe, has a serious problem: he already leads a minority government held together by a coalition of left-wing parties, and in the coming elections looks headed toward a major defeat. He has been embroiled in questions about his wife's corruption, and was almost forced to resign when the allegations first arose. 🇪🇸 Spanish PM Sanchez’s wife charged with corruptionBegoña Gómez, the wife of Spanish far-left Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has been formally charged with multiple corruption-related offenses, including influence peddling, business corruption, embezzlement, and… pic.twitter.com/n04JCTaMZl— Visegrád...

“The pro-EU Tisza party’s victory over Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the Hungarian election means that the country has essentially been taken over by the Soros network, Elon Musk has said. In a post on X on Monday, Musk lashed out at Alexander Soros — the son of billionaire George Soros and chair of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Foundations (OSF) – who celebrated Orban’s fall as “a resounding rejection of entrenched corruption and foreign interference.” Soros Organization has taken over Hungary,” the SpaceX and Tesla owner said. In a separate post, Musk responded to a post...

Almost one in two, or 45.1 percent, of Muslims in Germany under the age of 40 hold Islamist attitudes, according to Germany’s Radicalization Monitoring System and Transfer Platform. MOTRA is run by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). MOTRA researchers revealed last month that almost half of younger Muslims in Germany hold latent or manifest Islamist-leaning views, which means they feel drawn to Islamism, prefer Sharia law over the constitution, and hold antisemitic prejudices. Breaking this down, the researchers found manifest Islamist attitudes – meaning their radicalization toward Islamism is already evident and pronounced – to be most widespread among...

All members with public order training have been told to arrive in their protective gear. The order is described as an “exceptional event” within An Garda Síochána, and one which is rarely used.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday declared a 32-hour ceasefire in Ukraine over the Orthodox Easter weekend, following an earlier call from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for a pause in some of the hostilities to observe the holiday. Putin's decree, released by the Kremlin, orders Russian forces to observe a ceasefire starting at 4 p.m. Saturday and lasting until the end of Sunday. Zelenskyy proposed earlier in the week that each side stop targeting each other's energy infrastructure over the holiday, saying he made the offer through the United States, which has been mediating talks between delegations from Moscow and...

Construction of a “transformational” new railway line linking China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan will allow goods to transit from east to west across Eurasia a whole week faster. On the way, it’s also predicted to have a transformational impact on the economy of Kyrgyzstan, one of the slowest developing countries on the continent. Now, the “CKU” will give direct transit options for most of Central Asia while unlocking substantial natural resource opportunities among a depressed, mountainous region of Kyrgyzstan. The trilateral agreement to build the 300-mile-long railway was signed on December 27th, 2024, and construction began the following year. $1.1 billion...

Poll in Spain: Trump and Netanyahu are seen as two of the three most dangerous leaders in the world. Trump was ranked as the biggest threat to world peace, followed by Russian President Putin. Spaniards perceive Netanyahu as more dangerous to peace than Iran's new leader. 81% of survey respondents said Trump is endangering global peace - more than any other leader. The Spanish government is considered the most hawkish in Europe against Israel and President Trump's policies. Why it matters: The survey reflects the worsening criticism in Spain towards Israel and the US, also among citizens and not just...

SNIP Just as globalists in the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and across Old (and increasingly Islamic) Europe turned the “Reign of COVID Terror” into an opportunity to bilk taxpayers, enrich elites, and grow the totalitarian national security State, the same globalist scum quickly turned the Ukraine conflict into another “emergency” requiring more taxes, censorship, and public sacrifice. All of a sudden, anything criticizing the official public policies of Western governments was labeled “Russian disinformation.” If you disagreed with whatever the West’s vaunted “experts” said, you were dismissed as “Putin’s puppet.” Pro tip for information warfare enthusiasts: When...

“With increasing Islamophobia – the day will come where we have to ask ALL Women to wear a head scarf to show solidarity with those who do so for religious reasons” Christians are persecuted, slaughtered, and abused all over the world in horrific ways, yet these globalists never suggest that everyone wear a cross in solidarity with them. But Islam, once again, gets treated like the one and only protected faith that must be accommodated and now apparently modeled on the runway by women.

Iran has achieved a singular statistic in its current front against Israel. After firing more than 400 missiles over nearly a month, Tehran apparently hasn’t hit a single Israeli military target. That leaves the Islamic Republic with a 100% civilian casualty ratio—a benchmark of the number of civilian casualties relative to combatant ones. Not long ago, civilian casualty ratios were at the heart of discussions of the Israel-Gaza war, with Israel’s critics claiming that “disproportionate” levels of civilian casualties were evidence of war crimes. In reality, Israel’s infliction of 30% to 40% military casualties on an adversary hiding behind civilians...

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday Donald Trump’s mocking comments about his marriage did not merit a response, calling them “neither elegant nor up to standard”. […] On Wednesday, Trump made fun of the French president and his wife at a private lunch as he lambasted NATO allies for not joining the war against Iran. The US president imitated a French accent and said that Macron’s wife “treats him extremely badly” and that Macron was still “recovering from the right to the jaw”. On a visit to Seoul, Macron, who was accompanied by his wife Brigitte, said Trump’s comments...

U.S. conservatives have long pointed to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as proof that a Western leader can crack down on immigration, defy global institutions and wage war on “woke” liberalism – and still win elections. But as Hungary heads toward an April 12 parliamentary election, some of Orban’s most enthusiastic admirers in the U.S., including President Donald Trump, are confronting a once‑unthinkable prospect: after 16 years in power, Europe’s champion of “illiberal democracy” could be voted out of office. Defeat for Orban would reverberate well beyond Hungary, casting doubt on the durability of a political system – marked by...

Italy has denied the use of an airbase in Sicily to US military planes carrying weapons for the war in Iran after the US did not follow the required authorisation procedure. A source at the Italian defence ministry confirmed a report in Corriere della Sera that “some US bombers” had been due to land at Sigonella – one of seven US navy bases in Italy – before heading to the Middle East, but that use of the base had been denied because the US sought authorisation to land only while the aircraft were already en route to Sicily. The source...

The UK’s agreement with France to pay for beach patrols is on the verge of collapse amid wrangling over the number of small boat interceptions and the safety of asylum seekers in French waters. Negotiations over plans to revamp the three-year, £480m deal remain deadlocked, despite the involvement of ministers including Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary. The deal expires at midnight on Tuesday. It is understood that Downing Street has insisted on an increase in the number and nature of interventions by French officials as they seek to disrupt gang activity. Paris remains concerned that UK demands could put the...

Since late February, between 600,000 and one million Iranian households—up to 3.2 million people—have fled their homes, according to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Most are fleeing from Tehran and other major urban areas toward the rural north, escaping strikes that began on February 28. The human toll has been severe. Thousands of people have been killed across the Middle East. As of March 22, 3,231 people had been killed in Iran, of which 1,407 were civilians including 214 children, according to U.S.-based rights group HRANA. Thirteen U.S. service members had been killed. Strikes have been reported in more than...

Viktor Orban has said he fears the Iran war could worsen the migrant crisis and outlined what he thinks Europe needs… The GB News host referred the migrant crisis of 2015 - where over one million people fled conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq - and asked whether the same could be repeated now. The Hungarian PM replied: "I think now we have two difficulties approaching us from that conflict. "One is migration, exactly as you have elaborated, and the other is energy. "And the impact of this war on the energy supply and the price of the energy. "So...

The war started with Iran by the United States and Israel has left the European far right divided and doubtful... In the first days of the war, the loudest silence came from Hungary's ruling party... Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has praised Trump as a “peacemaker” for his role in the war in Gaza, neither condemned nor endorsed the attacks on Iran. Orbán, who is campaigning for re-election on a “pro-peace narrative” and accuses the EU of fuelling the war in Ukraine by supporting Kyiv with money and weapons, has since resolved the dissonance by saying in an interview with...

Few EU leaders will miss Hungary's Prime Minister ⁠Viktor ⁠Orban if he loses an April 12 election after ⁠he blocked key policies, including vital aid to Ukraine, but they don't expect his rival - if elected - to fully reverse Budapest's ​approach to Europe. Most opinion polls suggest Orban's nationalist Fidesz party, in power since 2010, could lose to Peter Magyar's centre-right Tisza party. Orban, who maintains friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and is also ‌a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, has ‌often infuriated his EU partners, most recently by blocking a vital 90 billion euro...