Free Republic

President Donald Trump has labeled drug cartels operating in the Caribbean as “unlawful combatants” and said the U.S. is engaged in an “armed conflict,” multiple outlets reported Thursday, following recent strikes targeting alleged drug smuggling boats in the region. The Trump administration said in a confidential notice the U.S. was engaged in an “non-international armed conflict” against the drug cartels, the Associated Press and New York Times reported, citing a person familiar with the matter and a copy of the notice, respectively.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was appalled by the attack and additional police officers would be deployed at synagogues across the U.K. (Scripps News)On Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a Manchester synagogue was attacked, prompting heightened security across the UK. An assailant drove a car into people outside a synagogue Thursday in northern England and then began stabbing them, killing two and seriously wounding four in a terrorist attack on the holiest day of the Jewish year, police said. Officers shot and killed the suspect, Greater Manchester Police said, though it took authorities some time...

Forget pickleball and wine tasting. The government shutdown may force lawmakers in both parties to scrap luxury retreats planned this month in Napa Valley and Sea Island, Georgia. The Senate GOP’s planned getaway to the ultra-exclusive Sea Island is slated to begin on Friday, but it’s not clear whether lawmakers will go through with the trip while the federal government remains shuttered amid a partisan spending standoff that began Oct. 1. Senate Democrats have more time to decide whether to go forward with their Napa Valley political conference, which is slated to start Oct. 13 at the Hotel Yountville, a...

Pope Leo XIV criticized those who question the prevailing narrative on climate change during a recent gathering in Rome.The pontiff slammed those who “ridicule those who speak of global warming” and affirmed the efforts of his predecessor, Pope Francis, according to The Guardian.Leo presided over the 10th-anniversary celebration of Francis’s landmark ecological encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), at a global gathering south of Rome. The encyclical cast care for the planet as an urgent and existential moral concern and launched a global grassroots movement to advocate for caring for God’s creation and the peoples most harmed by its exploitation.Leo told...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order vowing to use all measures including U.S. military action to defend the energy-rich nation of Qatar — though it remains unclear just what weight the pledge will carry. The text of the order, available Wednesday on the White House’s website but dated Monday, appears to be another measure by Trump to assure the Qataris following Israel’s surprise attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders as they weighed accepting a ceasefire with Israel over the war in the Gaza Strip. The order cites the two countries’...

A bipartisan group of senators is already looking for a way out of the government shutdown.The talks, which played out on the Senate floor Wednesday as lawmakers again voted down dueling partisan funding bills, are still in their early stages. Multiple lawmakers involved said they aren't close to finalizing a proposal.But the nascent “gang,” as ad hoc bipartisan Senate groups are often called, is the most promising route out of the shutdown in its early hours.Among the ideas being floated by the members involved are passing a shorter-term stopgap than the seven-week measure passed by the House, as well as...

Three Senate Democrats voted in favor of the Republican Continuing Resolution, bucking their party and hoping to avoid a Schumer Shutdown. Those Senators are Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), John Fetterman (PA), and Angus King (ME). In a post on X, Fetterman explained his vote, writing, "I voted AYE to extend ACA tax credits because I support them -- but I won't vote for the chaos of shuttering our government." He added, "My vote was our country over my party." Earlier, Sen. King had expressed concerns over the CR and played coy as to how he would vote. "You'll find out...

Today, Planned Parenthood is closing its Houston, Texas abortion facility that was the biggest abortion center in North America. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast announced in July that it would close two Houston-area abortion centers, including its 78,000-square-foot Prevention Park facility, once the largest abortion center in the Western Hemisphere. That closing will happen today and hundreds, if not thousands, of pro-life Texans will be on hand to celebrate. The Houston Coalition for Life is hosting two special vigils today. “The events will both honor the lives lost to abortion within the building and celebrate the closure of Planned Parenthood’s Prevention...

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth were accused of 'condescending and insulting' America's top generals and admirals at a highly anticipated summit on Tuesday. The president and Secretary of War hosted hundreds of military chiefs at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, for a meeting they hoped would inspire the nation and revolutionize America's fighting force. But ex-Pentagon chiefs warned that the political speeches, which meandered through various topics from fat soldiers to Joe Biden's autopen, risked alienating the top brass. A former national security official told the Daily Mail that he found it 'incredibly condescending ... and a highly inappropriate...

Washington — A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Tuesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio violated the First Amendment by targeting pro-Palestinian students for deportation in order to strike fear into international students and curb lawful speech. In a 161-page decision, U.S. District Judge William Young delivered a blistering assessment of the Trump administration's efforts to pursue international students who expressed pro-Palestinian views on college campuses, which he said was constitutionally protected speech. The judge, appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, was unsparing not only in his views of Noem and Rubio's actions, but...

A year ago, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won the largest majority in Parliament this century and consigned the Conservatives, Labour’s historic rival, to its worst defeat. Now, after 15 months in power, Starmer has become the most unpopular British prime minister on record. Although previous leaders have joined despised foreign wars, bungled responses to a pandemic and nearly sent the economy into meltdown, none have been as unpopular as Starmer, according to Ipsos, a leading pollster. Just 13% of voters say they are satisfied with Starmer, while 79% are unsatisfied. Labour has “suffered the worst-ever fall in support for a...

Government shutdowns are Kabuki theater. And the next showing is scheduled to begin on Wednesday at 12:01 am. Conventional D.C. wisdom maintains that the side pushing for passing a clean continuing resolution as a stopgap to fund the government is typically the party that can make a more coherent winning argument.DEMOCRATS STILL CLUELESS ON BORDER SECURITYWell, the Republican-led House already passed a “clean” continuing resolution, maintaining government funding until November. Yet Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) now demand Republicans preemptively extend sunsetting COVID-era Obamacare subsidies. To put the situation in context, imagine...

Today is the day we stop pretending that it’s not. Talks at the White House on Monday aimed at preventing a government shutdown left both sides far apart on a deal. Earlier in the day, reports emerged that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) would consider a ten-day extension of government funding if Trump agreed to negotiate on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year.Reaction to this was swift. “You don’t pick a fight and then run away,” said Emma Lydon, managing director of P Street, the government relations arm of the Progressive Change...

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WASHINGTON, Sept 30 (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed "fat generals" and diversity initiatives that he said led to decades of decay in the military and told a rare gathering of commanders on Tuesday they should resign if they don't support his agenda. "Foolish and reckless political leaders set the wrong compass heading and we lost our way. We became the 'Woke Department,'" Hegseth said as he kicked off the event in Quantico, Virginia. "But not anymore," he said. Addressing the room full of America's top generals and admirals, summoned from around the world without explanation last week,...

After targeting one former FBI director he forced out, Trump raised the prospect of an investigation into a different former FBI director he forced out.For more than four years, a wide variety of Republican conspiracy theorists clung to a ridiculous idea about the Jan. 6 attack: It was federal law enforcement, they’ve claimed, that secretly instigated the insurrectionist assault on the Capitol. The absurd claims grew so common that they were given a name: the “fedsurrection” narrative.Indeed, at the heart of the theory is the idea that insurrectionist rioters were actually the victims on Jan. 6: These poor, unsuspecting partisans...

The devices had destructive potential but never went off despite being reportedly planted 16 hours ahead of time set with one hour timers. And one witness told investigators that at least one of the bombs may not have been planted the night before. The unsolved case of two pipe bombs planted at the major political parties' headquarters in Washington D.C. before the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot is facing new mystery after FBI Director Kash Patel transmitted to Congress the lab analysis and interviews with a key witness who is challenging the official timeline of events.The documents obtained by...

It has been blazingly obvious that the Jan. 6 “insurrection,” which the left has used for over four years now to try to portray Trump as a dangerous would-be dictator and his supporters as violent fascists, was a set-up ever since the videos began circulating of police holding open the Capitol doors as the supposed “insurrectionists” strolled leisurely in. Now, however, it is even clearer that the whole Jan. 6 “insurrection” was an attempt to frame Trump for allegedly trying to overthrow the government, which, if it had worked, would have kept him from running for president again: it has...

Louisiana Gov. Huey Long, Democrat and Depression-era populist, predicted in 1935, “When fascism comes to America, it will come under the guise of anti-fascism.” This prophecy is coming true before our eyes. This year, Democrats are calling everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi or a fascist while facilitating evil. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz charges that President Trump is “a fascist to his core.” Former Vice President Kamala Harris agrees. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the silver-tongued Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who calls Mr. Trump a “Temu Hitler,” are among the Democrats who have twisted reality to reach...

“We’re just going to pursue excellence … that’s how you win a space race and that’s just how you move our countries forward. More importantly, that’s how you create an environment where you might encourage others to collaborate,” Glover, 49, the mission pilot, said.