Free Republic

Keir Starmer has said the conflict engulfing the Middle East could continue “for some time” as he insisted the best way forward in the longer term was a negotiated settlement with Iran. The prime minister said the UK was doing “everything we can” to de-escalate the situation, a clear contrast to the US president, who is focused on regime change and has said it was “too late” for Tehran to negotiate. He defended his decision to block initial offensive strikes by the US and Israel at the weekend, saying he stood by his judgment and denying it had damaged the...

Intense waves of airstrikes have hit dozens of military positions, frontier posts and police stations along northern parts of Iran’s border with Iraq in what appears to be preparation by US and Israel for a new front in their war. A US official with knowledge of the discussions between Washington and Kurdish officials said the US was ready to provide air support if Kurdish peshmerga fighters crossed the border from northern Iraq. A spokesperson for Israel’s military said the air force had been “heavily operating in western Iran to degrade Iranian capabilities there and to open up a way to...

Israel’s determination to attack Iran and the certainty that US troops would be targeted in response forced the Trump administration to take pre-emptive strikes, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said, in a new explanation for Washington’s surprise entry into the conflict. The rationale drew divided reviews from top members of Congress who on Monday evening received the first briefing by the Trump administration since it ordered the air campaign to begin over the weekend. Rubio; the CIA director, John Ratcliffe; and joint chiefs of staff, chair Dan Caine; spoke to the lawmakers behind closed doors in the Capitol ahead...

As Republicans celebrated the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with praise for Donald Trump’s decisive action, Democrats faced their own divisions and a reckoning over how to present a united front. Most were quick to condemn the US president for sidelining Congress to launch an illegal and unconstitutional war and demanded a swift vote on a war powers resolution that would restrain his military onslaught. But some in the party also felt obliged to acknowledge the authoritarian Khamenei’s death as a positive development and demonstrate their support for US troops. A small band of centrist Democrats have...

Keir Starmer has agreed to allow the US to use UK military bases to launch attacks that degrade Iran’s missiles.In a recorded statement, the prime minister said the “only way to stop the threat is to destroy the missiles at source in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire the missiles”.

The hosting of Tommy Robinson by the Trump administration has been condemned by British MPs amid calls for the US to be included in a probe into foreign interference in UK politics. The far-right activist, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is being feted in the US, where he met figures including a political appointee at the Department of State in Washington DC and a congressman. The visit has prompted questions about how Robinson – a former member of the extreme-right British National party and a leader in recent decades of street protests that have often turned violent – was...

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022. The phone call William Burns had travelled halfway around the world to speak with Vladimir Putin, but in the end he had...

Newly revealed emails undermine Kennedy’s testimony about 2019 Samoa trip ahead of deadly measles outbreakThree members of Congress say the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during his Senate confirmation hearings in response to newly revealed emails that undermine his testimony that a trip he took to Samoa ahead of a deadly measles outbreak had “nothing to do with vaccines”.The governor of Hawaii, a medical doctor who responded to the crisis, also spoke out – saying that the disclosure of the emails by the Guardian and the Associated Press show Kennedy misled the Senate and that he should...

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record. Seamus Culleton was a “model immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system, said his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye. Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. While buying supplies at a hardware store on 9 September 2025 he was arrested in a random immigration sweep, according to Okoye, of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts. Culleton entered...

Whistleblower says that Tulsi Gabbard blocked agency from sharing report and delivered it to White House chief of staff Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) flagged an unusual phone call between two members of foreign intelligence, who discussed a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney who was briefed on details of the call.The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard.But rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, Gabbard took a paper copy of the...

Federal immigration authorities allowed a suspect in a $100m jewelry heist believed to be the largest in US history to deport himself to South America in December, a move that stunned and upset prosecutors who were planning to try the case and send him to prison. Jeson Nelon Presilla Flores was one of seven people charged last year with stalking an armored truck to a rural freeway rest stop north of Los Angeles and stealing millions worth of diamonds, emeralds, gold, rubies and designer watches in 2022. Flores faced up to 15 years in federal prison if convicted on charges...

Donald Trump has told the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, that he will unfreeze funds for major infrastructure projects in New York and New Jersey if he supports renaming Dulles international airport in Virginia and Penn Station in New York City after him, according to media reports. The demand, which was first reported on Thursday by Punchbowl News, comes after the president in October halted $18bn in funding for a major subway line expansion in New York City as well as a new rail tunnel connecting the city to New Jersey. The funding freeze was announced on the first day...

Six Palestine Action activists have been cleared of committing aggravated burglary over a break-in at an Israeli defence firm’s UK site. Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, Fatema Rajwani, Zoe Rogers and Jordan Devlin were accused of threatening unlawful violence and using sledgehammers as weapons after a prison van was driven into Elbit Systems’ factory in Filton, near Bristol, on 6 August 2024. But after a trial at Woolwich crown court, south London, none were convicted of any offence. All six were acquitted of aggravated burglary, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, and jurors found Rajwani, Rogers and...

The UK economy would be 3.6% smaller by 2040 if net migration fell to zero, forcing the government to raise taxes to combat a much bigger budget deficit, a thinktank has predicted. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said falling birthrates in the UK and a sharp decrease in net migration last year had led it to consider what would happen if this trend continued to the end of the decade. In this scenario the UK population would stop growing at about 70 million in 2030. The latest official figures showed the UK population was 69.3 million...

Alex Pretti’s death could be a moment of reckoning for Democrats to call time on Trump waging war on his people Wearing helmets, gas masks and camouflage fatigues, the federal agents took aim and prepared to open fire. “It’s like Call of Duty,” one could be heard saying via a TV mic, referring to a first-person shooter military video game. “So cool, huh?”This was the scene on the streets of Minneapolis on Saturday after armed agents, wearing masks and tactical vests, wrestled 37-year-old Alex Pretti to the ground and shot him dead. The killing took place just over a mile...

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer went after President Trump on Wednesday for reversing position on a deal surrounding the Chagos Islands, suggesting the president did so because of tensions over his plan to acquire Greenland. “I made out my position on Greenland absolutely clear on Monday and a moment ago. President Trump deployed words on Chagos yesterday that were different to his previous words of welcome and support when I met him in the White House,” Starmer said in the House of Commons. “He deployed those words yesterday for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in...

Americans who fled to the Netherlands in a bid to escape the Trump administration are now living in filthy refugee camps, it has emerged. According to Dutch immigration authorities, 76 US citizens claimed asylum in the country last year, a significant increase from the nine that did in 2024. Many of those who have left are transgender or parents to transgender children and are housed in the 'queer block' of an overcrowded camp in the northern village of Ter Apel, The Guardian reported. The camp, which resembles a prison, has guards stationed at every gate and offers less than desirable...

The Kremlin has announced that Vladimir Putin has been invited to join Donald Trump’s “board of peace”, set up last week with the intention that it would oversee a ceasefire in Gaza. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists on Monday that Russia was seeking to “clarify all the nuances” of the offer with Washington, before giving its response. The claim of an invitation comes with Putin showing no signs of ending his invasion of Ukraine, in which hundreds of thousands have been killed and Russian troops have carried out atrocities against civilians. The Russian president has repeatedly rejected proposals...

"A Spirit of Dialogue”: the theme for this year’s World Economic Forum, the gathering of the global elite in the sparkling Alpine air of Davos, seems a heroic stretch, when star guest Donald Trump has spent the past year smashing up the world order. The president will touch down alongside the snowcapped Swiss mountains with the largest US delegation ever seen at the WEF, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and the special envoy Steve Witkoff. Last year, just days after his second inauguration, Trump was beamed in to...

An attack by the United States on a Nato ally would mean the end of both the military alliance and “post-second world war security”, Denmark’s leader has warned, after Donald Trump threatened again to take over Greenland. Fresh from his military operation in Venezuela, the US president said on Sunday the US needed Greenland “very badly” – renewing fears of a US invasion of the largely autonomous island, which is a former Danish colony and remains part of the Danish kingdom. Greenland’s foreign and security policy continues to be controlled by Copenhagen. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, warned on...