Free Republic

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...

The Department of Health and Human Services is freezing all childcare payments to all states, an official for Donald Trump’s administration told ABC News in a report published Wednesday. States’ funds will be released “only when states prove they are being spent legitimately”. The report came a day after Jim O’Neill, the HHS deputy secretary, and Alex Adams, an HHS assistant secretary who oversees the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), appeared in a Tuesday evening video message. O’Neill declared that the department had “activated our defend-the-spend system for all ACF childcare payments across America” and would now require “justification,...

The US comedian whose late-night show was briefly cancelled after pressure from Donald Trump’s government is to urge UK audiences to stand up for free speech. In a defiant alternative Christmas message on Channel 4, Jimmy Kimmel will liken the first year of Trump’s second administration to the rise of fascism. Sitting beside a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, Kimmel will quip: “From a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year.” He is also expected to warn that press freedoms can be snuffed out quickly, and urge UK viewers to resist attacks on free speech....

The ammunition boxes stacked on the stage opened up to reveal figurines of angels and an infant Jesus lying in his manger. Six actors sang plaintive carols, accompanied by readings of the brooding poetry of Kharkiv writer Serhiy Zhadan. The audience sat, transfixed by the almost unbearable intensity of the spectacle. The nativity play, performed on a recent evening at Kharkiv’s puppet theatre, was a reminder that conflict has seeped into the fabric of almost everything in Ukrainian life over the past four years. “We can’t just put on comedies and escape from reality,” said Oksana Dmitrieva, the nativity play’s...

The federal government will launch a new gun buyback scheme in response to the Bondi beach terror attack in what Anthony Albanese says will be the biggest collection of weapons since the Port Arthur massacre nearly three decades ago. It comes as New South Wales announced a suite of gun control measures including capping the number of firearms most recreational shooters can hold at four. Costs for the buyback, which is expected to see hundreds of thousands of weapons destroyed, will be split between the federal government and the states, the prime minister said on Friday. States and territories will...

Noise machines installed by LA Home Depot ‘torture’ for day laborers, advocates say Advocates call for removal of machines and demand that company speak out against ICE raids in parking lots Victoria Bekiempis Thu 18 Dec 2025 21.23 EST A Home Depot in Los Angeles installed three high-pitch noise-emitting machines outside to deter day laborers from seeking work there, causing them to suffer headaches and nausea, advocates alleged at a press conference on Wednesday. The Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (Idepsca), an advocacy organization that helps day laborers, called for the removal of these machines from Home...

Downing Street insists the $40bn Tech Prosperity Deal between the US and UK that is on hold is not permanently stalled. The BBC reported on Tuesday evening that the prime minister’s office claimed that the UK remains in “active conversations with US counterparts at all levels of government” about the wide-ranging deal for the technology industries in both countries to cooperate. The agreement, previously billed as historic, was paused after the US accused the UK of failing to lower trade barriers, including a digital services tax on US tech companies and food safety rules that limit the export of some...