Free Republic

TRUMP'S MOST IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENT. Experts estimate that during the Biden administration, around 9 million migrants crossed illegally into the United States and remained in the country. As illegal border crossers, they are what immigration officials call "removable," that is, subject to expulsion from the country on the grounds that they entered without authorization. The wild influx during the Biden years strained communities nationwide, burdened government budgets, caused social disruption, led to an alarming number of violent crimes, and, in general, made a mockery of U.S. immigration law. Plus, the situation is difficult to reverse; it would be exceedingly difficult, if...

Oct 3 (Reuters) - Former U.S. President Joe Biden exceeded his authority by withdrawing large areas along U.S. coastlines from future offshore oil and gas development, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled on Thursday.U.S. District Judge James Cain in Lake Charles, Louisiana, sided with Republican states and oil and gas industry groups that sued to block Biden's move to protect all federal waters off the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the northern Bering Sea in Alaska.Biden, on one of his final days in office, used his authority under the 70-year-old Outer Continental Shelf...

The Caribbean has become a “powder keg” as U.S. warships steam off the coast of Venezuela, sparking a tense standoff. While Washington frames the deployment as a counter-narcotics operation, it’s a clear strategic signal to President Maduro, whose own provocations against Guyana and alignment with China and Russia have raised alarms.

Excerpt - MOSCOW (AFP)--British-Russian oil company TNK-BP chief executive, Robert Dudley, has been summoned to appear before Russian prosecutors on Monday to explain "violations" of labor laws by his company, Interfax news agency reported Saturday. Dudley "temporarily" left Russia this week, the company said Thursday, saying he would run the company from outside the country. ~ snip ~

William Allen Kruse, 55, a charter boat captain recently hired by BP as a vessel of opportunity out of Gulf Shores, Ala., died Wednesday morning before 7:30 a.m. of a gunshot to the head, likely self-inflicted, authorities said. "He had been quite despondent about the oil crisis," said Stan Vinson, coroner for Baldwin County, which includes Gulf Shores. Kruse, who lived with his family in nearby Foley, Ala., reported to work Wednesday morning as usual at the Gulf Shores Marina on Fort Morgan Road in Gulf Shores, Vinson said. He met up with his two deckhands at his boat, The...

The U-Boat campaign off the United States' coast is pretty well known. Complacency on the American side, and daring on the German side. Combining in a perfect storm that saw many, many losses in the early days after the United States joined the war. That said, not all those losses were American. Some U-Boats were lost too, including one particularly noteworthy one. U-166. A submarine sunk close off the Gulf Coast. This sinking became something of a controversy, in how the captain responsible was treated by the Navy. But the boat, herself, is interesting all her own. After all, this...

According to the Obama administration, formulating a long-term Gulf Coast restoration plan can be done in someone's spare time. And all the duties of the Secretary of the Navy can be accomplished in less time than it takes the average person to do their full-time job. That's the message coming from the White House in response to complaints that current Navy Secretary and former Mississippi Governor Ray Mabus will keep his current position even after President Barack Obama chose him to develop that restoration plan. "The president talked to the governor about this, and they both agreed that he had...

The reputation of a disgraced wartime navy captain has been restored, thanks to the discoveries of a documentary featuring the finder of the Titanic. For more than 60 years, Captain Herbert G. Claudius was blamed for letting a Nazi U-boat ‘get away’, after it sank the Robert E. Lee passenger freighter in the Gulf of Mexico in 1942. But an undersea expedition – aided by Dr Robert Ballard who rediscovered the Titanic 30 years ago – has revealed the first published pictures of the submarine’s wreckage, showing how bombs dropped by Cpt Claudius’ crew successfully sunk the attacker U-166. ........

Hondo and Lytle are one step closer to receiving desalinated drinking water in the future through an agreement between the Nueces River Authority and Port of Corpus Christi. On Tuesday, July 15, the port agreed to lease 31 acres on Harbor Island to the NRA to build the desalination plant. Harbor Island is northwest, across the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, from Port Aransas, and east, across Redfish Bay, from Aransas Pass. Intake and discharge pipes for the plant’s seawater will be positioned about 1.3 miles east of San Jose Island, in the deeper water of the Gulf of Mexico. This...

It's Saharan dust season in the Atlantic, when massive clouds of dust from Africa's Sahara Desert are carried westward by wind, sometimes reaching all the way to the United States.

Mexico's leader sees potential in progress of Petrobras Guillermo Najera, a 42-year-old machine operator at Mexican state-controlled oil company Petróleos Mexicanos, gets paid to do nothing all day. Pemex management can't fire the union worker or transfer him from the ammonia plant in Ciudad Camargo, where he still shows up for work even though the plant stopped production in 2002. "We don't have anything else to do except keep our areas clean," Najera says as he and dozens of other idle workers enter the gates of the plant for the 7 a.m. shift. "I want to go back to work."...

PEMEX You might say Mexican state-owned petroleum company Pemex had a bad day Thursday. As Reuters reported, there were fires at three different facilities owned by the company — two in Mexico and one in Texas. And while there are still some unknowns, in an update, the wire service gives what details are known:(Reuters) – A Thursday night fire at Pemex’s 312,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Deer Park, Texas refinery broke out in a crude distillation unit (CDU), said people familiar with plant operations.The sources did not know which of two Deer Park CDUs were hit by fire. The plant has a...

Mexico is suing Google for ignoring repeated requests not to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America on Google Maps for US users, President Claudia Sheinbaum says. She did not say where the lawsuit had been filed. Google did not respond to the BBC's request for comment. Sheinbaum's government contends that...the US lacks the authority to rename the entire gulf. In January, Sheinbaum wrote a letter to Google asking the firm to reconsider its decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico for US users. The following month, she threatened legal action. At the time, Google said it made...

Starship Flight 9: New Local Notice to Mariners cites NET May 19 for launch. Obvious caution required as we wait for status on Ship 35. NASASpaceflight.com on Facebook

“These are not idle threats," Mark Carney of said President Donald Trump after his election victory last week. | ....................... President Donald Trump isn’t closing the door on using force to attempt to annex Greenland and Canada. But he said the prospect of attacking Ottawa appears “highly unlikely.” Greenland on the other hand? “I don’t rule it out,” Trump told host Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨Epic. Secretary Doug Burgum gets a tour of an oil rig in the Gulf of America: "Biden banned the possibility of even developing acres of the Gulf of America. He banned all of that. Trump unbanned that... we're back in business again." From Rapid Response 47 9:31 AM · May 3, 2025

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will no longer give wire services a permanent spot in the White House press pool following The Associated Press’ victory last week in a lawsuit over its exclusion, The Post has learned. Instead, the White House is giving a second spot to “print” journalists — a term henceforth including wire reporters — who will get access to President Trump in small event spaces. ... DC US District Judge Trevor McFadden last week ordered the AP’s restoration to the press pool — after weeks of exclusion over editors’ refusal to update the AP Stylebook to refer...

April 14 - BP (BP.L), opens new tab has made an oil discovery at the Far South field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, it said on Monday, as the energy major seeks to grow production under a strategy reset announced earlier this year. The exploration well was drilled in Green Canyon Block 584 about 120 miles (193.12 km) off the coast of Louisiana. Both the initial well and a sidetrack encountered oil. Preliminary data indicates a potentially commercial volume of oil and gas, the company said in a statement. It also said it plans to increase output in the...

Shrimpers along the Gulf Coast say they need more help from the federal government with cheap shrimp imports from countries like Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam driving down local demand. With reciprocal tariffs on imports from those countries on hold for 90 days, shrimpers are left wondering if they will get a lifeline they say they desperately need. Some shrimp farmers are ready to push for measures like capping imports at 25%. Rodney Olander with the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force has been coasting the gulf coast waters for shrimp for more than 40 years. Shrimp season is just a month...

A very Florida welcome home for NASA and SpaceX's Crew-9. Some curious dolphins seemingly wanted to give a personal "welcome home" to the Crew-9 astronauts, moments after they splashed down off the coast of Florida on Tuesday afternoon. As the rescue teams surrounded SpaceX's Dragon capsule with NASA astronauts Suni Williams, Butch Wilmore, Nick Hague, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov inside, a small pod of dolphins was seen swimming around the area. You can watch that moment in the video player above.