Free Republic

The U.S. is continuing to build up its military presence in the Middle East ahead of a possible attack on Iran. The USS Abraham Lincoln and its Carrier Strike Group (CSG) is now in the Indian Ocean, a U.S. Navy official told The War Zone on Thursday. The CSG was in the South China Sea until U.S. President Donald Trump ordered it moved west. In addition, more cargo jets and aerial refueling tankers have arrived in the region. Trump on Thursday said a large naval presence is heading to the region. These movements come as Trump has threatened to strike...

The ‘nothing ever happens’ people seem to be, sadly, correct about Iran thus far, although one hopes that the brutal Islamic Republic might still be overthrown. It’s hard to know what to think, and at times like this we all turn to the experts to give their analysis of what might happen and what might follow. Foreign policy expertise is hard work, because it requires both a specific knowledge of the national culture and the relative strength of personalities. Because there are so many factors involved, analysts frequently get things completely wrong, the Iraq and Afghanistan debacles being the notorious...

Per capita per unit time, suppose around 30,000 Iranians were massacred in just a couple of days. Let’s contrast that with Gazan civilian deaths, which may be of the same order of magnitude relative to population, but spread over two years. Let’s put Gazan deaths at 50,000 (a likely overestimate). Iran: 167 deaths per million per day (30,000 of 90 million killed in 2 days) Gaza: 34 deaths per million per day (50,000 of 2 million killed in 2 years) Even this is not a fair comparison. Per-capita rates implicitly treat all 90 million Iranians as equally at risk as...

The Iranian protests reveal the “pro-Palestine” lie. Moment 586. Jan 18, 2026 Mark Changizi. YouTube. Dr. Mark Jangzizi, here's your science moment. They claimed that they were only pro Palestine, not pro- Hamas. They told us over and over again, "We're not pro Hamas, we're just pro Palestine." Now, never mind that the 10/7 war wasn't about Palestine at all. It was about Gaza. The Palestine Authority wasn't even part of the broad conflict that had half a dozen Islamic Republic proxies. Never mind that they never spoke out against Hamas, who had been Gaza's brutal, unelected oppressor for a...

Austin, we have a problem. Even as many in Texas are pushing back against the rising presence of Islamic Supremacist organizations and hate groups trying to spread their hateful views and calls for the conquest and mass murder of non-Muslims, Austin is welcoming them in. Fresh off declaring January to be ‘Muslim Heritage Month’, the city of Austin, Texas also decided to declare Jan 22nd, “CAIR-Austin” day after the local chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood organization (a violent Islamist movement originally funded by Nazi Germany) whose national organization celebrated the Hamas massacres of Oct 7 and was named an unindicted...

ranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been transferred to an underground bunker in Iran after senior officials in the country’s security forces assessed that concerns are growing over a possible American strike, Iran International reported Saturday. Khamenei's son, Masoud, has assumed governing authority. Meanwhile, Iran Times, a newspaper identified with the IRGC, quoted the Iranian Defense Ministry spokesperson as saying that Iran’s defensive and missile capabilities have become more effective, and are quantitatively and qualitatively superior compared to what they were during Operation Rising Lion in June 2025. At the same time, levels of preparedness and tension ahead of...

Donald Trump’s strangely artificial Board of Peace event in Davos on Thursday looked like a Hollywood rendering of an international summit. Everything was too slick, faintly uncanny. Like an AI-generated image, it was photo-real yet failed the most basic human glance test. Too perfect. No wabi-sabi. The first tell was visual: the set, complete with a crisp new institutional logo: a globe on a shield, flanked by olive branches. It carried the unmistakable whiff of Grok or ChatGPT, but the strangeness went deeper than design. The speeches themselves were weirdly messianic and utopian. The most peculiar part was the show-within-a-show:...

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NEW YORK, NY — The woman behind YouTube's most popular and beloved educational content for children found herself in hot water, as Ms. Rachel issued a public apology for accidentally spray-painting "GO AWAY JEWS" on a synagogue. The internet personality was embroiled in controversy after witnesses reported seeing her run angrily up to a local synagogue and spray-paint the antisemitic message on the wall of the building, an act she later said was completely unintentional. "It was never my intent to do something hateful," Ms. Rachel said in a tearful video posted to social media. "When I spray-painted that antisemitic...

As the Russian president noted, the warming peak is now behind us and cooling will follow nextMOSCOW, January 23. /TASS/. President Vladimir Putin of Russia said his country will explore the Arctic regardless of global climate trends. "Experts differ on how the climate situation will change on the planet and in the Arctic further down the road - and on whether we are actually facing global warming or, as some believe, the warming peak is now behind us and cooling will follow next," the Russian head of state said at a meeting with students of Moscow Institute of Physics and...

CAIRO (AP) — Desperate Palestinians at a garbage dump in a Gaza neighborhood dug with their bare hands for plastic items to burn to keep warm in the cold and damp winter in the enclave, battered by two years of the Israel-Hamas war. The scene in the Muwasi area of the city of Khan Younis contrasted starkly with the vision of the territory projected by world leaders gathered in Davos, Switzerland, where they inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace that will oversee Gaza. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump claimed that “record levels” of humanitarian aid...

Mostly unnoticed in the recent flurry of world events, from the people’s uprising in the streets of Iran to the lightning fast seizure and extradition of Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, by the United States (U.S.) in a 2-3 January 2026 overnight raid, was an important meeting in Istanbul, Turkey of leadership figures, branches, and networks associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of these representatives came from Brotherhood groups in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, but others also represented Brotherhood chapters based in Europe. Preceding the Istanbul meeting itself, on New Year’s Day, 1 January 2026, large pro-HAMAS...

| WATCH. Can Ms. Rachel get any more pathetic? We all know she hates Israel and Jews. She should just stop pretending. Popular children's entertainer Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, is once again at the center of controversy after admitting to accidentally "liking" an antisemitic comment on her Instagram page. The 43-year-old YouTube star, known for her educational "Songs for Littles" channel with over 11 million subscribers, broke down in an emotional video apology, claiming the mishap occurred while trying to delete the hateful remark. The comment in question, "Free America from the Jews," was posted...

A new edition of Tucker Carlson’s newsletter is drawing sharp backlash after he argued that an Iranian nuclear weapon could ultimately be a stabilizing force in the Middle East, prompting critics to accuse him of echoing narratives friendly to the Islamic Republic. In the essay, Carlson reportedly contends that the chances Tehran would ever launch a nuclear strike are effectively zero, describing the use of such a weapon as “suicidal” for any regime. He contrasts that with the United States, noting it is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, and suggests Washington treats that history as...

A "racial equity" and "restorative justice" nonprofit funded by Minnesota taxpayers is calling for donations to a new bail fund that’s helping free anti-ICE agitators and illegal immigrants detained in Minneapolis. The Legal Rights Center, which Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison led for five years, is promoting the People’s Bail Fund of Minnesota through Know Your Rights MN, a Legal Rights Center project that provides legal information and resources for activists. The project’s website was updated Thursday to include a link to the bail fund, which only secured nonprofit status last week and is actively "accepting requests for ICE protest...

The Regime Behind the Carnage: Iran’s War on Its Own People and on Israel. Iran’s Hypothetical Atrocities and Its Proxy War Against Israel. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a dark history of brutally suppressing its own people, with estimates suggesting that in just two weeks of crackdowns (Jan/2026), it massacred between 20,000 and 50,000 unarmed civilians. Extrapolating this rate over two years yields a staggering 1.04 million to 2.6 million potential deaths—a chilling reminder of the regime’s capacity for mass murder against innocents, far exceeding even the most tragic conflicts. This same ruthless regime fuels terrorism through its backing...

A tell-all describes how the war in Gaza loomed over the 2024 campaign and strained Biden’s reelection bidJosh Shapiro’s Judaism was not a factor in Kamala Harris passing him over as a running mate, according to a 2024 election tell-all, contradicting a narrative Republicans eagerly peddled. If anything, Harris rejected Shapiro because they had too much in common — both were former attorneys general who hoped to be president. That and poor chemistry knocked Shapiro out of the running, according to How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, by political reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and...

Pink Floyd co-founder Rogers Waters defended the murderous regime in Iran, one week after defending former Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, calling claims that Iran has been a leading sponsor of terrorism around the world “nonsense.” “The government sent the police out to protect those grocers, those business owners, those ordinary working people in Iran, ok? And they were attacked by a gang of armed thugs who murdered, we believe, armed thugs, probably organized by MI6 and the CIA,” Waters said about the deadly response from Iran’s government to protesters in an appearance this weekend on Piers Morgan Uncensored. Water went...

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said authorities “must break the back of the seditionists” and blamed US President Donald Trump for “casualties” after the Islamic Republic’s bloody crackdown on a protest wave against the country’s clerical authorities. Iranian authorities have repeatedly blamed the US for the mass demonstrations they have called “riots” and “terrorist” operations. Trump had threatened to strike Iran if it did not stop killing protesters, but starting Wednesday sounded a more conciliatory tone, saying he was assured the killings would stop. In a speech broadcast by state television to mark a religious holiday, Khamenei...

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib went on an emotional rant about the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recruitment posts on social media during a Friday shadow hearing in Minnesota. The hearing, chaired by Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, discussed the recent heightened presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minnesota and the fatal shooting of Renee Good. When it was Tlaib’s turn to speak, she used her time to passionately suggest that recent DHS social media posts evoked “neo-Nazi” and “white nationalist” imagery. Tlaib held up a printed Jan. 9 social media...