Free Republic

The European Union could reduce the refugee status protections it grants to military age Ukrainian men because “the war needs to be fought and won”, and should crack down on Russians coming to the bloc for luxury shopping trips and beach holidays, ministers were told. A European Union Justice and Home Affairs summit in Luxembourg has discussed the need to reform the bloc’s open borders approach to the Ukraine War, with crackdowns on both Ukrainians and Russians proposed. While preventing Russians from enjoying their summer holidays in Europe is already widespread, a further proposal came from the Swedish government, with...

WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden is marking his seventh year of sobriety with a social media blitz that’s taking the internet by storm. Hunter, 56, began posting on his X account last month after years of dormancy, a move so surprising some wondered if the messages were fake. The account proved both genuine and a hit, quickly amassing nearly half a million followers, most of whom have cheered Hunter’s purported honesty and dry sense of humor. After Hunter posted a message celebrating being seven years sober Monday, one user accused him of being the owner of a bag of cocaine left...

The Republican-led House on Thursday passed a sweeping security package providing new military aid to Ukraine and imposing sanctions on Russia, delivering a sharp rebuke to the Trump administration, who opposed the measure. Eighteen Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democrat-authored legislation in a vote of 226-195. California Rep. Kevin Kiley, an independent who caucuses with Republicans, also supported the legislation. Meanwhile, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was the lone Democratic lawmaker to vote against the bill. House GOP leadership and the vast majority of Republicans opposed the legislation aimed at bolstering Ukraine's defenses amid a surge in Russian missile...

Former President Joe Biden "truly changed his mind" on pardoning his son Hunter — who was convicted on federal gun and tax charges in 2024 — according to former first lady Jill Biden. Shortly after Hunter's conviction, President Biden publicly said "I will not pardon him" and then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly told the press that a pardon or commutation was off the table. But in the final weeks of his presidency, Biden signed a full and unconditional pardon for his son. On NPR's Newsmakers video podcast, Jill Biden told All Things Considered Host Scott Detrow that then-candidate...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday said he is still hoping to land a major deal to buy advanced US military drones, saying it would be a potentially “huge’’ game-changer in the war. His comments came as he warned that Ukraine was set to be brutally pummeled by Russia by air again for the second week in a row. Zelensky argued that fusing the dramatic advancements Ukraine has made with its drone technology because of its battlefield experience against Moscow with America’s remarkable military capabilities would be “huge” and beneficial for both countries. “American technological companies, they have a lot...

The FBI’s reputation problems have accelerated with the arrest on corruption charges of Charles McGonigal, the former chief of counterintelligence for the FBI’s New York field office, one of the most powerful spy-hunters in the country - who also happened to be connected to Hunter Biden. In twin indictments last month, McGonigal was charged with taking secret cash payments from a former Albanian intelligence officer, holding secret meetings with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and attempting to remove top Kremlin oligarch Oleg Deripaska from a US sanctions list. The Albanians cited by prosecutors tie this scandal to Hunter Biden and...

It has been more than four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And although polls show that a majority of Americans support Ukraine, military and financial assistance to bolster its defensive and offensive capabilities have fallen dramatically. This is in no small part due to President Trump’s and Vice President JD Vance’s open antipathy toward President Volodymyr Zelensky, which has led to the blatant slow walking of implementing support already appropriated by Congress. As co-founder of a humanitarian organization, I have traveled frequently to Ukraine and seen the devastation caused by Russia’s relentless attacks on non-combatant civilians, including children....

Today's video investigates the absurdities of the policies, and how they lead to inefficiencies both domestic and international. We then try to understand why autocratic governments nonetheless offer subsidies despite knowing all of their drawbacks. Turkmenistan prior to 2019? Free natural gas for everyone. Great. But it gave rise to the saying, "A Turkman does not turn off his stove because then he will have to pay for matches." Hence why I had to add the prior to 2019 qualifier there because that policy sure as heck was not sustainable.

The Prime Minister sought to reassure the Ukrainian leader as questions remain about UK sanctions on Russian oil, which critics say have been watered down. Downing Street said the Prime Minister had “reaffirmed the UK’s steadfast support for Ukraine” in his call with Mr Zelensky and “set out our ongoing commitment to do everything possible to debilitate and degrade Putin’s war machine”. Sir Keir told Mr Zelensky that the UK’s efforts meant there would be “less Russian oil on the market, with Russia weaker as a result”, a spokesperson added. The call followed criticism of a “short-term” trade licence issued...

The fight against Russia in Ukraine is now firmly Europe’s war. The European Union this week signed off on the equivalent of $105 billion in loans to keep Kyiv afloat through the end of next year—but officials warned that it may not be enough. With Russia determined to continue its four-year invasion until it dominates its neighbor, and President Trump pulling back from Europe and focused on the Middle East, Ukraine finds itself reliant on the traditionally gun-shy EU in its war for survival. The confirmation of the loan ahead of a summit in Cyprus on Thursday, long blocked by...

https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/2037354821632831563 DataRepublican (small r)@DataRepublican·Mar 26🧵🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: A $15+ MILLION DOE contractor and NoKings protest organizer with active nuclear security contracts is on camera recommending a color revolution "how-to" 🚨🚨His name is Steven A. Cash. Former CIA officer (Balkans, Clinton era). Under Biden: Senior Advisor to the Undersecretary at DHS Intelligence & Analysis.The day after Trump's 2016 election, Cash co-founded "The Steady State" — a network of more than 340 former intelligence community officials who decided Trump was an "existential threat".When Biden won, the threat was gone. Cash went into Biden's DHS. His own words: "we disappeared."Then Trump won again....

Bevan Cooney, the former business associate of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden who flipped on the Biden family, has been moved from his cell, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Breitbart News. On Tuesday, several days after emails Cooney provided to Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer and journalist Matthew Tyrmand became public, federal agents moved him from his cell to protect him. Tyrmand, who is in contact with members of Cooney’s family, told Breitbart News that Cooney was moved from his cell in a federal prison in Oregon around 11:00 a.m. local time on Tuesday....

If you think America is just an idea, then you’ll gladly sacrifice the rights of Americans for the ‘rights’ of foreigners. Lately, it’s become fashionable for Never-Trumpers like David French to denounce the president’s new policy of revoking the visas of foreign nationals who agitate for terrorist groups like Hamas. It’s un-American, we’re told, to hold guests to a certain standard or to remove hostile foreigners from our country. This past week, French posted on X that “we can absolutely and totally dispense with the idea that Trump’s Republican Party defends free speech. We’re witnessing one of the most comprehensive...

he Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency outsourced its "censorship operation" to a nonprofit it funded following a First Amendment lawsuit by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys general, "implicitly admitting that its censorship activities are unconstitutional," according to an interim staff report by House Judiciary Committee Republicans shared with Just the News. CISA also wanted to use the Center for Internet Security, which operates the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EI-ISAC), as its "mouthpiece" to obfuscate its own role in censorship, the report says. It cites spring 2022...

Aaron Berman, a 17-year veteran of the CIA who already held a senior position in Facebook’s “misinformation” team during the 2020 election, has been promoted to “Head of Elections Policies” at the company now known as Meta. Berman served at the CIA between March 2002 and July 2019. During that time, he wrote for and edited the President’s Daily Brief, an influential top-secret document prepared by the U.S. intelligence community given to the president each morning. According to Berman’s Linkedin, he enjoyed positions of considerable influence at the agency, including “supervising teams of dozens of analysts and with multi-million-dollar budgets,”...

WASHINGTON — An FBI investigation launched in the wake of the the 2020 election scrutinized nearly 100 Republican and GOP-aligned groups or people — including Turning Point USA, co-founded by slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, unclassified bureau files released Tuesday show. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published files related to the probe — codenamed “Arctic Frost” — during a panel hearing, saying the records revealed “Arctic Frost was much broader than just an electoral matter” and that the investigation “expanded to Republican organizations.” “Some examples of the groups the [Christopher] Wray FBI sought to place under political investigation...

The deal was years in the making, the culmination of forging contacts, hosting dinners, of flights to and from China. But on Aug. 2, 2017, signatures were quickly affixed, one from Hunter Biden, the other from a Chinese executive named Gongwen Dong. Within days, a new Cathay Bank account was created. Within a week, millions of dollars started to change hands. While many aspects of Hunter Biden’s financial arrangement with CEFC China Energy have been previously reported and were included in a Republican-led Senate report from 2020, a Washington Post review confirmed many of the key details and found additional...

A new whistleblower report from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s office revealed new allegations of FBI misconduct over the Hunter Biden laptop during the 2020 election. According to multiple whistleblowers, Johnson wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, agency officials “intentionally undermined efforts to investigate Hunter Biden.” “After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop’ and that the FBI is ‘not going to change the outcome of the election again,'” Johnson wrote....

Among those who signed the letter — and are named in Mr. Trump's order — are former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden and former CIA Director John Brennan. Two of the 51 signatories have since died.

Two former Politico reporters spoke candidly about efforts made by their bosses to either slow-walk or completely quash their reporting on the Biden family during their time at the news outlet. Marc Caputo and Tara Palmeri, now journalists for Axios and Puck respectively, reflected on their time at Politico on Palmeri's "Somebody's Gotta Win" podcast. Caputo called out Politico's "ill-fated headline" downplaying the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election. "I mean, Politico, my former employer, and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors," Caputo said in the exchange, which was shared Thursday on YouTube. "I...