Free Republic

After a self-imposed political exile to Ireland after President Donald Trump’s re-election, Rosie O’Donnell quietly returned to the United States. During an interview with Chris Cuomo on his new show, “SiriusXM’s Cuomo Mornings,” the 63-year-old actress revealed she recently returned to the country to visit her family. The actress moved to Ireland with her teenage daughter in January 2025, just prior to President Trump’s second inauguration. “I was recently home for two weeks, and I did not really tell anyone,” she told Cuomo. “I just went to see my family. I wanted to see how hard it would be for...

An Irishman who overstayed his 90-day tourist visa more than 15 years ago has been held in a Texas immigration detention facility for nearly five months rather than be deported, despite calling it a form of “torture.” Seamus Culleton, who is married to an American woman, told Irish media that he has a valid US work permit and a pending green card application when he was suddenly picked up by agents in Boston, where he runs a construction company. He was cuffed and eventually flown more than 2,000 miles from home to a camp facility at Fort Bliss Army base...

The “beep test”, a standard aerobic fitness test for prospective firefighters for the last 40 years, discriminates against women and advantages younger candidates, a tribunal has found, following a legal challenge by a prospective recruit. Cork Fire Brigade has been ordered to pay €8,000 ($9,536) in compensation to Terézia Foott, a part-time firefighter aged in her 40s who failed to advance in a November 2023 recruitment competition for a full-time post because she did not make the cut. Ms. Foott, a qualified sports therapist and personal trainer, said she passed every element of the fitness test on the day on...

A set of internal documents published by the Republican members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee (Judiciary GOP) has sent shockwaves through Brussels. Released under the title The EU Censorship Files, Part II, the investigation presents documentary evidence of a sustained strategy by the European Commission to influence public debate on social media and digital platforms, pressuring major tech companies to censor lawful content, alter their internal rules, and restrict certain political viewpoints. https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/2018683758006665352 The revelations go far beyond an abstract debate over content moderation. According to the material made public, the Commission has directly or indirectly intervened in at...

Queen’s University Belfast is to remove the name of former US Senator George Mitchell — one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement — from a peace center following the emergence of new information contained in the Jeffrey Epstein files released on Friday. A bust of Mr. Mitchell will also be removed from the university grounds. Mr. Mitchell chaired the negotiations which led to the 1998 peace agreement. The former senator has a long-standing association with the university where he was chancellor from 1999 to 2009. …

Bounties as high as $100,000 are being offered to contract killers for the murder of dozens of Israeli researchers, including some in the US, on the website of a hateful anti-Zionist group. “The Punishment for Justice Movement” website offers between $50,000 for murdering one of the Jewish academics listed — and twice that amount for the killing of “special targets” — claiming the high-achieving researchers are complicit in child murder. Home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and social media accounts were listed for at least 40 academics, according to The Jerusalem Post. The website offered a $2,000 USD as reward...

China has suspended imports of Irish beef following the detection of an outbreak of bluetongue in County Wexford last week, while more cases of the virus have been confirmed in three additional cattle herds in the county. Minister for Agriculture said that his department informed Chinese authorities of the cases and that they “subsequently informed us that they have suspended the acceptance of Irish beef exported from Ireland with effect from 27 January 2026”. Minister Heydon added: “As with all temporary suspensions, it is a matter for the importing country when they will recommence the acceptance of exports of Irish...

Heartfelt tributes have been paid to a "beautiful" and "very talented" young Irish man that "always had a smile on his face" who died suddenly while living in Canada. Deep condolences have been expressed to the family of Kildare man, Jeremy Burke, 27, who passed away peacefully in his sleep in Toronto, on January 22. "The family are in awe of the support they are receiving from all around the world," a fundraiser entitled Bringing Jeremy Home, which has raised over €24,000, has said.

The prospect of a full-blown trade war between the EU and the US was averted for the second time in less than 12 months following President Donald Trump's dramatic U-turn on Greenland. For Ireland, several uncomfortable truths are emerging after this week’s geopolitical chaos. The trading relationship with the US is part of the bedrock of the Irish economic success story. It is based on Ireland providing an environment of stability for multinationals. One of the certainties important for US corporations is the level of tariffs applied to exports shipped across the Atlantic. […] Fortunately for Ireland, pharmaceuticals and computer...

Brusselstown Ring lies within the Baltinglass hillfort cluster, a landscape of up to 13 large hilltop enclosures that shows nearly continuous activity from the Early Neolithic through the Bronze Age. What is singular about Brusselstown, however, is its extraordinary scale and layout. Two widely spaced ramparts surround the site, with the outer boundary encompassing not only the main hillfort but also the nearby Neolithic enclosure at Spinas Hill 1. Enclosures extending across more than one hill are rare in Ireland and Britain and are very uncommon even in later Iron Age Europe.Airborne and topographical surveys identified more than 600 subtle...

The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) remains Europe’s largest data enforcer by a wide margin, having issued €4.04 billion in fines since May 2018. The annual Data Breach Survey from law firm DLA Piper found that Ireland’s GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) fine total is almost four times more than second-placed France. The DPC issued the largest fine of 2025, a €530 million penalty against TikTok over the transfer of the personal data of European users to China. TikTok is currently appealing the ruling. The Data Breach Survey shows that European GDPR fines totaled approximately €1.2 billion in 2025, consistent...

The first members of what would later become Iran’s fearsome revolutionary guards were trained in a quiet village outside Paris. Those close to the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was in exile in Neauphle-le-Château, secretly began recruiting Iranian revolutionaries in the West to establish a “people’s army”. One of the group’s founders, Mohsen Sazegara, has told The Telegraph that the aim in 1978 was to gather loyalists prepared to confront the Shah’s regime head-on in Iran. The recruits first studied the theory of guerrilla warfare before being dispatched to Beirut and Damascus for military training. There, they learnt...

The chair of Shannon Airport warned the Minister for Transport that protests and airside incursions at the airport were a “grave risk” and a threat to the international reputation of the State. The letter to Minister Darragh O’Brien last May said security breaches at Shannon that month were part of a “persistent and deeply concerning” trend. However, a further incident took place in November when protesters managed to reach an apron and taxiway, before spray painting a US military aircraft. In last year’s correspondence, the airport chair Conal Henry pleaded for help, saying the incursions posed a very serious security...

According to an exclusive by The Daily Beast, a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower leaked personal information and sensitive details of roughly 4,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol employees, including agents.Sensitive details of around 4,500 ICE and Border Patrol employees—including almost 2,000 agents working in frontline enforcement—have allegedly been released by a Department of Homeland Security whistleblower following last week’s fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good.So, you could be a secretary, a stenographer, an interpreter, or an analyst, but you may now be a target of left-wing crazies who want anyone involved with ICE or Border Patrol...

Ireland is to give €42 million in aid to the people of Palestine over the course of 2026, up from €36 million last year. Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee made the announcement during a visit to the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza. The funding will include €20 million to support the work of UNRWA that provides vital services to Palestinian refugees in Gaza and the West Bank, and across the region, while €2 million will assist the work of the Egyptian and Palestinian Red Crescent Societies. …

Those who want to see a new government in Ireland to cut immigration and break ties with globalist elites need to “reach across the Atlantic” and seek help from the Irish diaspora in the US MAGA movement, Eddie Hobbs told a conference on Saturday. The audience for the weekend-long IRL Forum in Ashbourne, County Meath, who had paid €90 each for a two-day pass or €50 a day, numbered 300 to 400 on Saturday morning and included US ambassador to Ireland, Edward Walsh. Participants in the sessions, which were all moderated by Mr. Hobbs, a financial adviser-turned podcaster and campaigner,...

U2 frontman and activist Bono has publicly backed a campaign calling for the release of Marwan Barghouti from an Israeli jail. Barghouti has been serving multiple life sentences since 2002 for orchestrating murderous terrorist attacks against Israelis. He is widely believed to have planned the Second Intifada, which claimed thousands of Israeli lives from 2000 to 2005. Barghouti has continued inciting terrorism from his jail cell. Despite his convictions, he is viewed by many Palestinian Arabs as a unifying figure and potential future leader. In a personal essay published in The Atlantic, Bono described Barghouti as “a leader of vision,...

An elusive bird which is now considered to be extremely rare in Northern Ireland made an unexpected visit to a Belfast street, where it was found behind a bin. Office staff who spotted it on the Lisburn Road thought it might be a bird of prey and called wildlife rescuer Debbie Nelson, who works under the name Debbie Doolittle. She was surprised to find it was in fact a nightjar - a bird she described as "almost extinct" in Northern Ireland, with only a handful of sightings since the 1950s. "They were about to put some rubbish in the bin...

The woman shot dead by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis has been identified as Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had just moved to the city. She was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist, who was there as a legal observer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, city leaders have said. But the Trump administration has called her a "domestic terrorist". Good's death has sparked protests across the country, with many people holding signs that read "Justice for Renee". ... A fundraiser for Good's family, which was set up with a target of $50,000...

Sanctioned vessel reportedly under NATO surveillance as Russia asks US to halt pursuit A Venezuela-linked oil tanker operating in the so-called "dark fleet" painted a Russian flag on its hull, changed its name, and reflagged to Russia in an apparent bid to evade the U.S. Coast Guard, according to reports. The vessel has since been spotted off Ireland, with the U.S., U.K., France and Ireland reportedly conducting aerial surveillance after it escaped U.S. interception in December, The Times reported. Meanwhile, Russia has reportedly since deployed a submarine and naval assets to escort the tanker to its own waters, the Wall...