Free Republic

DAVOS, Switzerland — President Donald Trump’s demands to take over Greenland, reiterated in an overnight barrage of social media posts, are transforming this week’s annual gathering of the global elite into an emergency diplomatic summit, as European leaders prepared to use the president’s arrival here Wednesday to de-escalate the spiraling crisis. Europe may not have a home-field advantage in Davos. The United States is seeking to dominate this year’s World Economic Forum by sending its largest and most senior delegation in history. Meetings with senior Trump officials are among the most sought-after engagements in town as European leaders, already reeling...

Former congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming is the poster child of a Republican establishment abandoned by the party’s far-right base. Now, she’s billboarding what may come next: In an interview with CBS aired Sunday, Cheney lamented the extent to which the Republican Party had been “co-opted” by Trumpism and said she feared the potential of a vengeful Trump presidency in 2025. “One of the things that we see happening today is a sort of a sleepwalking into dictatorship in the United States,” Cheney said. Cheney’s refusal to accept former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been...

Just a few months ago, the honeymoon seemed in full bloom. President Joe Biden arrived in Brussels in June and was treated like a long-lost friend, happily home after a sojourn in the Trumpian wilderness. "America is back on the global scene," Charles Michel, president of the European Council, said to Biden in front of the media. "It's great news. It's great news for our alliance. It's also great news for the world." But as the summer wanes, so too has the transatlantic romance that accompanied Biden's ascent to power earlier this year. Biden promised a far less combustible relationship...

Donald Trump, the apparent Republican presidential nominee, attended the annual Rolling Thunder rally this weekend in the nation’s capital. The event, now a decades-old tradition, honors veterans and draws thousands of bikers. At this year’s event, some 5,000 bikers motored past the Pentagon to the Mall... The phenomenon of biker gangs mixing with ultranationalism, of course, is not simply an American one. In fact, perhaps the most successful convergence of bikers and power politics can be found thousands of miles away in Russia, a putative adversary... President Vladimir Putin has for many years cultivated a muscular nationalism, beginning with his...

Global military spending reached almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, marking a year-on-year increase for the first time since 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms expenditure around the world. The United States remained far and away the top spender, which despite a dip from 2014, accounted for more than a third of total global spending. It was followed by China and then, perhaps surprisingly, Saudi Arabia, which supplanted Russia in third place.

It has become a sort of mantra in the U.S. election cycle. When faced with questions of national security, Republican presidential candidates consistently harp on the importance of calling out "radical Islam" — something they believe the Obama administration and their Democratic opponents don't do. -SNIP- Part of the rhetorical move involves an attempt to cast Obama and rival Democrats as too soft and politically correct. The reticence of liberals and some Democrats to grandstand on the Islamist threat is a convenient wedge issue in an election year, aimed at harnessing widespread fears over jihadist infiltration and violence. -SNIP- "I...

Let's call this one "true, but misleading." On today's Daily Rundown, discussing the letter sent by Senate Republicans to the Iranian regime, Washington Post reporter Ishaan Tharoor, said that "it is the president who ratifies treaties." Tharoor is right, but only in a trivial sense. The president does formally ratify treaties in that he exchanges instruments of ratification with the foreign power(s). But that occurs only if and when the Senate has approved the treaty by a two-thirds majority vote. Tharoor made no mention of that little proviso. View the video here.

Malaysia's highest court on Monday rejected a challenge to a ban that in effect prohibits non-Muslims from referring to God as Allah. That ban has been in place since 2007 and, despite a series of appeals by the Catholic Church, will now remain. Malay-speaking Chrisians have long used the word "Allah" to signify God; the word entered the Malay language in the medieval era with the arrival of Arabic-speaking merchants. But in Malaysia's complex, fragmented social landscape, historic realities often rub up against modern politics. Malaysian authorities pursuing the case say that Christian usage of the term presents a dangerous...