Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is deleting her text messages, thus defeating efforts by media organizations to obtain them as government communications subject to public records requests, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Times reported that it had been unable to obtain Bass’s text messages concerning her overseas trip to Ghana, during which the L.A. fires broke out, because they were automatically deleted and the city had not retained them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that Israel will be halting all movement of goods into Gaza, following Hamas’s apparent rejection of a ceasefire proposal suggested by President Donald Trump’s envoy. As Breitbart News reported Saturday, “Israel accepted a new proposal by the Trump administration on Saturday night, under which all of the 63 remaining hostages would be released over the course of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, en route to a permanent ceasefire.” It was not clear at the time what Hamas’s response would be to the proposal, which had been conveyed by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

President Joe Biden reportedly wanted the Department of Justice to target then-former President Donald Trump for prosecution far sooner and more aggressively than it did, and regrets naming Merrick Garland as Attorney General. The report, published in the Washington Post on Saturday, echoes reporting nearly three years ago by the New York Times, which suggested in 2022 that Biden was frustrated with the slow pace of Garland, a “ponderous judge.” The Post noted: << In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general, complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland...

President-elect Donald Trump told reporters at a press conference on Monday at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, that he would consider pardoning New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who was indicted on federal corruption charges in September. The indictment alleged that Adams exchanged favors for Turkey in return for campaign contributions that were then used to obtain matching campaign funds for the city. It also alleged that he obtained benefits such as hotel upgrades.

Israel disputed allegations Monday by Cindy McCain, the widow of the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and the director of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP), claiming only two of its aid trucks entered Gaza in November. McCain made that claim on CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, and also accused Israel of deliberately “targeting” humanitarian aid workers. She also implied that Israel, not Hamas, was to blame for the looting of aid trucks in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Sunday saying that he had spoken to President-elect Donald Trump the day before about the need to “complete Israel’s victory” in the war that began after last October 7. Netanyahu did not specify what would qualify as “complete” victory, but he mentioned the return of all of Israel’s remaining 100 hostages from Gaza and ensuring that Hezbollah could not rearm in Lebanon.

Seventy-seven Democrats in the House of Representatives signed a letter Thursday accusing Israel of violating human rights law, disagreeing with the Biden-Harris administration and potentially triggering an arms embargo on Israel. The signatories to the letter include well-known left-wing Jewish Democrats, such as Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and Sara Jacobs (D-CA). The latter is romantically involved with former Democratic congressional candidate and former Obama administration official Ammar Campa-Najjar, who is the grandson of a notorious Palestinian terrorist.

The Iranian establishment — the officials and business leaders who exert the most influence — has reportedly had enough of the radicalism of the current regime and is looking to replace it with a less confrontational, albeit still Islamic, model. That is the analysis of an expert interviewed by the UK Telegraph, which notes that Iranian leaders are quietly taking stock of the regime’s defeats in the region and concluding that constant fights against the West are not a good idea.

Israel’s Army Radio reported Thursday that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began preparing plans for Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear sites after destroying nearly 90% of Syria’s air defense capabilities, which had formerly protected Iran. Army Radio military correspondent Doron Kadosh reported on air that Israel had destroyed 86% of Syria’s surface-to-air missile capability, among 500 other sites that the IDF had targeted since the fall of the Assad regime Sunday. Kadosh elaborated, in a post on X, that Israel had used 1800 munitions in the attack on Syrian weapons — munitions that had been intended for other purposes, but...

Israel continues to launch hundreds of attacks daily against what is left of the Syrian military of ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad in what Israel’s Army Radio called the biggest attacks against Syria since the Six-Day War in 1967. As Breitbart News reported on Monday, the Israel Air Force (IAF) had carried out hundreds of attacks on Syrian military hardware in the wake of the rebel ouster of the Assad regime. Israel targeted the Syrian air force, as well as air defenses, missile stockpiles, chemical weapons sites, heavy weaponry, and other targets. Those attacks continued overnight into Tuesday, with Israeli airstrikes...

The outgoing Biden-Harris administration gave Iran $10 billion in sanctions relief just days after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, despite Iran’s ongoing attacks against Israel and support for terrorist organizations. The Washington Free Beacon reported: Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined on November 8 that “it is in the national security interest of the United States” to waive mandatory economic sanctions that bar Iraq from transferring upward of $10 billion to Iran in electricity import payments. … Though the first Trump administration did green-light the same waiver—causing tension with some congressional Republicans—it narrowly tailored the waiver to restrict...

Israel’s Army Radio reported on Sunday morning local time that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had moved tanks into the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria to deter Syrian rebels after the apparent fall of the Assad regime. As Breitbart News reported, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was reported to have fled the capital city of Damascus on Sunday. Unconfirmed social media reports suggested that he had been aboard a plane that appeared to have crashed. On Friday, the IDF said that it had reinforced Israeli positions on the Golan Heights, the plateau seized by Israel from Syria during the Six-Day...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the Labor government of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday, saying its anti-Israel policies had led directly to an arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne. As Breitbart News reported, the synagogue was set ablaze during weekday prayers on Friday morning — with some worshippers inside the sanctuary. Breitbart News noted: Local media outlets confirmed people were inside at the time for morning prayers and they had reported seeing firebombs thrown by masked assailants. One person was injured and the fire caused extensive damage. Synagogue board member Benjamin Klein told The Age newspaper...

Israel conducted a daring mission Wednesday to retrieve the body of a hostage who was kidnapped and murdered, and published an analysis that concluded that six other hostages were murdered by Hamas, not killed by an airstrike. Hamas has often claimed that Israeli hostages who have died in captivity were killed by Israeli airstrikes. The purpose of such claims is to dissuade airstrikes on Hamas terrorists, and to demoralize the Israeli public. Such inadvertent strikes have occurred, and last December Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and killed three escaped hostages in northern Gaza who were trying to signal to them, and...

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen fired another ballistic missile at Israel on Sunday morning, in a gesture of defiance against President-elect Donald Trump and despite a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Sirens were activated across a wide swath of central Israel once the missile was detected: The Houthi rebels evidently claimed they had launched a “hypoersonic” missile, but given that hypersonic missiles are an advanced technology possessed by very few countries, and are almost impossible to intercept, that seems unlikely.

J Street, which took funding from left-wing billionaire George Soros and lied about it for years, often takes positions against the Israeli government in Congress, even though it claims to be both pro-Israel and pro-peace.Recently, J Street supported a failed effort by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to restrict certain weapons from Israel...As Breitbart News recently reported, J Street has been fundraising over what it calls the "nightmare scenario" of President Donald Trump taking office again while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in office in Israel.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that President Joe Biden “still stands” by his claim that President-elect Donald Trump is an “existential threat,” even though he also wants a peaceful transfer of power. Jean-Pierre was asked about Biden’s earlier descriptions of Trump during the campaign, given his warm reception for Trump last week and seeming comfort with the idea of a man Democrats likened to Adolf Hitler returning to office. Critics on both sides of the aisle have suggested that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris never really believed Trump was an existential threat to America at all,...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Tuesday that Hezbollah had fired rockets that struck United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) peacekeepers in southern Lebanon — not once, but twice in the same day. In a first statement, the IDF said: Earlier today (Tuesday), a report was received that a UNIFIL post in the area of Ramyeh in southern Lebanon was hit, causing a number of injuries and damage to the post. An IDF review determined that Hezbollah fired a rocket that hit the UNIFIL post. The rocket was fired from the area of Deir Aames, one of many fired...

The lame-duck Biden-Harris administration is slapping new sanctions on Israelis, while sending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in additional funding to the Palestinians, adding insult to injury in the closing weeks of its failed policy. The Washington Free Beacon noted Monday: The Biden-Harris administration on Monday unveiled sweeping new sanctions on Israeli Jews, just days after it awarded another $230 million in taxpayer funds to the Palestinians. The back-to-back announcements signal that diplomatic relations between Israel and the outgoing White House will continue to sour until President-elect Donald Trump retakes office next year. The new sanctions are the...

Hezbollah has reportedly agreed to ceasefire terms proposed by the United States, according to the Lebanese government — though the terror group has “comments” that may indicate it has not fully accepted the deal. The Times of Israel reported: Lebanon and Hezbollah have agreed to a US proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, with some comments on the content, a top Lebanese official tells Reuters, describing the effort as the most serious yet to end to the fighting. Ali Hassan Khalil, an aide to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, says Lebanon had delivered its written response to the US ambassador in...