Free Republic

Two container ships near the strait of Hormuz have ⁠sunk after being struck by missiles, amid the sharpest rise in Iranian attacks on shipping since the start of the US-Israel war with Iran. The increase in attacks suggests Iran is trying to fully close the strategic waterway in an attempt to frustrate Donald Trump’s efforts to bring down fuel prices before the US midterm elections on 3 November. The Trump administration has been attempting to deflect attention from the economic impact of the war on Iran by blaming Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries for increased fuel prices.

During his two-day visit, Kash Patel is expected to visit the capital Moscow and Russia’s second largest city of St. PetersburgWASHINGTON, October 14. /TASS/. FBI Director Kash Patel has arrived in Russia for negotiations, the MS NOW television reported, citing own sources. The report indicates that during his two-day visit, Patel is expected to visit the capital Moscow and Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg. It will be the first visit by an FBI chief to Russia since 2013. Earlier, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that he has nothing to comment on about media rumors on...

President Donald Trump has called for Ukraine to elect a new leader, raising fresh questions over current President Volodymyr Zelensky's political future and when Kyiv will hold its next vote. "I think it's time for Ukraine to get a ​new president," Trump said on Saturday, echoing his previous pushes for Kyiv to carry out elections that the country's constitution forbids during wartime. --SNIP-- Valery ZaluzhnyiZaluzhnyi, the former Ukrainian military commander-in-chief who is the current Ukrainian ambassador to the U.K., is widely considered Zelensky's top rival. According to research published by Ukrainian research institution, the Rating Group, on Thursday, Zelensky and...

Trump says he has struck a deal with Putin for Russia to sell 4.8 million tons of diesel fuel to the U.S. and global markets

Hamas is generating as much as $5 million a day from goods entering Gaza while rebuilding tunnels, accumulating weapons, and planning possible attacks on Israeli troops, including attempts to kidnap soldiers, according to separate Israeli television reports this week citing security officials. Neomi Neumann, a former head of research at Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, told the Kan public broadcaster on Thursday that Hamas continues to exercise effective control over Gaza’s population through a decentralized system of taxation, aid distribution, and covert enforcement. Neumann, now an adjunct fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, estimated that Hamas earns...

The Trump administration argues that its proposed multibillion-dollar Russian oil deal would advance American foreign policy interests and lower energy prices. But most of the ownership in the deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to key U.S. officials involved in the negotiations, according to people familiar with the talks. The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine. The United States government, through...

President Trump on Wednesday said, "I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton" and former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Trump made the comment Wednesday during an Oval Office announcement for his “Trump Accounts” for children, the Independent reported. The president previously claimed that if Democrats gain control of Congress in November, they would impeach him. A reporter asked about Trump's assertion, saying, “For what?” “They don’t know,” Trump said, before mentioning Clinton, whom he ran against in the 2016 presidential election, and his Democratic predecessors. “I could've done very bad things to Hillary Clinton,” he said. “I...

Russia has finalized preparations to provide a $1 billion loan to Iran, with the funds ready for transfer once Tehran provides bank account details, Iranian media reported Tuesday. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency said the payment process had been finalized but disagreements among Iranian government bodies over how the money should be spent have delayed the transfer. The loan was first reported in June and was described as the first installment of a planned $20 billion Russian loan to Iran, according to Fars.

LGBTQ advocates condemn president's rhetoric in tight Senate race in South Carolina President Trump's latest Truth Social broadside is drawing attention not just for who he targeted, but how, NBC News reports. In a Monday post backing Republican Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina, Trump repeatedly used an anti-trans slur to describe her opponent, Democratic Senate nominee Annie Andrews, who is not transgender, and said she is "not for South Carolina" and voters should show her that the state "is not for her." The White House, asked why he used the term, simply pointed reporters back to his post. CNN...

On Monday, President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that the United States will help Russia after a laboratory worker died at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute in Siberia.While local media alleged the 28-year-old lab technician died from pneumonic plague, Russian officials stated postmortem tests found only 'pneumonia of undetermined aetiology' with no evidence of occupational pathogens.Authorities placed at least one hospital in Shelekhov under quarantine, with nearly 200 people under medical observation after potential exposure to the worker.U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the nation is monitoring closely and sees no 'cause for alarm,' while experts...

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with. If for any reason it is not, which is highly unlikely, then the “Shootin’ Starts,” bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before. It was agreed, a long time ago, and despite all of the fake rhetoric to the contrary - NO...

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore torched the US as the “bad guys” in the war with Iran – while hailing the Middle Eastern nation as one of the world’s “greatest civilizations” in a deranged online tirade. The documentarian unleashed the frenzied rant on Tuesday, calling President Trump a “terrorist” for threatening a “holocaust” after the commander in chief warned Iran that its “whole civilization” would be wiped out if the nation failed to cut a ceasefire deal to open the Strait of Hormuz and end the six-week conflict. He also accused the US of “meddling” in Iran’s internal affairs for the...

Days after Pope Leo XIV delivered his State of the World speech, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby summoned Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s U.S. representative, to a closed-door Pentagon meeting for a bitter lecture. “The United States,” Colby said, according to a blistering new report by The Free Press, “has the military power to do whatever it wants in the world. The Catholic Church had better take its side.” One U.S. official present at the meeting brought up the Avignon papacy, a period in the 14th century in which the French monarchy bent the Catholic Church into submission,...

Megyn Kelly on "Piers Morgan Uncensored" discussed the damage sustained by the Trump political coalition, the global economy, and U.S. allies, after 40 days at war with Iran. “The question is now not, who has Trump lost. The question is who remains," she said about the MAGA coalition. "He’s underwater with men, including young men and young people. The young person coalition that Charlie Kirk delivered to the president is gone. They’ve abandoned Donald Trump." "These battles in the Middle East have been fought now for 20-plus years, and we continue to learn the same lesson over and over. It’s...

What better way for Morning Joe to mark the Iran ceasefire than by once again tying President Trump to the “monsters of history”? On consecutive days, co-host Jonathan Lemire reached for the same loaded line. He first used it yesterday, reacting to Trump’s bellicose Truth Social post warning Iran of severe consequences. He rolled it out again today—clearly deciding it was too good not to reuse. This time, he escalated further, suggesting Trump’s rhetoric would leave a lasting “stain” not just on his presidency, but on the United States itself. On Tuesday’s show, Lemire cited Trump’s threat-laden language—of the sort...

When an Irish Republican Army bomber came within a few feet of assassinating Margaret Thatcher in a hotel room in Brighton, England, in 1984, the terrorist group acknowledged the attempt with an official statement.“Today we were unlucky,” it said in a declaration addressed directly to the British prime minister. “But, remember, we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every time.”Blood-chilling and callous as its language was (the bomb killed five members of the governing Conservative Party), the boast was a brutally accurate meditation on the nature of asymmetric warfare. In conflicts between two sides that...

US-mediated peace talks on Ukraine collapsed in less than two hours after Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky claimed it was unfair that Donald Trump was placing more pressure on his country than on Russia.The second day of talks concluded on Wednesday, though neither side signalled they were any closer to ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War II.The talks wrapped up after just two hours, much shorter than the six hours of meetings on Tuesday, according to the head of Russia's delegation.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Friday morning that the Department of Justice had released at least three million new Epstein files to the public. Hundreds of thousands of Epstein-related documents had already been made public by the House Committee on Oversight in late 2025, including sickening images showing Epstein surrounded by young-looking women. The files, released following Epstein’s death in 2019, contain disturbing photographs of women’s bodies, harrowing notes, and references to famous figures including former President Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson. Previous document dumps have sparked fierce backlash after large swathes of material were heavily redacted by...

EU Army ready for war with America! Tariffs. Italy objects to whole expedition. Germany 13 soldiers. Norway 2. UK 1 officer. 15 France. 2 from Finland. 1 from Netherlands. 1 from Belgium. Germany buggered out under threat of tariffs. America already has 100 troops in the area. America is tariffing everyone, including Denmark, which didn't send any soldiers. Transcript linked below video.

The Democratic National Committee is killing its autopsy of the 2024 election. Ken Martin, the chairman of the D.N.C., said on Thursday that he had decided not to publish a report that he ordered months ago into what went wrong for the Democratic Party last year. Party officials have conducted more than 300 interviews with Democrats in all 50 states to create a document that Mr. Martin had once pitched as crucial to charting a path forward. Mr. Martin will instead keep the findings under seal. He believes that looking back so publicly and painfully at the past would prove...