Free Republic

War Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Tuesday another lethal strike against a drug trafficking vessel in the Eastern Pacific. Two were killed in the attack. According to NewsNation, at least 66 people have been killed in at least 16 strikes since the United States campaign in South America started in September. This strike came “the same day an aircraft carrier began heading to the region in a new expansion of military firepower,” per NewsNation. Hegseth wrote in a statement on Tuesday, Today, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War carried out a lethal kinetic strike on a...

The Trump administration is planning a new mission to target drug cartels in Mexico that could include U.S. troops on the ground, according to multiple officials familiar with the effort. NBC News' Courtney Kube has details on the plans and what actions could be taken.

Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez was slain in the town's historic center. People gather to honor Carlos Manzo Rodriguez, who was shot during Day of the Dead celebrations, in Uruapan, Michoacan state, Mexico, on Nov. 2, 2025. | Eduardo Verdugo/AP ================================================================= URUAPAN, MEXICO — A mayor in Mexico ’s western state of Michoacan was shot dead in a plaza in front of dozens of people who had gathered for Day of the Dead festivities, authorities said. Local politicians in Mexico are frequently victims of political and organized crime violence. The mayor of the Uruapan municipality, Carlos Alberto Manzo Rodríguez, was gunned...

This is truly shocking stuff. Mexican authorities in August, with the use of DNI intelligence, captured an infamous human trafficker who would lure pregnant women to steal their babies and organs. She would then sell the stolen babies and organs on both sides of the border, which is how the United States got involved. The last example ... was providing intelligence to the Mexican law enforcement that led to the arrest of CJNG cartel affiliated baby trafficker called "La Diabla." Her whole moneymaking operation was centered around luring pregnant women, performing illegal c-sections, harvesting organs, and selling newborn babies. The...

ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents in Laredo, Texas, arrested a father and son accused of smuggling hundreds of firearms, including rifles, magazines and ammunition into Mexico after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers discovered hidden compartments in two trailers at the U.S.-Mexico border. On Oct. 23, CBP officers working at the Laredo Bridge 2 Port of Entry stopped two southbound vehicles towing box trailers for inspection. Agents said they noticed irregularities in the trailer walls. A secondary inspection revealed false compartments packed with an arsenal: roughly 400 firearms of various calibers, high-capacity magazines, and thousands of rounds of ammunition....

A former abortion clinic worker in the state of Arizona has revealed alarming practices that, according to her, reflect severe ethical and legal negligence within the abortion industry. The former employee reported that medical instruments that were already worn out or had damage, such as small broken pieces, were not completely discarded but instead sent to Mexico and other Latin American countries, even at times when abortion was illegal in most of the region. According to her testimony, the clinics where she followed an informal protocol: any instrument that did not meet US safety standards—whether due to wear, cracks, or...

Mexico has started mass deportations of illegal migrants, deporting thousands to Central America Mexico making the move after President Donald Trump closed the US Mexico border. The closing led to an 85% plunge in illegal migrant entries through the US – Mexico border in the first eight months of the year—the lowest levels in half a decade. Mexico has realized that it cannot absorb the spillover from Biden-era open-border policies, as more illegal migrants have been apprehended in Mexico than by U.S. agents in recent months. Here are some of the moves being made by Mexico. Mass deportations to Central...

Officials intercepted millions of dollars worth of cocaine traveling to South Florida from Mexico during a traffic stop on Florida’s Turnpike, the governor’s office announced Wednesday. According to officials, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s West Palm Beach office alerted Florida Highway Patrol “to intelligence regarding a semi-truck suspected of transporting narcotics from the Mexican-Texas border into South Florida.” On Oct. 5, DEA and FHP officers stopped a vehicle going southbound on the Turnpike. “During the inspection, troopers discovered a concealed trap door containing multiple duffel bags filled with cocaine,” a news release from the office of Lt. Governor Jay Collins reads....

A drone attack hit the prosecutor's office in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, a key hub for drug trafficking, authorities said Wednesday without identifying the suspected assailants. Baja California state prosecutor Maria Elena Andrade told reporters that the attack with three explosive-laden drones caused some damage but resulted in no casualties. The prosecutor's office said on Facebook that the attack hit the anti-kidnapping unit of the state attorney general's office. In a social media post, the state attorney general said that "no attack will stop investigative work or commitment to justice."

The drug cartels basically said out loud this week that they want war. They might just get one. Before we get to war and other niceties, here's why they might have just opened a can of military-grade whoop-a** directly into their own faces. Bugs Bunny has been a hero of mine for so long that I can't remember a time when he wasn't. All Bugs ever really wanted to do was enjoy his (surprisingly posh) digs and indulge in a perfectly crafted carrot stew. He never sought out trouble, but when it came for him, he came back ready to...

Avi Lewis, the former CBC host and husband of author Naomi Klein, has joined Al Jazeera’s rapidly growing English network as host of a weekly program on the American election. In the first episode of Frontline USA (complete video at the end of this post), which aired on the weekend, Mr. Lewis said the show will follow the election through such themes as race and immigration, and offer “a full-spectrum assault of American voices” to compete with the established networks. Al Jazeera English is not broadcast in Canada, although it has the approval of the federal regulator. Nonetheless, Mr. Lewis’s...

THE battle to save the world is an arduous and paradoxical one. Today's most visible scourge of globalisation and brands is herself an inexhaustible globetrotting brand: a 32-year-old Canadian journalist, armed with little more than a portable computer, a plane ticket and Internet access. Naomi Klein is the pre-eminent figure (she would deplore the term “leader”) in a worldwide protest movement against companies, free trade and global integration—in effect, against capitalism—that has no name or organisation, but is the most vigorous expression of leftist sentiment since the 1960s. The movement burst on to the scene in Seattle in December 1999,...

You probably can’t tell whether this is the alien itself or the ship it landed in. Possibly both at the same time. Hard to distinguish the tentacles from the portholes or the eye-sockets, while the salmon-pink folds and creases have a certain gynecologiocal feeling. In any case, this beast landed in Xalapa, capital of Veracruz state, Mexico. It is called Casa de los Milagros or House of Miracles by architect Danilo Veras Godoy and is a private residence, not an intergalactic freight transport vehicle / organism. As a technical matter, this is an extreme case of what you get when...

In 2020, California imported about 25% of its demand for electricity from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona due to the capacity limitations of the three utilities that serve the State (Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas and Electric). These capacity limitations resulted from the closure of fossil fuel plants and environmental restrictions imposed by regulatory authorities in California to meet climate change standards. New England, New Jersey, and New York combined imported about 30% of their demand from either neighboring states or Canada. Many utilities in PJM and MISO import electricity from TVA and the...

Illegal crossings along the US-Mexico border plummeted to a 55-year low in fiscal year 2025 – with the vast majority of unlawful attempts to enter the country taking place during the final months of the Biden administration. Federal authorities apprehended a total of 237,565 migrants along the southwest border during the period between Oct. 1, 2024 and Sept. 30, 2025, according to data released Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The figure is the lowest fiscal year total for apprehensions since 1970, when authorities caught 201,780 migrants attempting to cross the...

Guy Fieri was shocked to learn that two truckloads of his Santo Tequila had gone missing. Fieri co-founded the tequila company with musician Sammy Hagar. In an episode of "60 Minutes" — which aired Oct. 5 on CBS — the Food Network star and his company’s CEO shared more information about how an international crime group pulled off a highway heist, stealing two semi-trucks filled with tequila valued at $1 million. The "Diners, Drive-In and Dives" host explained the president of his company called him with the news — and his immediate concern was the safety of the drivers. "I...

A 14-year-old girl died just days after she had a boob job and butt lift without her father’s knowledge — with her mom’s plastic-surgeon boyfriend now under investigation for possible negligent homicide, according to reports. Paloma Nicole Arellano Escobedo died Saturday in a hospital in Durango, Mexico, after being in a coma with a swollen brain and heart problems following the secret surgery a week earlier, according to local newspaper El Siglo de Durango. “At the funeral, some relatives told me her breasts were larger than what she had before, and when I mentioned it to her mother, she told...

A notice calls the people the U.S. military recently killed on suspicion of drug smuggling in the Caribbean Sea “unlawful combatants.”President Trump has decided that the United States is engaged in a formal “armed conflict” with drug cartels his team has labeled terrorist organizations and that suspected smugglers for such groups are “unlawful combatants,” the administration said in a confidential notice to Congress this week. The notice was sent to several congressional committees and obtained by The New York Times. It adds new detail to the administration’s thinly articulated legal rationale for why three U.S. military strikes the president ordered...

An alleged Sinaloa cartel leader admitted President Trump’s aggressive border policies have made the illegal work of the powerful Mexican drug gang more difficult in an interview with CNN. An anonymous member of El Chapo’s former gang explained that Trump’s immigration and drug policies have put a damper on their black-market tradecraft in a bizarre interview with the news station’s senior national correspondent, David Culver, in the back of an SUV. “From killing to coordinating smuggling operations, he says he’s done it all,” Culver said, referring to Trump. “Do you think what President Trump has been doing has been making...

They might be small but grasshopper mice are top level carnivores. AWWWWOOOOOO! Image Credit: Minden Pictures/Alamy You might think that only werewolves howl at the Moon, but this spooky season, we’re bringing you another creature with a lot to say at nighttime. Meet the grasshopper mouse; it might be small, but it has one heck of a voice. There are three species of grasshopper mouse that are closely related to deer mice: the northern grasshopper mouse (Onychomys leucogaster), the southern grasshopper mouse (O. torridus), and Mearns’ grasshopper mouse (O. arenicola). The southern grasshopper mouse is found in northern Mexico and...