Free Republic

President Donald Trump has waived the Jones Act for 60 days to mitigate supply disruptions resulting from conflict in the Middle East. This raises a fundamental question: why do policymakers regularly suspend this law during emergencies yet leave it in place the rest of the time?The Jones Act is an antiquated 106-year-old law officially known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 that places draconian restrictions on the use of ships to transport goods within the United States. According to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, the waiver allowing the use of foreign vessels to transport goods “will allow vital...

Congress has expressed interest in the status of the U.S. military’s inventories of munitions (e.g.,ammunition, bombs, missiles, torpedoes, anti-aircraft weapons, missile interceptors). Since the UnitedStates and Israel launched military operations against Iran on February 28, 2026, some Members ofCongress have sought information on the stockpiles and availability of U.S. weapons from theDepartment of Defense (DOD, which is “using a secondary Department of War designation,” underExecutive Order 14347 dated September 5, 2025). Some Members have raised concerns about potentialshortfalls in munitions, while other Members have said munitions are not an immediate concern.President Donald J. Trump has said U.S. munitions are “virtually...

U.S. and Israeli military operations against Iran since February 2026 and subsequent Iranian military action throughout the Persian Gulf have raised concern about oil and natural gas markets in relation to the Strait of Hormuz (the Strait). Starting on March 4, 2026, Iranian forces have declared the Strait “closed,” threatening and carrying out attacks on ships attempting to transit the Strait. In light of a considerable decrease in shipping traffic, President Donald Trump has raised the prospect of U.S. actions intended to reestablish free transit of the Strait.The Strait, which borders Iran and Oman, is a key waterway, particularly for...

Cyber espionage is one of the unconventional methods recommended for achieving global dominance in the 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. They state that America, though far more powerful than China, is vulnerable to asymmetric warfare, which has “greater destructive force” than military action. Like other asymmetric strategies, cyber warfare blurs the boundaries between war and peace as well as between military and civilian domains. Consequently, covert attacks continue without formal declarations of war: research and technology are stolen from universities, corporations, and leading institutions; sensitive networks and grids, both military...

As we navigate the opening quarter of 2026, the United States ammunition market has transitioned from a period of volatile demand to a state of forced prioritization. We are no longer witnessing a temporary market fluctuation driven by domestic panic; rather, we are navigating a structural realignment of the entire industrial base. This 2026 crisis is fundamentally a supply-side phenomenon where the civilian market is being “crowded out” by a monopolistic procurement force: the global defense apparatus. Unlike previous demand-driven shocks, this scarcity is rooted in the physical redirection of raw materials and manufacturing lines to sustain high-intensity kinetic conflicts...

Acting on direction from the White House, the Pentagon and the Navy are devising a plan to escort merchant ships and tankers through the narrow passage. In the past, mines have been a primary weapon to restrict transit through the waterway, but during the current conflict, Iran is choosing projectiles to control the waterway.Still the U.S. is striking Iran’s mine layers Caine said. “We’ve made it a priority to target Iran’s minelaying enterprise, their mine layers, the naval bases and depots, in addition to the missiles that could influence the straits,” Caine said. “And [U.S. Central Command] continues to attack...

The Western European NATO allies of the United States appear to be celebrating what they mistakenly believe is the discomfort the Americans and Israelis are now encountering in the Iran war. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has unctuously announced that this war is not a NATO responsibility since NATO is a defensive alliance. He has at least had the decency to recognise that “The United States and Israel are doing the world’s dirty work for it.” President Trump has made it clear that he does not need the assistance of any other country in clearing the Hormuz Strait, but he considers...

he USS Gerald Ford is headed for service repairs in Crete days after experiencing an hourslong fire while deployed in the Red Sea for service in the Iran war. The aircraft carrier will spend over a week in port at the Naval Support Activity Souda Bay for repairs, according to the U.S. Naval Institute. The ship's move from the Middle East comes after a fire that started in the laundry area on Thursday reportedly burned through part of the ship's sleeping quarters and lasted about 30 hours before it was extinguished.

T The solution to the Iranian drone problem may already be in the pipeline. This involves a long-serving U.S. drone, the Raytheon Coyote. The latest version, the Block 3NK (Non-Kinetic) has demonstrated that it can knock down numerous enemy drones without ever actually striking them – and then turn around and do it again. The first version of the Coyote originated in a 2004 requirement from the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research for a small, expendable UAV to serve with the P-3 Orion antisubmarine aircraft. The drone was to be launched from the plane’s sonobuoy tubes, at which...

A defiant Iranian regime is reeling from U.S. and Israeli military strikes, but one American who fled Iran as a child says some citizens are thanking the U.S. as a liberator.Iranian American Armin Assadi said Iranians are dancing near where American bombs have landed, adding that for the first time in 47 years there is hope Iran may be free."You can literally see people singing and dancing in the streets, mere blocks away from where the first missile struck. That's craziness to have [to] find hope in being bombed," Assadi said on "Fox & Friends Weekend.""That's how desperate these people...

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) says he believes the 2,500 U.S. Marines headed to the Middle East will be used to seize Iran’s Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. On Friday night, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. military “totally obliterated every military target” on Kharg, through which 90% of Iran’s oil exports pass. The president said the island’s oil infrastructure was left intact, but added that if Iran does not reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he will “reconsider this decision.” Sessions appeared on Tuesday’s CNN News Central, where Kate Bolduan asked the congressman if he would support their deployment in...

The resignation of Joe Kent as head of the National Counterterrorism Center triggered widespread political reaction centered on U.S. policy toward Iran.Administration responseDonald Trump welcomed Kent’s departure, criticizing his view that Iran was not a threat and asserting the opposite. Tulsi Gabbard emphasized that the president determines national security threats and stated that Trump concluded Iran posed an imminent danger requiring action.Kent’s position and resignationKent resigned amid disagreements with the administration’s approach to Iran, including military action. In his statements, he argued Iran was not a direct threat and suggested U.S. decisions were influenced (supposedly) by Israel.Criticism and allegationsThe Anti-Defamation...

he U.S. Navy Independence class Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) USS Tulsa and USS Santa Barbara, which are configured for minesweeping duties, have appeared in port in Malaysia. Both of these ships were last known to be forward-deployed in the Middle East, having arrived in Bahrain in the past year or so to take the place of a group of now-decommissioned Avenger class mine hunters. Now, as Iranian attacks on commercial ships have caused a virtual halt to maritime traffic through the highly strategic Strait of Hormuz, these ships have emerged thousands of miles away. The extent to which Iran has...

TEHRAN — At President Donald Trump's direction, the U.S. military successfully took out Iran's new gay supreme leader by luring him out of his bunker with a cardboard cutout of Baywatch star David Hasselhoff. As part of Operation Hot Hoff, SEAL Team Six reportedly trained night and day for weeks ahead of a planned ground incursion in which they strategically set up a cardboard cutout of David Hasselhoff designed to look lost and in need of male companionship. It was only a matter of time before Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who sources indicated was gay, fell for the devious trap and...

The findings come from a newly released Marine Corps report that’s over 600 pages long. That report determined that the mishap was the result of a malfunction in the artillery’s fuze, which electronically controls the timing of detonation. “The M767Al fuze is extremely reliable, with only one malfunction in its service history, in 2017, that was ultimately determined to be caused by an external factor,” the report said. “It is manufactured to a tolerance of one defect in a million.” ... The report ruled out wrongdoing by Marines, interference by other unmanned aerial systems and birds. Instead, the report suggested...

“History doesn’t move in straight lines. What looks like stagnation can be prelude. Let’s not lose hope.” —RVassil on X. Don’t lose your s--- over mines in the Strait of Hormuz and the oil price shooting up. Iran has many thousands of mines. But something has to lay them out in the water. Iran has no more naval ships. They have small boats. The US can see everything moving on the surface, or sitting at docks. We are blowing them up methodically. The news outlets who want the US to fail in this operation (because: Trump) want you to think...

In March 2020, on a Libyan battlefield, civilization may have crossed an ominous threshold. Turkish-made autonomous drones reportedly “hunted down and ​. . . ​engaged” retreating forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar with no human guidance. According to a UN-commissioned report, those lethal autonomous weapons were “programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true ‘fire, forget and find’ capability.” That was no theoretical scenario devised by military analysts or ethicists. Nor was it a scene from a Hollywood sci-fi thriller about rogue killer robots. It was a real occurrence, one...

After fighting for almost a decade to gain U.S. citizenship, time is running out for Marine Corps veteran Paul Canton. He’ll likely be deported soon back to his native New Zealand, despite serving in the U.S. military for seven years, and building a life in Central Florida for more than 25 years. Canton’s story first hit the news cycle in 2020 when his application for citizenship was rejected by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, even though the former Marine had no criminal record. Despite the setback, Canton and his family kept working on his citizenship case, gaining support from leaders...

Online sleuths think they have uncovered missing retired Air Force general William Neil McCasland’s anonymous social media account — which claimed another general was murdered for his dealings with nuclear material. McCasland, 68, went missing from his Albuquerque, NM, home on Feb. 27 — which is the same day that the person behind a conspicuously credentialed X account centered on spacecraft and advanced science made their last post. The account @tmbspaceships claims to be run by a “retired 38-year active duty” United States Air Force with a PhD in engineering — listing the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), the...

Ethan Thornton is the Founder and CEO of Mach Industries, a defense technology company developing next-generation unmanned systems and hydrogen-powered weapons platforms to redefine modern warfare and energy logistics. Ethan left MIT after one semester in 2023 to focus on building Mach full-time. Originally from Texas, Ethan grew up on a farm where he began prototyping weapons in high school. Funded through car tech jobs, knife and furniture sales, and small engineering projects. His early hands-on ingenuity and deep sense of urgency, intensified by the war in Ukraine—motivated him to accelerate U.S. innovation in unmanned aircraft and weapon systems to...