Free Republic

Thom Tillis has always said that he hates the camera. Then he announced his retirement last year. Now, the moderate Republican from North Carolina cannot stop making headlines. In a fiery floor speech earlier this year, Tillis said he was leaving the Senate to remove himself from any “boundaries I should have in expressing my concern and creating complications for my campaign” and Senate Republicans maintaining the majority. His retirement, which he announced last June, allows him to “speak truth” to President Donald Trump about White House policies and advice from Trump’s staff, he said earlier this month. But, the...

@RandPaul 🧵If H.R. 260 becomes law, $631M meant for Afghanistan reconstruction will be clawed back to the Treasury. After twenty years of war and failure, not another dollar should ever reach the Taliban. H.R. 260 finally ends Washington’s blind commitment to relocate Afghans without adequate safeguards. We’ve already seen the cost. One National Guardsman is dead at the hands of a terrorist who entered through resettlement. We must put security first. No country or NGO that props up the Taliban should ever receive U.S. tax dollars. This amendment makes that principle law. America must not bankroll those who side with...

More than 36,500 killed in deadliest two days in Iran protest crackdown: report. More than 36,500 Iranians were allegedly killed during a brutal, two-day crackdown against anti-regime protesters, the deadliest in the history of the Islamic Republic, according to a new report. The latest estimates paint a horrific image of the violence that fell across Iran on Jan. 8 and 9 when Tehran’s security forces opened fire on thousands of civilians protesting the government’s rule and failure to fix the nation’s ailing economy. Despite downplaying the death toll in recent weeks, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ own records allegedly acknowledge...

Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to TCTV. This is your global news channel, Amaya Tusi and we have some breaking news coming from London. Absolute chaotic scenes outside the Islamic Republic of Iran's embassy as the London Metropolitan Police have started the uh extremely harsh crackdown on the anti-IRGC protesters. Something that we've never seen against the pro Palestinian side in London before. But things are kicking off.

(I wanted to kick the hornet's nest, to ask a pointed question. I didn't want to rely on a single source, I tried ChatGPT, Grok, Yandex and Co-Pilot. Only two of the sources were reasonably accessible. Here are the results.) Question to Co-Pilot On a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIU4VO7nCuY titled “The Iran War Almost Started — Here’s What Stopped It | Larry C. Johnson” on the YouTube channel “Lezzet Yöresi”, former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson commented on the issue of intelligence agencies closely allied with financial power centers projecting currency manipulation as an instrument of economic warfare: “Let's go back...

video coverage ongoing about Iran and US military actions

Sen. Rand Paul expressed concerns Sunday over President Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran as the Middle Eastern country sees widespread protests continue. Speaking with ABC’s “This Week,” the Kentucky Republican said he is not sure striking Iran “will have the effects intended.” “We wish freedom and liberation the best around the world, but I don’t think it’s the job of the American government to be involved with every freedom movement around the world,” Paul said.Paul also expressed concerns over how the administration would distinguish between Iranian protesters and law enforcement if Trump were to approve military action in the...

President Donald Trump is set to be briefed by top aides this week as he plots out the level of his response to the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown against citizen-led protests. Trump's top military and diplomatic staffers, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine, are anticipated to be present at the meeting, per the Wall Street Journal. The meeting comes as Trump is understood to be considering further US involvement in the region, but no final decisions are expected to emerge until after Tuesday's scheduled meeting. Putting U.S. troops'...

Iran has warned it will retaliate if attacked by the US, as protesters defied a deadly government crackdown on Saturday night. Videos verified by the BBC and eyewitness accounts appeared to show the government ramping up its response to the protests, which have spread to more than 100 cities and towns across every province in Iran. Medics at two hospitals have told the BBC that more than 100 bodies had been brought in over a two day period. The nationwide death toll is feared to be far higher. The US has threatened to strike Iran over the killing of protesters....

WARNING: Israel May Launch False Flag Attack On US Ships To Force Trump Into Direct War With Iran In The Coming Weeks, Warns Military / Geopolitical Expert Matt Bracken!

All week, Iranians have been mounting massive and widespread street protests. … These demonstrations have been far more consequential than previous such revolts. ... Even more remarkably, a number of bases for the fearsome Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij militia reportedly fell into the hands of protesters, with one Basij operative killed after demonstrators threw stones in Kuhdasht, a city in western Iran. At time of writing, this insurrection is still escalating. Although at least four protesters have been killed, the feared bloodbath by security forces hasn’t yet materialized. ... [If] this revolt ... succeed[s], this ... would...

It was bad enough that ostensibly conservative political commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens both have been the main drivers of a growing divide in the MAGA movement, through their obsession with demonizing Israel and the Jews. Now they have also become leading Western apologists for Islam. Are they even conservative? Were they ever? (Owens in particular has never been committed to anything but her own grift, not a political philosophy.) Conservatives are defenders; we preserve. Our mission, in large part, is to defend and preserve the liberties our forefathers earned for us. It is to defend and preserve the...

Ahead of the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump, Israeli officials are concerned that Washington may force a transition to Phase II of the Gaza agreement without the return of the last killed hostage, Israel Police Yamam special operations unit Staff Sgt. Ran Gvili, and without firm commitments to Hamas’ disarmament and the demilitarization of the Strip. In Jerusalem, there is concern that the Americans will seek to move forward “at any cost,” potentially demanding further Israeli withdrawals and the opening of the Rafah crossing in both directions, while showing less interest in the facts...

Khan Yunis (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) – It only took a matter of minutes after the heavy overnight rain first began to fall for Jamil al-Sharafi's tent in southern Gaza to flood, drenching his food and leaving his blankets sopping wet. The winter rains have made an already precarious life worse for people like Sharafi, who is among the hundreds of thousands in the Palestinian territory displaced by the war, many of whom now survive on aid provided by humanitarian organisations. "My children are shivering from cold and fear... The tent was completely flooded within minutes," Sharafi, 47, said on Sunday....

Iran’s president declared they were in a “total war” with the US, Israel and Europe, just as Tehran looks to rebuild its nuclear capabilities and strengthen ties with Hamas. Masoud Pezeshkian made the bold statement in an interview published in state media Saturday, Barron’s reported. “In my opinion, we are at total war with the United States, Israel and Europe. They want to bring our country to its knees,” Pezeshkian said. “This war is worse than the one launched against us by Iraq. On closer inspection, it is far more complex and difficult,” he said, in reference to the 1980-88...

Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth. Let’s face it, Ben Shapiro is the farthest thing from MAGA. Let’s be blunt. He is a hardcore never-Trumper. He’s a hardcore never-Trumper. In the spring of ’16, he tried to upend Breitbart. He walked off the job, made a big deal about some incident in Mar-a-Lago with Corey Lewandowski. He tried to turn it to Ted Cruz from Donald Trump because he hated Donald Trump. In the general election, he barely supported Donald Trump. The first sign of– when President Trump gets sent back to Mar-a-Lago,...

The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a rule that should have sent shockwaves through every newsroom in the country: visitors entering the United States under visa-waiver programs may soon be required to hand over five years of their social-media history before boarding a plane. No context, no criminal suspicion, no triggering event, just a mandatory reveal of your digital life, tied directly to your passport.On paper, the justification looks familiar. DHS presents the change as a security upgrade, a harmless modernization of screening tools to help identify threats. They repeat the same vocabulary Americans have been conditioned to accept...

Sometimes member of Julani security detail dood it. Julani says he went rogue. Also says he was strictly ISIS, not affiliated with him. Whatever. Trump doesn't want to depose him, because that would strengthen the IRGC and Iran in Syria, and would lead to an endless non-linear war. But Julani sucks, even if he does look good in a suit and tie, and his beard is neat and trimmed. Julani doesn't want to fight the USA, because he knows that would end badly for him. Transcript linked below video.

ERUSALEM, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Israel's cabinet has decided to give legal status to 19 settlements in the occupied West Bank, including two that were vacated 20 years ago under a pullout aimed at boosting the country's security and the economy, Israeli media reported. The Palestinian Authority on Friday condemned the move, announced late on Thursday. Some of the settlements are newly established, while others are older, Israeli media said. The move to legalise the settlements in the West Bank -- territory Palestinians seek for a future state -- was proposed by far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Israeli Defense...

The phrase “Woke Right” arrived almost overnight... James Lindsay traces the history of “woke” as a mindset rather than a policy list. For him, “woke” is a way of seeing the world through a single lens of power and grievance. It falsely elevates politics to a pseudo-theology—that of a cosmic struggle between oppressors and oppressed. It is inspired by resentment, which inevitably fosters online mobs, practices cancel culture, and treats ideological opponents as heretics who must be hunted down rather than debated. Lindsay argues that a similar pattern has emerged on parts of the Right. He points to Groypers and...