Free Republic

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity. The decision is Trump’s latest win on the court's emergency docket, and allows the administration to enforce the policy while a lawsuit over it plays out. It halts a lower-court order requiring the government to keep letting people choose male, female or X on their passport to line up with their gender identity on new or renewed passports. The court’s three liberal justices dissented

Singapore has the most powerful passport in the world, with its citizens able to visit 193 countries and territories without a prior visa, according to the Henley Passport Index.Japan and South Korea come in second place, with its citizens able to visit 190 countries, followed by EU countries Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Denmark and Spain in joint third, with access to 189 countries.As Statista's Anna Fleck reports, even though the United States is a little further down the list, coming in 10th place, it still yields considerable power, enabling citizens to enter 182 countries without major restrictions. It’s a...

The Ancient Greeks were active travelers, despite the dangers of land travel and the fear of highwaymen. Sea travel required ample supplies and means. A fascinating archaeological find exhibited in the Agora Museum in Athens is rectangular clay tablets with inscribed names and occupations that purportedly served as travel documents in antiquity. Most travelers were aristocrats and well-to-do citizens who traveled to witness and experience the wonders of the ancient world, and other famous places and sights. Others traveled for pilgrimage; healing in sanctuaries such as the Sanctuary of Asclepius in Olympia, the Sanctuary of Apollo on Delos Island, or...

Jeffrey Epstein traveled throughout the Middle East and Africa in the 1980s, frequently requesting multiple passports for the trips, according to newly obtained documents. Between 1980 and his death in 2019, Epstein visited Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mali, Gabon and countless European countries. He often reported lost passports and requested multiple to accommodate his many travel visas, the documents obtained by ABC News, reveal. 'Please issue me a second passport so I may have the 3 visas issued for Africa while I am using my current passport in France.' At the time, he carried a conviction for soliciting child...

Boelter stands accused of carrying out a brazen and calculated attack, posing as a police officer to gun down two sitting state lawmakers: Rep. Melissa Hortman and Sen. John Hoffman. He also allegedly shot the lawmakers’ spouses in the ambush. Hoffman and his wife survived. Hortman and her husband did not. ... Boelter’s vehicle contained flyers emblazoned with the slogan “No Kings”—the same phrase we saw at anti-Trump protests across the country ... most striking is Boelter’s history with the state’s Democrat leadership. In 2019, Gov. Tim Walz appointed him to a four-year term on Minnesota’s Workforce Development Board. Before...

The wife of Vance Luther Boelter, Jennifer Boelter, was detained by police for questioning after a traffic stop late Saturday morning near Onamia, Minnesota. Her husband, Vance Boelter, is the subject of an intense manhunt and is suspected of shooting two Minnesota state lawmakers—killing one—and injuring both of their spouses. Inside the vehicle, investigators reportedly found a weapon, ammunition, cash, and passports, according to two sources. As of late Saturday night, no arrests have been made, but all occupants of the vehicle are being questioned. It’s still unclear what led to the traffic stop—whether the vehicle was being tracked or...

Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-TX) Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act cleared the House of Representatives on Thursday.The House voted in favor of the SAVE Act, requiring proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections, in a 220-208 vote. All Republican present voted in support of the SAVE Act, but it was largely passed on partisan lines, as just four Democrats voted in favor alongside them.The SAVE Act effectively amends the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.The measure itself lists several forms of valid identification to prove citizenship:...

Venezuela’s Tarek El-Aissami The Americas Report | Oct 03, 2008  By Nicole Ferrand [...] Mr. El - Aissami is a Venezuelan national of Syrian descent who, before becoming Minster of Interior and Justice, occupied the position of Deputy Interior Minister for Public Security. His father, Carlos Aissami, is the head of the Venezuelan branch of the Iraqi Baath political party. Before the invasion of Iraq, he held a press conference in which he described himself as a Taliban and called Osama Bin Laden, "the great Mujahedeen, Sheik Osama bin Laden." Tarek's great-uncle Shibli el-Aissami was a prominent ideologist and...

The day after President Donald Trump returned to office, Lisa Suhay took her 21-year-old daughter, Mellow, to a passport office in Norfolk, Virginia, where they live. Getting a passport for Mellow, who is transgender, was urgent. In an executive order Trump signed the night before, the president used a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. The order says a person is male or female and it rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. The framing is in line with many conservatives' views but at odds...

The State Department is no longer issuing U.S. passports with “X” gender markers and has suspended processing all applications from Americans seeking to update their passports with a new gender marker. This suspension, made in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order signaling his administration’s opposition to gender diversity, affects all transgender and nonbinary Americans, including those currently traveling or overseas. ... Trump’s executive order directed federal agencies to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports and visas, reflect sex assigned at birth. Since this order states that it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes,...

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, officially requested his passport from Minister Alexandre de Moraes on Wednesday so he may attend President-elect Trump’s inauguration later this month. “Very honored to receive from the President of the USA, @realDonaldTrump , an invitation to his inauguration and that of his Vice President @JDVance , on January 20th,” Bolsonaro wrote in a post on the social platform X. “I thank my son, Federal Deputy @BolsonaroSP , for the excellent work in this relationship with the family of President Donald J. Trump,” he added. “My lawyer, Dr. Paulo Bueno, has already forwarded a request to...

Students banging pots, and shouting "fraud", gathered at a busy Caracas intersection on Monday night, to protest election results in the tropical country.

Feb-15-2017 - RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA) — The Trump administration imposed sanctions against Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami

New Report Details Horrifying Cost of Fauci’s FailuresIn the post-pandemic period of Covid, there’s now a concerted effort to comprehend and explain the damage that was caused by our capitulating to the hysterical overreaction and overreach of the ‘experts.’ There’s a long list of policy failures to examine; mask mandates were a disaster that accomplished absolute nothing of value, but instead led to tremendous harms, many of which continue today.Children were forced into masks for years on end, millions of people still wear masks when traveling or inside stores and restaurants, permanently convinced of the deliberate falsehood that masks are...

Russia has successfully imposed its passports on nearly the entire population of occupied Ukraine by making it impossible to survive without them, coercing hundreds of thousands of people into citizenship. A Russian passport is needed to prove property ownership and keep access to health care and retirement income. Refusal can result in losing custody of children, jail – or worse. A new Russian law stipulates that anyone in the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport by July 1 is subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen.”..... AP spoke about the system to impose Russian citizenship in occupied...

In a survey, 22 percent of respondents said they knew of at least one vaccinated person who suffered health issues after taking the injections. People who did not comply with COVID-19 vaccine requirements were hesitant because they knew someone who had experienced a health problem after getting the injection, according to recent research. “Knowing someone who experienced a health problem following COVID-19 injection reduced the likelihood of injection, the International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research reported. Such people “were more likely to oppose injection mandates and passports. .. Conversely, “knowing someone who had health problems following the COVID-19...

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) tells me that thousands of illegal aliens are being flown to cities and towns across the nation courtesy of the American taxpayers. Norman said a pilot reached out to him for a major American air carrier and was very disturbed about the illegals who he was being forced to board his plane. The pilot said none of the illegals had government identification or medical clearance. Meanwhile, journalist Bill Melugin posted a photograph of a sign at the Tucson airport. The sign directed illegals with no passports to form a separate line. There’s a very real chance...

33-year-old Canadian MSM journalist who heavily promoted the Covid-19 vaccine, advocated for vaccine passports, and the firing of those who refused the jab has died after being hospitalized and “declared neurologically dead. (Snip) ”Vandaelle had taken to social media multiple times, advocating for incentives to encourage Covid-19 vaccination, the implementation of vaccine passports, and the termination of those who refused the jab.In one social media post, Vandaelle stated, “I, for one, advocate we bring the carrot and the stick. Incentivize getting the vaccine however we like – ice cream, lotteries, literally whatever, I don’t care – and require vaccination to...

The World Health Organization has disturbing plans for freedom of movement, including in the United States. In the classic movie Casablanca, two Nazi-controlled French Vichy police utter the famous, or infamous, line: "May I see your papers?" When the suspect provides expired government-issued identification papers and attempts to flee, the fascist supporting police gun him down in the street. Even though the suspect is outnumbered two to one, no attempt is made to pursue him, to apprehend him, or to establish guilt. He is just gunned down. The lesson couldn't be clearer. Have the proper government-issued papers, or you can...

Apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation. Two days ago I posted what I thought would be quite an innocuous twitter thread about the implications of the U.K. government’s target of “net zero” by 2050. Reminder of what ‘net zero’ really means. ... Key points: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow to close by 2030. NO FLYING at all by 2050. No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level. 2. Food, heating and energy restricted to 60% of...