Free Republic

Events in Europe, the Middle East, and here are moving so quickly, it seems that decades of deceit, corruption, and just plain stupidity are nearing their end sooner than we could have imagined. Here’s a sample of the tremors this week which promise to undo the near past. IranCredible reports indicate 23,000 civilians have been murdered by the mullahs’ forces, and videos (again made public due to the extraordinary efforts of Elon Musk’s teams to work around the mullah's blackouts) reveal incredible brutality. Corpses with catheters and heart monitors still attached support accounts of persons being snatched from hospitals and...

Every time I write about this subject it has gotten yet a little more ridiculous. The background is that back in 2019 New York, both State and City, set themselves targets for “emissions” reductions and energy transformation that are quite literally impossible as a matter of physics, thermodynamics, and cost. And then, just to show who is the boss here, they made the impossible targets mandatory by statute. In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most...

For him, extreme volatility and risk are not a problem but an opportunity.Is Iran next? That was the question the world was asking this weekend. As both protests and repression escalated, President Trump repeatedly warned that the U.S. would not stand idly by if the theo-thugocracy in Tehran fired on protesters. The mullahs’ response came from their usual playbook. They carried out a bloodbath and threatened to attack American bases and assets across the region if Mr. Trump raised a hand against them. As in Venezuela, Russia and China aren’t doing much either way. Joint exercises involving the Chinese, Russian,...

The United States and Venezuela announced Friday they are pursuing the possibility of reestablishing diplomatic relations, coming a week after a U.S. military operation that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and extradited him to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.A U.S. delegation, including diplomats and security personnel, visited Venezuela to evaluate the potential reopening of the American Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement sent to media outlets. The department did not immediately return a request for comment.The embassy has been shuttered since 2019, when ties were severed during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term...

The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States. Based on these determinations, the Department has taken steps to impose visa restrictions on agents of the global censorship-industrial complex who, as a result, will...

Most Americans are not antisemitic, but concerns over Israel reflect “a real backlash to consensus view in American foreign policy,” United States Vice President JD Vance assessed in a Monday interview… The vice president said Fuentes serves as a “useful foil” for some pro-Israel conservatives, allowing them to avoid a substantive discussion about US policy toward Israel. Vance said that while he believes “Israel is an important ally... we’re also going to have very substantive disagreements with Israel – and that’s OK.”

Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers, many have designated September 11, 2001 as the true close of the 20th century. That event indeed changed many things in the United States and in the world. It was a sign that the American-led global order established after World War II had become fragile and hollowed out. But in the decades that followed, our leaders clung to the pieties and perspectives of the pre-9/11 period, applying obsolete solutions in a new era with much different problems. In retrospect, Donald Trump’s 2015 presidential campaign was the true start of the...

U.S. President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy appears to blow up some of the key principles behind 80 years of European collective defence, challenging the foundation of the continent’s relationship with the country. But on whether the White House will — or even can — follow through on many of its more radical or transformative demands, many European capitals will likely need more convincing. In a blistering attack, Trump’s new policy portrays Europe’s governments as weak and ineffective. Migration has destroyed the continent’s self-confidence, it claims, accusing the European Union of contributing to a loss of national sovereignty, weakened...

Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, delivers a passionate series of remarks in support of President Trump’s foreign policy.Outlining the impact of federal policy under President Trump from the perspective of what is in America’s best interest, Rubio notes how foreign policy meshes with domestic policy and is specifically the combination of national security interests that secures prosperity for all American people.“For the first time in four decades American foreign policy is based on what is in our interests,” Rubio notes. The entire segment is well presented. WATCH:.This level of authenticity is very difficult to fake. Secretary...

In a late-night Truth Social post published on Thanksgiving evening, President Trump called for “reverse migration” and promised sweeping changes to U.S. immigration policy. His message came in the wake of a tragic shooting in Washington, D.C., where a 29-year-old Afghan national allegedly gunned down two members of the National Guard. One soldier has died, and the other remains in critical condition. In a later reported incident, Fox News published that an "Afghan national was arrested this week after posting a video of himself on TikTok indicating he was building a bomb with an intended target of the Fort Worth...

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright might possibly be the biggest unsung hero in the Trump 2.0 Cabinet. While his fellow Cabinet secretaries like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth regularly get the big headlines, Wright flies a bit under the radar. But, that doesn't mean he's not busy taking bold, common sense actions to push America toward policies that prioritize affordable, reliable, and secure energy sources. Regular readers of RedState will know that Wright has been taking bold action to undo burdensome regulations and policies implemented by the Biden administration. Our own Ward Clark has...

Administration allies say they are fed up with the Defense Department’s third-most senior leader and his foreign policy surprises. More than a half dozen diplomats interviewed in Washington and Europe also complain that the Pentagon’s once steady consultations have slowed as Colby’s office crafts that strategy, along with a review of troop locations worldwide.That uncertainty deepened after the Pentagon quietly decided not to replace a rotational Army brigade in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia — a move the Romanian government learned of only two days before it was announced, according to a U.S. defense official and a Romanian official.One NATO diplomat...

Like a ‘friendly’ poker game, the ‘peace process’ was an end in itself. The president decided to win.In the 77 years since the formation of the Jewish state, and for the 2,000 years since the destruction of the Second Temple, the West has understood peace in the Middle East—peace between Arabs and Jews—as impossible.Semantically, the “Peace Process” was the continuing enjoyment of a process which could be ended only by peace. What, then, have the West, the world and the United Nations been doing in regard to the Mideast since 1948?The terrorist Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...

The subject of refugees entering the United States has been one we've steadily covered on these pages over the past few years, especially during President Joe Biden's term in the White House, when people from around the world were allowed to stream across the border with Mexico - and take flights into the nation's interior - practically unhindered by authorities. On Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it will be making a major change to how immigration works regarding refugees who are allowed to enter the U.S., starting the end of Oct. through the end of the fiscal year (that...

President Donald Trump‘s peace deal in Gaza is not simply unprecedented due to the longevity of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. If the deal even somewhat holds, it’s a categorical repudiation of a quarter-century of failed diplomatic consensus. It proves the futility of the democracy promotion of the Bush and Obama-era neoconservatives and negates the notion that the rest of the world should walk on tenterhooks to appease Iran and its proxies in order to garner a consensus in the Middle East. The Gaza deal repudiates the notion that any regional peace hinges on prioritizing a Palestinian state, and...

During the recent gathering of Democrat Party bosses in Minneapolis, there was no shortage of deranged rhetoric, usually about the dark doings of the “dictator” Trump. But the most delusional diatribe was delivered by DNC Chair Ken Martin, who unintentionally captured why Democrats have been unable to recover from their drubbing last November – and why their prospects aren’t much better moving forward. Martin opened the first session of the three-day meeting with a predictably dull speech full of progressive platitudes and mangled metaphors that ended with this bizarre call to arms: “The Democratic Party has to stop trying to...

A term that became popular in the last decade or two is the Overton Window Principle. It was a theory conceived in the 1990s by a brilliant young engineer-turned-lawyer, Joseph Overton, who was a libertarian and executive in a libertarian think tank, the Mackinac Center, in MichiganWhile working in fundraising for the Mackinac Center, Overton developed his Window principle, while explaining to audiences the purpose of think tanks. The essential idea is that there is in every society a “window”, or range, of thoughts and policies that are generally acceptable to the wider population. The purpose of think tanks, he...

Writing elsewhere last month, I suggested that Donald Trump end the National Endowment for Democracy once and for all. Like most so-called “non-governmental organizations,” the NED is in fact an all-governmental organization. It depends absolutely on a subsidy from the state department, i.e., from the federal government, i.e., from the taxpayer, i.e., from you. The NED began life in the Cold War as a way of projecting “soft power” against our Communist adversaries. But as James Piereson noted in February of this year, the NED has undergone a familiar process of mission creep and moral and political entropy. “With the...

Conservatives are up in arms about Trump's decision to have the government buy a stake in Intel. Classic, textbook socialism. Trump sees the Intel deal as a first step toward creating an American "sovereign wealth fund," with many more investments to follow. This is about keeping America competitive with Communist China, which controls the world's second and third largest sovereign wealth funds. Traditionally, countries rich in national resources, particularly oil, have used sovereign wealth funds to diversify and grow their economies.

President Trump has taken extraordinary measures in the nation’s capital to fulfill an ordinary function of local government: keeping clean, orderly streets. His actions seem unusual because government officials in America’s cities long ago abandoned the basics. They have been led astray by academics and activists who promised them crimeless cities and an end to homelessness if only they established a right to housing and eradicated income inequality. These idealistic public-policy frameworks have failed to achieve the desired outcomes anywhere in the U.S. Instead, they’ve ushered in the worst homelessness crisis on record. President Trump’s strategy is straightforward: Everyone living...