Free Republic

Eagle Pass, Texas — By 6:30 a.m., there were scores of migrants, including parents carrying young children and babies, between a seemingly endless line of razor wire and the Rio Grande, pleading with Texas National Guardsmen to grant them safe passage into the U.S. "Please, let us through," a woman in the river clamored in Spanish. "Let us pass," another migrant yelled. "There are kids in the water," a man said. These dire scenes have become a daily occurrence near the Texas border town of Eagle Pass, now the busiest sector for illegal crossings alongside the remote Tucson sector in...

If there was ever a year that called for bold global action on climate change, 2023 was it. In what will likely go down as the warmest year on record — one rife with catastrophic floods, scorching heat waves, devastating wildfires and enduring drought — leaders from nearly 200 countries gathered to chart a path forward in the fight against climate change. After more than two weeks of tense negotiations representatives from 198 countries agreed Wednesday to “transition away” from fossil fuels. It was a historic deal but one that once again fell short for many climate activists, who saw...

Department of Homeland Security officials are warning about the impact of policies being discussed in negotiations between the White House and Congress that would increase deportations, deny many migrants the right to seek asylum and make detention mandatory, according to current and former officials who spoke to NBC News. “It would break the border,” one current Homeland Security official predicted. “It would be completely counterproductive,” another warned. The second official noted that Customs and Border Protection detention centers, as well as those of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, would quickly become so full that the agencies would be unable to keep...

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The birth of their daughter should have marked the beginning of a joyful chapter for the young Palestinian couple. Instead, the devastating war in Gaza, now in its third month, has turned childbirth and parenthood into a time of worry and fear for Salim and Israa al-Jamala. First, they endured a perilous journey, dodging missile fire, to reach a maternity ward. And now, the couple is sheltering with their newborn in the partially tented courtyard of another hospital where they can’t care properly for their now 3-week-old daughter, her mother’s namesake. His wife’s breast...

During a meeting with senators, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Zelensky “made clear, and we all made clear, that if we lose, Putin wins, and this will be very, very dangerous for the United States.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), after meeting with Zelensky later in the morning, reiterated that any aid for Kyiv must be coupled with border security. President Biden has requested about $60 billion in additional Ukraine support as part of a more than $100 billion supplemental spending package that has hit multiple hurdles in Congress. The press conference is scheduled for 4:15 p.m. EST.

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Health officials and people trapped inside Gaza’s largest hospital rejected Israel’s claims that it was helping babies and others evacuate Sunday, saying fighting continued just outside the facility where incubators lay idle with no electricity and critical supplies were running out. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dismissed urgent calls for a cease-fire unless it includes the release of all the nearly 240 hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 rampage that triggered the war. A day after Netanyahu said Israel was bringing its “full force” with the aim of ending Hamas’ 16-year rule...

The security cabinet approved regulations that would allow the government to close foreign broadcasters who broadcasts harm national security, KAN reported early Monday morning. The decision comes as Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi pushes for the Qatari Al-Jazeera and Lebanese Al-Mayadeen networks in Israel to be closed.

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thousands of Palestinians sheltering from the Israel-Hamas war at Gaza City’s main hospital fled south Friday after several reported strikes in and around the compound overnight. They joined a growing exodus of people escaping intense urban fighting in the north — including near other hospitals — as Gaza officials said the territory’s death toll surpassed 11,000. The search for safety across the besieged Gaza Strip has grown desperate as Israel intensified its assault on the territory’s largest city. The Israeli army says Hamas’ military infrastructure is based amid Gaza City’s hospitals and neighborhoods, and...

Some hospitals in Gaza say they are under attack as heavy fighting and explosions over the last 24 hours have continued amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. Targeting civilians is against the laws of war, but Israel maintains that Hamas uses civilians as shields. International organizations have decried the shellings in retaliation for Hamas' Oct. 7 terror attack, which killed more than 1,400 in Israel. The death toll continues to mount in Gaza with 11,078 dead as of Friday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical center located in Gaza City -- where thousands of wounded...

Tel Aviv — The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry has released harrowing new footage of what it says are conditions inside Al-Shifa hospital. Israeli forces are continuing to pummel northern Gaza in what the IDF says is an effort to wipe out the Islamist militant group once and for all. In a seven-minute graphic video posted on the ministry's Facebook page, an unnamed doctor is seen describing his surroundings as wounded and injured people are strewn across the hospital floor. "The department is completely full of wounded and injured," the unnamed doctor says in the video. "They are on the ground...

More than a dozen children with cancer or other serious blood disorders have been safely evacuated from Gaza after weeks of difficult negotiations involving the U.S., Egypt, Israel and Hamas — but more than 30 remain in the war-torn territory, three doctors involved in the effort tell NBC News. The children, accompanied by parents or companions, were evacuated from the Al-Rantisi Specialized Hospital for Children to hospitals in Egypt and Jordan, the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the World Health Organization said Friday. The development comes as hospitals across northern Gaza on Thursday and Friday came under munitions fire...

Haneen Okal, a Palestinian-American who lives in New Jersey, reunited in recent months with family in the Gaza Strip for the first time in more than 10 years, she told ABC News. Now, Okal and her three young children -- two of whom were born and raised in the U.S. -- find themselves caught in the Israel-Hamas war despite pleas to U.S. officials in Israel, Okal said in an interview. "It's very terrifying because we all want to get out of here," Okal said. "Unfortunately, the U.S. embassy is not helping. We feel abandoned." Okal's husband, Abdulla, is at home...

Israel is warning of a "prolonged" war in Gaza as it prepares to launch a ground invasion of the densely populated Palestinian territory. Many of those paying the ultimate price for the brutal weekend terror attack on Israel by Gaza's Hamas rulers are the youngest Palestinians. Hospitals and clinics struggling to keep their lights on since Israel imposed a complete blockade, cutting electricity supplies to the Palestinian enclave, are full of tiny bodies covered in blood and exhausted doctors trying desperately to save their lives. The blockade has amplified the misery of the millions of people who live in the...

After Covid completely upended life on college campuses, students and recent graduates are encountering a new challenge: student loans. Millions of college students and graduates — including Black women, who carry the highest burden of student debt — held on to the hope of President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, which the Supreme Court struck down in June. Yet, Biden is aiming to push policies that would provide relief for loan borrowers, with his announcement Wednesday approving $9 billion in student loan forgiveness for 125,000 borrowers. Still, as payments resume, several Black students and graduates told NBC News that...

WASHINGTON — The Biden campaign is preparing to target Republican economic positions, views they expect to play a large role in the second Republican presidential debate in California on Wednesday. President Joe Biden has frequently touted "Bidenomics" — the term the administration embraced that encompasses his economic agenda — but more recently highlighted what he is calling "MAGAnomics," using the term for the first time according to a senior White House official to target Republican economic policies earlier this month. The Biden campaign plans to portray "MAGAnomics" as harming middle-class families, senior citizens and American manufacturing, all the while helping...

CHICAGO (WLS) -- With a potential federal government shutdown looming, Illinois political leaders and officials are anticipating how local services and programs might be affected. A government shutdown may impact flights from Chicago airports and payment for government employees, including sailors serving at Naval Station Great Lakes. Illinois Congressman Jesus "Chuy" Garcia said a government shutdown would hit the state hard. "It would affect nutrition programs, education programs, our ability to travel through airports," Garcia said. Governor JB Pritzker issued a statement Wednesday saying he is working with Illinois Treasurer Mike Frerichs to reinstate a 100-million dollar zero or low...

Democrats on Sunday sought to play down the ramifications in Washington from last week's indictment of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, while Republicans seized on the development. In appearances on the Sunday public affairs show circuit, top Democrats noted the lack of firm evidence to back up Republicans' allegations that the president directly profited off of or influenced his son's business dealings while suggesting that the GOP is trying to distract from more important issues. Polling indicates a large number of voters agree with Republicans' line of attack. A Quinnipiac University survey earlier this month found that half of...

(CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago shootings this weekend have left at least 20 people shot, one fatally, police said.) WASHINGTON (AP) — A masked white man carrying at least one weapon bearing a swastika fatally shot three Black people inside a Florida store Saturday in an attack with a clear motive of racial hatred, officials said. The shooting in a Dollar General store in a predominately Black neighborhood left two men and one woman dead and was “racially motivated,” Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters said. In addition to carrying a firearm with a painted symbol of the genocidal Nazi regime of Germany...

A camera clicks. In a fraction of a second, the shutter opens and then closes, freezing forever the image in front of it. When the camera shutter blinked inside an Atlanta jail on Thursday, it both created and documented a tiny inflection point in American life. Captured for posterity, there was a former president of the United States, for the first time in history, under arrest and captured in the sort of frame more commonly associated with drug dealers or drunken drivers. The trappings of power gone, for that split second. Left behind: an enduring image that will appear in...

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists. The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs...