Free Republic

President Donald Trump was greeted by a packed crowd at UFC 327 in Miami Saturday night during the president's first appearance at a sporting event since the start of the Iran war. Trump has been a frequent fixture at UFC and other combat sports events during his presidency, during his 2024 campaign and even dating back to his first term. In 2025, Trump attended UFC 316 and Miami fight night. In 2024, he attended UFC 302 in June and UFC 309 in November. In 2019, he attended UFC 244. Before Saturday, the last major sporting event Trump attended was the...

The dust of conflict has settled. The fever of the moment has yielded to the cooler discipline of strategic reflection. It is time to ask, with unflinching clarity, what the United States and its partners should do with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Tehran’s propaganda organs were quick to claim victory. That claim, however theatrical, must be taken seriously -- not because it reflects battlefield reality, but because it reveals an uncomfortable truth: the regime cannot, or will not, abandon the terrorist and extremist doctrines that have defined it for more than four decades. No amount of quiet concessions extracted...

WANA (Apr 08) – The Full Text of the Supreme National Security Council Statement on the ceasefire is as follows: “The enemy, in its cowardly, illegal, and criminal war against the Iranian nation, has suffered an undeniable, historical, and crushing defeat. By the grace of the pure and holy blood of the Martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution, His Eminence Grand Ayatollah Imam Khamenei (Peace be upon him), the prudent measures of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution and Commander-in-Chief, His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei (May God protect him), and the struggle and bravery of the warriors of...

Two attempts on the life of a former president, less than two months apart, is unprecedented in American history. And yet it’s not entirely surprising given that the country’s most powerful institutions and industries have spent the last eight years weaponizing the most suggestible and mentally ill of our citizenry to target Donald Trump and his supporters. Now it seems the FBI may be recruiting from abroad as well. According to the Trump campaign, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently briefed the Republican candidate on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort...

There’s nothing really new in the uproar surrounding the loss of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran this past weekend. Media hysteria over the downing of a single U.S. aircraft has become a commonplace schtick in coverage of American wars over the past three decades. During WW II, the U.S. lost over 23,000 planes in combat. I kid you not, playmates: 23,000+ – and that’s only combat losses. Overall losses, including accidents, amounted to 65,164. The media talking heads would have had to be carried out in straitjackets if they’d been active at the time. Losses dropped sharply following...

In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful To the people of the United States of America, and to all those who, amid a flood of distortions and manufactured narratives, continue to seek the truth and aspire to a better life: Iran—by this very name, character, and identity—is one of the oldest continuous civilizations in human history. Despite its historical and geographical advantages at various times, Iran has never, in its modern history, chosen the path of aggression, expansion, colonialism, or domination. [Unless you count our colonization of Lebanon, Gaza, Syria, neighboring portions of Iraq, Kurdistan, and any other...

Citing the First Amendment, a federal judge on Tuesday agreed to permanently block the Trump administration from implementing a presidential directive to end federal funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, two media entities that the White House has said are counterproductive to American priorities. The operational impact of U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss’ decision was not immediately clear — both because it will likely be appealed and because too much damage to the public-broadcasting system has already been done, both by the president and Congress. Moss ruled that President Donald Trump’s executive order to cease funding...

The U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has been accused of “God-washing” the war in Iran. Leading a Christian worship service at the Pentagon, he prayed for "every round to find its mark" and for “overwhelming violence" against America's enemies. During the service, which was livestreamed and attended by military personnel, Hegseth also quoted from the Psalms, saying: "I pursued my enemies and overtook them, and did not turn back till they were consumed." Speaking to Sky News, U.S. pastor Rev Andy Campbell said the use of Scripture in conversations around the Iran war is troubling: “If you go to war...

Both Ayn Rand and George Orwell would have recognized what is going on—and, in fact, they warned us about it. A form of torture I endure for my research is reading the New York Times morning emails. The phrase “alternate universe” aptly describes its sly, misleading story titles, which demonstrate a built-in bias even before the report itself begins. A good example was a heading marked “Territorial Adventurism” used the other day in reference to Trump’s geopolitical strategy in Iran and elsewhere. Adventurism is defined as “Involvement in risky enterprises, especially in foreign affairs, while disregarding established principles or...

Here come the morality police: About 1-in-3 people under the age of 30 say being extremely wealthy is “morally wrong.” Just 19% say it’s acceptable, and another near-50% don’t think it’s an issue one way or another. That data comes from the latest Pew Research Center poll on morality. Compare Gen-Z to Boomers, and data becomes even more stark. Only 10% of those over 65 say it’s morally wrong to be extremely wealthy. But that checks out. Those over 65 have enjoyed one of the greatest growth engines in human history, post World War II America. Cheap education, cheap homes...

The Iranian regime has been running an online influence campaign using AI-generated photographs, videos and memes to sow confusion about the war in the Middle East. Experts say the main goal is to ramp up anti-war sentiment in the US and pressure President Trump to end the conflict. “The propaganda includes memes and cartoons that aren't meant to be perceived as real but are very good at spreading political messaging,” said Darren Linvill, author of the study and co-director of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub. “The deepfakes portray a version of reality that [seems] genuine and often paint Iran as more...

I watched this last night and was blown away by how stupid it was. It had a good plot but the character portrayal of the military and executive government officials under the stress of nuclear missile launched against the US was horrific. Every one involved from the initial launch detection to the president issuing the go code was so overcome with stress that they couldn't focus and function. Missile commander left his position, SECDEF committed suicide, blah blah blah.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds.</p><p>Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S.</p>

Demonizing the Jews is one of the oldest tricks in the bag. In the early Middle Ages, the accusations against the Jews of Europe started to erupt, and in the first quarter of the 21st century, they haven't stopped. Justin Martyr accused us of being Christ killers in "Dialogue with Tripho", as early as A.D. 160. John Chrysostom, might very well be the poster child for early Christian antisemitism. In his work Adversus Judaeos (387), he describes the Jews as "lucious, rapacious, greedy, destroyers, demon-possessed and assassins of Christ." Then came the ritual murder libel of 1141 when Jews were...

If you've been following coverage of the Trump administration's military action against Iran, you've probably noticed something: A lot of people are determined to convince you that the United States is losing. They're wrong. Even worse, many of them know they're wrong. Critics across the political spectrum — from Democrats to elements of the so-called horseshoe Right — are pushing narratives that paint the conflict as a disaster in the making. The goal is simple: Undermine public confidence and turn what is shaping up as a strategic success into a perceived failure. Three particular claims are circulating widely. All three...

The artist and singer/songwriter formerly known as Cat Stevens, and then as Yusuf Islam, and then as Yusuf/Cat Stevens (you can call him anything, just don’t call him late for iftar dinner), early on Thursday morning weighed in on the conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran. He did not, however, have a negative word to say about the bloodthirsty Iranian regime; instead, he said that the problem was all anti-Muslim propaganda: Perhaps I was particularly blessed to have discovered Islam in 1977, before the Iranian Revolution, when Muslims were less visible and the monstrous propaganda machine had not been...

As the war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran enters its sixth day, the rate of military resource depletion on both sides has emerged as a critical factor that could determine the outcome of the conflict. Reza Talaei-Nik, a spokesperson for Iran’s Ministry of Defense, stated on the 3rd, “We have the capability to sustain an ‘offensive defense’ longer than the enemy expects in this war,” adding, “We have no intention of deploying all our advanced weapons and equipment from the outset.” This remark, implying that Iran has yet to use its “advanced weapons,” directly contradicts U.S. President Donald Trump’s...

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...

This is the most consequential moment in the modern Middle East since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. No American president has ever – ever – dealt so courageously or so decisively with the Iranian regime since its leaders declared war on America 47 years ago. The Iranian regime has killed, wounded, and maimed more Americans than any government in the world since the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet no American leader has ever truly confronted the tyrants in Tehran. Until now. When Iran ordered its terror proxy, Hezbollah, to blow up the U.S. Marines...

Next month the most important political book of the year, or perhaps the decade, will be published. It is called The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control. The author is Jacob Siegel, a journalist for the Tablet. To summarize: shocked by the arrival of Donald Trump in 2016, American government officials, the media, and the technology giants created a system of censoring the public, spying on other opponents, and planting false stories. The media was complicit and will never fully recover. Trump’s rise, Siegel writes, “meant that politics had become war, as it is in many...