Free Republic

@SenRandPaul I opposed John Kennedy’s idea to bring in so many Afghan nationals. I told Kennedy it was reckless and dangerous. Ultimately, Kennedy and Biden won, and our country was flooded with unvetted Afghan nationals. This video has the receipts. In 2013, I put forward legislation to suspend visas from high-risk terrorism countries and to require thorough background-check waiting periods for all others, so Americans can be confident our visa system keeps terrorists out In 2015, I also introduced legislation to stop taxpayer-funded benefits for newly arrived refugees from high-risk countries.

The Airbus A319 that always flies Maduro touched down in Santa Elena de Uairén, right on the Venezuela-Brazil frontier. No official confirmation he's on board or that he's requested asylum in Brazil, but the timing is screaming "I'm out." Brazilian authorities say they haven't been contacted yet. If Maduro actually bolts, 26 years of Chavismo might die overnight The military splits: some will celebrate, some will try a last stand The opposition (Edmundo González, María Corina) instantly becomes the legitimate government in the eyes of the world Cuba loses its oil lifeline and implodes within months, while the U.S. bombing...

President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that the United States is preparing to take new action against alleged drug trafficking networks in Venezuela, telling service members during a Thanksgiving call that efforts for strikes on land will be starting “very soon.” “In recent weeks, you’ve been working to deter Venezuelan drug traffickers, of which there are many. Of course, there aren’t too many coming in by sea anymore,” Trump told service members in the call. “You probably noticed that people aren’t wanting to be delivering by sea, and we’ll be starting to stop them by land also,” the president continued. “The...

The United States has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Spanish for Cartel of the Suns) - a group it alleges is headed by Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, and senior figures in his government - as a foreign terrorist organisation. Labelling an organisation as a terrorist group gives US law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target and dismantle it. In recent months, the US has been ramping up pressure on Maduro, saying his government is illegitimate following last year's election, which was widely dismissed as rigged. The designation gives it another way to turn up the heat. But...

[TX] Gov. Greg Abbott is calling on law enforcement officials across North Texas to launch investigations into what he says may be illegal Sharia tribunals operating as rogue courts in Collin and Dallas counties. In a letter sent to local district attorneys, sheriffs, the Texas attorney general, and the Department of Public Safety, Abbott warned that certain entities may be “masquerading as legal ‘courts’ staffed with ‘judges’ issuing orders” that claim to bind individuals to Islamic law—actions he says could violate multiple state criminal statutes. Abbott noted that the First Amendment provides wide latitude for religious bodies to adjudicate internal...

Gov. Greg Abbott is escalating his actions against the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood, directing the Texas Department of Public Safety to launch criminal investigations into the organization and its affiliates. In a letter sent Thursday to DPS Director Freeman Martin, Abbott said CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood “have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world.’” The governor accused the groups of supporting terrorism, engaging in intimidation, and attempting to subvert state law through radical activity. Abbott pointed to federal court findings linking CAIR to Hamas—including a...

Greg Abbott @GregAbbott_TX: Today, I designated the Muslim Brotherhood and Council on American-Islamic Relations as foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organizations. This bans them from buying or acquiring land in Texas and authorizes the Attorney General to sue to shut them down.

Nov 18 (Reuters) - Hamas rejected the United Nations Security Council passing a U.S.-drafted resolution endorsing U.S. President Donald Trump's Gaza plan, saying it fails to meet Palestinians' rights and demands and seeks to impose an international trusteeship on the enclave that Palestinians and resistance factions oppose. "Assigning the international force with tasks and roles inside the Gaza Strip, including disarming the resistance, strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation," the group added.

Despite detailed photographic evidence to the contrary, many liberals continue to assert that the Venezuelan boats recently destroyed by the U.S. Navy are merely fishing, not drug, boats. The Associated Press has jumped into the fray and in a roundabout "nuanced" way admitted that the destroyed boats are indeed drug boats. The "nuance" comes in via the AP asserting that among the crews of the drug boats, some worked mostly as fishermen or other low paying jobs with drug smuggling only as a side gig to boost their income. The AP reluctantly made the 'nuanced' admission that the destroyed boats...

The Trump administration is planning a new mission to target drug cartels in Mexico that could include U.S. troops on the ground, according to multiple officials familiar with the effort. NBC News' Courtney Kube has details on the plans and what actions could be taken.

Emergency services have been called after "multiple people" were stabbed on a train travelling in Cambridgeshire Two people have been arrested, Cambridgeshire Police say - they're currently at Huntingdon station responding to the incident No details have been released about how many people have been stabbed, or how serious the injuries are The LNER website confirms "emergency services are dealing with an incident between Stevenage and Peterborough" and says all lines are currently closed while the incident is dealt with

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. military carried out three strikes Monday in the waters of the Eastern Pacific against boats suspected of carrying drugs, killing 14 and leaving one survivor. The announcement made on social media Tuesday, marks a continued escalation in the pace of the strikes, which began in early September spaced weeks apart. This was the first time multiple strikes were announced in a single day

Venezuela’s authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro issued a rare plea to Donald Trump in English, calling for peace with the United States as tensions between Caracas and Washington escalate following a series of U.S. military operations in the Caribbean and Pacific. “Yes peace, yes peace forever. Peace forever. No crazy war, please!” Maduro said in English during a meeting with pro-government labor unions in Caracas. Maduro’s comments were met with applause from the audience. Switching between Spanish and English, he repeated the appeal several times: “No war. No war. No crazy war. Yes peace. Please, peace forever.” Nearly 14% of the...

VENEZUELAN tyrant Nicolas Maduro is not merely complicit in organised crime — he leads it. From generals to judges, the very top of Venezuela’s political and military elite are deeply embedded in a powerful, sprawling cocaine trafficking network, experts say. Cartel de los Soles, translated as Cartel of The Suns, isn’t a cartel in the traditional sense. It’s a web of Venezuelan military, intelligence and political elites accused of taxing, protecting and moving cocaine with state resources. With parts of Maduro’s government deeply enmeshed in the drug trade, the lines between state power and organised crime have been blurred. Dr...

FBI/Patel's war on big drug dealers continues.

Mexican cartels have reportedly placed bounties on United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Chicago, offering to pay up to $50,000 for the assassination of high-ranking officials. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced in a Tuesday statement that it had obtained “credible intelligence” that Mexican criminal networks are working with domestic extremist groups to coordinate a “tiered” bounty system. Mexican cartels are working with street gangs in Chicago and groups like Antifa “to monitor, harass, and assassinate federal agents,” according to the DHS. The federal agency alleged that cartels “have disseminated a...

President Trump accused Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro of being an “illegal drug leader” and announced that his administration is cutting off all subsidies to the Latin American country. Trump further trashed his Colombian counterpart as a “very unpopular leader” and warned Petro to close up alleged drug fields, or else “the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” “President Gustavo Petro, of Columbia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Columbia,” Trump raged on Truth Social. “It has become the biggest...

Just hours after President Donald Trump cancelled all subsidies with Colombia and warned leftist President Gustavo Petro that he would be taking action against drug-trafficking organizations within the country if the Colombian president failed to deal with them, War secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the U.S. Military had carried out a successful strike on a drug-trafficking boat linked to a leftist terrorist group. “On October 17th, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a Designated Terrorist Organization, that was operating in the...