Free Republic

US President says he loves Spain and its people while escalating criticism of Pedro Sánchez’s government Donald Trump has delivered one of his strongest attacks yet on Spain, but this time there was a notable shift in his language. While again threatening trade consequences and describing Spain as a poor NATO ally, the US President also made a point of separating the country from its political leadership, insisting that he has affection for Spain and the Spanish people even as he condemned the government’s stance. That distinction is becoming increasingly noticeable. Rather than portraying Spain itself as the problem, Trump’s...

An American left-wing activist moved from New York City to Killarney, Ireland, five years ago, and now she’s dead. The woman’s name was Jamey Carney. She was a single mother of a thirteen-year-old and fit the typical stereotype of a white liberal woman from Manhattan. She hated ICE, loved Palestine, and moved to Europe, where she began a relationship with a migrant man. Jamey was found dead in her bed, hidden under a duvet by her teenage child. The migrant man she was involved with is nowhere to be found. Police officials are looking for him, and reports online suggest...

Spain's plan to grant legal residency and work rights to undocumented migrants will be the largest scheme of its kind in European history. There have been at least 1.3 million applications made, more than double the 500,000 the centre-Left coalition government expected. The deadline for applications is on Tuesday. Pedro Sánchez, Spain's prime minister, said the amnesty was an act of justice but also of necessity, to continue Spain's strong economic growth and safeguard public pensions by bringing younger workers into the country. It began on April 16 and by mid-June 360,000 people out of 900,000 applications had been granted...

A shooting at a youth welfare facility in northern Germany on Monday left six people dead, police said. The suspected shooter was arrested. Five people – four women and one man – died at the scene of the shooting in Stade, police said. A sixth, also an adult, died later at a hospital. Police said several people were wounded, some of them seriously, German news agency dpa reported, but they did not give a specific figure or information on the victims’ identity. Police said the shooting took place in the facility on Dankersstrasse, a street south of the town center....

Wealthy nations with the highest rate of immigration over the past 35 years reaped a large economic benefit and many could still absorb more ​workers, according to research to be presented at a top European Central Bank conference next week. Political tensions ‌over immigration have been on the rise in recent years as far-right, anti-immigrant parties have helped drive the issue to near the top of the political agenda while making headway in countries including the U.S., Germany and Britain. The study, which looked at data in dozens of rich ​countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, said...

French President Emmanuel Macron has shot down the idea of backing a collective European project to establish illegal migrant return hubs outside the bloc, after the EU Parliament paved the way earlier this week. Claiming that it is contrary to the supposed values of “Europe”, President Macron said that France will not agree to fund any EU migrant return hubs, nor will Paris seek to partner on an individual basis with a third-party country, as it will be allowed to under the new returns regulations passed on Wednesday in Strasbourg. Rather than allowing illegals to remain in EU nations while...

..... A German investigative journalist has urged her fellow countrymen to “listen to police officers” and their experiences and “act accordingly”. German broadsheet newspaper Die Welt reports the words of Liv von Boetticher who said she had spoken to police officers across Germany, “from all departments, of all ages, and from all federal states”. The journalist said she was prompted to come forwards with what she’d learnt after noticing speaking to her officers told a very different and unvarnished account of Germany after official interviews had finished and the cameras stopped rolling. Having given the official line their jobs may...

More than 700 people have crossed the Channel on 11 small boats - the highest number in a single day so far this year. The Home Office said 710 migrants made the crossing on Monday. It follows two weeks of windy weather when there were no crossings at all. A total of 9,852 people have made the journey so far this year - a fall of 40% compared with the same period in 2025. The Home Office has said it was "bearing down" on small boat crossings. In April, the UK and France confirmed a new £662m deal to stop...

Given its oft-proclaimed calling as a peace project, the European Union can sound oddly bellicose when it sets about crafting policy. There are trade and fiscal “bazookas” to blast away crises, “silver bullet” solutions for every problem, and “nuclear options” to be used as a last resort. Yet in the absence of an EU army or even a police force, the pen-wielding Eurocracy rarely gets its hands on anything that looks like an actual weapon. The only exception—tellingly—is the club’s border-patrol agency. For over a decade after it was founded in 2005, Frontex agents wielded little more than whistles and...

@RobertJenrick Reporting restrictions lifted. 15 men jailed for raping a girl as young as 14 in Bradford. Jameel Ahmed committed 4 rapes, yet could leave prison in a little over 5 years. Sentences for rape gang perpetrators are routinely pathetically short. Britain is broken.

A survey has found that over seven in ten people in France believe that crime is “out of control”, with fears that the country is sliding towards a “Mexinization” in which public authority is destroyed. According to a poll this week from CSA for Le Journal du Dimanche, 72 percent of French people believe that crime is out of control. This belief is firmest among supporters of the center-right Républicains at 92 percent, followed by 83 percent of National Rally, and 62 percent of supporters of President Emmanuel Macron’s neo-liberal bloc. The sentiment was also held by a majority of...

With less than 100 days until Iceland votes on whether to restart EU membership talks, the island remains deeply divided, with both camps only now beginning to mobilise their campaigns ahead of the summer ballot. The national referendum on joining the EU takes place on 29 August and the two intractable opposing political sides have yet to fully make their case. On the “yes” side: a government coalition that sees a geopolitical imperative for EU membership and on the other side, the “no” campaign sees a loss of sovereignty, and worse, loss of control over Iceland’s agriculture and fishing industries....

Muslim passengers being deported from Ireland to Pakistan were insensitively served pork sausages as part of a breakfast during their chartered flight. A Government-appointed human rights monitor branded the meal choice "inappropriate" aboard the journey from Dublin to Islamabad transporting 24 men to the Muslim-majority nation. The monitor's assessment noted "the quality of food was a low standard" and criticised the decision to include pork products for individuals travelling to an Islamic country – naturally defying the dietary practices of the religion. Before the flight – which cost Irish taxpayers €473,000 – the men were detained overnight across three separate...

Sweden, together with the European Commission, will hold talks with the Taliban. The goal is to enable deportations to Afghanistan - but the announcement is being criticized. "A deal with extremists," says Annika Hirvonen (MP). Migration Minister Johan Forssell (M) tells TT that the Swedish government has been "very proactive" in the EU on securing deportations to Afghanistan. The issue of being able to carry out more criminal deportations, i.e. of people who have been convicted of crimes in Sweden or who pose a threat to Sweden's security, is one of my most important priorities, he says. According to Forssell,...

The UK government has agreed to pay France another £660m to curb the number of asylum seekers travelling across the Channel, including plans to fund a riot squad to “contain and disperse” people trying to board small boats. Under a three-year deal to be signed on Thursday by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, 1,100 enforcement, intelligence and military officers – an increase of 40% – will be employed to track down smuggling gangs and people seeking refuge. A 50-strong riot squad will be trained in “crowd-control tactics” and will “stop illegal migrants in their tracks”, according to the Home Office....

Over one in every four people in Germany, or nearly 22 million, now have an “immigration history”, according to the country’s national statistician. A report from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has found that the proportion of people living in Germany with an immigration history rose by 0.5 per cent last year to a record 26.3 per cent. The category is defined as someone who has either immigrated to Germany since 1950 or who has two parents that came to the country as migrants. This is significantly stricter than the previously used category of “migration background”, which is defined in...

Nearly half of criminal suspects in violent crimes are foreign nationals in Germany, police statistics have found. According to the annual statistical release from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), violent crime in Germany fell slightly in 2025, by 2.3 percent compared with the previous year. However, the agency noted that “(n)on-German suspects continue to be significantly overrepresented in violent crime” at 42.9 percent. Data collected from various federal states across the country from the Welt am Sonntag newspaper found similar results, with around one in every two suspects of violent crimes in Bavaria, Berlin, and Baden-Württemberg being foreign nationals,...

The United States government has warned that mass migration represents an “existential threat” to Western civilization and has warned Europe against the continuing open borders policies and the creation of two-tier justice systems that favor foreigners over native populations. In a shot across the bow against the open borders ideology that has taken hold in the halls of power in many Western European capitals, the U.S. State Department urged its allies “to take bold action and defend citizens against the threats posed by mass migration.” The diplomatic arm of the Trump administration also warned that its embassies will be actively...

A French court on Friday sentenced an Algerian woman to life imprisonment without parole for raping, torturing and murdering a girl in Paris, making her the first woman to receive this maximum sentence. Dahbia Benkired was handed an “irreducible life sentence” for killing 12-year-old Lola Daviet in the French capital in 2022, in a case that horrified the country and sparked anti-immigration fervour because the woman did not have the right to be in France. The sentence is the harshest under the French penal code. “We believed in justice and we got it,” said Lola’s mother, Delphine Daviet, following the...

This is the moment a police van was set on fire as riots broke out near a hotel used to house asylum seekers in Dublin. Officers were also attacked with missiles and fireworks as protesters gathered at the Citywest Hotel last night. Six people were arrested and the Irish police service, the gardai or An Garda Siochana, said one of its officers suffered a foot injury. Ireland's Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan said that those involved in the violence will be brought to justice. He said: 'The scenes of public disorder we have witnessed at Citywest tonight must be condemned. 'Unfortunately,...