Free Republic

Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq reported drone attacks in their territory Monday amid a lull in US air strikes against Iran, after nearly two weeks of fighting between both sides. The Israel Defense Forces said Monday morning that it shot down two drones over the Jordan border, near the Dead Sea, adding that the drones did not cross into Israeli territory. Their origin was under investigation, the army said. Saudi Arabia’s defense ministry, meanwhile, said it shot down drones aimed at petroleum targets, some in its eastern province and others in the capital Riyadh. It said the drones had...

In 2026, America is like a tinpot tyranny, where our politicians’ votes are being controlled by threats from communists and Islamists. One need not read much in the contemporary media to be treated to the idea that political violence is an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. Why, leftist organizations like Antifa are merely ideas, not violent anarchists, as Joe Biden told us. Black Lives Matter, socialists, communists, Islamists—they’re all just benign, legitimate political movements. It’s those MAGA maniacs, those soccer moms and Normal Americans who are too busy working every day to protest, loot and burn that are the real threat of...

A leftist Democrat sparked fierce backlash after he appeared to insist that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s views on Cuba carried less weight because he has not visited the island. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., made the striking claim during a heated exchange with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz on Wednesday at a committee hearing. Pocan, who has compared Cuba to a "silent Gaza," visited the communist island earlier in July, where he called for the U.S. to relent on its pressure campaign against the Cuban government, blaming U.S. sanctions for the island's economic devastation and fuel shortages....

Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega said the Central American country would no longer hold elections, further closing off any potential path for the opposition to challenge the government he leads with his wife, Rosario Murillo. Ortega, Nicaragua’s longest-serving leader, has remained in power since 2007 after previously governing during the 1980s. His current presidential term is scheduled to run through 2027. “There won’t be any more elections here for them to try to seize the government and seize power,” Ortega said. He delivered the remarks Sunday during a speech commemorating the 1979 Sandinista revolution, in which Ortega participated in the overthrow...

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

A new US State Department report identifies the Antifa legal nonprofit, the National Lawyers Guild, as a central support organization for Antifa militants and traces the radical lawyers’ group’s activities to a decades-long network of left-wing terrorist influence tied to the Cuban regime. The 100-page report, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” released on Monday, details how Havana spent nearly seven decades cultivating left-wing American radicals, extremist organizations and sympathetic institutions to advance revolutionary leftism inside the United States. It alleges that network stretches from the Weather Underground and Black Panthers to modern Antifa, anti-ICE organizations and socialist groups....

Karl Marx's economics, and it concedes valuable ideological ground to the left every time it's repeated. It's a line some conservatives still reach for, almost reflexively. It's time that changed, because even the claim that communism works in theory is plainly false. In a speech Thursday announcing a global crackdown on left-wing terrorism, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made exactly that argument: communism does not even work in theory. Socialism and communism, by their very nature, require the centralization of power, the destruction of the individual, and the abolition of private property, the very institution that has been instrumental to...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday announced the imposition of visa restrictions in a bid to target violent, far-left terrorist groups. The announcement coincided with an international summit in which Rubio met with representatives of dozens of nations and warned of growing far-left extremism. He further invoked international coalitions to stop the Islamic State as a model for them to emulate. "Today, in support of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 and ongoing U.S. Government efforts to disrupt networks fomenting political violence before they escalate to criminal action, the Department of State is announcing a new visa restriction policy that targets...

It’s no secret that JD Vance has lost the confidence of many Jewish Republicans, who have taken issue with the vice president’s reprimanding of Israeli officials, indulgence of anti-Israel conspiracy theories and silence on Tucker Carlson, the prominent pundit who has turned against Israel. But Vance is still thought by many to be US President Donald Trump’s likeliest successor at the top of the party’s ticket in 2028, leaving the GOP’s Jewish supporters with the question of whom to back when Trump’s second term ends. “The overwhelming majority of American Jewish MAGA voters, donors, and policymakers are enthusiastically supporting a...

Direct YouTube Link: Secretary Rubio delivers opening remarks at the Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political TerrorismA whole industry grew up in our countries around the study of extremism. We have think tanks and fellowships and journals and consultancies, with the unspoken understanding among them that the only kind of political violence that was a true threat to our system – I’m sorry – that only one kind of political violence was a true threat to the system. A bomb planted by a neo-Nazi group was a nefarious and murderous act of evil. It is. But a bomb planted by...

Vance 45 to Newsom 38; also, Vance 45 AOC 38. Zogby Poll; July 1-4, 2026; 1,003 likely voters.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, launched a campaign to dismantle the International criminal court (ICC) on Monday, claiming that the global tribunal was interfering with US military and law enforcement operations at the risk of American sovereignty. Rubio invoked images of US Border Patrol agents and elected leaders being “dragged before an international court” and tried by judges from around the world in a lengthy op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Monday. “If we stand idle, all of them will be at the mercy of foreign judges, thousands of miles away – facing the constant risk of...

President Trump was sitting in the Oval Office earlier this year with Secretary of State Marco Rubio when an idea came to him. Maybe he should dispatch Mr. Rubio permanently to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, where U.S. commandos had carried out the proudest foreign policy achievement of Mr. Trump’s second term: the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president. Mr. Rubio could be the next leader of Venezuela, Mr. Trump suggested. And while the president’s aides say he was joking — and that he frequently teases Mr. Rubio about an overseas assignment — the fact is that Mr. Rubio does...

An illegal alien child rapist from Laos who was set for deportation until Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and the State Board of Pardons granted him clemency has been removed from the United States, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News Digital. Rubio stepped in to terminate Tue Lue Vang's legal status in the U.S. and ensure that Walz's actions would not create roadblocks for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) removing him from the country. "Just weeks ago, a foreign child rapist was freed to once again endanger America's children after receiving a pardon from Minnesota Governor Tim...

Your next passport photo could be taken in your living room. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced plans to let Americans use their phone or laptop camera to capture passport photos from home instead of visiting CVS, Walgreens, or another photo service. The State Department says the images would be verified in real time using facial recognition technology, eliminating the need for in-store photo services. It's the latest move from the Trump administration aimed at making travel more convenient for Americans as they roll out changes tied to the travel experience.

"TRUMP: “I think [Israel] could do better … I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better…”

Almost all media commentators seem convinced that Donald Trump’s foreign policy in his second term is a disaster. He is bogged down in Iran, snookered in Ukraine, his tariff agenda has failed and he has alienated his NATO allies. But this consensus has been too hastily formed. Looking at the bigger global picture, Trump’s foreign policy has been a spectacular success. Take the western hemisphere. We have the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” the updated version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. In 1822, president James Monroe, having welcomed South America’s overthrow of Spanish and Portuguese imperial rule, stated that Latin American nations...

Back in January, President Donald Trump told the Iranian people, "Help is on the way." In February, he delivered on that help. Donald Trump did what presidents before him have not: told the brutal Iranian regime that, after 47 years, the American people have had enough. Iranians all over the world were ecstatic and took to the streets to celebrate. But since then, there has not been a lot of discussion of or messaging to the Iranian people, who continue to live under a violent, dictatorial regime. 🚨 IRANIANS CHEERED WITH US.VIDEO RELEASED FROM INSIDE IRANAs the internet slowly comes...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Tuesday that the Iran war is “over now,” while laying out what he described as the Trump administration’s non-negotiable conditions for any broader agreement currently under discussion with Tehran — including the full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the surrender of Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile, and severe long-term restrictions on the regime’s nuclear program before any sanctions relief would be considered. Speaking in his first public congressional testimony since the launch of Operation Epic Fury in February, Rubio argued the Trump administration’s military and economic pressure campaign has significantly weakened the Islamic...

In recent conversations with aides and allies, President Trump often interjects with a question about his vice president: Does JD Vance have what it takes to go all the way? He usually answers his own question: He’s not so sure. It is not that Mr. Trump is abandoning Mr. Vance. He involves him in major decisions, has given him high-profile opportunities to position himself for 2028 and trusts the 41-year-old vice president to wage partisan warfare on his behalf. In a cabinet meeting this week, Mr. Trump compared Mr. Vance to Eliot Ness, the mob-busting federal agent, for working to...