Free Republic

Eighty years ago, on February 4, 1945, the Yalta Conference opened, at which the leaders of the victorious countries of World War II – the USSR, the US and UK – defined the contours of the post-war world. Despite ideological differences, they agreed to finally eradicate German Nazism and Japanese militarism. The agreements reached in Crimea were confirmed and developed during the Potsdam Peace Conference in July 1945. One of the results of the negotiations was the creation of the UN and approval of the UN Charter, which remains the main source of international law to this day. The goals...

Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s “kowtowing” to President Donald Trump had been disappointing. Host Jake Tapper said, “Is Secretary Rubio able to do the two main jobs there?” Warner said, “I don’t know how anybody could do these two big jobs, and they’re frankly very different. One is actually trying to diplomatically work with friends and adversaries around the world. And unfortunately, the number of adversaries has gone up dramatically as Trump’s approach has been so awful to our allies. The other are our national security adviser...

The Trump administration has accused Berlin of acting in a tyrannical manner after a top intelligence agency officially branded the populist AfD party as an “extremist” group over its stance against mass migration, paving the way for more government spying against the right-wing party.The supposedly independent Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) — which reports directly to the Interior Ministry of the elected civilian government — ruled on Friday that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is a “right-wing extremist” organisation. The classification will allow for increased state surveillance of the anti-mass migration party, including observing its meetings...

Former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz was photographed checking his Signal chat the day before President Donald Trump announced he was stepping down from the role. Reuters published photos of Waltz during a Wednesday cabinet meeting checking his Signal account. Chats with newly-appointed National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard could be seen on his phone. U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is seen checking his mobile phone while attending a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein pic.twitter.com/gQAvgypVFf — Idrees...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the closure of the Global Engagement Center as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the “censorship-industrial complex.”“Today, it is my pleasure to announce the State Department is taking a crucial step toward keeping the president’s promise to liberate American speech by abolishing forever the body formerly known as the Global Engagement Center (GEC),” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for the Federalist, titled, “Rubio: To Protect Free Speech, The Censorship Industrial Complex Must Be Dismantled.”Rubio wrote that, in 2016, the Obama administration changed the GEC’s focus on combatting international terrorism cover...

United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Russia and Ukraine need to submit "concrete proposals" for ending the conflict, or Washington will step back as a mediator, US Department of State spokesperson Tammy Bruce revealed on Tuesday. "We are now at a time when concrete proposals need to be delivered by the two parties on how to end this conflict. How we proceed from here is a decision that belongs now to the [US] president [Donald Trump]. If there is no progress, we will step back as mediators," Rubio said, according to a readout by Bruce during a...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied claims that three minor U.S. citizens, all under ten years old – and one with stage IV cancer, were deported without due process, calling the accusations "misleading." The Washington Post reported that three American citizens from two different families, aged two, four and seven, were deported along with their mothers from a Louisiana facility on Friday. The report alleged that the four-year-old child is suffering from stage-4 cancer and that the mother had no way of contacting their doctors, according to the family’s lawyer. Rubio pushed back against the claims that the children were...

Just shy of two weeks ago, President Trump spoke with assurance during a media event in the Oval Office with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni that negotiations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were in a good place, and that U.S./Ukraine minerals deal could be signed shortly. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent piped up later on Apr. 17 that the timeline was looking closer to the 26th. The images of the two leaders' last meeting in D.C., with Zelensky causing a commotion over the president's and Vice President JD Vance's responses to his strident statements during their sit-down, then departing from the...

In a sharp criticism of NATO’s European members that has become increasingly common in the Trump administration, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has issued a stark warning, urging the alliance’s member states to dramatically increase their defense budgets or risk undermining the credibility of the entire organization.“NATO is only as strong as the commitments of its members,” Rubio told The Free Press in an interview. “If the US is carrying the lion’s share, with European nations as mere junior partners, that’s not a true alliance—it’s a dependency.”Rubio’s comments come amid rising frustration in Washington over NATO’s continued reliance on...

State Dept. to close woke programs. The Department of State revealed on Tuesday the Trump administration’s plans to slash the agency’s bloat. Internal documents obtained by the Free Press revealed that the State Department will close 132 agency offices — a 17% reduction. The office terminations also reportedly involve eliminating 700 positions, including civil service and foreign service employees. The news outlet reported that the offices earmarked for closure include those dedicated to advancing human rights, democracy overseas, and thwarting extremism and war crimes. The State Departmen's new shake-up will consolidate 137 offices by transferring them to other parts of...

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “All In” that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is acting “unconstitutionally and illegally” on behalf of President Donald Trump. Discussing Turkish national Rumeysa Ozturk, Markey said, “There have been no charges that have been lodged against her, no evidence produced except for an op ed that she wrote in the Tufts University newspaper as part of a debate going on at Tufts University. Beyond that, they have charged her with nothing. And so to the extent to which this is more like Russia or more like Belarus, where someone might be swept...

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) says the Trump administration should drop nuclear negotiations with Iran and finish off the country's nuclear facilities with a military strike. "Waste that s—t," the Pennsylvania Democrat told the Washington Free Beacon in an interview on Wednesday. "You're never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran's nuclear facilities." Fetterman dismissed the foreign policy experts who warn that striking Iran would lead to the outbreak of...

This week, District of Columbia Judge Ibn al-Murderu ordered the restoration of the USAID funds designated for Hamas that he says "Secretary of State Marco Rubio has illegally canceled. The desire for government efficiency does not override the commitments made by the prior Biden Administration." ACLU spokesperson Bertram Petty praised the ruling, calling it "both correct and humane. Israel has cut off the humanitarian aid to Gaza that Hamas had been pilfering to supplement the contractual payments USAID had been making to the organization. This has made it impossible for Hamas to meet its payroll obligations to its fighters. These...

The Sting (1973) is a classic crime-comedy film directed by George Roy Hill. Set in 1930s Chicago, it follows con artist Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) and veteran grifter Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) as they team up to pull off an elaborate con against a ruthless mob boss, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw). After Lonnegan's men kill Hooker's partner, the duo orchestrates a fake betting parlor scheme to swindle him out of a fortune. With clever twists, period charm, and a ragtime soundtrack featuring Scott Joplin's music, the film builds to a satisfying, surprising climax. It won seven Oscars, including Best Picture....

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented to "to all parties the outlines of a durable and lasting peace" regarding the war in Ukraine, a U.S. spokesperson said on Thursday, after Rubio spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement that Rubio had communicated the same message the U.S. team had to the Ukrainian delegation and European allies in Paris, where she said it met an "encouraging reception."

The State Dept. Global Engagement Center was the epicenter of the Dept of State operation to control speech on social media platforms. Following revelations from within the Twitter Files, and facing increasing scrutiny, the GEC operation was shut down – but the remnants of the operation remained active within the State Dept.The terms “disinformation, misinformation and malinformation” were weaponized by the State Dept to define speech against their interests and block, deplatform and remove any voices, including in the U.S., they determined were against the interests of the U.S. government. The COVID-19 and vaccine narrative were both examples of speech...

President Trump has come out and said the "Maryland man" was a MS-13 terrorist gang-banger, an illegal alien from El Salvador, and was given an order to be deported, and that the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the courts cannot interfere with the Executive Branch foreign policy decisions. Marco Rubio has said the same thing. Stephen Miller has said the same thing. The President of El Salvador has basically said the same thing and that this man is not going to come back to the United States. The media keeps saying this terrorist gang-banger is a "Maryland man" (basically a...

Colleges around the country are reporting some of their international students' visas are being revoked unexpectedly, expressing alarm over what appears to be a new level of government scrutiny.Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but college leaders say the government has been quietly terminating students' legal residency status with little notice to students or schools. That marks a shift from past practice and leaves students vulnerable to detention and deportation.The list of colleges that have discovered students have had their legal status terminated includes Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.The Trump administration has targeted students...

In unprecedented exchanges on the social media platform X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, DOGE head (and X owner) Elon Musk heavily chastised warmongering Polish Minister Radosław Sikorski over the issue of Ukraine usage of Musk’s Starlink terminals.Rubio reached the point of asking the Minister to ‘say thank you’ because Starlink terminals kept Russian forces away from the Polish border.Before we start with ‘who said what,’ let’s remember who Radosław Sikorski is. Look at what he posted (and deleted) when he felt that the US under Biden had exploded the Nordstream pipeline:Warmonger. So, Sikorski said ‘thank you’ – to...

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo) sharply criticized President Trump's deportation of illegal aliens to Guatemala, saying "everybody in America wants violent criminals who are here illegally out of the country, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. That's what Judge Boasberg was trying to establish when he ordered the plane carrying 200 illegal alien criminals out of the country to turn back. Now we'll have to endure the embarrassing spectacle of having the President of the United States jailed for contempt of court." "We have been a beacon to the world for the brightest minds...