Free Republic

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to seek sanctions against Elon Musk after he missed previously scheduled testimony for the regulator’s investigation into his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, according to a court filing.It was the second time the billionaire tech mogul skipped out on testifying for the probe of the acquisition of the social media site now known as X.“The Court must make clear that Musk’s gamesmanship and delay tactics must cease,” SEC attorneys wrote in the filing.

W is considering axing as many as 30,000 jobs as it scrambles to save billions of euros amid a slowdown in the car market, German media has reported. The carmaker recently announced it could close some of its German factories for the first time in history as it struggles to reinvent itself for the electric era. Analysts at Jefferies said VW is considering closing two to three facilities, with as many as five German sites under threat, putting 15,000 jobs at risk. That job losses is feared to have doubled to 30,000, according to Manager Magazin, a leading German business...

The U.S. has confiscated Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro‘s $13 billion plane in the Dominican Republic due to violations of sanctions, as reported by CNN. Earlier this year, the United States reinstated sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas industry due to the Maduro administration’s refusal to facilitate “an inclusive and competitive election.” According to U.S. officials, the aircraft was flown to Florida on Monday, underscoring escalating tensions between the two nations.

In a move that has sparked significant debate, the Biden-Harris administration has recently renewed a sanctions waiver for Iran’s state-controlled broadcaster, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB). This decision, detailed in a non-public notification to Congress on August 9, 2024, permits the IRIB to engage in financial transactions essential for its operations, despite its role in disseminating anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda. The IRIB, which oversees a broad range of media outlets, including television, radio, and news services, has faced criticism for broadcasting content that promotes radical and violent ideologies. Since Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023,...

In March 2022 I predicted some consequences of the sanctions imposed on Russia: The first [map] shows the countries which banned Russian airplanes from their airspace. Russia in turn denied its airspace to operators from those countries. It will cost quite a bit for U.S. and EU airlines as their flight times and cost to and from Asia, which typically fly through Russian airspace, will now increase. Carriers from Asian countries will now easily out-compete U.S. and European airlines on these routes. bigger As British media reported yesterday: British Airways is temporarily scrapping flights to Beijing until at least next...

When last we left Hunter Biden and his legal team, they were busy being scorched by U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi in the California criminal tax case pending against Biden (and currently set to go to trial in September). As I noted in our reporting on the matter: But there's an even bigger problem with the motion than that: Biden's lawyers contended in the motion that Weiss only brought charges against Biden after he was appointed as Special Counsel. Which, as Scarsi very pointedly notes in his order, is false (emphasis mine): "The Court orders Mr. Biden’s counsel to...

Looks like Lucy pulled the football away again.

Texas senator investigating lapse in U.S. sanctions enabling Tehran’s proxies to fund war on Israel. The suicide drones used by Iran’s Houthi militants to conduct a deadly and unprecedented attack on Tel Aviv last week were constructed primarily with American components, highlighting severe gaps in U.S. sanctions on Tehran, according to Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). Yemen’s Houthi militants, who are funded and directed by Iran, significantly escalated their attacks on Israel last week when they launched a long-range drone strike on Israel’s second largest city, killing one person and wounding several others. The advanced military equipment was supplied by...

In May, Vance was among nearly 50 members of Congress added to a long list of lawmakers banned from entering Russia in retaliation for U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow. "In response to the anti-Russian sanctions regularly introduced by the Biden administration, which are intended, according to Washington's plan, to inflict maximum damage on Russia by personally affecting officials and ordinary citizens of our country, entry into the Russian Federation for 500 Americans is being closed as a countermeasure," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement at the time... It isn't clear why Vance was specifically targeted by Russia in May,...

Whistleblowers have informed top Republican senators that former President Barack Obama’s State Department blocked the FBI from executing arrest warrants against illegal aliens in the U.S. who were financially backing Iran’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that for nearly 20 years, Republican and Democrat administrations imposed sanctions on “Iranian individuals, companies, and organizations for involvement in nuclear proliferation, ballistic missile development, support for terrorist groups, and human rights abuses.” They noted that even one of Obama’s executive orders and a law passed during the Obama-era, the Iran Nuclear Agreement...

Less than a day before the Biden administration announced its intent to cut off U.S. arms sales to Israel, it issued a sanctions waiver to bypass congressional prohibitions on arms sales to a host of Arab nations that boycott the Jewish state, including Hamas ally Qatar and Iran-controlled Lebanon, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. On Tuesday—just a day before President Joe Biden threatened to withhold key weapons deliveries from Israel if the country moves forward with an incursion in the Gaza Strip's Rafah neighborhood—the State Department informed Congress that it intends to bypass laws that bar the United States...

Turkey on Thursday suspended all export and import operations with Israel due to what it described as its "aggression against Palestine in violation of international law and human rights," the Turkish Trade Ministry announced, according to the Anadolu news agency. "Since the first day, our country has rushed to the aid of the people of Gaza, delivered tens of thousands of tons of humanitarian aid to the region by ships and planes, especially food, health and medical aid materials, evacuated thousands of patients and stood by our Palestinian brothers and sisters in these difficult days," the ministry said. "However, the...

Moscow puts subsidiaries of German and Italian firms under the control of a Gazprom division, sparking annoyance from Italy and the EU. In a move that is likely to increase tension between Russia and Western Europe, the Kremlin has unexpectedly announced the "temporary external management" of Russian subsidiaries of Italian water heating company Ariston and German appliance maker BSH Hausgeraete. The subsidiaries, Ariston Thermo Rus, and BSH Household Appliances, now come under the management of Gazprom's Household Systems and are now completely under Russia's control. The Executive Order, signed by President Vladimir Putin, which was revealed on Friday and backdated...

The Soviet-Afghan War destroyed Afghanistan and eventually the Soviet Union, which dissolved in 1991 into 15 republics. Numerous satellite states in Europe were liberated at the same time. History may repeat as the Russia-Ukraine war weakens Moscow, financially and geopolitically. Russia’s 2022 invasion was about reoccupying a former colony, Ukraine, but there are other Russian republics that hope to become liberated... … in December 1991, Ukrainians voted for independence and Ukraine became the first of the Soviet republics to leave. The Baltic republics followed, as did Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and others. Now there is unrest across the Russian Federation…...

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday he called White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and threatened to “intervene” if President Biden slapped sanctions on an Israeli military battalion over its alleged conduct in the West Bank. “We heard a rumor of this before our [aid] bill was actually brought for a vote in the House [Saturday], I mean, hours before,” Johnson (R-La.) told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. “And I’ll tell you what I did, Hugh, and I don’t, I guess I’m breaking news here,” Johnson went on. “No one knows this. But I called the White House immediately...

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to announce sanctions against the IDF’s Netzah Yehuda Battalion in the next few days, according to three American sources. The sanctions are a result of human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank. This will be the first time that the United States government has imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit for its activities in the West Bank. The sources stated that the American sanctions will prohibit the transfer of US military aid to the Netzah Yehuda Battalion, will prevent its soldiers and officers from taking part in training with...

The European Council decided today to list four persons and two entities under the EU Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime. "The listed individuals and entities are responsible for serious human rights abuses against Palestinians, including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and for the violation of right to property and to private and family life of Palestinians in the West Bank," the EU stated. "The listed entities are Lehava, a radical right-wing Jewish supremacist group, and Hilltop Youth, a radical youth group consisting of members known for violent acts against Palestinians and their villages in the...

The European Union will "start the necessary work" to hit Iran with heavier sanctions after Saturday's aerial attack on Israel, the bloc's top diplomat has said. Speaking following an exceptional virtual meeting of EU foreign ministers on Tuesday, Josep Borrell said he would ask his services to study the possibility of expanding existing EU sanctions against Iranian drone technology. It would see the current sanctions regime - established in July 2023 to punish Iran for aiding Putin's war machine with unmanned drones - expanded to include missiles and to also cover Iran's proxies in the region. The bloc would also...

The administration of leftist President Joe Biden did not move to renew expiring sanctions in Iran’s drone and ballistic missile production at the United Nations in October, shortly after the Iran-backed massacre of an estimated 1,200 people in Israel and Saturday’s unprecedented direct missile assault by Iran on the country.

The Biden administration has rolled back sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela in a disastrous move being heavily criticized by Hispanic voters here in the United States—many of whom are in the U.S. because they or their families fled the socialist regimes. President Joe Biden's administration mobilized Tuesday to ease economic sanctions against oil-rich Venezuela just one day after lifting several Trump-era financial, travel, and migration regulations for fellow socialist state Cuba, whose repressive government notoriously cracked down on the pro-democracy protests in 2021. This week's events are being seen as a soft-on-socialism downslide in U.S. foreign policy that's dealing a...