Free Republic

The US Senate has voted to end a partial 40-day government shutdown, approving funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - but with immigration enforcement excluded. The almost six-week funding lapse has had a knock-on effect on air travel in the US. Airport security workers' salaries are paid by the DHS, and hundreds have quit since the shutdown began. Democrats had refused to agree a funding deal without reforms to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, but the Senate reached unanimous agreement in the early hours of Friday morning after stripping ICE and parts of border protection...

American intelligence agencies have determined that Iran or potentially another group could retrieve Iran’s primary store of highly enriched uranium even though it was entombed under the country’s nuclear site at Isfahan by U.S. strikes last year, according to multiple officials familiar with the classified reports. Officials familiar with the intelligence said that Iran can now get to the uranium through a very narrow access point. It is unclear how quickly Iran could move the uranium, which is in gas form and stored in canisters. U.S. officials have said that American spy agencies have constant surveillance of the Isfahan site...

Global oil prices could breach the $100 (£74) a barrel mark within days, and reach $150 a barrel by the end of the month, without a solution ​to the severe disruption in crude flows through the strait ‌of Hormuz, Goldman Sachs has warned. Oil exports via the vital trade route linking the world’s biggest oil producers to buyers in the global market have fallen further than the US investment bank had initially expected after the US-Israeli attack on Iran a little over a week ago. Goldman Sachs had anticipated that flows of crude through the strait would fall to 15%...

Russia has a question for the European countries that have shunned its energy exports: Do you miss us now? The Kremlin is enjoying a sudden resurgence of its importance as a global supplier of oil and gas, as the conflict in Iran disrupts energy production and shipment across the Middle East and sends global energy prices soaring. “Now other markets are opening up, and perhaps it’s more advantageous for us to stop supplying the European market right now,” Mr. Putin said on Wednesday to a state television reporter, Pavel Zarubin, who chronicles the Russian leader. “We are seeing an increase...

The Justice Department, after calls by President Trump to investigate former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., scrutinized whether Mr. Biden and his aides broke the law in using the autopen to sign presidential documents, but was ultimately unable to move forward with making a case, according to three people briefed on the matter.

According to a Politico report citing an internal Pentagon notification, United States Central Command (CENTCOM) has requested additional military intelligence officers to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days and possibly through September. When the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran last Saturday, the operation was framed as a swift military campaign. Donald Trump later described it as a limited effort expected to last roughly four to five weeks. ...

For the first time since 1980, the U.S. men’s hockey team has defeated our chief communist adversary in front of the entire world at the Winter Olympics. If you watched the gold-medal game, and you’re an American, you were probably enjoying yourself the entire time. I certainly was. It was a close game. It went to overtime. Our goalie looked like this: He’s got the American flag and a largemouth bass on his headgear, which is pretty hard to beat. And on top of that, he stopped something like 40 shots during the game. It was incredible to watch, even...

With only nine months until the midterm elections, Democrats will scrutinize every move President Donald Trump takes as they fight to reclaim control of the House and the Senate. Victor Davis Hanson lays out the narrow road ahead to victory for Trump and the GOP during the 2026 midterm elections. History is not on the incumbent’s side. Messaging mistakes and unforced errors could shift key voters and hand Congress back to Democrats. Hanson explains what it will take to hold a Republican majority—and why the stakes for these midterm elections could not be higher—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson:...

Attorney General Pam Bondi has admitted that the Justice Department (DOJ) made mistakes in handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, including errors in redacting sensitive information, according to a letter sent to federal judges. The disclosures, detailed in a court filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, come amid mounting scrutiny of the department’s handling of victim privacy and compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Under the bill, which was signed into law on November 19, 2025, the Justice Department was required to release all unclassified records, communications, and investigative materials concerning Epstein within...

The White House deleted a meme video posted on President Trump’s Truth Social that depicted former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes — after a prominent GOP senator called the clip the “most racist thing I’ve seen” and demanded it be taken down. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the post and accused critics of fomenting “fake outrage” — but the video was taken down a little before noon Friday. A White House official added that a staffer had “erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the highest-ranking black...

Democrats seem to be getting their mojo back as the midterm season heats up. Democrats topped Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by a considerable six points, 52% to 46%, scoring the highest of any party on that metric in the history of the survey commissioned by Fox News.The minority party also made massive gains on key issues, crushing Republicans on affordability by 14 points, health care by 21 points, helping the middle class by 14 points, transgender issues by 22 points, and even taxes by one point.<“Democrats are taking back the House in November,” a confident Democratic Congressional Campaign...

The National Rifle Association (NRA) criticized comments by a senior federal prosecutor warning that approaching law enforcement with a gun could justify a fatal police response, saying such statements risk "demonizing law‑abiding citizens" as the nation reels from the killing of a man in Minneapolis by a U.S. border agent.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday he told U.S. President Donald Trump that he meant what he said in his speech at Davos, and told him Canada plans to diversify away from the United States with a dozen new trade deals. Carney rolled his eyes and rejected U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s contention to Fox News that he aggressively walked back his comments at the World Economic Forum during a phone call with Trump on Monday. “To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,” Carney said to reporters as...

U.S. Senator John Fetterman asked President Donald Trump to fire Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a social media post Tuesday, . “President Donald J. Trump: I’m making a direct appeal to immediately fire Secretary Kristi Noem,“ Fetterman wrote on Facebook. “Americans have died. She is betraying DHS’ core mission and trashing your legacy to secure our border. DO NOT make the same mistake President Biden made for not firing a grossly incompetent DHS Secretary.” Fetterman made a similar post on X, just a day after condemning the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good by U.S. Border...

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded a two-hour meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office late Monday after she was elbowed aside amid backlash over her handling of the latest deadly shooting in Minneapolis by ICE agents.Trump held the crisis talks with Noem after he revealed border czar Tom Homan was headed to take charge of Homeland Security efforts in Minneapolis after protester Alex Pretti was killed during a brutal takedown by Border Patrol agents, the New York Times reported.Noem has faced widespread criticism after she was quick to brand Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who had charged at officers...

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has sent letters to the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to testify before his committee amid growing public controversy over immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis and other communities. Paul informed the leaders of President Trump’s immigration agencies in a tersely worded letter that “Congress has an obligation to conduct oversight” of what he called the “exceptional amount of funding” the Republican Congress has allocated to secure the borders and enforce immigration laws. “Congress has an obligation to conduct...

President Donald Trump’s climbdown on Greenland capped one of the most erratic episodes involving a modern president on the world stage. Within hours Wednesday, Trump flipped from demanding “right, title, and ownership” of the semiautonomous Danish territory to celebrating an “infinite,” “forever” framework deal over its future. Outside the right-wing bubble, Trump is being mocked for another “TACO” (“Trump always chickens out”) moment after dropping the threat of tariffs on European nations until they agreed to give him Greenland. Just as with his “Liberation Day” tariffs, the president may have been spooked by the result of his own actions.

PARIS/OSLO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought "purely of Peace" as the row over the Arctic island on Monday threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe. Trump has intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, threatening punitive tariffs on countries which stand in his way and prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures. The dispute is threatening to upend the NATO alliance that has...

Several NATO countries are deploying small numbers of military personnel to Greenland to participate in joint exercises with Denmark as US President Donald Trump ramps up his threats to forcibly annex the Arctic island. Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland’s defense, has warned an attack on Greenland would all but end NATO, and announced on Wednesday that it was expanding its military presence “in close cooperation with NATO allies.” Germany, Sweden, France and Norway have all since confirmed they are sending military personnel to Greenland this week for a joint exercise with Danish troops. Canada and France have also said...

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - Two people were shot by federal agents in Southeast Portland on Thursday afternoon, according to police. At 2:18 p.m., Portland police officers responded to the 10200 block of Southeast Main Street on a report of a shooting. Officers confirmed that federal agents had been involved in a shooting, PPB said. The FBI office in Portland confirmed that the two agents involved in the shooting were working for Border Patrol on X/Twitter. But a short time later they deleted that statement. There’s no word on the condition of the people who were shot.