Free Republic

The election’s over and Florida was probably never up for grabs, so it’s time for leftists to do what they love for the one they love. And leftists of a certain age love no country more than Communist Cuba. And so on the way out the door, they’re lifting Cuba’s terror sponsor status. And refusing to enforce a law that allows Americans to sue for property that was stolen from them. (I reported earlier on Kamala’s family ties to that sort of business.) While they would have done it anyway, part of this is likely a calculated jab aimed at...

President Joe Biden politicized former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Thursday to warn the nation against “hate” and “abuse of power.” Biden’s comments, delivered while President-elect Donald Trump sat in the audience, were unintentionally ironic. Biden’s allies tried to imprison Trump, bankrupt him, remove him from the ballot, and make him politically irrelevant by introducing a partisan committee to investigate January 6. “Jimmy Carter’s friendship taught me … strength of character is more than the title or power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect. That everyone — and I mean everyone...

The Biden administration has quietly shipped 11 prisoners linked to al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden to Oman from Guantanamo Bay. The Yemeni men had been held at the infamous facility at the southeastern end of Cuba for more than two decades without charge. Two of the men were once bodyguards for Osama Bin Laden, and all of the men were captured in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. 'The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately...

The Biden-Harris White House has wished Americans a “Happy Kwanzaa” — a holiday invented in 1966 by a racist extremist who served prison time for torturing a woman. Vice President Kamala Harris — who was born just two years before the holiday’s inception — claimed in 2020 that she and her family used to gather around, “across multiple generations,” and discuss Kwanzaa’s “seven principles” — which are identical to the principles of left-wing terrorist organization Symbionese Liberation Army. Harris wrote on X in 2020 that her family’s “Kwanzaa celebrations are one of my favorite childhood memories,” garnering thousands of critical...

The late Martin Anderson, one of Ronald Reagan’s long-time senior policy advisers going all the way back to the 1976 campaign, once told me a story to illustrate Reagan’s unappreciated cleverness. When Anderson published his favorable chronicle of the Reagan years called Revolution: The Reagan Legacy in early 1988 (while Reagan was still in office), he called the president to ask the favor of a dust jacket blurb. Reagan kindly explained that much as he would like to, the White House counsel and other advisers told him sitting presidents can’t (or shouldn’t) make commercial endorsements of any kind. .... This...

Retiring President Biden hit the shops on Black Friday and surprised onlookers by picking up a copy of a book describing the establishment of Israel as “colonialism” that’s been met with Palestinian “resistance” — an acquisition its author bemoaned was “4 years too late.” Biden, 82, left Nantucket Bookworks holding in full view of the press a copy of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonial Conquest and Resistance, 1917-2017” by Columbia University professor emeritus Rashid Khalidi. The book argues that “the modern history of Palestine can best be understood in these terms: as a colonial...

Hint: “Islamophobia.” The FBI recently released its hate crime statistics for 2024, and they don’t paint a comforting picture for those who uncritically accept the left’s claims about the state of the nation and what is going on in it. The FBI’s data belies the increasingly common linkage of “antisemitism” with “Islamophobia,” as if, in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis, both Jews and Muslims were facing vigilante attacks on an equal basis. In reality, the increasingly common mention of “Islamophobia” in any discussion of “antisemitism” is just an attempt to soften the rage...

Terrorists murdered over 1,000 people and got over $1 billion. Oct 7 marked the grim anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since Holocaust. The terrorist perpetrators of it however could celebrate the over $1 billion in foreign aid from the U.S.46 Americans had been murdered on Oct 7 and another 12 taken hostage, but ahead of the Oct 7 anniversary, USAID announced that it was sending another $336 million in taxpayer-funded ‘aid’ to the terrorist occupied territories in Israel behind the killings of Americans.USAID boasted that this “brings the total U.S. humanitarian assistance announced for the Palestinian people to...

U.S. President Joe Biden said on Sunday he did not intend to intervene to prevent a port strike on the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico if dock workers failed to secure a new contract by an Oct. 1 deadline. “It’s collective bargaining. I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” he told reporters. Presidents can intervene in labor disputes that threaten national security or safety by imposing an 80-day cooling-off period under the federal Taft-Hartley Act.

President Biden on Monday said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal, adding pressure on the Israeli leader to reach a cease-fire agreement after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza over the weekend. Biden was asked by reporters outside the White House on Monday if Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a hostage release agreement, to which he said, “No.”

Shortly before midnight on Monday evening, Joe Biden finally took the stage at the DNC. Billed as his "final speech" and a tribute to his career, the failed president, who dropped out of the race in July, was nothing new. Instead, his time behind the podium was incredibly typical, with lots of angry shouting and repeating the same old lies. If you watched his last State of the Union, you've heard it all. [snip] According to Joseph Robinette Biden, the terrorist-supporting lunatics outside the DNC who are promising to "bring the war home" while burning American flags "have a point."...

Iran is expected to skip a retaliatory strike on Israel if a Gaza ceasefire deal is reached, US President Joe Biden told reporters in New Orleans on Tuesday, stressing “That’s my expectation.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant left nothing to chance, stating in northern Israel that the IDF is prepared for defensive and offensive actions against Hezbollah and Iran, even as the United States pinned its hope for averting a regional war on Thursday’s hostage talks in Doha. A hostage and Gaza ceasefire agreement would more “broadly, create conditions for diplomacy to get the region out of this cycle of violence,”...

President Joe Biden said on “CBS Sunday Morning” that if former President Donald Trump wins in November he will be a “genuine danger to American security.” Reporter Robert Costa asked, “How do you want history to remember President Biden?” Biden said, “That he proved democracy can work. He got us out of a pandemic—it produced the single greatest economic recovery in American history. We are the most powerful economy in the world. We have more to do, and it demonstrated that we can pull the nation together.”

The Biden administration unleashed a torrent of criticism against Israel’s polarizing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, on Friday after he referred to cease-fire negotiations with Hamas as a “dangerous trap.” White House national security communications adviser John Kirby said a lengthy statement posted by Smotrich to the social platform X made “ridiculous charges” regarding his opposition to a cease-fire deal to end the fighting in Gaza. “Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners. Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought...

When President Joe Biden met with a group of Muslim community leaders this week, he recounted a recent conversation he had with first lady Jill Biden relating to the conflict in Gaza. One of the attendees told the president that the decision to participate in the gathering had been a cause of concern for his wife, given the fierce backlash Joe Biden has drawn for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, according to two attendees present at the meeting. Those attendees tell CNN that Biden brought up his own wife and closest confidant. “It’s got to stop,” he recounted the...

Facing a growing global terrorist threat, Biden administration officials are debating expanding cooperation with the Taliban regime in Kabul to help track ISIS-K, the branch of the terrorist group active in Afghanistan, according to two sources familiar with the matter and a former U.S. official. The administration and other Western governments are scrambling to keep up with the mounting danger ISIS-K poses. Before this year, U.S. and other Western officials believed ISIS-K had the intent but not the ability to orchestrate attacks abroad. But that view changed with the horrific attack at Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue on March...

A U.S. district court rejected the Biden administration’s bid to dismiss a landmark lawsuit alleging it engaged in an "illegal and dangerous $1.5 billion terrorism subsidy program for the Palestinians."

President Joe Biden’s campaign aired an ad on Monday that capitalized on the weaponization of government against his political opponent, former President Donald Trump. The Biden campaign has mostly shied away from campaigning on Trump’s criminal conviction — until now. In a $50 million ad buy through the end of June, Biden will cast Trump as a criminal and himself as a protector of family values. The Associated Press described the ad: Besides Trump’s criminal conviction, the ad, titled “Character Matters,” notes the former president also was found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud in separate proceedings. Trump also...

WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials have discussed potentially negotiating a unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of five Americans being held hostage in Gaza if current cease-fire talks involving Israel fail, according to two current senior U.S. officials and two former senior U.S. officials. Such negotiations would not include Israel and would be conducted through Qatari interlocutors, as current talks have been, said the officials, all of whom have been briefed on the discussions. The officials did not know what the United States might give Hamas in exchange for the release of American hostages. But, the officials said,...

The Biden administration has called for Israel and Hamas to engage in negotiations and ceasefire talks after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) rescued four hostages. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan released a statement addressing the news that the IDF, Israel Security Agency (ISA), and the Israeli police had conducted a joint operation rescuing four hostages, who had been taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023, from the Supernova Music Festival. Sullivan noted in his statement that the United States government was “supporting all efforts to secure the release” of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, and went on...