Free Republic

The back-and-forth voyages have been instrumental because only a small number of shipowners were willing to risk sending their tankers through HormuzIran’s attacks on commercial ships are turning off a lifeline for the global energy market—a stream of tankers ferrying crude through the hazardous Strait of Hormuz.The barrage of missiles and drones hit ships that specialize in short voyages in and out of the Persian Gulf known as “shuttle runs.” Unlike traditional tanker voyages, which carry crude through the strait to refineries in China, South Korea and elsewhere, these ships make repeated short trips moving oil from Gulf terminals to...

A stable peace appears elusive, some former officials say President Trump’s new plan to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz by resuming strikes and reimposing the blockade is his third major shift in military strategy as he searches for a way to turn the tables on Iran in the nearly five-month-old war. Trump has tried air and missile attacks, a naval quarantine and now the calibrated use of firepower to try to coerce Tehran to agree to his terms, in addition to diplomatic inducements. But Iran has exploited its proximity to a major oil export route to defy Washington...

Mark Carney swept to power on a backlash to President Trump’s talk of making Canada the 51st state, which many Americans took for mere shtick. But for the new prime minister, reading intelligence reports detailing the gravity of the crisis, it was a breaking point. In private phone conversations with Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, Trump had threatened to scrap the 1908 agreement delineating their shared border. “I tear that up and your whole country unravels,” Trump told Trudeau in one call, according to two people familiar with the matter. Over dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trudeau’s envoys tried to dissuade Trump from...

‘My whole life, all I do is deals,” President Trump said Wednesday, but Iran’s regime “is from a different school,” he had to admit. “They’re liars, they’re cheats, they’re sick people.” Mr. Trump cited the tens of thousands of Iranians slaughtered by the regime in January and explained how its word has proved worthless. “I don’t want to deal with them anymore,” he said.The President is so mercurial that it’s impossible to know if he’s serious that the cease-fire is “over,” as he said. He could declare it back on tomorrow. But he’s right that Iran’s regime has been wasting...

China’s leader draws from autocrats’ playbook to expand power, oust potential rivals and lay groundwork to rule indefinitely Chinese leader Xi Jinping is employing the sort of autocratic tactics once wielded by Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to stamp out opposition and stack the leadership with acolytes as he prepares to extend his reign. In a throwback to the most powerful Communist leaders of the 20th century, Xi has purged dozens of senior officials—even his own protégés—overseen the growth of a cult of personality and demanded absolute loyalty. His goal: dictate China’s destiny for years to come in order to...

Talking to LBC's Sunday with Lewis Goodall, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party called for more restrictions on social media usage around the date of elections, calling for rules to be aligned with current broadcasting restrictions. "We absolutely need to strengthen regulation in the social media place," she told LBC, adding that she already has some proposals to put forward, "especially when it’s election time,” as part of a current bill being looked at in Parliament. "We’ve got an elections bill going through the House of Commons at the moment; to strengthen that bill, so that social media comes...

Undersecretary Emil Michael and CEO Dario Amodei went back and forth for months over safety guardrailsz Anthropic overcame its latest spat with the Trump administration Tuesday, but new court documents released in one of its lawsuits against the Pentagon shed light on the underlying tensions between the government and one of America’s hottest AI companies.The documents show in detail the uneasy back-and-forth between Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei and Emil Michael, the undersecretary of defense for research and engineering. The pair are at the center of a landmark fight over appropriate guardrails for the Pentagon’s use of artificial intelligence.The...

CQ Brown, who was fired as Trump’s top general, questioned the president’s handling of the armed forces CQ Brown, the retired general forced out of his post as the nation’s top military officer last year, has provided his most direct critique of the Trump administration’s handling of the U.S. military, questioning the deployment of troops in U.S. cities and warning against tainting the armed forces’ service with politics.In an essay published Friday with two co-authors, Brown cautioned that sending the military into American cities for “politically contentious missions” like fighting crime risked compromising its traditionally apolitical role and diverting it...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was planning to head to Brussels last month to deliver what would be a bombshell announcement in a meeting with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military chiefs. The U.S., he planned to say, was preparing additional cuts to its forces in Europe that would go beyond the canceled deployment of an armored brigade to Poland and the earlier withdrawal of an infantry brigade from Romania, people familiar with the matter said. But Hegseth’s proposal was nixed after it was shared with Marco Rubio—President Trump’s national-security adviser—and other senior officials, the people said. Instead, Hegseth said...

The sleek, handset-like prototype was designed to integrate AI technology from SpaceX’s xAIElon Musk’s SpaceX SPCX -7.80% has developed a prototype for a handset-like device designed to reshape how humans interact with artificial intelligence that SpaceX has shown investors recently. The rocket and AI company showed the prototype, which features a sleek design that is slimmer than an iPhone, to some investors and other stakeholders ahead of the company’s mega initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The prototype was designed to run on a proprietary operating system and integrate AI technology from SpaceX’s xAI, some of...

Tehran is using force to gain control over traffic through the Strait. The best selling point for President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran was that at least it opened the Strait of Hormuz. Well, now the regime is trying to nullify those terms by using force against commercial vessels, Gulf states and U.S. bases. All of this violates the deal... On Thursday Iran struck a container ship transiting the Strait with a drone. The U.S. responded on Friday with strikes on Iranian missile and drone storage sites and coastal radars. It announced the strike after markets closed as if...

Iran’s decision to launch ballistic missiles at Israel after months of ceasefire was not only a military message but also an attempt to demonstrate the new balance of power in Tehran. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the driving force behind the decision was Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Vahidi, who has emerged in recent months as a key figure within the Iranian regime. Vahidi prevailed over more moderate voices in Tehran who opposed the strike out of concern that it could damage contacts with the United States and jeopardize the possibility of an agreement. He persuaded Iran’s...

North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story. Its economy is flourishing in ways not seen in years, aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and the ability to flout international sanctions to import more energy, components and materials. Chinese leader Xi Jinping traveled to North Korea this week for his first foreign trip of the year. The Kim regime slammed its borders shut during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has since reopened to only a select few outsiders, including Russian and Western travelers and diplomats. Those visitors describe a North Korea unrecognizable...

WASHINGTON—President Trump and Democrats rarely find themselves in alignment. Yet both sides wanted the same outcome in Tuesday’s Texas Senate primary runoff election. Ken Paxton’s trouncing of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican runoff represents Trump’s latest triumph in maintaining his grip on his MAGA base after he similarly ousted rivals in Indiana, Louisiana and Kentucky. But to the delight of Democrats, the president’s decision to make an 11th-hour endorsement of Paxton could put the Senate seat in play for James Talarico after decades of Democratic futility in the Lone Star State.

Russia is stuck on the Ukrainian battlefield and lashing out with massive strikes on Kyiv. The growing fear in European capitals is that President Vladimir Putin will try next to reshuffle the cards by expanding the conflict to Europe. In recent weeks, Russia has made increasingly bellicose statements against the Baltic states. It has threatened to bomb “decision-making centers” in Latvia after accusing the country of hosting Ukrainian drone operators, an allegation denied by the Latvian authorities. Air-raid alarms were sounded in Lithuania last week, forcing the government into a bunker, after suspected Russian drones approached its airspace from Belarus....

The establishment consensus is hardening. President Trump’s war with Iran is the culminating disaster of the most damaging and misguided American foreign policy in history. Iranian leaders are humiliating the U.S., German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned. “Superpower suicide” is how Wendy Sherman, a top Iran negotiator under President Obama and Joe Biden’s deputy secretary of state, described Mr. Trump’s Iran policy to ABC News. As Ms. Sherman sees it, the Iran war has alienated allies, assisted Russia financially, and weakened America’s position vis-à-vis China. For Fareed Zakaria, the question is no longer whether the administration’s policies will backfire but whether...

The U.S. national debt exceeded the total amount of output from the entire economy as of March 31, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of goods and services in the economy, was $31.215 trillion. The ratio of GDP to Debt was 100.2%, up from 99.5% in September 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal. The government now spends $1.33 for every dollar it collets in revenue, with budget deficits running consistently at around 6% of GDP. That figure will continue to rise...

SNIP Summary: Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran following a Monday Situation Room meeting, rejecting both a resumption of bombing and acceptance of Iran's current proposal The blockade is aimed at forcing Tehran to dismantle its entire nuclear programme, with Trump demanding at minimum a 20-year suspension of enrichment Iran's three-step proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz while deferring nuclear talks was rejected as evidence of bad faith The Strait of Hormuz is seeing its lowest transit levels since the conflict began, driving up energy costs and weighing on Trump's poll numbers ahead...

The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II. As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure will likely climb for the foreseeable future because the federal government is running historically large annual deficits of nearly 6% of GDP, which add to...

The fight against Russia in Ukraine is now firmly Europe’s war. The European Union this week signed off on the equivalent of $105 billion in loans to keep Kyiv afloat through the end of next year—but officials warned that it may not be enough. With Russia determined to continue its four-year invasion until it dominates its neighbor, and President Trump pulling back from Europe and focused on the Middle East, Ukraine finds itself reliant on the traditionally gun-shy EU in its war for survival. The confirmation of the loan ahead of a summit in Cyprus on Thursday, long blocked by...