Free Republic

Ukraine detained two agents in Kyiv’s equivalent to the Secret Service over allegedly plotting with the Russians to assassinate President Volodymyr Zelensky. Two colonels in Ukraine’s State Protection Department, which is tasked with guarding the lives of the president and other high-ranking government officials, have been arrested for an alleged attempt to assassinate President Zelensky in conjunction with Russia’s FSB, the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB, it is claimed1. According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the Russian intelligence agency was tasked with finding potential traitors within Zelensky’s security detail who could take him hostage and ultimately kill...

The Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to review former President Donald Trump's application to appeal Judge Scott McAfee's ruling to keep embattled Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis on the case. Judge McAfee's order in March said that special prosecutor Nathan Wade had to be removed in order to keep Willis from disqualification in the Trump election interference case in Georgia. Willis and Wade were alleged to have had an "improper" affair. Trump and several co-defendants alleged Willis and Wade were romantically involved prior to his hiring and that she financially benefited from the relationship. Both Willis and Wade...

In 2010, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was experiencing memory loss and mental fogginess so severe that a friend grew concerned he might have a brain tumor. Mr. Kennedy said he consulted several of the country’s top neurologists, many of whom had either treated or spoken to his uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, before his death the previous year of brain cancer. Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a...

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig said Tuesday on “The Source” that during the New York business record case, adult film star Stormy Daniels’ cross-examination by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers was “disastrous.” Honig said, “It’s hard for me to believe that a juror heard that and thought, this is entirely made up. There may well be some embellishments…but I think it’s quite clear they had sex in 2006 in that hotel room. But the cross-exam, boy, her responses were disastrous. I mean, ‘Do you hate Donald Trump?’ Yes. Of course, she does. That’s a big deal. When the witness...

Russia said on Wednesday that sending NATO troops into Ukraine would potentially be extremely dangerous, and Moscow was closely watching a Ukrainian petition that called for such an intervention. The petition, posted on the Ukrainian president's website, says Ukraine should ask the United States, Britain and other countries to send troops to help it repel Russia's invasion. "We have repeatedly said that direct intervention on the ground in this conflict by the military of NATO countries potentially carries enormous danger, so we consider this an extremely challenging provocation, nothing less, and, of course, we are watching this very carefully."

ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Brian Kemp signed legislation Tuesday that makes additional changes to Georgia's election laws ahead of the 2024 presidential contest in the battleground state, including defining probable causes for removing voters from the rolls when their eligibility is challenged. Republican activists — fueled by debunked theories of a stolen election — have challenged more than 100,000 voters in the state in recent years. The activists say they are rooting out duplicate records and removing voters who have moved out of state.

“For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”This philosophy, announced by Brazilian President Getulio Vargas in the 1940s, is no longer just the favored approach of Latin American strongmen. It has become the openly practiced strategy of today’s Democratic machine.Laws that hamper Democrats are ignored. Laws that might be used to hurt Republicans are enforced to — and often well past — the limits of the law.One need look no farther than the absurd circus-clown show trial (one pundit prefers the term “goat rodeo”) in which the state of New York has gone so far in trying to turn...

Washington — The Georgia Court of Appeals on Wednesday agreed to review a decision by a Fulton County Superior Court judge who declined to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis and her office from the 2020 election case against former President Donald Trump because of a personal relationship Willis had with a prosecutor.

The Biden administration last month announced a revamping of Title IX rules ostensibly intended to protect transgender college students. The move was met with condemnation and lawsuits challenging the new rules.Now, White House officials are in the hot seat, being forced to explain and defend this decision. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently gave testimony before the Senate. Sen. Burgess Owens (R-UT) grilled Cardona, asking him whether he would allow his daughter to be forced to deal with biological men in women’s space. Naturally, the secretary had trouble answering.President Joe Biden’s administration released a finalized rule in April that extends Title...

Louise Meijer, an MP for Sweden’s centrist Moderate party, apologised to voters for her previous position on open borders. She regrets “making mistakes” by “pleading for openness and refugees [being] welcome”, she says. Meijer says she “changed her mind” over her views, in an opinion piece for Expressen this week. “Now, instead, I am advocating an even stricter migration policy than the one I opposed at the time,” she says. Political sentiments around migration have shifted swiftly in Sweden, with now even leaders of the Social Democrats saying they favour more strict migration policies. Sweden today is a “completely different...

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) announced that the city’s Department of Corrections was prepared to imprison former President Donald Trump at Rikers Island. Adams’ comments came a day after New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over Trump’s business records trial, threatened to jail the former president after finding him in contempt for violating a gag order for the tenth time.

They're studying Facebook posts. They're using frame-by-frame video screenshots of faces to match with gargantuan databases of named faces. They're seeking and taking tips from "friends" and relatives and ex-boyfriends. For the UCLA Jewish students who got into a scrap with pro-Hamas illegal campout protestors, no doubt after hearing a slew of antisemitic statements and being blocked from attending class, they're doing exactly what they did to identify and hunt down January 6 protestors. According to the Los Angeles Times, which reports this like it was a good thing: It is shaping up to be perhaps the biggest case in...

Turkish Foreign Minister: We must stop Israel. Either by peace or by force.

https://twitter.com/newstart_2024/status/1787852468828643457

“Heads up, this is no time to check out,” the MSNBC prime time host says Discussing the latest events from Donald Trump’s ongoing New York criminal trial, Rachel Maddow used it to look ahead to this year’s election, offering viewers some optimism about things, despite warnings that “this is no time to check out.” Maddow argued that Trump has signaled he is part of the worldwide anti-democracy, pro-authoritarian movement, but that “should put some steel in our spine,” because it’s giving people a clear picture of where things are headed in the United States. Maddow also said, based on events...

Rep. Henry Cuellar's chief of staff quit after the Texas Democrat and his wife were charged by the Justice Department with bribery and fraud. Jake Hochberg served as Cuellar's top aide since 2021 but left the office on Monday, multiple people familiar with the situation confirmed to Punchbowl News. The sources say that more staffers are also considering leaving in coming days.

Elon Musk’s Tesla, the leading electric vehicle manufacturer, has slashed even more workers from the payroll following weeks of massive layoffs, leaving employees on edge and seeking closure. Business Insider reports that Tesla has been conducting a series of layoffs over the past four weeks. The latest round of cuts, which took place on Sunday night, has left employees uncertain about their future with the company. According to Business Insider, four workers reported that their managers notified them of additional cuts to their teams on Monday morning, while several Tesla workers took to LinkedIn to share their experiences of receiving...

When Donald Trump arrived in a Manhattan courtroom last month to stand trial in the first-ever criminal prosecution of a former U.S. president, he barely acknowledged the man who’s been trying to take him down for years. Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo is Trump's polar opposite - a slim gray-haired man in a gray suit whose mild manner and steady tone belie the relentlessness with which he has pursued the flamboyant ex-president. Even as Colangelo laid out his case against the Republican presidential hopeful, reading aloud the shocking details of the 'P****gate' scandal and various alleged schemes to buy the silence of...

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres demanded that Israel end its military operation in Rafah, less than a day after the IDF launched an operation to destroy the final four Hamas battalions in Gaza. "I am disturbed & distressed by the renewed military activity in Rafah by the Israeli Defence Forces," Guterres wrote on X today (Tuesday). "I urge the Government of Israel to stop any escalation, and engage constructively in the ongoing diplomatic talks." .....

Donald Trump would likely be sent to New York City's largest jail, Rikers Island, if he is jailed for breaching another gag order, according to a legal expert.But Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor at West Coast Trial Lawyers, exclusively told Daily Express US that Trump being sent to jail would likely cause “mass protests and civil unrest.”