Free Republic

The leader of Mexico has dramatically ramped up apprehensions of U.S.-bound migrants, providing relief to President Joe Biden as he fights for re-election. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has overseen an unprecedented level of migrant apprehensions in the 2024 calendar year which has, in turn, led to a decrease in migrant encounters for U.S. federal immigration authorities. The drop in migrant flow has helped ease a major headache for Biden as he’s faced poor polling on the migration issue, but questions remain whether the will to crack down on illegal immigration by Mexican leaders will remain after the U.S. election.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says Israel is working on finding a replacement for Hamas’s rule in the Gaza Strip, vowing that the war will not end until the terror group is dismantled of both its military and governmental capabilities. “In any process of ending the war, we will not accept the rule of Hamas. We are advancing an alternative government to Hamas, within the framework of which we will isolate areas, remove the Hamas members and bring in other forces that will enable a different government,” Gallant says following an assessment at the Southern Command in Beersheba. "On one hand,...

As Ukraine prepares to mobilize tens of thousands of men to address a critical shortage of soldiers amid intensified Russian attacks, Ukrainian commanders in the field say they are bracing for most of the new troops to arrive with poor training. Ukrainian commanders have long griped about lackluster preparation for recruits at training centers. But with Russia on the offensive, the persistent complaints are a reminder that a newly adopted mobilization law intended to widen the pool of draft-eligible men is just one step in solving the military’s personnel problems. An influx of conscripts under the new law is still...

Looking out of his window at Cape Town's False Bay, Nick Searra acknowledges that things do work better in South Africa's second biggest city, a stronghold of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). But that doesn't mean he is ready to see the party or its 48-year-old leader John Steenhuisen running the rest of the country. "Imagine an old white man as the president of South Africa," said Searra, a 44-year-old white Johannesburg native who moved to Cape Town in 2022. In a seismic shift, voters this week dismantled the majority which the African National Congress (ANC) has held since the...

Former President Donald Trump announced Saturday night that he has joined TikTok, even as many in his party criticize the popular app and call for its China-based parent company to divest. Trump’s first post on the platform was a 13-second video, which appeared to be filmed at the UFC event in New Jersey he attended Saturday. In the first shot, Trump is joined by UFC President Dana White, who announces, “The president is now on TikTok.” “It’s my honor,” Trump responds as the TikTok cuts to a montage of the former president greeting fans at the arena.

Europe has only a fraction of the air defence capabilities needed to protect its eastern flank, according to Nato’s own internal calculations, laying bare the scale of the continent’s vulnerabilities. Russia’s war against Ukraine has underscored the importance of air defence, as Kyiv begs the west for additional systems and rockets to protect its cities, troops and energy grid against daily bombing raids. But according to people familiar with confidential defence plans drawn up last year, Nato states are able to provide less than 5 per cent of air defence capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and...

When the Mexican national soccer team, otherwise known as El Tri, visits Soldier Field, it’s cause for celebration on the lakefront. Fans tailgate and play loud music in the parking lots, and the matches are full of color and passion. Unfortunately, something unsavory frequently accompanies the festivities. During the 2019 Gold Cup final against the United States and a 2022 friendly with Ecuador, El Tri fans chanted a homophobic slur at the opposing goalkeeper. Two years ago, the Ecuador match was paused in the 81st minute as part of FIFA’s three-step system aimed at eliminating discriminatory incidents by fans, specifically...

Estonia considers itself a front-line state, a Nato member where its border guards stare across the Narva River at the Russian fortress of Ivangorod. This tiny Baltic state, once a part of the Soviet Union, is convinced that once the fighting stops in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin will turn his attention to the Baltics, looking to bring countries like Estonia back under Moscow’s control. To help stave off that possibility, Estonia’s government has poured money and weapons into Ukraine’s war effort, donating more than 1% of its GDP to Kyiv. "If every Nato country did this," says Estonia’s steely Prime...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, remained steadfast that the "probability weighs much more heavily" that the COVID-19 pandemic was a "natural occurrence" and not a lab leak. Fauci also admitted that social distancing guidance "sort of just appeared" and that he "might have" seen studies to support masking children, but that he's not sure. The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released transcripts of Fauci's testimony that he gave to the panel behind closed doors in January. Committee Chair Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, released the trove of transcripts — and a 17-page...

Russia is expected to significantly increase the size of its military presence in Ukraine, with an additional 200-300 thousand troops set to join their ranks, according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov in an interview with Reuters. The minister added that the current number of Russian forces stationed in Ukraine and along its borders stands at 500 thousand troops. Umerov emphasized the urgency of mobilizing fresh recruits to facilitate the rotation of military personnel in response to the anticipated surge in Russian troop numbers. "At this stage, we are focused on training our personnel ... pilots, we are focused on...

US President Joe Biden on Friday outlined the details of a new plan to conclude the Israel-Hamas war that would seemingly leave the Palestinian terrorist group in control of the Gaza Strip. Delivering a speech from the White House, Biden gave updates on his administration’s efforts to end the war in Gaza, laying out a proposed multi-phase plan that, in his words, would result in a “permanent cessation of hostilities” between the Jewish state and Hamas, which launched the war by invading southern Israel, murdering 1,200 people, and abducting over 250 hostages on Oct. 7. Biden explained that his administration...

President Joe Biden renewed his election-year pitch to Black voters on Wednesday, lashing out at Donald Trump’s “MAGA lies” and saying the winner of this year’s White House race will make crucial decisions, including on nominees for the Supreme Court, that could affect the country for decades. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, in a joint appearance at a Philadelphia boarding school, thanked Black voters in Pennsylvania and beyond for being the lynchpin to their 2020 victory and they made the case that their agenda has had an enormous impact on improving lives for Black voters. The Democratic president also...

Russian leader Vladimir Putin says European countries should rethink their calls to let Ukraine use Western arms to strike his country. "So, these officials from NATO countries, especially the ones based in Europe, particularly in small European countries, should be fully aware of what is at stake," Putin told reporters on Tuesday. "They should keep in mind that theirs are small and densely populated countries, which is a factor to reckon with before they start talking about striking deep into the Russian territory," he continued. Putin's warnings come after several European leaders said that Ukraine should be allowed to attack...

Gen. Serhii Golubtsov, the commander of the Ukrainian air force, has said all along he needed four operational squadrons of Lockheed Martin F-16 fighters to have any chance of controlling the air over a single sector of the 700-mile front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine. It’s taken more than a year of intensive diplomacy between Ukrainian, Norwegian, Dutch, Danish and Belgian officials, but Golubtsov is finally getting his four squadrons. On Tuesday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced Belgium would donate 30 surplus F-16s—boosting to 85 the total number of the nimble, supersonic fighters Ukraine should receive starting this...

Pressure is mounting to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided weapons on military targets within Russian territory. The big picture: After the Biden administration instituted the ban in an attempt to keep the conflict from escalating, calls to remove the embargo have been growing from U.S. lawmakers, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The criticism from many is that the ban is hindering the country's ability to effectively defend itself. Context: Ukraine has been provided with a large arsenal of Western weapons, including long-range missiles, but it is not allowed to use them to strike targets in Russian...

MESQUITE, Texas — In a warehouse off Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway in an industrial area outside Dallas, the future of American military ammunition production is coming online. Here, in the Pentagon’s first new major arms plant built since Russia invaded Ukraine, Turkish workers in orange hard hats are busy unpacking wood crates stenciled with the name Repkon, a defense company based in Istanbul, and assembling computer-controlled robots and lathes. The factory will soon turn out about 30,000 steel shells every month for the 155 mm howitzers that have become crucial to Ukraine’s war effort. Ukraine fired 4,000 to 7,000 such...

As thousands fled Kyiv in the first days of Russia’s 2022 invasion, one 57-year-old grandmother hurried in the opposite direction. Liudmyla Menyuk was going to sign up for the army to avenge her son who’d been killed fighting the Russians almost a decade before. Many Ukrainians of Menyuk’s age have volunteered, sometimes motivated — like she was — by the explicit wish to stand in for a youth who might otherwise die in their place. “I performed my duties well,” she told Bloomberg in an interview, “so I could save the life of a young Ukrainian.” But the enthusiasm of...

"Squad" member Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Sunday blasted President Biden’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, deriding him as an "enabler" of genocide while speaking at an event attended by at least one member of a designated terrorist organization and funded by an asset of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The event, the People’s Conference for Palestine was held over the weekend in Detroit, and featured, among other speakers, Wisam Rafeedie, an activist with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S. has designated a foreign terrorist organization. The conference was organized...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor reflected Friday on her time on the Supreme Court, admitting that some of the high court’s decisions have driven her to tears. “There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” Sotomayor said Friday at an event honoring her at Harvard University. “There have been those days. And there likely will be more,” she added in the speech, per the The New York Times. The Harvard event was held as the Supreme Court heads toward the last several weeks of the term. The court is...

Russian forces have advanced along the front line in Ukraine, battlefield maps published by a U.S. think tank show, as Ukraine warns that Moscow is preparing for a major offensive in the east. Maps released by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a U.S.-based think tank, on Sunday, show that Russian forces have made progress in Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk regions, which together comprise the Donbas. The Kremlin has been pushing for the total capture of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions since Russia's initial invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by...