Free Republic

Florida's blanket restrictions on medical care for transgender children were ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge on Tuesday, striking down a key pillar of Gov. Ron DeSantis' platform. In his ruling from Tallahassee, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle invalidated a Florida health code rule and a new state law that prohibited Medicaid payments for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. He found these bans violated federal laws, including the Affordable Care Act's prohibition on sex discrimination in healthcare. "Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate," Judge Hinkle wrote in his 105-page...

Russia has rolled back on comments suggesting that a major agreement with Iran had been suspended due to problems it faced with Tehran. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, Tehran has supplied Moscow's war machine with equipment such as the Shahed drone, which has been used to attack Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. In September of that year, work on a new treaty between Moscow and Tehran was announced during a meeting between Putin and the late President of the Islamic Republic, Ebrahim Raisi. Russia's Foreign Ministry had said in January that the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty...

Ukrainian drones are threatening Russian vessels in the Sea of Azov, it has been reported, signaling an intention by Kyiv to target Moscow's infrastructure beyond the Black Sea. -snip- British outlet Sky News reported Ukrainian forces had carried out a "coordinated strike" against a Ropucha-class landing ship overnight Saturday, which had moved to the Sea of Azov, connected to the Black Sea by the Strait of Kerch. Ukrainian Telegram channel Crimean Wind and Ukrainian Mariupol mayoral adviser Petro Andryushchenko gave more details, saying a ship was hit near the port of Yeysk, located in Krasnodar. But there are conflicting reports...

Ukraine attacked several advanced Russian air-defense systems across Crimea overnight, Kyiv's military said on Monday, in the latest round of long-range strikes to menace vital Russian assets on the annexed peninsula Ukraine has vowed to reclaim from Moscow. -snip- Rybar, one of the influential Russian military blogger accounts often used as sources in lieu of official statements from Moscow, said on Monday that Ukrainian forces had attacked Crimea overnight with "at least 12" U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missiles, fired from Ukraine's southern Mykolaiv region. Another prominent military blogger said Kyiv had attacked Crimea with an unspecified number of...

Ukrainian forces have damaged an advanced Russian Su-57 jet hundreds of miles away from the front lines inside Moscow's internationally recognized territory, Kyiv's military spy agency said on Sunday, adding this is the "first such case in history." An Su-57 jet was struck on Saturday at the Akhtubinsk airfield, in the southern Russian republic of Astrakhan, Kyiv's GUR military intelligence agency said in a statement. The site is around 365 miles from the current front lines in eastern Ukraine, according to the GUR. One of Russia's influential military bloggers—often considered sources for information on losses in lieu of official commentary...

The judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case has been criticized by legal experts for her "baffling" rescheduling of a number of hearings in the already delayed trial. Judge Aileen Cannon announced on Wednesday that there will be a shuffle of the timeline as she intends to rule on a number of legal arguments connected to the case. Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, has already indefinitely postponed the start of the federal trial pending the outcome of several appeals and motions. From June 21, Cannon will hold hearings on Trump's arguments that Special Counsel...

Kyle Rittenhouse has sparked outrage on social media after sharing a post in which he baselessly stated that President Joe Biden "is gay." Taking to X, formerly Twitter, on June 1, Rittenhouse shared the post: "Joe Biden is gay." Rittenhouse added no other information to the post, which as of press time has garnered more than 2.5 million views. When contacted for comment, Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told Newsweek in an emailed statement: "Happy Pride, Kyle." Newsweek has contacted a representative of Rittenhouse via email for comment.

In mid-2022, Gazprom restricted gas flows to Europe in what was seen as a move by Putin to get both leverage against Kyiv's allies ahead of the winter season and retaliate against Western sanctions and support of Ukraine. But the EU managed to find alternative long-term sources of gas imports and free itself from most Russian piped-gas imports ... Gazprom's revenue fell by 41 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2023, while sales profits dropped 71 percent and gas production by 25 percent... The report said the company's upstream gas-production base is now isolated because infrastructure connecting its main...

A Russian army general who was blamed for a costly HIMARS strike on troops in occupied Ukraine last year has been removed from his post, according to pro-war Russian Telegram channels. Lieutenant General Sukhrab Akhmedov was dismissed as commander of the Russian 20th Combined Arms Army (CAA), per reports from prominent Russian milbloggers. The formation is currently engaged in Russia's grinding offensive towards the eastern city of Lyman on the Donetsk front. -snip- Akhmedov has been involved in multiple battlefield setbacks since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, including the 20th CAA's recent inability to make significant progress on...

MAGA Donald Trump supporters have rallied behind the former president after he released FBI paperwork, connected to its search of his Mar-a-Lago residence, showing agents were permitted to use "deadly force." On Tuesday, Trump shared on his social media platform Truth Social the information revealed by an unsealed search warrant in his classified documents case which said that federal agents were prepared to use "deadly force" when executing the raid of his Florida resort. After the news broke, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and Trump ally Mike Davis discussed what they called an "assassination" plot by the bureau. A post...

Conservative TV host Tucker Carlson has launched his own show on a Russian state television channel. The former Fox News anchor is presenting the program Tucker on the rolling news channel Russia 24, with the first episode now available online, Russian state newspaper Rossiskya Gazyeta reported. The paper said that the show is part of a joint project with Carlson TV, in which he will interview figures and politicians who have "alternative views to the mainstream." -snip- This is a breaking story. More to follow.

A senior Russian commander who criticized the Russian military and its war effort in Ukraine has been arrested, Russian state media reported on Tuesday. Major General Ivan Popov, who had headed up Russia's 58th Army, was "arrested on suspicion of fraud," Russian state news agency, Tass, reported, citing a law enforcement spokesperson. In July 2023, Popov was removed from his command of Russian troops in Ukraine's annexed southern Zaporizhzhia region after he criticized the Russian Defense Ministry for failing to provide sufficient support for the country's troops. Popov condemned what he called a "lack of counter-battery combat," too few resources...

The Russian government has instructed Gazprom, once Russia's biggest company by revenue, not to pay out dividends, following record losses and a plummeting share price. Earlier this month, Gazprom Group, which also includes oil and power businesses, announced a net loss of 629 billion rubles [$6.9 billion] for last year—the first since 1999. A decree on the government website, dated May 18, ordered Gazprom not "to provide for the payment of dividends on ordinary registered shares," for 2023.

A Russian military airfield in Crimea has caught fire for a second night in a row, according to new reports, after Moscow said Ukraine had launched consecutive long-range strikes on the Russian-controlled peninsula. The Belbek airfield, close to the port city of Sevastopol on Crimea's western edge where Russia bases its Black Sea naval fleet, is "on fire again," Russian independent news outlet Astra reported on Thursday.

If Donald Trump wins a second term in the White House in November, NATO may fall apart, a recent wargame found. As a presidential candidate, Trump has threatened to quit NATO unless European allies contribute more, and should he carry it out Europe may decide to go it alone on defense, the game suggests. "A US policy of frustrating NATO has the potential to cause the alliance to collapse, with the EU as a candidate for eventually replacing NATO's ultimate function — defending Europe from Russia," wrote Finley Grimble, the British defense expert who designed and ran the game. The...

A video posted Monday on social media shows the Ukrainian military destroying 10 Russian military vehicles in a single strike. The video was posted by the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade on Telegram. Reportedly, five Russian BMP-1s, an amphibious infantry fighting vehicle, along with five tanks, were burned in the strike. The 63rd Brigade said that at least one vehicle was a Russian T-90M battle tank. The Ukrainian defense effort reportedly occurred near Terni in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The 63rd Brigade said it destroyed the vehicles "with the help of artillery and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drops."

A Russian commander was reportedly killed in Crimea following a Ukrainian missile strike in the region. On Monday, the Russian independent outlet Astra said on its Telegram channel that a Russian air defense base located near Mount Ai-Petri in Crimea was hit with "an early morning missile attack" by Ukrainian forces. "The commander of the military unit was killed," Astra reported. "On the mountain, there is a 'secret' military air defense base of the 3rd radio technical regiment of the Russian Armed Forces." The outlet identified the Russian military commander as Alexander Kulakov. Another Russian soldier was also killed in...

Following President Joe Biden stating that he would withhold certain weapons from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, Republicans were confronted on Sunday over former President Ronald Reagan's similar stance to leverage military aid to Israel. On October 7, 2023, Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched an attack against Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage. In the months that followed, Israel's offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the Associated Press reported, citing local health officials. On Wednesday, Biden warned he would stop supplying Israel with offensive weapons like bombs and artillery shells if Israeli...

Gazprom, the energy giant at the heart of Russia's economy, has announced it is selling property in Moscow, one week after posting record losses linked to restricted supplies to Europe linked to Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The company said on Wednesday that the properties include office and non-residential buildings, a car parking lot in the capital, and the Imperial Park Hotel and spa sanatorium and resort complex in Rogozino village, just outside of Moscow. "Gazprom is engaged in a fire sale. They had their worst year in decades, and their production has fallen precipitously, down to what it was...

Legal analysts are accusing Judge Aileen Cannon of pro-Donald Trump bias after indefinitely suspending his classified documents case. Cannon, a Trump appointee, indefinitely postponed the trial on Tuesday, citing legal disputes around classified evidence. Cannon said there were eight outstanding substantive pending motions for her to rule on and predicted this will take until at least late July. It is unknown whether the case will begin before the November 2024 presidential election. If elected, Trump has a number of options to kill the trial, including pardoning himself or appointing a favorable attorney general to drop the charges. Cannon is overseeing...