Free Republic

A federal court Tuesday night upheld a challenge to the Trump administration's asylum restrictions, specifically a 2019 rule that requires seekers to ask for asylum closer to home. U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of immigrant nonprofits and asylum-seekers who argued that the rule known as the "third-country asylum rule," which was jointly published by the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, violated the Immigration and Nationality Act. Kelly, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2017, agreed that in adopting the policy, the administration did not...

A new continental trade agreement kicks in on Wednesday (July 1st), and border industry leaders are ready to take advantage of it. The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) increases native content in the auto industry, incorporates rules for e-commerce and pharmaceuticals, opens Mexico’s energy sector and updates labor protections in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA... One in four jobs in El Paso is tied to cross-border trade, while 300,000 people across the border in Juarez work in U.S.-run maquiladoras that assemble automotive components, electronics and medical supplies, among others... Mexico is also looking forward to the business opportunities...

Analysts have used other evidence to conclude that the transfers were most likely part of an effort to offer payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan. American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia’s military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence...

It’s exceedingly difficult to believe that no one told the president about the intelligence on Russian efforts to harm Americans in Afghanistan. Since at least February, and possibly as early as March 2019, the United States has had compelling intelligence that a committed adversary, Russia, paid bounties to Taliban-linked fighters to kill American troops in Afghanistan. American service members were reportedly killed as a result. To this day, the president of the United States has done nothing about it. Instead, President Trump dismissed the intelligence as not “credible” and “possibly another fabricated Russia hoax, maybe by the Fake News” that...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell flatly rejected on Tuesday the idea of Russia rejoining the Group of Seven (G7). President Donald Trump has suggested allowing Russia to be readmitted to the group of world leaders after it was ousted in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.

An emerging virus discovered in pigs in China has traits similar to the 2009 swine flu and 1918 Spanish flu, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, told a Senate committee on June 30. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that while the virus, which has been dubbed G4 EA H1N1, doesn’t appear to infect humans, it has shown that it could mutate. “In other words, when you get a brand new virus that turns out to be a pandemic virus, it’s either due to mutations and/or the...

WASHINGTON—As states across the country progress through their reopening phases, some economic indicators that surpass expectations have boosted hopes of a speedy U.S. recovery. A spike in retail sales and in personal consumption in May indicated that consumers were back and eager to open their wallets. While the U.S. economy shows clear signs of recovery, some economists are taking a more cautious stance, raising concerns about the possibility of a second wave of COVID-19 that could stall reopening plans and hurt consumer spending. Despite some setbacks in several states, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow still predicts a sharp economic...

HONG KONG — A new strain of the H1N1 swine flu virus is spreading silently in workers on pig farms in China and should be “urgently” controlled to avoid another pandemic, a team of scientists says in a new study. H1N1 is highly transmissible and spread around the world in 2009, killing about 285,000 people and morphing into seasonal flu. The newer strain, known as G4 EA H1N1, has been common on China’s pig farms since 2016 and replicates efficiently in human airways, according to the study published on Monday. So far, it has infected some people without causing disease,...

The United States warned further measures were on the table to revoke its preferential treatment for Hong Kong, as Beijing imposed a controversial national security law on the city... The sweeping law would heighten the risk that sensitive US tech exports to the city – including metal alloys, high-powered computers and lasers – would be diverted for use by the Chinese military or the Chinese Ministry of State Security, Ross said... The US was Hong Kong’s second-largest trading partner in 2019, with trade worth HK$516 billion (US$67 billion), official data showed... “Further actions to eliminate differential treatment are also being...

The Pentagon said in a statement late Tuesday evening that it had no corroborating evidence that Russian operatives offered bounties to the Taliban for American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. “The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan. To date, DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports,” said Chief Pentagon Spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.

The ruling was against the Soros-backed Alliance for Open Society International. The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Monday making it clear that a major front of progressive billionaire oligarch George Soros does not have 1st Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. In the case of Agency for International Development v. Alliance for Open Society International, Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts ruled against 1st Amendment right for the Soros front. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented against the majority while Justice Elena Kagan did not take part in the...

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it is revoking Hong Kong’s special trading status and stopping its defense equipment exports to Hong Kong, in order to protect U.S. national security amid the passing of Beijing’s national security law for Hong Kong. “With the Chinese Communist Party’s imposition of new security measures on Hong Kong, the risk that sensitive U.S. technology will be diverted to the People’s Liberation Army or Ministry of State Security has increased, all while undermining the territory’s autonomy. Those are risks U.S.A refuses to accept and have resulted in the revocation of Hong Kong’s special status,”...

Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published on Monday in the US science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009. It possesses “all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans”, say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. From 2011 to 2018, researchers took 30,000 nasal swabs from pigs in slaughterhouses in 10 Chinese provinces and...

The AP today published a shocking report of China’s effort to control and over time eliminate its Uighur minority population. The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members...

Australia will roll out an anti-ballistic missile defence shield for deployed forces for the first time, as well as land, sea and air-based long-range and hypersonic strike missiles, to project military power to the region and defend against potential “adversaries”. In the most significant shift in the nation’s military posture in decades, Scott Morrison on Wednesday will announce a $270bn 10-year defence plan including “lethal” naval and air warfare capability as well as the first land-based long-range missile defence systems. It will include the development with the US of a missile defence shield against ballistic missile attack as well as...

On Jan. 28, 2020, the long-awaited Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century,” officially titled “Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People,” was made public. The proposal aspires to reach the goal within its title after unfreezing and advancing negotiations between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The aim is to end a conflict as old as the State of Israel, and in some ways older. The plan entails Israel replacing the present military law with its system of civil law in the still non-sovereign territory that Israel captured from the...

China said Tuesday it will retaliate after the U.S. announced it was ending the export of sensitive military items to Hong Kong in response to Beijing imposing a controversial national security law on the semi-autonomous city. China's rubber-stamp parliament formally passed the sweeping law for Hong Kong on Tuesday, which critics and many western governments fear will smother the global financial hub's freedoms and hollow out its autonomy... The State Department will end the export of all items on its controlled list to Hong Kong, which includes products ranging from advanced ammunition to military hardware that already require approval from...

The story is shocking in exposing just how multi-faceted fraud is in China: capitalizing on pre-existing cronyism and connections with China's powerful army, the founder of Kingold was allowed to basically do anything he wanted, no questions asked, including counterfeiting over 83 tons of gold bars to get billions in funds to participate in China's housing bubble, only for a series of unexpected events to unwind the frauds one after another and expose the type of sordid scandal that is at the heart of most Chinese "enterprises" and business ventures.

BERLIN — Authorities in western Germany said Monday they have evidence that tens of thousands of people may have been involved with an online child sex abuse network uncovered last year. The justice minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, Peter Biesenbach, said that allegations against members of the pedophile ring include possession and distribution of child sex abuse images, and serious abuse. “I didn’t expect, not in the slightest, the extent of child abuse on the net,” Biesenbach told reporters, adding that specialist investigators have so far counted “more than — and I hope you’re sitting down — 30,000 unknown suspected...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China’s parliament passed national security legislation for Hong Kong on Tuesday, setting the stage for the most radical changes to the former British colony’s way of life since it returned to Chinese rule almost exactly 23 years ago. .... The legislation pushes Beijing further along a collision course with the United States, Britain and other Western governments, which have said it erodes the high degree of autonomy the global financial hub was granted at its July 1, 1997 handover.