Free Republic

2020 is the 100th anniversary of an important U.S. law that becomes more vital each year: the Jones Act. As the United States fends off China's effort to become the world's dominant economic and military power, this law has become especially important. Yet despite the law’s significance, some Americans want to repeal it, effectively allowing China to expand their ocean dominance by moving into America's domestic waters. Last year the world learned that China's economy has surpassed Japan's to become #2 in the world, second only to the U.S.A. A major part of China’s growth has been its heavily-subsidized industry...

BEIJING -- The Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Saturday held a meeting on the prevention and control of the outbreak of pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, chaired the meeting. The meeting decided to set up a CPC Central Committee leading group to oversee the work.

The GOP-controlled House of Delegates in West Virginia recently unanimously passed a bill that would require pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) to share the rebates they receive from drug companies with consumers at the point of purchase. The bill now goes to the state Senate. Pharmacy benefit managers were created to administer drug benefits for health plans including commercial, employee and retiree plans and Medicare Part D.  In 2003, the PBM industry secured safe harbor status from Congress that exempted them from criminal prosecution for taking rebates from drug manufacturers. Essentially, PBMs can collect these kickbacks and give certain medications access to the...

Democrats' claim that the Trump administration broke America's promise to protect Ukraine from Russia by withholding military aid is just an example of the party's hypocrisy, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, claimed Thursday. "The Democratic House Managers’ hypocrisy is on full display," Ernst wrote on Twitter on Thursday evening, after Day 3 of Trump's Senate impeachment trial. "They’ve spent most of their time lecturing the Senate on aid to Ukraine, yet four of them voted AGAINST legislation that provided the very same aid they’re lecturing us on." Joni Ernst ✔ @SenJoniErnst The Democratic House Managers’ hypocrisy is on full display: they’ve...

Donald Trump has always been a man of absolutes. Something is the best or the worst, a person is a winner or a total loser, an event has never happened before, even when it has. Absolutism was the unwritten credo of his career in business and is the guiding light of his presidency as he makes an assertion rarely heard from an American president: that he can do as he pleases. Now that approach faces its ultimate test as a foundation of Trump’s defense in his impeachment trial, namely that he is cloaked with unrestrained authority. How that question is...

If I'm going to be completely honest, I cried a little as I listened to Donald Trump speak at the 47th March for Life, a massive annual pro-life rally in Washington, D.C. The tears were caused by a combination of things, including lack of sleep, I'm sure. There are a lot of beautiful events before and after the march, and reunions with wonderful friends from throughout the country. But my reaction also had to do with the contrast of some of the president's words with the bile that we often hear in politics of late, including at his own...

Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate has called out racism in media after she was cropped out of a photo featuring prominent climate activists including Greta Thunberg, Loukina Tille, Luisa Neubauer and Isabelle Axelsson. ---- “Why did you remove me from the photo? I was part of the group”, she tweeted in response. Other agencies, including Reuters, misidentified Nakate as Zambian activist Natasha Mwansa. Reuters’ currently available version of the photograph identifies the other four activists in the picture but not Nakate. --- In the viral video, Nakate elaborated on what she considers the erasure of black and brown voices in...

RUSH: A pretty big first is on the verge of happening in Washington, D.C. Every year during this month at this time there is an event called the March for Life, the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. A bunch of pro-lifers show up, and it’s always a gigantic, well-attended event. No U.S. president has ever appeared in person. They always appear via video conferences. Ronaldus Magnus appeared on a big screen behind the stage. The Presidents Bush did the same. Vice President Pence has been there in person. I’m not sure… Other vice presidents may or may not...

Everyone wants to stop dangerous people from getting guns. To some the obvious solution is Red Flag laws, which take away the guns of people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. Wednesday’s straight party line vote in Virginia Senate shows that these laws are more controversial than normally understood.  But the reasons for these differences get little coverage in the media.  As the debate moves to the Virginia House of Delegates, it is important to understand they are so controversial is that there is a much better alternative already in place. This alternative is commonly known as Baker Act statutes (Virginia’s...

WASHINGTON — House Democrats were prepared and passionate as they laid out over three draining days in the Senate a detailed argument for impeaching and removing President Trump. What they do not appear to have been is persuasive to the critical handful of Republicans who hold the key to their immediate objective: gaining access to witnesses and documents that could cement their case..... “The House made a decision that they didn’t want to slow things down by having to go through courts,” Ms. Murkowski said. “And yet now they’re basically saying ‘You guys — the Senate — got to go...

This will be a weekly post. Count remains at 185 judges confirmed. 133 District Court judges 50 Circuit Court judges 2 Supreme Court justices While there's no court news this week, keep in mind that an undercurrent of the impeachment saga is to prevent Trump from further eroding the Democrats' preferred lawmaking body, their unelected legislature: the courts. And in this, they have failed, and will fail. Trump will have been elected, impeached, acquitted, reelected, and will continue to make fantastic judicial appointments despite all their efforts.

... President Trump's team of lawyers have vowed to an aggressive defense when they begin their opening statements Saturday at the president's Senate impeachment trial. ... “It's not a rebuttal, but what we are going to do is attack -- attack all of the misstatements,” Trump lawyer Jordan Sekulow previewed Friday on “Fox and Friends.” “We're going to make the case for the president, why the president was totally within his constitutional rights." Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday’s session will begin at 10 a.m. ET and run “for several hours.” A source on the president's legal team told...

China has expanded its lockdown on more cities, restricting movement to an unprecedented 56 million people as it rushes to build a prefabricated, 1,000-bed hospital for victims, while the death toll from the outbreak continues to rise, casting a pall over Lunar New Year, the country's biggest and most festive holiday. The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus across China climbed sharply to more than 1,287, with at least 41 deaths reported as of Saturday morning. At least five cases are also reported in Hong Kong, two in Macau, and three cases in Taiwan. Worldwide, there are a total of...

"Vote against the President and your head will be on a pike".______ There was audible grumbling and cries of “not true” heard by reporters in the gallery. Schiff managed to alienate Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) one of the few Republicans whom Democrats and the media believe are persuadable on impeachment. “CBS News reported last night that a Trump confidante said that GOP senators were warned ‘vote against your President, vote against the President and your head will be on a pike’. I don’t know if that’s true: ‘Vote against the president and your head will be on a pike’. I...

As he wrapped up his argument for convicting Trump and removing him from office, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif) asked senators "to reflect on the damage he will do to our country if he is allowed to remain president. In the three years he's been in office he has disrupted so many long-held policies and trends that it is difficult to imagine the horror that awaits us if he is not stopped." "Look what he has done to our economy," Schiff urged. "Millions of people, many of them minorities, have been lured off of welfare into wage-slavery. Others have become millionaires...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Healthcare, Government, Family, Military, Business, Farmers, Sanctity of Life, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

-content is video at link above or below- U.S. Navy's F/A-18 Super Hornet, EA-18G Growler, T-45 Goshawk, assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 23, and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, C-2A Greyhound, assigned to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron (VX) 20, flight operations test on USS Gerald R. Ford's (CVN 78) flight deck, Jan. 2020. Ford is currently conducting Aircraft Compatibility Testing to further test its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch Systems (EMALS) and Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG).

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – At the 47th annual March for Life, marchers carried signs thanking President Trump, incorporating popular culture, sharing the pro-life message in general, and representing schools and pro-life clubs. Here are some of them. All photos are by LifeSiteNews (with the exception of embedded social media posts) unless otherwise specified. **PICTURES ON LINKY AND WITHOUT A BARF ALERT BECAUSE OUR SIDE IS CLASSY AND CREATIVE**

A top White House spokesman invoked the 1987 Mel Brooks classic “Spaceballs” in laying out just how flimsy lead impeachment manager Adam Schiff’s, D-Calif., impeachment case is against President Trump. Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley told “The Story” on Friday that the House Democrats’ case against Trump — in which they alleged abuse of power in the form of the president trying to personally benefit through foreign policy with Ukraine — effectively has no first-hand witnesses. Democrats, he said, are trying to “splice it together [and] pass it off as real.” […] “It’s all ‘your father’s brother’s cousin’s nephew’s former...

As infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists race to contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus centered on Wuhan, China, they’re getting backup that’s been possible only since the explosion in genetic technologies: a deep-dive into the DNA of the virus known as 2019-nCoV. Analyses of the viral genome are already providing clues to the origins of the outbreak and even possible ways to treat the infection, a need that is becoming more urgent by the day: Early on Saturday in China, health officials reported 15 new fatalities in a single day, bringing the death toll to 41. There are now...