Free Republic

With a pair of gold scissors in hand, President Trump on Thursday cut a large piece of red tape at the White House that symbolized his administration’s efforts to roll back regulations on businesses. “Instead of eliminating two old regulations for every new regulation, we have eliminated 22. Twenty-two — that’s a big difference,” Trump told reporters, referencing his January 30 executive order. “We aimed for two-for-one, and in 2017 we hit 22-for-one.” The president tweeted out a video of him cutting the red tape during the White House event promoting the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, explaining,...

Administration officials are planning to stop spouses of thousands of immigrant workers from getting jobs in the United States, CNN is reporting. The spouses of H-1B visa holders waiting for green cards have been permitted to work in the U.S. on H-4 department visas since 2015, according to the news network. But now the Department of Homeland Security said it is planning to do away with that rule. It said it was acting "in light of" the "Buy American, Hire American" executive order signed by President Donald Trump in April, CNN said. Under that order, the H-1B visa program for...

When Amazon kicked off a bidding war for its second North American headquarters in September, the company laid out a vision of its perfect suitor. The ideal city would have more than a million people, mass transit, an international airport, attractive housing and “stable and business-friendly” regulations. But the retail goliath apparently isn’t worried about how surging seas, extreme weather and deadly heat waves might affect its operations or the 50,000 employees it promises to hire in its new $5 billion “second home.” The company also doesn’t seem overly concerned with how much its ravenous appetite for energy and reliance...

It’s hard to be optimistic about climate action, not in a week when federal scientists reported that “the Arctic shows no sign of returning” to the “reliably frozen region of recent past decades.” Not in a month when California’s wildfires show every sign of burning straight through Christmas. And not in a moment when the federal government keeps scrubbing basic climate information from its websites. But something big is starting to shift. After years of effort from activists, there are signs that the world’s financial community is finally rousing itself in the fight against global warming. A foretaste came last...

Executives from major airplane manufacturers Boeing and AirBus will reportedly head to Iran next week to hammer down multi-billion dollar deals to sell the Islamic Republic a new fleet of commercial planes amid a congressional crackdown on Tehran's continued use of commercial aircraft to transport weapons and terrorist fighters across the region. As controversy continues to swirl around Boeing's and AirBus's efforts to sell Iran a fleet of new jets, Congress has taken steps to mandate the U.S. government release public reports outlining Tehran's continued use of commercial aircraft for illicit terrorism purposes.

When President Trump took office 10 months ago, the bottom was supposed to drop out of the firearms market. It did not happen. We have the numbers for the National Instant Background Check System (NICS) for the first eleven months of 2017. They are on track to be the second highest year on record. It is hard to see how they can miss that mark.December has been the highest month of the year for eight out of nine years. In two anomalous years, 2013, and 2014, it was the fourth highest and second highest month, respectively. November of 2017...

One of the most notable political eyesores of recent years has been the issue of high drug prices. Since 2015, the public has been hungry for a solution to this problem. Indeed, even in 2015, there was a level of bipartisan agreement that drug prices were too high that today would be seen as shocking. According to a December 2015 poll from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 80 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Republicans agreed on this issue. Moreover, more than 90 percent of all voters saw pharmaceutical companies’ pricing decisions as unreasonable. Given that...

Republicans have very nearly finalized their tax reform legislation. We hope they iron out last-minute disagreements and pass it without delay. It will make Christmas merrier. Republican senators and the Senate leadership owe it to the public to be flexible with one another lest so much work on such a crucial bill be squandered. Reform has been a very long time coming. Regardless of the top marginal tax rates, the tax code’s complexity, unfairness, and distortion of economic activity have continued unabated for decades. The only worthy regret about this reform package, the biggest in more than 30 years, is...

Americans should have the courage to ignore their written laws, to amnesty DACA illegals and accept an open-borders world, says an op-ed by two wealthy CEOs who stand to gain more wealth in a labor market flooded by low-wage migrants. The op-ed by Tim Cook (CEO of Apple, wealth $800 million and growing) and Charles Koch (Koch Industries, $49 billion and growing) was posted in the Washington Post newspaper owned by Jeff Bezos (owner of Amazon, $98 billion and growing). Under the headline “Congress must act on the ‘dreamers,’” it declared: We must do better. The United States is at...

By effectively deeming the internet a utility, former chairman Tom Wheeler turned the FCC into a political gatekeeper. The rules prohibited broadband providers from blocking, throttling and favoring content, which Mr. Wheeler ostensibly intended to help large content providers like Google and Netflix gain leverage against cable companies.

Two Republican senators indicated Thursday they were holding back support for the final $1.5 trillion GOP tax reform bill unless a larger child tax credit is included...The strongest statement came from the office of Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio...Conn Carroll, a spokesman for Utah GOP Sen. Mike Lee, also said Lee is "undecided" on the bill in its current form. “Sen. Lee continues to work to make the [child tax credit] as beneficial as possible to American working families," Carroll said.

Americans Spend More Than Expected as Holiday Season Heats Up November retail sales up 0.8% from prior month; economists saw 0.3% increase By Sharon Nunn Updated Dec. 14, 2017 1:40 p.m. ET 27 COMMENTS WASHINGTON—Americans are spending more this holiday season than analysts expected, fueled by income gains, confidence in the economic outlook, buoyant financial markets and modest inflation. That includes spending at brick-and-mortar stores such as Walmart Inc. and Nordstrom Inc., which clocked the largest year-over-year November sales increase in seven years. Home-furnishing stores, electronics and appliance stores also posted strong spending numbers, despite competition from online shopping websites,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week, a government report showed on Thursday. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits declined by 11,000 to a seasonally adjusted 225,000 for the week ended Dec. 9 from an unrevised 236,000 the week before, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims rising to 239,000 in the latest week. The 4-week moving average was 234,750, a decrease of 6,750 from the previous week’s unrevised average of 241,500.

39 second video of Pelosi at link (CNSNews.com) - House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, during whose four-year speakership the debt increased by more than $5 trillion, said at her press briefing today that the Republican-controlled Congress is “robbing from the future by increasing the debt.” Pelosi made the remark as part of her criticism of the Republican tax-reform plan. “This is who they are,” Pelosi said. “This is what they came here to do: tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the middle class, at the expense of the health and well-being of the American people. Robbing from...

Collins shrugged off the House snub, saying it didn’t matter if the House passes a spending bill that doesn’t include the legislation. “That has never been the plan,” she told reporters. “The plan is for the majority leader to add [the bills] in the Senate.”

Marguerite Moniot felt frustrated and flummoxed. Despite the many hours she had spent in front of the computer this year reading consumer reviews of health insurance plans offered on the individual market in Virginia, she still did not know what plan was right for her.

President Trump touts his administration’s advanced progress on deregulation, saying for every one new regulation — 22 are eliminated. From the White House Thursday, the president said this will allow the U.S. to build and create more jobs. President Trump said checking on unlawful regulations means “defending Democracy” and “draining the swamp.” In a symbolic “cutting of red tape,” the president compared a short stack of papers representing regulations from the 1960’s to that of a tall stack of papers symbolizing today’s regulations.

Ajit Pai has been at the heart of the net neutrality debate and he would like to take this time to address all of the internet trolls with a PSA. (video)

State attorneys general are now threatening lawsuits against the federal government's repeal of "net neutrality" rules. New York's attorney general says he'll lead a multistate lawsuit to stop the Federal Communications Commission's rollback of rules that guaranteed equal access to the internet. Democrat Eric Schneiderman has been investigating fake public comments submitted to the FCC during the net neutrality comment process. Schneiderman says his analysis shows 2 million comments stole the identities of real Americans, including dead people and children. The Washington state attorney general has likewise vowed to sue over net neutrality.

The Minnesota owners of Sun Country Airlines are selling the Eagan-based carrier. Apollo Global Management, a New York-based investment group, will purchase the airline for an undisclosed sum. Mitch and Marty Davis, the current owners, said they decided to sell Sun Country to a group that could help grow the company faster. The headquarters will stay in Minnesota and Jude Bricker will remain president and chief executive.