Free Republic

A Look Into the Opaque Crystal Ball for Infrastructure Initiatives in the First 100 Days of the Trump Administration President Donald J. Trump's "America's Infrastructure First" plan is one of the Trump Administration's priorities during his first 100 days in office. Throughout the campaign, President Trump heralded his plan to build and restore highways, tunnels, airports, bridges, and water systems across America and promised a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure sector over a 10-year period. Leaders from both parties acknowledge the nation's deteriorating infrastructure, and there have been expressions of support from both sides of the aisle for some...

Polls: There several conflicting polls out about President Trump's approval rating. But one thing is clear in all of them: The only reason his numbers are low is because Democrats despise him. The latest approval numbers come from the Pew Research Center, which found that Trump's overall approval rating in his first month in office is just 39%. That's far below every other president since Reagan. His approval rating was 55% at this point. Obama's was 64%, Clinton's 56%, Bush I's 63% and Bush II's 53%. Pew's number is lower than the IBD/TIPP poll, which has Trump's approval rating at...

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control shows that the uninsured rate has hit a historic low, or at least it's the lowest it's been in the 20 years the CDC has been tracking it. This is being treated as trouble for Republicans who want to repeal ObamaCare, since it seems to indicate that the law is working as promised. But does it? According to the report, the overall uninsured rate was 8.8% in the first nine months of 2016. That's down from 9.1% the year before, and 16% in 2010, the year President Obama signed ObamaCare —...

A former Twitter engineer recently tweeted his belief that the most important thing professional communities can do is to make it difficult to be a conservative.Travis Brown, a former open source engineer at Twitter, recently tweeted his disapproval of the tech conference LambdaConf following the announcement that computer scientist Curtis Yarvin would be speaking at the event.LambdaConf urged attendees to focus on their professional work at the conference, warning of the issues that the introduction of personal political beliefs can have in a formal setting, something which Brown seemed to vehemently disagree with.

In the weeks after Donald Trump won the election, CNN chief Jeff Zucker watched as one of his employees compared the new president to Adolf Hitler.At a White House press conference Thursday, Trump declared that he was changing his moniker for the network from “fake news” to “very fake news.”There’s been a ton of well-publicized drama between the two camps. The White House has threatened to throw Jim Acosta out of the briefing room. Jake Tapper has bashed Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway for lying on air. And his Sunday show recently declined an offer by the White House to have her come on.You may think Trump is too harsh on CNN.But take a...

American defence major Lockheed Martin today said discussions are currently taking place between the US and Indian governments on the company's plans to set up manufacturing base for F-16 fighter jets in India. "The conversation has progressed to the point that we are deferring at this point to the government-to-government conversation. And that conversation is ongoing," a top company official told reporters at Aero India 2017 air show here. The comments from Randy Howard, Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, Integrated Fighter, Director, Business Development, came when asked about its move to push ahead with its plan to move production of its F-16...

In recent months, President Donald Trump has taken pointed aim at CNN over what he feels is the network’s unfair and hostile coverage of him. Last month, following the cable news channel’s report on him being presented with a two-page synopsis on the infamous Russia dossier during an intel briefing, Trump started labeling CNN “fake news.” Well, it now appears that the Trump administration is taking its complaints to CNN’s corporate bosses. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner met with a Time Warner executive to protest CNN’s reporting. In a meeting at the White...

President Trump on Thursday signed legislation ending a key Obama administration coal mining rule.   The bill quashes the Office of Surface Mining's Stream Protection Rule, a regulation to protect waterways from coal mining waste that officials finalized in December. The legislation is the second Trump has signed into law ending an Obama-era environmental regulation. On Tuesday, he signed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution undoing a financial disclosure requirement for energy companies. Both the mining and financial disclosure bills are the tip of a GOP push to undo a slate of regulations instituted in the closing days of the Obama administration. The...

Mark Zuckerberg has revealed deep-seated concerns that the tide is turning against globalisation.In an interview with the BBC, the Facebook founder said that fake news, polarised views and "filter bubbles" were damaging "common understanding".He said people had been left behind by global growth, sparking demands to "withdraw" from the "connected world".In a call to action, he said people must not "sit around and be upset", but act to build "social infrastructures"."When I started Facebook, the mission of connecting the world was not controversial," he told me."It was as if it was a default assumption that people had; every year the...

Bold Nebraska is running a letter writing campaign to block the XL pipeline at the state level with letters to the Nebraska Public Service Commission. We can do the same by writing in support of the pipeline. Here is an excerpt from their campaign letter .. "Today, TransCanada submitted its application to build the Keystone XL pipeline to the Nebraska Public Service Commission. [1] With the shocking silencing of the massive public outcry against this pipeline by President Trump's State Dept. -- which said that the federal government is "not inviting further comment at this time" [2] -- Bold's efforts...

BLUFFTON, S.C.- Lauren Malphrus pulled up to the Little Steps Daycare and Preschool in Bluffton around 7:30 a.m. Thursday with her 3-year-old son, Asa, and saw that the windows were darkened. Confused, she turned back to her car, and soon found that the daycare had closed for the day in support of “A Day Without Immigrants,” a national strike in which immigrants are boycotting work, school and businesses in response to President Donald Trump’s immigration stance and in an effort to show their economic influence in the community. “Why didn’t they tell me?” she asked loudly. “Why didn’t they call...

NEWARK -- Along parts of Ferry Street on Thursday, doors remained shuttered, chairs were stacked and newspapers left uncollected on doorsteps at restaurants and businesses. Some had a message for passers-by: They were closed to support "A Day Without Immigrants," a national boycott meant to highlight the impact immigrants have on the economy. Storefronts posted signs in English, Spanish and Portuguese that read "Nos unimos a un dia sin immigrantes, CLOSED!" or "We are joining the day without immigrants, CLOSED!"

Article with long list of alleged Obama accomplishments. Too long to list by FR restrictions, even when heavily edited. Please see the stripped down list in my initial comment, then let's do a line-by-line rebuttal.

Roughly 50,047 single- and multi-family residential homes could be damaged with an estimated reconstruction cost value of $13.3 billion if the Oroville Dam in California were to fail completely, according to new data analysis from CoreLogic that included the six primary counties in that area. Fears of flooding from the nation’s tallest dam, which reaches 770 feet, prompted evacuation orders for nearly 200,000 people. A word from our sponsor: Sponsored by: Water Security Solutions U.S. Click here for more info.How does Western Security Surplus work to your advantage? How do we keep ahead of the competition? And what motivates us...

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Rep. Mick Mulvaney to lead the Office of Management and Budget under President Donald Trump, placing the South Carolina Republican in a key White House role that holds significant sway over the administration's spending priorities. Mulvaney is one of the founding members of the House Freedom Caucus, the hard-line group of some 40 congressmen who have yanked the GOP conference in the chamber to the right and were instrumental in forcing out former House Speaker John Boehner in 2015. The Senate approved Mulvaney's nomination mostly along party lines, 51 to 49, with Majority Leader Mitch...

While much of the siren call against federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court surrounds abortion rights, women's access to birth control should be equally as concerning. Ever since the Affordable Care Act required that insurers provide women's birth control without a copay, access to contraception has been under assault. While lawmakers try to read the tea leaves on Gorsuch regarding abortion, his position on access to birth control is crystal clear. As a member of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Gorsuch has twice sided against the ACA birth control benefit. In Hobby Lobby...

The price of the F-35 will continue to drop and the variant being purchased by the Air Force and international partners could cost as little as $80 million per plane, the general in charge of the Joint Program Office told lawmakers on Thursday. Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the F-35 program executive officer, said officials are "on track to keep driving down price." He said that by fiscal 2019, the F-35A, which takes off and lands on runways, will cost between $80-85 million each. The Pentagon reached an agreement with Lockheed Martin this month to buy the 10th lot of 90...

The Philadelphia Fed said its manufacturing index soared in February to a 33-year high, in another indication of improving business sentiment in the wake of a Republican election sweep. The Philadelphia Fed index surged to a reading of 43.3 from 23.6 in January. That’s the highest level since early 1984, on a scale where any reading above zero indicates improving conditions. That is well above the MarketWatch economic consensus was for a reading of 20. It was also the biggest one-month gain in the index since June 2009.

The Christian owner of a Richland floral shop violated state laws when she refused to make custom arrangements for a longtime customer’s same-sex wedding, an appellate court ruled Thursday. The unanimous decision by the Washington state Supreme Court affirms a Benton County...

The Index of Economic Freedom is my favorite annual publication from the Heritage Foundation. It’s a rich source of information, using dozens of data sources, about economic liberty around the world. I first wrote about the Index back in 2010 and shared the bad news that the U.S. score dropped dramatically in Obama’s first year. Well, the new Index lets us see the net effect of Obama’s entire tenure. The worse news is that the U.S. score has dropped to 75.1 on a 0-100 scale. And the worst news is that this represents America’s lowest score in the twenty-plus years...