Free Republic

Former President Trump made history Thursday as the first president to have his mug shot taken - and it will soon be enshrined as a bobblehead. A pre-sale for the special edition figures was announced Friday by the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum. “The Trump bobblehead features the former president’s unsmiling, scowling mug shot on a base bearing his name,” the museum said in its press release. “Glaring into the camera, Trump’s brow is furrowed, his jaw clenched and his red tied knotted tightly.” The release comes one day after Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County...

While the entire United States was under authoritarian mandates, top so-called Covid-19 “experts” were making hundreds of millions of dollars on the pandemic that caused lifelong hurdles for many Americans. According to records, the former NIH Director, Dr. Francis Collins, and former NIAID Director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, made huge profits from royalty checks during the Chinese virus-fueled pandemic. At the same time, thousands of people struggled to put food on the table. OpenTheBooks, a transparency organization, recently released over 1,500 unredacted records revealing the leaders of the country’s National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious...

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and related causes received an astonishing $82.9 billion from corporations, a new funding database from the Claremont Institute has found. The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life explained the necessity of their report in an article published in Newsweek, where the Center asserted that the 2020 BLM movement was about more than just “rioting and destruction.” The Center explained that “The BLM pressure campaigns, harassment, and moral blackmail also amounted to possibly the most lucrative shakedown of corporate America in its history.” “As a point of reference, $82.9 billion is more...

The United States is now publicly discussing the "containment" of China with its Asia-Pacific vassals. On January 8, the Financial Times reported that the supreme US Marine Corps commander for Japan gave very direct statements regarding Pentagon's China strategy. Lieutenant General James Bierman thinks there are "numerous parallels" between Ukraine and Taiwan and admits the US is preparing what he dubbed "a counter-China theater" by strengthening coordination with its regional satellite states. "The US and Japanese armed forces are rapidly integrating their command structure and scaling up combined operations as Washington DC and its Asian allies prepare for a possible...

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy became the president of Ukraine in 2019, it made headlines around the world. That wasn’t because he was a political heavyweight deemed ready to resolve Ukraine’s deep-seated challenges —ranging from an economic crisis to corruption and an entrenched, powerful oligarchy — not to mention the conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country. It was just the opposite. Zelenskyy was a political novice whose closest brush with politics was playing the role of Ukrainian president in a well-known domestic TV series, before life imitated art and he decided to launch his own...

President Joe Biden, fresh from a surprisingly good November election for his fellow Democrats, has redoubled his commitment to rid the world of natural fuels (oil, gas, coal) and impose an all-electric universe powered in large part by offshore wind farms. To that end, Biden recently announced massive wind lease areas offshore from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Galveston, Texas. One is a 188,023-acre tract located 56 miles offshore from Lake Charles; the other is a 508,265-acre tract 24 nautical miles offshore from Galveston. While Louisiana’s Democrat Governor John Bel Edwards is ebullient about the economic prospects for offshore wind, his...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will be the keynote speaker at a top defense industry conference in Austin, Texas, later this month. Zelensky’s keynote address at the National Defense Industrial Association’s (NDIA) annual Future Force Capabilities Conference and Exhibition will occur over video on September 21. Zelensky is expected to make his pitch to U.S. defense companies for more weapons to aid in his country’s war with Russia, Reuters reported. Zelensky will be joined by Ukraine’s minister of defense, Oleksii Reznikov, who will also address the defense industry leaders. NDIA’s board of directors includes individuals who work for defense industry titans...

Pfizer and BioNTech said Friday that a COVID-19 vaccine could be tweaked and produced within 100 days to counter a "vaccine-escape" variant. [cut] In an emailed statement to FOX Business, Pfizer said the vaccine-makers are "remaining vigilant" and "constantly conducting surveillance efforts focused on monitoring for emerging variants that potentially escape protection from our vaccine." [cut] "As always, we will continue to follow the science as we examine the best approaches to protecting people against COVID-19," Pfizer wrote. "In the event that vaccine-escape variant emerges, Pfizer and BioNTech expect to be able to develop and produce a tailor-made vaccine against...

Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc have raised the prices of their COVID-19 vaccines in their latest European Union supply contracts, the Financial Times reported on Sunday. The new price for the Pfizer shot was 19.50 euros (US$23.15 ) against 15.50 euros previously, the newspaper said, citing portions of the contracts seen. The price of a Moderna vaccine was $25.50 a dose, the contracts show, up from about 19 euros in the first procurement deal but lower than the previously agreed $28.50 because the order had grown, the report said, citing one official close to the matter. The European Commission said...

Many of the union lifeguards working in Los Angeles County make more money than the governor's $210,000 salary, and the top earners were approaching $400,000, and they can thank a powerful union that took advantage of a noncompetitive contract, according to a new report. John Miltimore has written at the Foundation for Economic Education that an OpenTheBooks review found the top earner was Fernando Boiteux, who got $291,971 in salary, benefits and perks as "acting chief lifeguard" in 2019. Second was Capt. Daniel Douglas, whose compensation was only $368,668. "Nearly all the top paid lifeguards were men, the report notes,...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) stated that there has been a nearly “800% increase April over April” in the amount of fentanyl coming across the border apprehended by the Texas Department of Public Safety. And that there has been enough fentanyl obtained to kill everyone in New York. Abbott said, “I’ve got to tell you, Steve, there’s something else, a new dynamic about what’s going on at the border that Americans need to know about, and that is the increased apprehension of fentanyl coming across the border. Yes, there...

The European Commission has signed a contract with US pharmaceutical giant Gilead, securing 30,000 doses of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir for EU member states and Britain. Remdesivir is the first drug that received EU approval to treat severe cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The €63-million ($74-million) contract will be paid for with an emergency instrument from the European Union’s shared budget, the EU’s executive body announced on Wednesday. Stella Kyriakides, EU Commissioner for health, called this move “another important step forward in our fight to overcome this disease”, and said the contract between the commission and...

Surprise, surprise: people who work in tech are rich. But ever since a new law came into effect last year that requires publicly traded companies to report the median pay of their employees, we know exactly how rich. Silicon Valley led the pack. As reported to the SEC, Google employees are the most made of money: their median annual pay in 2018 was $246,804. That's an increase of nearly $50,000 from what Google employees made in 2017. Facebook came in second place, with a median pay of $228,651 in 2018. However, this number fell by nearly $12,000 from 2017. A...

President Obama is living the life of a former king, vacationing these days at a palatial estate in the south of France. At what point has he made enough? Silly us for asking. Daily Mail has a report with a lot of photographs: Former US president Barack Obama and his family arrived in Avignon in the south of France for a week's holiday just days after they were pictured celebrating daughter Sasha's graduation from high school. The Obamas are reportedly staying at a luxurious 18th century farmhouse on Bathelasse island, near the Provencal city. Barack, 57, his wife Michelle, 55,...

As Democrats cobble on about their chances of beating President Trump, and backslap with one another about how 'beatable' the man is, here's some news to give them indigestion from Lauren DeBellis Appell at Real Clear Politics: The Center for Responsive Politics, which uses Federal Election Commission data, found that during the first three months of 2019 the number of women who donated to President Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign topped the number of women who donated to any Democratic candidate running for president, accounting for more than 45 percent of all individual donations. That means President Trump had more female...

NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is really stretching that “ripped from the headlines” mindset with its latest episode. Not only does SVU maintain the media lie about the Covington Catholic kids (this time with Jewish students), the show also manages to play defense for Rep. Ilhan Omar (with a Muslim councilwoman standing in for "Native American elder" Nathan Phillips). Who knew you could fit so much intersectional dishonesty into one hour? The May 9 episode “Assumptions” opens with two Jewish teenage boys running from a vandalized synagogue where we find Muslim Councilwoman Nahla Nasar (Nazneen Contractor) has been...

For all his claims to being "everyman," the great grassroots candidate, fumblin' Uncle Joe all full of malapropisms, or Amtrak Joe who rides the train, news is getting out about potential Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden, and he doesn't quite look like the everyman he projects himself to be. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel: For his appearance at the Broward Center last month, Joe Biden wasn’t simply a former vice president and possible 2020 presidential candidate. He was an artist, similar in many ways to many other entertainers. That means everything about the appearance — not just the fee...

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos did NOT have a prenuptial agreement so, by all rights, they will split their incredible fortune right down the middle ... sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ. The couple will file divorce docs in Washington, where community property rules ... translation -- all earnings and income during the marriage are split 50/50. When the couple married in 1993 -- 6 months after meeting -- Jeff wasn't even a millionaire. He didn't become one until 1997, so dreams of being the richest man in the world were pie in the sky. The division of assets will be...

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos said that he will divorce his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie Bezos, in a tweet on Wednesday. "As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the couple wrote in the statement. "If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again," it continued.

President Trump didn't play along with the usual narrative at the G-7 summit, and the liberal media predictably characterized him as the villain: Even before then, Mr. Trump had left himself the outlier in the annual session. By departing before the end, he skipped sessions about climate change, oceans and clean energy — ceding not only America’s leadership on those topics, but also its very seat at the table. Lost in this breathless "transcription" of events is the question of whether America should lead on so-called "issues" such as climate change, oceans, and supposedly "clean" energy.