Free Republic

These bottoms are getting a bum rap. Bootcut, low-rise, skinny or straight — jeans reign supreme as a stylish staple in most wardrobes worldwide. For decades, denim designs have graced the dapper derrière likes of Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Taylor Swift and Kanye West. The haute timelessness of the togs notwithstanding, recent research from Guangdong University of Technology found that wearing a pair of fast-fashion jeans just once creates a whopping 2.50 kg of carbon emissions. The environmental wear-and-tear of the pants is equivalent to driving 6.4 miles in an average gasoline-powered car. “This study took jeans as an example...

Cotton is a fiber grown on a plant of the Gossypium genus, which, once harvested, can be cleaned and spun into the fabric we know and love. Needing sunshine, abundant water, and relatively frost-free winters, cotton is grown in a surprising variety of locations with diverse climates, including Australia, Argentina, West Africa, and Uzbekistan. However, the largest producers of cotton are China, India, and the United States. Both Asian countries produce the highest quantities, mostly for their domestic markets, and the U.S. is the largest exporter of cotton with about 15 million bales each year.1 "Cotton: World Markets and Trade."...

Cotton is one of the most valuable crops grown in the U.S., with a harvest value of some US$7 billion yearly. It is cultivated across a crescent of 17 states stretching from Virginia to California and is used in virtually every type of clothing, as well as in medical supplies and home goods such as upholstery. Cotton grows inside a hard, fibrous case called a boll. About 100 days after planting, the bolls mature and split open, revealing thousands of fluffy white fibers inside. Each boll contains 20 to 40 seeds with fibers attached to them, which is why the...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) endorsed Donald Trump for president Wednesday, the latest high-profile endorsement for Trump leading up to the January 15 Iowa caucus. “When Donald Trump was president, America was safe, strong, and prosperous,” Cotton told Fox News Digital. “With Joe Biden as president, everything has gone to hell: families can’t afford groceries, our border is wide open to a full-blown invasion, and our enemies are starting wars everywhere. “I endorse President Trump and I look forward to working with him to win back the White House and the Senate so we can help hardworking Arkansans suffering from Joe...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a key ally of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), declared Friday that President Biden’s $100 billion foreign aid and national security funding request is “dead on arrival” on Capitol Hill. “President Biden’s slush fund proposal is dead on arrival, just like his budgets,” Cotton said in a statement. “We will not spend, for example, $3.5 billion to address the ‘potential needs of Gazans,” he added, arguing that humanitarian assistance to Gaza could inadvertently fund “a resupply line for Hamas terrorists.”

Hussein Mousavian headlined STRATCOM's Deterrence Symposium U.S. military leaders earlier this month hosted a former top Iranian official who came under fire last year for bragging about the hardline regime’s efforts to assassinate American leaders. U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) tapped Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, to headline its 2023 Deterrence Symposium, a high-level powwow that brought the former Iranian official shoulder-to-shoulder with America’s top military brass. Mousavian’s appearance at the mid-August gathering, which came to light on Monday after STRATCOM posted...

The continued — an increasingly curious — absence of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) from her duties in the upper chamber of Congress is becoming a growing thorn in the sides of the Democrats. Feinstein is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and her prolonged recovery from shingles has ground to a halt the Democrats’ ability to further pollute the judicial system with activist judges who have been nominated by Joe Biden’s puppeteers. Over the weekend, Matt wrote a VIP column about Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) asserting that the Republicans on the committee not let Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer...

Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton vowed that lawmakers would stall Biden government nominations until it handed over the materials the FBI recovered from both former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. "Until the administration stops stonewalling Congress, there will be pain as a consequence for them," Cotton said, according to The Hill. "Whether it's blocking nominees or withholding budgetary funds, Congress will impose pain on the administration until they provide these documents." "I'm prepared to refuse consent to fast-track any nominee from any department or agency and to take every step that I can on every committee on which...

A total of 18 Republicans joined all Senate Democrats to pass a $1.85 trillion omnibus spending bill Thursday afternoon, in the final two weeks in which Democrats control the House of Representatives. The bill passed 68-29. Since there are 47 Democrats in the Senate and three independents who caucus with Democrats, that means 18 Republicans voted to support the spending package. They are listed below. Conservatives called the move during the lame-duck session a “stunning act of betrayal.” Democrats have had both branches of Congress and the presidency during all of 2022, conservatives say, but rushed to pass this budget...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) predicted on Thursday that leftist President Joe Biden’s decision to trade imprisoned basketball player Brittney Griner for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “merchant of death,” would result in people dying as rogue states interpreted the move as open season to arrest Americans. Biden announced and the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Thursday that Griner and Bout were both free.

If Kroger and Albertsons thought Republicans would rescue their plan to merge, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) made it clear last Tuesday that support for the merger among Republicans is anything but certain. What is the background? Kroger announced in October plans to acquire Albertsons for $24.6 billion. The plan was not exactly celebrated. Instead, it triggered immediate antitrust concerns, especially among Democrats who are suspicious of massive corporations. After all, Kroger is the nation's second-largest grocery store chain and Albertsons is the fourth-largest. If the acquisition were approved, Kroger could potentially rival Walmart. What happened with Cotton? At a hearing...

During an interview with Fox News, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) warned China could soon move to follow through with its threat to take Taiwan. According to the Arkansas Republican, the move on Taiwan from Chinese President Xi Jinping may come in 2023. “I’m concerned that as early as next year, Xi Jinping could decide to go for the jugular,” he said. “This has been a very important year for him in China. He just secured an unprecedented third five-year term. He’s made it clear that by the end of that five-year term in 2027, he wants to invade and annex...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Sunday voiced agreement with the Biden administration’s decision to grant sovereign immunity to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shielding the autocrat from a lawsuit over the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “What the administration has touted this week in granting sovereign immunity to Mohammed bin Salman is in keeping with the practice of custom of lawsuits involving foreign heads of state,” Cotton told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream. “It would have been a major break if those customs did not grant that kind of immunity.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) nominated Sen. Mitch McConnell for reelection as GOP leader after a motion to postpone the leadership election was quashed during a Wednesday meeting among members of the conference. The motion to postpone the Senate leadership election failed by a reported vote count of 32-16. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) put forward the motion, which Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) supported.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said the U.S. will continue to strongly support Ukraine with military aide as a new Congress will sit this January...“I believe we will continue to support Ukraine with the kind of military aide that only the U.S. can provide,” he told Newsmax’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight” Wednesday night. “Some of our European partners can provide some military support, but really there are some systems only America can provide.”

Race baiters have falsely accused a Little League Baseball team of “racism” for putting cotton balls on a black player’s head. On Sunday, photos and videos of the incident made a splash on social media as critics slammed the kids and their coaches for putting cotton on the black child’s head in an act the critics claim evokes slavery. The video pointed to as an example of “racism” seemed to show the black player sitting glumly in his seat as his white teammates pulled the white, cotton-like stuffing out of stuffed toys and placed the balls of puff on the...

The FBI director knows a lot about issues that matter to the Biden regime and the media. But he isn’t so savvy when it comes to issues that matter to Americans. It was time for him to fly. FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the first time since July 2021, insisted he had to leave the hearing by 1:30 p.m. sharp. (It began at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning.) Despite leading a scandal-ridden agency quickly losing the trust of the American people and congressional Republicans, Wray somehow believes that setting aside less than four hours...

In the final hours of the Trump presidency, the U.S. Justice Department raised privacy concerns to thwart the release of hundreds of pages of documents that Donald Trump had declassified to expose FBI abuses during the Russia collusion probe, and the agency then defied a subsequent order to release the materials after redactions were made, according to interviews and documents. The previously untold story of how highly anticipated declassified material never became public is contained in a memo obtained by Just the News from the National Archives that was written by then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows just hours...

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) said he hopes the top official at the Democratic National Committee seeks help following a bizarre Wednesday morning rant in which the party official called the Arkansas senator a "little maggot-infested man." Asked about the comment from DNC chair Jaime Harrison on MSNBC's Morning Joe, a spokesman for Cotton said he didn't even know who Harrison was until hearing his comment this morning but is now concerned about his well-being. "While Senator Cotton was not familiar with Jamie Harrison before this morning," a Cotton spokesman told the Free Beacon, "he wishes him the best and...

During a Wednesday appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Jamie Harrison railed against Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) over his opposition to U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson in part because she represented Guantanamo Bay detainees as a federal public defender. Harrison deemed Cotton “the lowest of the low” and called him a “little, maggot-infested man” who “doesn’t deserve to be in the United States Senate” because he suggested Jackson would have represented the Nazis in the Nuremberg trials. “In a Senate where there is Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton is the lowest of...