Free Republic

In successfully lobbying Congress for an additional $61 billion in Ukraine war funding, an effort that ended this month with celebratory Democrats waving Ukrainian flags in the House chamber, President Biden has cast his administration’s standoff with Russia as an existential test for democracy. “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas,” Biden declared in his State of the Union address in March. “History is watching, just like history watched three years ago on January 6th.” While Biden’s narrative is widely accepted by Washington’s political establishment, a close examination of...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) unveiled a gambit to burst a legislative logjam and unleash a four-vote flood including a standalone vote on tens of billions in American taxpayer aid to Ukraine. The plan appears to exploit the sense of urgency in Congress for sending aid to Israel in the wake of Iranian missile attacks in a scheme to bypass Republican animosity towards continuing to fund Ukraine’s war against Russia. Johnson unveiled his plan to his colleagues during a Monday night House Republican Conference meeting. His plan is to hold a single vote on a rule — the product specifying which...

The Biden administration's Department of Energy announced Monday that it would distribute $6 billion in grant funds to a number of climate projects, according to a department press release. The funds will be dispersed to 33 projects across the country as part of Biden's "Investing in America Agenda." The grant program aims to "decarbonize energy-intensive industries, reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions, support good-paying union jobs, revitalize industrial communities, and strengthen the nation's manufacturing competitiveness." Only projects that demonstrate a commitment to an "equitable and inclusive clean energy future" by "develop[ing] and ultimately implement[ing] a comprehensive Community Benefits Plan" are eligible....

House Speaker Mike Johnson has the fate of a democracy and a people in his hands. It’s not the United States, which will survive – even if the coming general election results in another existential test for the constitutional system. The country Johnson has the power to save is Ukraine, two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded, decreeing that it didn’t have the right to exist. Ukraine’s soldiers – trapped in a World War I-style hellscape of trench warfare – are running out of bullets. There are signs that Russia may be about to break a stalemate and tip...

The Department of Energy announced more than $350 million for rural renewable energy projects from the bipartisan infrastructure law funds Tuesday. On a call with reporters, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said the $366 million would be allocated across 17 projects in 20 states and 30 tribal nations. Twelve of the projects are on tribal lands, according to Granholm. “These projects showcase rural and remote communities [and] innovative approaches to clean energy deployment. They span technologies, they are replicable, they’re scalable, and they include everything from building micro grids for community health centers so they never lose power for lifesaving equipment,...

The National Rifle Association and its former longtime leader were found liable Friday in a lawsuit centered on the organization’s lavish spending. The New York jury found that Wayne LaPierre, who was the NRA’s CEO for three decades, misspent millions of dollars of the group’s money on pricey perks for themselves. LaPierre, 74, sat stone-faced in the front row of the courtroom as the verdict was read aloud. The verdict is a win for New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who campaigned on investigating the NRA’s not-for-profit status. It is the latest blow to the powerful group, which...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — As he closes in on the Republican presidential nomination, former President Donald Trump made a highly unusual stop Saturday, hawking new Trump-branded sneakers at “Sneaker Con,” a gathering that bills itself as the “The Greatest Sneaker Show on Earth.” Trump was met with loud boos as well as cheers at the Philadelphia Convention Center as he introduced what he called the first official Trump footwear. The shoes, gold lame high tops with an American flag detail on the back, are being sold as “Never Surrender High-Tops” for $399 on a new website that also sells Trump-branded “Victory47”...

Increasingly, Americans of all generations are suffering from climate anxiety. There are, of course, a growing number of people who are directly impacted by climate disasters — severe weather, extreme heat, wildfires, even sunny-day flooding. But there are also an increasing number of people who are simply prone to worry — and in some cases, outright panic — over the freakish images and disturbing forecasts about the long-term impact of climate change that are now unavoidable. “We have an epidemic of anxiety,” said Dr. Heidi Schreiber-Pan, a Towson-based psychotherapist whose practice focuses on harnessing nature’s potential in therapeutic contexts. “More...

Michael Cohen, former President Trump’s onetime fixer and personal lawyer, predicted Saturday that Trump will try to capitalize on the indictments he faces for “as long as he can.” “What he’s doing is he’s inciting his base. That’s really what it’s about, because the more he incites them, the more money that they raise,” Cohen said in an interview with CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “He will continue to ride this grift as long as he can,” Cohen added.

President Biden invoked a Cold War-era law in a surprising move Friday to pour taxpayer funds into domestic manufacturing of electric heat pumps, an alternative to gas-powered residential furnaces. In a joint announcement with the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) said the federal government would award a "historic" $169 million for nine projects across 15 sites nationwide in an effort to accelerate electric heat pump manufacturing. The significant level of funding was made possible after Biden utilized the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to increase domestic production of green energy technologies. Under the actions announced Friday, the DOE...

A green energy company on Tuesday pulled the plug on two wind projects off the coast of New Jersey which were approved for an estimated $1 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and state lawmakers. The Danish outfit Orsted cited high inflation, rising interest rates and supply chain issues as their reasons for scrapping its Ocean Wind 1 and 2 projects – both of which were buoyed by tax incentives included in President Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act. “Macroeconomic factors have changed dramatically over a short period of time, with high inflation, rising interest rates, and supply...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wants to visit Israel in a show of solidarity with the country amid the fighting in Gaza, two Ukrainian and Israeli officials told Axios. Why it matters: A visit by Zelensky would boost international support for Israel's counteroffensive against Hamas in Gaza. Behind the scenes: Zelensky's office sent an official request to the Israeli Prime Minister's office asking to coordinate a visit, the Ukrainian and Israeli officials said.

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “The Open,” acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su responded to a question on why the Biden administration is using tax dollars to give wealthy people credits to buy expensive electric cars by stating that they’re trying to create jobs and people support tax credits that help create jobs, and also because there’s a climate crisis. After Su mentioned the Biden administration’s economic policies, host Jonathan Ferro asked, “Let’s talk about those policies. There is something really peculiar going on at the moment. If you think about what’s happening at the picket line, they have serious...

Very obviously I agree with the analysis: There is a massive amount of people and institutions jumping from one grift to the next to the next. But that’s not necessarily new: Especially when it comes to investments it’s just natural to follow the hype, to try to ride the wave wherever it leads you to get the next payday. Everybody can probably name a few people who have embraced that paradigm fully. People who effortlessly shift from “web3 is the future” to “I will explain to you why ‘AI’ will replace you”, people who get fame by talking about self...

Joe Biden on Sunday hobbled over to reporters posted up on King Charles Avenue outside of St. Edmond Catholic Church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to explain why he’s always at the beach. Biden has spent more than a solid year on vacation without visitor logs. He spent virtually the entire month of August snoozing at the beach and hiding away in Lake Tahoe. Biden came up with a new excuse for his non-stop holiday in Rehoboth Beach: He has no ‘home’ to go to. “Oh, and by the way, the reason why I’m here today, just for one day –...

It has been called the greatest grift in American history: an estimated $280 billion of taxpayer money that was supposed to help needy families and businesses through the COVID pandemic has been stolen. Only about $8 billion has been recovered through Justice Department prosecutions, according to a new congressional letter that is raising serious concern that the government is essentially yawning at a staggering amount of loss in tax dollars. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer wrote the letter to the Justice Department last week that he believes the vast majority of unrecovered money was stolen by criminal...

President Biden unexpectedly told an audience in New Mexico Wednesday that he has “hibernated” in the past, an apparent joke that resurrected memories of former President Donald Trump bestowing the unflattering nickname during the 2020 election campaign. “Siemens Corporation laid off workers who were making wind turbine parts and put the plant in Iowa and Kansas into what they now call, they refer to as ‘hibernation’,” Biden said at a wind-tower plant in Albuquerque. “I hibernated in a while — all, you know, in Iowa for a while,” he said to a smattering of chuckles. “But look, now we’re reopening...

Cars were seen lining up outside Carlee Russell's Alabama home on Sunday, just a day after her 26th birthday. A dozen cars lined the driveway and around the home, and drew the attention of police in Hoover, Alabama, who drove past the home as people entered and left. Police said Russell delayed additional requests to interview her again about her supposed July 13 disappearance. Russell vanished after calling 911 to report a toddler wandering along an Alabama highway.

The founder and former director of a Portland-based charity has been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after being found guilty of stealing more than $321,000 in Covid relief money. In addition to time behind bars, 62-year-old Theodore Johnson of the now-defunct Ten Penny International Housing Foundation was also ordered to pay back the full amount to the US Small Business Administration and Oregon Department of Administrative Services. According to the Department of Justice, Johnson founded Ten Penny in 2017 and served as its director of operations. In 2021, the United States government began rolling out its Covid relief...

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives, according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs that helped small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years. The numbers issued Tuesday by the U.S. Small Business Administration inspector general are much greater than the office’s previous projections and underscore how vulnerable the Paycheck Protection and COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan programs were to fraudsters, particularly during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.