Free Republic

WASHINGTON; If President-elect Donald Trump thinks he’s going to impose a 35 percent tariff on companies importing goods, he might want to check with Republicans in Congress. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested Monday that Republicans would not be in favor of imposing the 35 percent tariff on foreign goods that Trump proposed Sunday in a series of tweets.  Trump may not understand how tariffs really work; it would be very difficult for the United States to impose them on specific companies that move jobs to a foreign country; or that Congress, not the president, sets them. But he...

White House press secretary Josh Earnest encouraged President-elect Trump on Monday to take advantage of the "expertise and advice" of career diplomats at the State Department as the controversy surrounding the incoming president's recent call to Taiwan continues to boil over. "Whenever you are talking about the president-elect interacting with foreign leaders, it's incredibly important. It has profound consequences for our country and for our national interests around the world," Earnest said in response to a reporter's question about whether Trump is "winging" his discussions with foreign leaders. "Last week, we had some conversations about a conversation the president-elect had...

BREAKING NEWS - Mistrial declared in Michael Slager murder case

One Kansas City Royals fan feels like she is being punished for the good deed of others. Joyce Jeter has a debilitating medical condition, causing her to rely on Social Security as her only source of income. Royals fans rallied around her to raise money to send her to a game at Kauffman Stadium, but now that gift is leaving her financial future in jeopardy. Joyce told Fox4KC she feels like she's being robbed all because she accepted a gift.

The incoming chair of the congressional panel that oversees labor issues on Monday questioned the need for unions and said she wants to repeal various Obama administration labor policies.Organized labor has “sort of lost its reason for being” because of the many laws in place to protect workers, said Representative Virginia Foxx, a 73-year-old Republican from North Carolina who will become chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce in January, in a telephone interview with Reuters Labor unions have already been wary about how they will fare under the incoming administration of President-elect Donald...

THE HEART OF TERRORISM Pakistan named and shamed. Will it reform? At the Heart of Asia (HoA) summit which concluded on Sunday in Amritsar, Pakistan was well and truly cornered for promoting terrorism. Its isolation can be understood from the fact that for the first time, a HoA declaration named the Pakistan-based terror outfits, Lashkar-e-Tayyeba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as forces that are working to destabilise the region. This is a severe indictment of Pakistan, since not only do the two organisations operate from Pakistani soil but they also get overt and covert support from the establishment, especially from the Army there....

Breaking on twitter via Paul Egan. Political reporter, Detroit.

In an official announcement on The Tom Joyner Morning Show, King said that the project, which he has dubbed Injustice Boycott, will aim to force the progressive cities to meet local activists’ demands regarding police brutality. And if those demands are not met within 43 days — by Martin Luther King Jr. Day — King says that he will activate Injustice Boycott supporters — more than 200,000 people, according to his estimate — to level a four-prong attack on commerce and government. King, who took a job as a justice columnist at The Daily News last year, said that the...

"The left will stop at nothing. They will riot at the slightest provocation. They will use our children as suicide bombers, blowing families apart over made up differences. They will abuse the court system, the regulatory agencies, and every damn little ordinance in the tiniest of backwater towns to harass and beleaguer our efforts. We must fight for our children as we fight for our future...I tell you this not to depress you, but to alert you, so you aren't caught off guard by the ferocity of the coming counter-attack."

New York Fed president backs gradual interest-rate hikes Without mentioning President-elect Donald Trump by name, Federal Reserve officials on Monday warned that the incoming administration’s fiscal policy must be intelligently designed to spur the economy while maintaining a rainy-day fund to help the economy withstand another downturn. “Smart” government spending and tax reform could help the economy grow, said Chicago Fed President Charles Evans in a speech to the Executives Club of Chicago, according to Reuters.

Danilo Maldonado, known as “El Sexto,” was taken by Cuban security agents the day after the death of former leader Fidel Castro. Maldonado, 33, still has not been charged, but those familiar with the graffiti artist’s actions that morning say that he posted a Facebook message seemingly gloating over Castro’s death and urging people to “come out to the streets…and ask for liberty.” Maldonado also is said to have spray-painted “El Sexto” on a wall near Hotel Habana Libre. His girlfriend, a writer who lives in Miami, said that Maldonado has been transferred several times since his arrest on Nov....

The drama over Buzzfeed trying to publicly shame the stars of an HGTV show over their church’s stance on same-sex marriage just keeps getting more ridiculous. The author of the hit piece, Kate Aurthur, is a reporter and editor for the liberal site Buzzfeed News. Alex Varney, a producer for Dana Loesch, a conservative host for The Blaze, emailed Arthur, asking her to come on the show via Skype to discuss the article. Then, in response to a tweet from Loesch that criticized her, Aurthur tweeted a screenshot of the email Varney sent to her to ask about coming on...

Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, widely considered a frontrunner to be the next Democratic National Committee chair, says House Democrats will do nothing but “vote no” in the coming years under the new Trump administration. Ellison, who has faced questions over whether he can juggle both working in Congress and rebuilding a depleted Democratic Party, defended himself at a party meeting on Friday by suggesting that working as a Democratic congressman won’t require much effort.

Nearly half of Americans in a global survey said they believed an enemy fighter could be tortured to extract information, according to results released Monday. That finding puts respondents in the United States in contrast with citizens of many countries and at odds with international law, which prohibits torture under any circumstances. The results were part of a poll carried out by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which surveyed 17,000 people in 16 countries, including many nations in conflict or recovering from conflict, to gauge public opinion about the laws of war. The findings on torture were among...

As Donald Trump continues to indicate that he might be willing to change his position on climate change, which he has long called a “hoax,” the president-elect met Monday with former vice president Al Gore, who has become a prominent activist in the fight against global warming. Gore was originally scheduled to meet just with Trump's oldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, who is not registered with a political party and has already pushed her father to adopt positions usually promoted by Democrats. Gore told reporters that after that meeting, he then had “an extremely interesting conversation” with the president-elect. “I had a lengthy and...

A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows the highest abortion rate in the country – in comparison to the birth rate – is in New York City, where the abortion rate is 60 percent of its birth rate. The Abortion Surveillance report for 2013 finds a total of 664,435 abortions were reported to CDC for that year, down five percent from 2012. Of these abortions, 98.2 percent came from 47 regular reporting areas for which the abortion rate was 12.5 abortions per 1,000 women between the ages of 15 and 44. In 2013, New York...

"Tomi" host Tomi Lahren gives her take on the Black Lives Matter movement and explains why she lashed out against Colin Kaepernick for his national anthem protest. But there's more here for everyone to think about.

Justin Ross Harris, convicted three weeks ago of intentionally leaving his 22-month-old son inside a hot car to die, was sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. An additional 32 years — the maximum penalty allowed — was added to the sentence by Cobb County Superior Court Judge Mark Staley Clark, following the recommendation of prosecutors. “The state’s recommendation is the very least that can be considered just,” Staley Clark said. “There is no justification,” lead prosecutor Chuck Boring said Monday in requesting the toughest punishment possible. “This is basically the most aggravated killing of another...

PITTSBURGH - Election officials in Allegheny County finished recanvassing dozens of voting districts Monday, with no changes in the election results. A recanvass is not the same as a recount. Elections Division staff compared the final results from the voting machines in 52 districts to the results on the flash memory cards.

President-elect Donald Trump met Monday with former Vice President Al Gore and discussed climate change, as the two men with opposing views of the issue sought common ground. After the meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, Mr. Gore gave an upbeat assessment of the powwow. "I had a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground," he told reporters in the lobby. The high-profile meeting raised eyebrows because President-elect Donald Trump has been an outspoken skeptic of climate change and Mr. Gore is one of the world's most prominent advocates...