Free Republic

The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits climbed slightly last week amid broader strength in the U.S. labor market. Claims rose to 227,000 for the week ending July 29, up 6,000 from the previous week, ahead of more comprehensive jobs data to be released Friday by the Labor Department. Despite the uptick, U.S. employers cut just 23,697 jobs in July, the lowest number in 11 months, according to employment research firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. “Companies, weary of letting go of needed workers, are finding other ways to cut costs. Many have slowed hiring, but wages continue to rise, particularly...

Happiness is not as simple as it sounds. Philosophers advise that the pursuit of happiness may be a misguided aspiration, and psychologists warn that illusory happiness achieved through denial can harm your health. The United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s World Happiness Report 2023 has perplexed many people with its surprising national rankings of what it termed “happiness.” Because this significant work has spawned many commentaries and much confusion, it awaits clarification.Finns and Israelis have little in common yet are now doubly bonded: Both ranked in the top ten on “happiness” – Finland first and Israel fourth – and many...

A reporter and 2024 presidential hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) shared a tense exchange during the Florida governor’s first campaign event in New Hampshire on Thursday after the reporter asked him why he did not take questions from voters during the event. “Why not take any questions from voters, though?” the reporter, identified as the Associated Press’s Steve Peoples, asked as DeSantis mingled with the crowd, posing for pictures with the event’s attendees. “Governor, how come you’re not taking questions from voters?” the reporter asked again, prompting a response from DeSantis, who explained that he was now very clearly talking...

John Durham’s final report blasts the FBI for using the so-called Steele dossier, a compilation of unconfirmed claims about Donald Trump and Russia, without sufficiently considering the chance that Steele’s findings contained deliberate Russian falsehoods. But Durham himself relies substantially on a sketchy intelligence product that may be Russian disinformation to push a partisan political narrative. And he does not even note the irony. Durham, the special counsel who former Attorney General Bill Barr selected in 2019 to look into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, may have succeeded in his apparent goal of serving up reheated scraps for...

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment from the White House podium Tuesday about Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the investigation into Trump-Russia collusion. Durham’s 300-page report found that the FBI and Department of Justice "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law" regarding its investigation into possible Russia collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016. Though the report dropped on Monday, only RealClearNews reporter Philip Wegmann referred to Durham’s report and asked for a reaction at the White House press briefing. "What is the White House reaction to special counsel report on how...

Monday, moments after the long-anticipated Durham report about the Department of Justice and FBI probe into allegations the Trump 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the presidency, CNN’s “The Lead” host Jake Tapper weighed in on the results. Tapper acknowledged to his viewers the report, which criticized the FBI for the intelligence used to justify its investigation, was “devastating” to the agency and exonerated former President Donald Trump.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden made a combined income of $579,514 last year and Vice President Harris and her husband made $456,918, according to documents published by the White House on Tuesday based on the couples’ 2022 tax returns. The president and his wife paid an effective federal income tax rate of 23.8 percent, the documents showed. Those figures are lower compared to 2021, when the Bidens earned $610,702 with an effective federal income tax rate of 24.6 percent before taking office.

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” White House National Economic Council Deputy Director Bharat Ramamurti stated that the March CPI report is “very, very positive” and that we’re moving in the right direction on inflation. Ramamurti said, “I think it’s a very, very positive report, as you highlighted just now, inflation at the headline level continues to come down, nine straight months now of declining inflation. One of the most salient prices for families, for consumers — grocery prices — actually went down over the last month. And I think if you take a step back and...

Peter Doocy GRILLS John Kirby after new report admits intelligence disaster in Afghanistan withdrawal: "Who's going to get fired over this?!"KIRBY: "The purpose of it is not accountability."(Video of the exchange in the link below) https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1644054873149779968

WASHINGTON — The most expansive federal report in over two decades on guns and crime shows a shrinking turnaround between the time a gun was purchased and when it was recovered from a crime scene, indicating firearms bought legally are more quickly being used in crimes around the country.It also documents a spike in the use of conversion devices that make a semiautomatic gun fire like a machine gun, along with the growing seizure of so-called ghost guns, privately made firearms that are hard to trace.

A stronger-than-expected jobs report has put the wind at President Biden’s back ahead of his State of the Union address next week, and it could provide additional momentum as he prepares a reelection announcement in the coming weeks. Biden on Friday hailed new data from the Labor Department that showed the economy added 517,000 jobs in January, far exceeding economists’ expectations. The president wasted little time connecting the positive development with next Tuesday’s address to the nation. “Next week, I’ll be reporting on the state of the union. But today, I’m happy to report that the state of the union...

Ukraine scored 33 out of 100 on corruption in 2022, which puts the country near the bottom third out of 180 countries scored, according to the annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) published this week by non-profit Transparency International. Out of 180 countries scored, Ukraine was the 116th most corrupt, according to the yearly ranking published on Tuesday. Ukraine’s score of 33 was one point higher than in 2021, but the same as the year before, 2020.

The House Jan. 6 committee’s final report says that former President Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Trump “lit that fire,” the committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, wrote in the report.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is asking the state's Supreme Court to investigate New York Attorney General Letitia James for publishing a report claiming he sexually assaulted multiple women during his tenure. Cuomo claims James manipulated the investigation in order to pursue her own run for governor, failed to appoint independent investigators to the case and omitted crucial evidence from her report released last August. Cuomo argued James's press conference announcing the findings of the report "was meant to be prejudicial and highly inflammatory, and to villainize me in the public eye, and to mislead the public and the...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Senior Adviser to President Joe Biden Gene Sperling said that the August inflation report is “not the report that I think anybody wanted to see,” and failed to meet the expectations of the market, but “headline inflation has basically been flat for two months in a row.” And the year-over-year number declined. Sperling also argued there are some things that might take time to work their way into the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and there are “a lot of signs that core inflation will be moving in the right direction.” Sperling stated,...

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) called on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign on Thursday after news that his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, emailed with conservative lawyer John Eastman, who was central in former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In a statement on Thursday, Pascrell said Thomas “cannot possibly be seen as a neutral actor,” labeling him “a corrupt jurist.”

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden made a combined income of $610,702 last year while Vice President Harris and her husband made more than $1.65 million, according to documents published by the White House on Friday based on the couples’ 2021 tax returns. The president and his wife paid an effective federal income tax rate of 24.6 percent, the documents showed. Those figures are comparable to 2020, when the Bidens earned $607,336 with an effective federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent before taking office.

Rental prices for single-family homes have skyrocketed to record levels across the U.S., increasing to an average of 7.8 percent in 2021. Apartment rents are up too. “Of the markets in our analysis, 97.7 percent recorded price increases for one-bedrooms and all markets saw increases for two-bedrooms [100 percent],” the report, issued last month, said. “Nationwide rent prices have increased significantly year-over-year. One- and two-bedroom rents were up 24.4 percent and 21.8 percent, respectively.”

US officials believe Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine and an attack could take place as soon as next week, according to a report out Friday. PBS foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin tweeted that US officials believe Putin has communicated an invasion order to the Russian military and that Washington expects a “horrific, bloody” campaign.

MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace seemed to roll out the red carpet for White House chief of staff Ron Klain to discuss the latest jobs report. U.S. job growth shattered expectations in January, according to the jobs report released Friday from the Labor Department, adding 467,000 jobs, topping the 150,000 jobs gained forecast by Refinitiv economists who were pessimistic with their predictions due to the surge of the omicron variant. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4 percent.