Free Republic

The recent passage of a law in Alabama that essentially bans all abortions in the state resulted in a barrage of coverage of other abortion restrictions being adopted in conservative areas this year. But as FiveThirtyEight illustrated in a story last week, this is not a new trend — Republican-controlled states have been chipping away at abortion access since the 2010 elections, which swept the GOP into power in state legislatures and governors’ mansions across the country.

While speaking at a meeting of Japanese business leaders in Tokyo, Trump said the stock market would be anywhere between 7,000 to 10,000 points higher if the U.S. central bank had chosen to keep interest rates steady. He also suggested that the growth rate in the U.S. would have exceeded 3 percent. "But they wanted to raise interest rates," he said. "You’ll explain that to me." Trump, despite hand-picking Chairman Jerome Powell more than a year ago, has been a frequent critic of the Fed, often urging policymakers to cut interest rates from the current target range of 2.25 percent...

A Republican ex-congressman and current Trump campaign adviser claimed President Trump, not the Obama-Biden administration, "owns" the economy in its current state. Former Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., responded Monday on "The Story" to claims from 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, who charged Trump "inherited" a growing economy from himself and former President Obama. Biden made the original remarks at a Philadelphia rally earlier this month, telling the crowd at Eakins Oval that Trump was engaging in "alternative facts." "I know President Trump likes to take credit for the economy and the economic growth and the low unemployment numbers," Biden told...

The Salt Lake Tribune reports the state plans to charge a $10,000 application fee and an additional $100,000 annual licensing fee for those chosen, according to draft rules for Utah's new medical marijuana program published last week. State officials say the license fees are meant to offset the expense of adding personnel and equipment to inspect the growing facilities. If all 10 grower licenses are granted, revenues to the agriculture department could top $1.1 million the first year and hover around $1 million over the following years as cultivators pay the renewal fee. The state's agricultural department expects to spend...

by Jenn Carter Left-wing actress Alyssa Milano slammed veteran actor Jon Voight’s recent remarks praising President Donald Trump, calling the Academy Award-winning star an “F-lister trying to stay relevant.” The response from the Twitterverse however was not what she intended. In a pair of videos entitled “To my fellow Americans,” Voight lauded President Trump for confronting creeping leftism in the United States and their “absurd words of the destruction.” The Ray Donovan star also called Trump the “greatest president” since Abraham Lincoln. “I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again, that our nation has been built on the solid ground from our forefathers. And there...

I’m not just saying it — CBO is. On Thursday the Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and Economic Outlook, and buried in one of its nearly impenetrable tables of numbers is a remarkable story that has gone entirely unreported by the mainstream media: The 2003 tax cut on capital gains has entirely paid for itself. More than paid for itself. Way more. To appreciate this story, we have to go back in time to January 2003, before the tax cut was enacted. Table 3-5 on page 60 in CBO’s Budget and Economic Outlook published in 2003 estimated that...

Social media companies, whose base of operations are on the Left Coast and operated by staff who are almost universally left wing, are squeezing conservatives. There have been some pretty glaring examples of bias, specifically the whole notion being accounts being suspended on Twitter for entirely arbitrary reasons. Yes, Facebook banned Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam for his long history of bigoted remarks, like calling Jewish people termites, but his account wasn’t suspended on Twitter. Oh, and even without using examples of bias, Twitter itself admits that the environment is so left wing that conservative employees cannot speak...

TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump pressed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday to even out a trade imbalance with the United States and said he was happy with how things were going with North Korea despite its recent missile and rocket launches. Trump told a news conference with Abe after their summit that he wanted U.S. exports to be put on a fair footing in Japan through the removal of trade barriers. He said he hoped to have more to announce on trade very soon and said he and Abe had agreed to expand cooperation in human...

teven Rattner, "car czar" and counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration, cites three different modelers in his N.Y. Times commentary, "Trump’s Formidable 2020 Tailwind." The big picture: Trump wins all three modelers. Economists predict that the tailwind is large. Ray Fair, a professor at Yale, "found that the growth rates of gross domestic product and inflation have been the two most important economic predictors — but he also found that incumbency was also an important determinant of presidential election outcomes." "Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has looked at 12 models, and Mr. Trump wins...

The economy invariably ranks among the top issues on the minds of voters in presidential elections. At the moment, it appears to offer President Trump a meaningful tailwind. But how big is that tailwind? Fortunately, economists have worked hard to develop models for predicting election outcomes, and according to one of the best of these, it should be quite large. One of the first — and perhaps still the best — of these models was created by Ray Fair, a professor at Yale. He found that the growth rates of gross domestic product and inflation have been the two most...

ALBANY — The tax filings of President Trump and all public elected officials in New York will be fair game for congressional Democrats under a new law. The state Legislature on Wednesday approved a bill that allows the state Department of Taxation and Finance to release tax returns of thousands of New Yorkers upon an official request by Congress. Gov. Andrew Cuomo previously said he would support the idea. “This bill stands for a principle of transparency in regards to top officials’ tax returns and recognizing that shedding light on conflicts, potential conflicts of interest is for a public purpose...

Lori Rodriguez, a 27-year-old communications professional in New York City, is not saving for retirement, and it isn’t necessarily because she can’t afford to — it’s because she doesn’t expect it to matter. Like many people her age, Rodriguez believes climate change will have catastrophic effects on our planet. Some 88% of millennials — a higher percentage than any other age group — accept that climate change is happening, and 69% say it will impact them in their lifetimes. Engulfed in a constant barrage of depressing news stories, many young people are skeptical about saving for an uncertain future. “I...

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Frank Houston knows something about the longtime estrangement of white men from the Democratic Party. His family roots are in nearby Macomb County, the symbolic home of working-class Reagan Democrats who, distressed by economic and social tumult, decided a liberal Democratic Party had left them, not the other way around. Mr. Houston grew up in the 1980s liking Ronald Reagan but idolizing Alex P. Keaton, the fictional Republican teenage son of former hippies who, played by Michael J. Fox on the television series “Family Ties,” comically captured the nation’s conservative shift. But over time, Mr. Houston...

On Saturday, Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was recently acclaimed as an even better leader than the legendary Steve Jobs, carved out a morning from his very busy schedule to deliver a commencement speech for the 2019 graduates of Tulane University in New Orleans. [cut] But as soon as Cook stepped up to the podium on Saturday, his message to Tulane’s graduates became the very opposite of what was expected of him—instead of presenting himself as a role model for the young graduates in the audience, Cook encouraged them to challenge older generations’ successes and to find their own. “In...

If you missed the live broadcast on Fox News Channel, you can catch it here.

The events in the above headline are not unrelated. Once the literally “no news” two-year news cycle of Trump-Russia collusion ended with the thump of the Mueller report finding no collusion and not recommending any obstruction of justice charges, it turns out Americans are OK with President Trump. More than OK. The Zogby Poll has Trump’s job approval at 51%, 3 points above Obama’s in the same poll at the same point in his first term. Again, it cannot be said enough, this is after two years of media hyperventilating over something that did not happen. Maybe more interesting: A...

Insurgent Democrat presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg acknowledged at the Fox News town hall in Claremont, New Hampshire Sunday evening that he needs to do more to appeal to "black and brown" voters, even as he confidently parried a series of policy questions -- and, on several occasions, went directly after President Trump. Buttigieg argued that minority voters are "skeptical of people who seem to come out of nowhere," after moderator Chris Wallace noted that he was polling at one-percent support among nonwhite primary voters according to a recent Fox News poll. On fiscal policy, Buttigieg pushed for four distinct tax...

Not as strong as many, including President Trump believes. GDP growth and even the jobs data, including the unemployment rate, though fairly sunny, look deceptively strong and need a deeper look, which we have provided for you over the past few weeks. See here.How Will The Economy Hold Up As Trade War Escalates?More important, is the U.S. economy so strong it can withstand an escalation in the trade war with China?We seriously doubt it and fully expect Trump will be forced to cave on some of his completely unrealistic demands. We have been consistent from day one: China will never...

The latest polling of six key battleground states shows President Trump holding on to his working-class base against former Vice President Joe Biden. After Biden announced his presidential bid, WPA Intelligence conducted a poll of Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and found Trump leading overall in those six states by a margin of 46 to 44 percent, reports the Washington Examiner. In the individual states, Trump leads in four: Wisconsin (46 to 42 percent), Florida (48 to 44 percent), Iowa (49 to 44 percent), and Texas (49 to 42 percent). In Pennsylvania, Trump is down only by a...

Some of President Trump’s top aides, who assume he will be re-elected, are already planning for an epic 2021 spending battle. What's happening: Senior administration officials — including acting Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought and fiscally conservative chief Mick Mulvaney — have told Republicans that the president doesn't want Congress to strike a spending deal in September when current funding runs out. Instead, Team Trump wants a short-term solution to preserve the ability to fight for massive spending cuts in the fifth year of a Trump presidency. The White House thinks the most likely scenario this year...