Free Republic

Maybe now that the impeachment circus is behind us, we can start having a serious conversation about what’s truly at stake in the 2020 election.  Granted, my perspective is biased because my daughter Meadow was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, but to me the most important issue is school safety. And school safety is the clearest reason to re-elect Donald Trump.  This opinion might come as a shock to some parents. After all, the mainstream media did everything it could to spin a narrative that blamed Republicans and/or President Trump for the shooting. But I wasn’t interested in narratives....

"The United States is now -- and I said it and I'll say it all night long -- number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world. And there's nobody even close," said Trump at a "Keep America Great" rally in Hershey, Penn. on Tuesday. "In the Trump era, America became the big player in the energy world," Varney continued. "Now, that is a '180' from just a few years ago. And we all feel the benefit." "A strong economy and gas gets cheaper?" observed Varney. "It's not supposed to be like that. But with Trump's policies, we...

In a free enterprise system, some businesses prosper while some do not. Success and failure are simply a byproduct of the free market that should be expected. And when businesses fail due to market conditions, it should not be the responsibility of the federal government to bail them out or give them special treatment. So why then is conjecture building once again that key members of the Trump administration still want to revive plans to bail out failing power plants? Last year, the Department of Energy was trying to use its power to revitalize a handful of well-connected but economically...

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry has ordered his agency to release more than four years' worth of data from air monitors near an Ohio school where trace amounts of radioactive material were discovered. Perry says the data from 2015 through the first quarter of this year comes from six air monitoring stations on Energy Department property and ten in the surrounding southern Ohio community. Perry told Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in a letter Monday the data was provided to Pike County authorities, and to the Ohio Department of Health and the state Environmental Protection Agency. Zahn's Corner Middle School was...

.S. President Donald Trump on Friday directed Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take emergency steps to keep at-risk coal and nuclear plants running, the White House announced. Under the directive, Perry would require grid operators to buy electricity from ailing nuclear and coal-fired power plants to keep them from being shuttered. “Unfortunately, impending retirements of fuel-secure power facilities are leading to a rapid depletion of a critical part of our nation’s energy mix, and impacting the resilience of our power grid,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Lordy, how the mean girls jeered when Energy Secretary Rick Perry offered some extemporaneous words of encouragement to workers at a coal-fired power plant in West Virginia last week."Here's a little economics lesson," Perry said in response to a question about how the coal industry can stay competitive when the shale revolution of the last 10 years has made the supply of natural gas so abundant and cheap. "Supply and demand: You put the supply out there, and the demand will follow."Cue an avalanche of media scorn."Rick Perry Hilariously Misunderstands Supply and Demand Theory in Attempted Defense of Coal Industry,"...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said Monday that he will fight to keep jobs and boost funding for research facilities like Oak Ridge National Laboratory. {snip} Perry, who once called for the abolition of the Energy Department, has since become an outspoken proponent of the department's importance, particularly of the cutting-edge research conducted at the national labs. Perry acknowledged he has "not been in the job long enough to go through the budget line item by line item" but said he is "doing my homework every day." Perry was joined on the tour by U.S. Sen....

My son slides under the daybed, flattening his sprawling limbs in all directions across the dusty floor, then retracting them with a jerk. “I’m making myself invisible!” he declares. He knows our news is unwelcome. Don’t let him think it’s because of him, his doctor had coached. Crouching, I reach my hand to stroke his arm — a gesture I realize is not enough to comfort a boy whose body short circuits with uncertainty. My husband and I tell him: You can’t start second grade tomorrow. We’re leaving Singapore. We’re moving to America. We don’t know when. It will be...

Virtually all Democratic senators are expected to vote against President Trump’s picks to lead the departments of Education, Justice, Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury and his top budget nominee — a historic rebuke of a first-term president’s top Cabinet nominees.

President Donald Trump has disputed climate change, pledged a revival of coal and disparaged wind power, and his nominee to head the Energy Department was once highly skeptical of the agency’s value. What this means for states’ efforts to promote renewable energy is an open question. States that are pushing for greater reliance on wind and solar power are not quite sure what to expect as Trump takes over. Many of them depend heavily on federal renewable-energy tax credits, grants and research, much of which comes from the Energy Department. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Trump’s pick to lead the...

As he tries to convince the Senate to put him in charge of the Energy Department, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry will tell lawmakers Thursday that he was wrong to recommend eliminating that same department. During his 2012 presidential campaign, Mr. Perry, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for energy secretary, advocated getting rid of the Energy Department, along with several other federal agencies. At one GOP primary debate he was unable to remember all of the departments he sought to scrap, leading to his infamous “Oops” moment. More than four years later, Mr. Perry now is a full-throated supporter of the...