Free Republic

For eight years, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy doctrine has been rooted in a belief that while the United States can take action around the world on its own, it rarely should. “Multilateralism regulates hubris,” Obama declared. His successor, President-elect Donald Trump, has derided some of the same international partnerships Obama and his recent predecessors have promoted, raising the prospect that the Republican’s “America First” agenda might well mean an America more willing to act alone. “The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a...

A top adviser to Donald Trump on diversity issues is offering no apologies for the preponderance of white men filling the Cabinet and key jobs in the new administration, insisting that the lack of minorities reflected the president-elect’s color-blind approach to hiring decisions. Bruce Levell, who spearheaded a minority outreach effort for the Trump campaign and now serves as an adviser to the transition team, said that Mr. Trump isn’t looking to check off diversity boxes with his hiring decisions — and that’s OK with black and Hispanic Americans. “President-elect Trump doesn’t really so much look at the Cabinet and...

A New York county has announced that it is reversing its sanctuary policy only weeks before President-Elect Trump is set to be inaugurated. Sheriff Vincent DeMarco announced that his county will no longer demand a judge’s order before detaining an illegal immigrant wanted by federal agents for deportation, a major move to distance the county from its ranks of being a sanctuary city, according to Newsday. The reversal is happening in short order before Trump is expected to take office and dismantle sanctuary city policies. DeMarco states that this policy reversal came after careful “legal analysis” and had nothing to...

In a new legal development on the controversy over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails, an appeals court on Tuesday reversed a lower court ruling and said two U.S. government agencies should have done more to recover the emails. The ruling from Judge Stephen Williams, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, revives one of a number of legal challenges involving Clinton's handling of government emails when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

The Trump effect continues! Two major companies, Tesla and Panasonic, have just announced their intentions to manufacture in Buffalo, New York. The AP reports, via Yahoo News: Tesla, Panasonic to make solar cells in Buffalo, New York Japanese electronics company Panasonic and U.S. electric car maker Tesla said Tuesday they plan to begin production of solar cells at a factory in Buffalo, New York.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made the rounds on a few shows last week where she expressed her worry that a Trump administration will have a serious and negative impact on the profession of “journalism” -- it may "crumble" -- and it “just got different” under the incoming administration. Last week Maddow was on NBC's Late Night with host Seth Meyers, who asked her if liberals had any reasons to be optimistic about the new administration. Maddow hesitated before responding: “I have bright red shoes, which is very festive. … I have a family I love and nice dogs.” She did express...

Iran's rial hit a record low against the U.S. dollar on Monday in a sign of concern about the country's ability to attract foreign money after U.S. president-elect Donald Trump takes office. The rial was quoted in the free market at 41,500 to the dollar, weakening from around 41,250 on Sunday and 35,570 in mid-September. Before this month, the record low was about 40,000, hit in late 2012, traders said. Economists said there were several reasons for the slide, including the dollar's strength against many currencies in the last few weeks, and uncertainty before next year's presidential elections in Iran....

President Obama admitted he cried at a recent senior staff send-off dinner — and is now claiming that he’d be able to get re-elected if he had run for president again. “I am confident in this vision because I’m confident that if I had run again and articulated it, I think I could’ve mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it,” Obama said in a “The Axe Files” podcast interview by former aide David Axelrod. “I know that in conversations that I’ve had with people around the country, even some people who disagreed with me, they would...

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese electronics company Panasonic and U.S. electric car maker Tesla said Tuesday they plan to begin production of photovoltaic cells and modules at a factory in Buffalo, New York. The two companies said they finalized an agreement calling for Tokyo-based Panasonic to pay capital costs for the manufacturing. Palo Alto, California-based Tesla made a "long-term purchase commitment" to Panasonic. Their statement gave no financial figures. The factory in Buffalo is under development by SolarCity Corp., a San Mateo, California-based solar panel company owned by Tesla. The PV cells and modules it produces will be used in solar...

US President-elect Donald Trump may reverse up to 70 percent of President Barack Obama’s executive orders, practically erasing the legacy of the first African-American head of state, Former House speaker Newt Gingrich told Fox. Obama, who signed over 260 executive orders in his two terms in office, urged Trump, who will be inaugurated on January 20, not to circumvent Congress when trying to enact his agenda. Obama used his executive powers to push through labor, climate and immigration reforms after Congress refused to go along with his proposed programs.

That has been a problem in my party, that when we’re in power, we’re nice. We bend over backwards to work with people. . . . Waters said she wouldn’t even bother to meet with Trump if he invited her to the White House, saying she doesn’t trust him. “I’m not going to go,” Waters said. “I have no intentions of sitting down with him … He can’t be trusted. Why should we work with someone I can’t trust? … I’m going to fight him every inch of the way.”

U.S. Steel CEO Mario Longhi admitted that manufacturing challenges exist exclusively in the United States thanks to oppressive regulation set forth by President Obama. Longhi is willing to bring as many as 10,000 jobs back to the United States because of the prosperity predicted with the advent of the incoming Trump administration. Jobs were lost to lay offs and downsizing during the Obama administration, and many employees found work overseas.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump heaped pressure on Lockheed Martin Corp on Thursday, saying he viewed costs for the aerospace company's F-35 fighter as too high and had asked Boeing Co to offer a price for an older aircraft that lacks the same stealth capabilities. Trump posted his Twitter message a day after the president-elect met with the chief executives of both aerospace companies, using the bully pulpit to press them on projects he says are too expensive. In after-hours trading following Trump's tweet, Lockheed shares fell 2 percent and Boeing's rose 0.7 percent. "Based on the tremendous cost and cost...

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote. No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat. It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by nominating...

Mourning in Hollywood was at its zenith, however, when it became clear on Election Day that Trump was poised to emerge as the unexpected victor. "Gonna cry my false eye lashes off tonight," pop singer and Clinton supporter Katy Perry wrote on Twitter the night of the election, as the results rolled in. "World will never be the same," singer Cher, who had campaigned for Hillary, also wrote on Twitter the night of the election. "I feel Sad for the young." She included images of a toilet and feces to represent Trump. . . . In October, before the election,...

This week's report card finds President-elect Trump already acting like he's president, and having an outsized impact, especially on Pentagon projects and foreign policy. And pollster John Zogby, noting that Trump's approval ratings seem stuck, put the blame on the Clintons who just won't give up the 2016 presidential campaign and move on.

The pro-Trump Twitterverse is lobbing hundreds of angry posts and meme attacks at the Brooklyn husbands who were kicked off a plane at JFK after one yelled at future First Daughter Ivanka. The Cobble Hill couple, attorney Daniel Goldstein and Hunter College Urban Studies Professor Matthew Lasner, are being trolled as “jerks,” “misogynists,” “political terrorists,” “heterophobic bigots,” and all manner of ­offensive gay slurs. A flood of one-star pans also is filling the Amazon review page for Lasner’s new book, “High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century.” Meanwhile, a Trump confidante said Ivanka will probably keep flying commercial because...

The final consumer sentiment reading from the University of Michigan for 2016 came in just below a 13-year high. And it’s all about Donald Trump. Consumer sentiment hit a 98.2 in December according to the UMich survey, the highest since January 2004.

Following a one-on-one meeting with Boeing’s CEO, Dennis Mullenburg, on Wednesday over Trump’s concerns that the new Air Force One aircraft were costing too much, Mullenburg said: “We’re going to get it done for less than [the $4 billion price tag], and we’re committed to working together to make sure that happens.”The deal, hammered out at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, revealed much about the paradigm shift taking place even before Trump is inaugurated. First, Trump means business. Not inhibited by ties to the military-industrial complex, Trump is recognizing who his employer really is: the American people....

Of the many idiotic plans put in place for the military during this administration’s tenure, few were up there on the absurdity scale with a scheme to rename a number of jobs in the Navy because their titles contained the word “man” or some variation thereof. This piece of political correctness was supposed to make women in the service feel more comfortable, particularly since we’ve begun jamming them not only into combat roles for the Army and Marines, but serving on warships and even submarines as well. The offensive titles included things such as corpsman, yeoman and boatswain’s mate. (It’s...