Free Republic

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials appointed Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife to multiple government positions, many of which partially overlapped with her two U.S. Cabinet posts, according to Chinese government and state media reports unearthed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Elaine Chao, who married the Kentucky Republican in 1993, has held numerous U.S. government positions since the 1980s, including serving as Department of Labor (DOL) secretary throughout President George W. Bush’s tenure and as Department of Transportation (DOT) secretary during President Donald Trump’s first term. After resigning from the Trump administration in January 2021, Chao then served on the board...

This week I visited a Prefab Home that gets delivered in a shipping container in two pieces then unfolds and gets built in 3 hours. This is the Unfold House, a 19'2 x 25' prefab home with 12+ foot ceilings that make it feel incredibly spacious. It has a wall of windows on the front, a shed room and a look that I think people will like. In this video I look at the build, talk about how it's set up and get into the pricing. Watch to learn more about Unfold House! Inside the Folding Prefab Home with 12'...

The auto industry has a new solution to Americans’ fear that electric vehicles will run out of juice: a gasoline engine.

The Presidential Election year budget in France to be considered in the coming months with opinion polling this week pushing the notion of public support for cutting spending. The opinion poll conducted by the government itself with 40 percent respondents speaking of France's current financial situation as "very worrying'. That is up five percent from January... South Korea's President Lee Jae Myung on a four-day visit to France starting tomorrow. President Lee and French President Emmnuel Macron discussing security and economic connections between France and South Korea... France's increasingly confrontational stance towards China reflected in the new rules imposing fees...

SNIP "This latest news comes on the heels of a blockbuster report from Status — which reported that Bartiromo’s sudden departure from the network on Thursday can be traced to an incident in July — when Fox Business management privately instructed senior employees not to lend credibility to claims Trump had made during a prime-time address about the 2020 election and China. Status’s Oliver Darcy reported that Bartiromo “spilled the secret” to the White House — an action which, according to Darcy, amounted to Bartiromo having “effectively betrayed her employer.” Byers reported that Bartiromo took a screenshot of guidance sent...

At least 10 killed and 62 wounded in an explosion at a military base in Bolivia... At the Pentagon about 50 officials for the Joint Chiefs of Staff given polygraph... Republican Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky says that President Trump's executive order on beef labeling falls short... US and Chinese officials are expected to discuss AI...safety risks... A new era of "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI) has been proclaimed by Open AI CEO Greg Brockman... A federal district judge extending her order blocking US Postal Service mail-in ballot rules... Two killed in an Israeli attack on a motorcycle in southern Lebanon......

China’s communist dictator Xi Jinping debuted yet another vague plan toward world peace on Wednesday during an official visit to Egypt, one that not-so-subtly suggested Middle Eastern states should consider limiting their ties to America. Xi conducted a two-day visit to Cairo this week following a hectic diplomatic schedule that began by welcoming Jordanian King Abdullah II to Beijing in late August and also included at stop at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. There, Xi held meetings with some of his most important allies, such as Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, though...

Multiple Asian governments assert sovereignty over rocks, reefs, and other geographic features in the heavily trafficked South China Sea (SCS), with the People’s Republic of China (PRC or China) arguably making the most assertive claims. Separate from the sovereignty disputes, the governments of the United States, China, and other countries disagree over what rights international law grants foreign militaries to fly, sail, and operate in a country’s territorial sea or exclusive economic zone (EEZ). For more than a decade, some Members have examined China’s efforts to use coercion and intimidation to increase its control over the SCS.An estimated one-fifth to...

Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world's most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down. Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts "posting in a manner that could manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI and energy policy,"...

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s executive order ending birth tourism. The other order bans birthright tourism, the practice by which people travel to the United States solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child on our soil. President Trump, earlier this month, signed two executive orders on birthright citizenship and birth tourism, following the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Trump Administration’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. During the Oval Office signing, Trump decried the “very, very unfortunate” Supreme Court decision, adding, “So we’re making adjustments because it’s very unfair.” “This was done right after the...

Former Rep. Eric Swalwell was surrounded by FBI agents at San Francisco International Airport as he deboarded a plane, leading to the seizure of his cellphone and laptop as part of a federal criminal investigation, newly obtained video shows. The California Post exclusively obtained surveillance footage of the Aug. 15 encounter, providing the first look at the dramatic airport search that unfolded after Swalwell arrived in California. The footage shows Swalwell — dressed incognito in a hat, black sweatshirt and sneakers — speaking with several agents at his flight gate as travelers pass nearby. The former Democratic congressman appears calm...

Cybersecurity researchers have found surveillance backdoors in Chinese carrier routers made by Zbtlink and the same software in a different Zbtlink-made router sold through Amazon. Chinese law requires telecom and internet companies to provide technical assistance to police and state-security agencies. In an Aug. 27 report, cybersecurity firm VulnCheck said it found two hidden programs in an $88 router bought through Amazon from a U.S. seller. One, which the researchers named Speakingstone, sends information about the router to a remote server and can receive instructions to redirect internet traffic, obtain login credentials, or take control of the device. The second,...

The U.S.–Canada trade talks broke down on Aug. 21. Although both sides hold completely different views, they agreed on two common dealbreakers: bilateral coordination on Canada’s future trade deals with third countries and how deep tariff-rate cuts should go across sectors like autos, steel, and aluminum. A third, exempting U.S. companies from having to feature French-language content on streaming platforms, was resolved on Aug. 27 when the United States dropped the demand. Analysts say both sides share one other thing: the China factor, which neither names but looms over both positions.Neither the Canadian Prime Minister Carney nor U.S. Trade Representative...

X has said it uncovered a Chinese bot farm of approximately 200,000 inauthentic accounts involved in influence operations. The platform’s safety team said in an Aug. 27 statement that about 200 accounts within the newly identified network had posted material aimed at influencing U.S. debate over artificial intelligence and energy policy. X did not say how the rest of the roughly 200,000 accounts were being used. Other technology companies and U.S. authorities have separately documented Chinese influence operations involving tens or hundreds of thousands of fake, coordinated, or repurposed accounts, including networks tied to Chinese state actors and law enforcement....

The leaders of China, Russia and India gathered with other heads of state in Kyrgyzstan on Monday for the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group billed as a counterweight to U.S. global influence. Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are attending the events in Bishkek, the capital of the Central Asian nation. Putin met separately with Xi and Modi in two of the many bilateral sessions on the sidelines of the summit, Russian state media reported. Putin affirmed to Xi Moscow’s readiness to make the visa-free regime with China permanent,...

With a cast of characters including a former prime minister, some of the richest executives in France and Germany, Paris' biggest-ever corporate crime trial continued this week with 37 defendants in the dock. France's largest-ever corporate corruption trial resumed in Paris this week with more drama than your average Mexican soap opera. The case offered further tales of illicit backroom dealing, a €5 million divorce settlement tab picked up by French taxpayers and allegations that a former French prime minister accepted bribes in connection with a string of acquisitions made by the state-owned French oil conglomerate Elf Aquitane in the...

WASHINGTON — Top American AI companies are feeding Beijing’s beast and the US military at the same time, a longtime China hawk is warning. Four major providers of data for AI models — which help collate, label and package the vast troves of info for Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and the Pentagon — are also quietly working for China’s AI labs on the side, according to a new report. “America is in an AI race with the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told The Post. “We cannot spend billions trying to protect our technological advantage while American companies...

Socialism’s sectarian logic, pseudoscientific hubris, and the inescapable path from guillotine to Gulag C. The sectarian, antidemocratic, and antirational character of egalitarianism has been exposed with grim consistency across two centuries of revolutionary experiment. From the Jacobin committees of public safety to the Politburos of Moscow, Beijing, and their satellite regimes in Africa and Asia, the pattern recurs: utopian doctrine, once armed with state power, converts political disagreement into existential crime and answers it with systematic slaughter. A political monster from birth, socialism—along with its Siamese twin, communism, the progeny of egalitarianism and collectivism—does not merely fail to deliver abundance;...

...Republicans have spent years warning that China should not be allowed to buy American farmland. But some Republican insiders are getting paid by the Chinese-controlled company sitting squarely in the middle of that fight.... ...Among them are former aides to Republican Sens. John Warner and Susan Collins, a former House Republican Conference official, and a former U.S. Department of Agriculture official.... ...disclosure lists DeLacy, Ross, Joel Roberson, and former USDA official Peter Tabor lobbying more broadly on “issues related to foreign ownership of agricultural land.”..

Three of China's top solar market players reported deepening losses over the first half of the year, reflecting weakening demand for solar in the world's top manufacturer and generator.Jinko Solar, JA Solar Technology, and Tongwei all reported six-month losses as overcapacity in the sector meets weakening demand, not only at home but also abroad, Bloomberg reported, citing statements made by the companies at their financial results releases.The report noted new solar power capacity additions in China had shrunk to 72.07 GW over the first half of the year, compared with 212.2 GW a year earlier. Part of the decline was...