Free Republic

The United States is set to reshore substantial manufacturing capacity as China’s demographic time bomb will soon explode, pushing wages higher.....China’s aging labor force is set to shrivel by about 35 million per year over for the next three decades. Enodo Economics forecasts the most likely industries to reshore back to the United States include automobiles; electrical machinery; wood and grass product; chemical fiber; chemical material and product; transportation equipment; rubber and plastics; pharmaceuticals; and non-metallic mineral product.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) told Republican Senators that he would not support President Trump’s proposal for an infrastructure overhaul as part of any further coronavirus economic relief, according to multiple reports. “We need to keep the White House in the box,” McConnell told his caucus, according to Axios. ” . . . The Democrats and the White House both need to get the message.” Trump has been vocal about using a phase-four coronavirus package to fund infrastructure reform. “With interest rates for the United States being at ZERO, this is the time to do our decades long...

100 years ago, everyone who wasn't deaf or tone deaf, sang together, on average, at least weekly. Between 1900 and 1909, nearly one hundred songs each sold more than one million copies of sheet music. 1 million instances of "WHAT"? Page-clicks? Streaming downloads? MTV video views? Compact Disc purchases? Walk-Man cassettes? Juke-box dime drops? 45 rpm or 33-rpm store buys? Age of radio program listens? NO. Multiple 1-million sales per year of sheet music which each family's piano player in a country with 300 piano companies in the US alone before WW1, played casual-popular SHEET MUSIC sung to by another...

The Biden-Burisma investigation is again coming back into focus after the COVID-19 outbreak reset priorities for lawmakers and pushed the probe onto the back burner. Two Republican senators on Thursday sent a letter to the State Department (pdf) asking for records and interviews with persons of interest regarding Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that once employed former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden on its board. Co-signed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the letter requests interviews and documents that pertain to the probe.....“The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Committee...

Video shows a man grab a tip jar from the bar to show the camera what reads on the jar: “Donald Trump Assassination Fund” He then tips out the few coins that were inside the jar onto the counter, is told to leave, but before he does, he manages to stomp on and flatten the metal jar, while being pushed and held by a security guard. The bartender hops over the counter to also grab the man, who peacefully leaves. Truly disrespectful, hard to say “It’s just a joke” when you’re advocating violence against a world leader, whom just the...

Two Wisconsin police officers were caught on video verbally accosting a mother for letting her daughter play at a neighbor’s home during the states COVID-19 shutdown, accusing her of “violating an order” by the state. The incident, caught on video by the mom’s cell phone, shows the officers immediately – and aggressively – demanding to know if she’s aware of the state’s stay-at-home order. The footage shows the first officer, a male, repeatedly interrupting the woman and sarcastically responding to her answers. “Why are you here?” the mother asked in the video. “Because your daughter is going to play at...

Trump intends to nominate 'Keith Dayton' to be the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, ...Dayton, a retired Army lieutenant general, currently serves as the senior U.S. defense adviser to Ukraine and director of the George C. Marshall Center in Germany. If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dayton would replace Marie Yovanovitch, a career diplomat who was recalled in May 2019.... Yovanovitch told a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry of Trump that she was ousted from her post after coming under attack from the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signed an executive order on May 1 that seeks to protect the U.S. electricity system from cyber and other attacks in a move that could eventually put barriers on some imports from China and Russia.... The order allows the energy secretary, in consultation with other officials, to prohibit acquisition, importation, transfer or installation of power equipment from an adversary that they determine poses a risk of sabotage to the U.S. power system. Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said in a news release. The order will “greatly diminish the ability of foreign adversaries to target our critical electric infrastructure,”...

A federal judge in California ruled in favor of the United States Soccer Federation on most of the key points in the ongoing wage discrimination lawsuit brought by members of the U.S. women's national team player pool, dealing a potentially fatal setback to the players in the high-profile case. Players based the lawsuit filed last year on two grounds: first, that U.S. Soccer violated the Equal Pay Act by paying them less than members of the men's national team; and second, that the federation discriminated against them under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically with regard...

Bye-bye shelter-in-place. Hello re-opening. Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest. Screenshot of Apple's mapping data showing a resurgence in traffic JOHN KOETSIER Rural areas are following the same pattern.

Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday he is “inclined more than ever” to believe retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn did not intentionally mislead him about his conversations with a Russian envoy, which was a reason cited by President Trump for asking him to resign as national security adviser in early 2017. He made the comments after the FBI records released on Thursday have been touted by Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, as exculpatory evidence heretofore concealed from the defense team. They show that now-fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and others in the FBI’s leadership stopped the bureau from closing its investigation...

NEWRY, Maine — The co-owner of Sunday River Brewing Co. in Newry who defied state orders by opening his doors to diners on Friday afternoon has lost his state health and liquor licenses, he said. Restaurants must obtain state heath licenses to legally serve food. More than 150 people came to Sunday River Brewing Co. in Newry on Friday afternoon after co-owner Rick Savage announced Thursday night that he would reopen in defiance of state orders meant to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. After learning that he’d lost the licenses around 4:30 p.m., Savage initially said he planned to...

Over 13 deadly hours on April 18 and 19, Gabriel Wortman disguised himself as a Canadian Mountie and went to sixteen different locations in and around Portapique, Canada, where he killed 22 people and injured three others. For the killings, Wortman used a handgun and long guns, all of which he obtained illegally. On Friday, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau punished all Canadians for Wortman's act by reclassifying about 1,500 hitherto legal firearms as "prohibited." By using reclassification, Trudeau was able to circumvent legislation. According to the CBC, the ban is effective immediately and blocks all licensed gun-owners from selling,...

Actor Robert Redford is a Trump-hater and climate change nut. And the coronavirus pandemic allows him to indulge in both passions, writing NBC op-eds about how bad the virus makes the president look and how it also presents us with an opportunity to make our post-quarantine lives part of a new climate-conscious collective. Ah yes, a green communist future. Never let a crisis go to waste. The legendary actor wrote a guest column for NBCNews.com advocating for a transformation to our society while us normal Americans are stuck at home without too much say in the matter. He began by...

America’s economy has been shutdown and more than 50,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, a virus either recklessly or deliberately unleashed on the world by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

MANILA - A woman from Quezon City said Saturday she caught the coronavirus disease 2019 despite observing strict quarantine measures. Jaye de la Cruz-Bekema, 40, said she was rushed to the St. Luke's Medical Center on April 25 after a miscarriage. She was then 4 months on the way. Under hospital protocol, she was asked to do a swab test. It was then she found out she had the disease. "I even told the nurse (in my desire to avoid getting a long stick up my nose lol), 'I’m sure I’m negative because I never left the house since March...

In Sweden, bars and restaurants are open to the public, you can go get a haircut, and primary school is in session. The coronavirus has arrived, but life goes on. The country has taken a lighter-than-most approach to social distancing for COVID-19, relying on people to monitor themselves for symptoms, stay home when ill, practice good handwashing, and avoid crowds. You see very few masks on people's faces in current photos from Stockholm and other Swedish cities. It's a strategy that hasn't been employed in neighboring Finland or Norway, and it's one that some Swedish parents (keeping their kids out...

Covid County Map Dated: 05/01/20 The data for this map was pulled from: https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_daily_reports I am validating data by comparing it with other sources: https://covidtracking.com/data/ https://infection2020.com/ https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en as well as various state .gov websites No claims of the use or accuracy of these maps is implied. Other parties may use these maps as their own.

The first results from human trials of a coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University should be available by mid-June, said Oxford professor John Bell. "This is still a development program. We need still to demonstrate that this vaccine works in human populations," he told BBC Radio. "But the team ... have vaccinated several hundred people now and we hope to get some signal about whether it's working by the middle of June. The Oxford University research team is partnering with UK-based global biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to develop and manufacture this vaccine on a large scale. "Once we get an...

Naked in a milky bathtub of floating rose petals, Madonna has declared coronavirus “the great equalizer” in a bizarre video that was blasted as “privileged” by many of her die-hard fans.