Free Republic

The Biden administration is set to announce this week that it will reengage with the much-maligned U.N. Human Rights Council that former President Donald Trump withdrew from almost three years ago, U.S. officials said Sunday. The decision reverses another Trump-era move away from multilateral organizations and agreements.U..S. officials say Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a senior U.S. diplomat in Geneva will announce on Monday that Washington will return to the Geneva-based body as an observer with an eye toward seeking election as a full member. The decision is likely to draw criticism from conservative lawmakers and many in the...

WASHINGTON - President Biden’s push to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost more than 1.5 million jobs and drive up the cost of goods and services, the US Congressional Budget Office projected Monday. The nonpartisan federal agency also found that the “Raise the Wage Act” would see the federal deficit balloon to a whopping $54 billion — almost double what is now — if enacted next month. The report found Biden’s plan would have mixed results. The federal boost would lift 900,000 Americans out of poverty but would cut employment by 1.4 million. “Spending for...

Only a fragment of Americans believe democracy is thriving in the U.S., even as broad majorities agree that representative government is one of the country’s bedrock principles, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well, a pessimism that spans the political spectrum. Nearly half of Americans, 45%, think democracy isn’t functioning properly, while another 38% say it’s working only somewhat well. …

Following Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine as quickly as possible, two coronavirus vaccines have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for emergency use. The prioritization of who gets the vaccines first differs from state to state. Currently, vaccines manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna have been approved by the FDA, while others, including a vaccine manufactured by AstraZeneca, still await such approval. The coronavirus vaccines have demonstrated high effectiveness rates. But they do not come without side effects. The following highlight four things to know about the coronavirus vaccines and other treatments....

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) conceded Sunday that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) may be right about the unconstitutionality of former President Donald Trump’s upcoming impeachment trial. Murphy appeared on Fox News Sunday to discuss the upcoming impeachment trial scheduled to begin Tuesday. Murphy has said that he supports impeaching the president and disagrees with Paul’s argument, but said the Kentucky senator made a valid point. “I admit this is of course a matter of first impression and so I don’t think the case that Senator Paul is making is a ridiculous one,” Murphy said, according to Fox News. Dozens of Senate...

The Montana-class was authorized under the “Two Ocean Navy” building program, and it was funded in Fiscal Year 1941 (FY41). Nearly a third larger than the preceding Iowa-class, the super-battleship was to be 920 feet in length with a beam of 121 feet. Displacing 60,500 tones – 71,000 tons with its war load – it would have been even larger than the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard, the last battleship ever built.

When politicians are cast into a negative spotlight, they usually recoil to their respective corners and wait out the storm. The last thing they’ll do is chime in on a popular event because doing so will only draw more attacks. But Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a regular politician. During last night’s Super Bowl, she didn’t just chime in. She did so with a Tweet that is already sending progressives into the unhinged depths of insanity.An ad by Toyota and Team USA Olympics highlighted the miraculous path by which world-record paralympic swimmer Jessica Long came to become a champion....

China has formally arrested a Chinese-born Australian journalist for CGTN, the English-language channel of China Central Television, on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, Australia's foreign minister said Monday. The arrest of Cheng Lei last Friday starts an official criminal investigation and came six months after she was detained. "The Australian government has raised its serious concerns about Ms. Cheng's detention regularly at senior levels, including about her welfare and conditions of detention," Foreign Minister Marise Payne said. "We expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms," she added....

Whereas young people in their teens or 20s are into actors like Robert Pattinson or Chris Evans, those that grew up in the '50s have fawned over the late, but never forgotten actor James Dean. Dean was at the top of the world with his film credits including Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden, and Giant. His loss is still a heavy toll on Hollywood as Dean was at the height of his career, only to be taken so suddenly from a car accident. Today, Dean would have been 90 years old, so fans on Twitter celebrate the legendary...

Racism is always ugly, but it's even uglier when it’s welcomed on a national stage. And, make no mistake, the Kansas City football team's name is racist. The Kansas City Chiefs — who are playing the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during Super Bowl LV on Sunday — are just delaying the inevitable. They will eventually drop their name. They will be forced to do away with the dehumanization and commodification of Native Americans that are their name and logo and beloved team traditions. It will happen. They’re just being stubborn right now and refusing to simply ride the massive wave of...

So apparently Tom Brady is a pretty good quarterback. Is he football’s GOAT? Well, that’s up for debate. Unless you’re someone like social justice activist and flagpole climber Bree Newsome. For Newsome, there can be no debate about Tom Brady’s merits as a quarterback. Because, you know, Tom Brady is just another white guy

How is this for obnoxious? Leftists, one after another, have put a target on country music legend Dolly Parton's back. Her crime against political correctness? Making a Super Bowl ad for Squarespace, an inexpensive website-creating framework for small and start-up businesses. Here's what enraged them:How is this for obnoxious? Leftists, one after another, have put a target on country music legend Dolly Parton's back. Her crime against political correctness? Making a Super Bowl ad for Squarespace, an inexpensive website-creating framework for small and start-up businesses. Here's what enraged them: [VIDEO] *snip* "As much as we all love Dolly Parton, it's...

MOSCOW - Russia’s updated statistics on coronavirus-linked deaths show that 162,429 people with COVID-19 had died in the pandemic last year, a number much higher than previously reported by government officials. The state statistics agency, Rosstat, released figures for December on Monday, updating its count of coronavirus-linked deaths that includes cases where the virus wasn’t the main cause of death and where the virus was suspected but not confirmed. December accounted for the highest number of deaths since April — 44,435 — according to Rosstat. That’s when infections in Russia soared and officials regularly reported over 27,000 daily new coronavirus...

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron has blasted Twitter and Facebook for de-platforming the former US president and their arbitrary implementation of content moderation policies. Other leaders, including Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have also condemned the social media companies. In an interview, the French president talked about the recent censorship and removal of Trump following the January 6 riots. The social media companies removed Trump for allegedly “inciting” the riots. “We are very upset here in Paris [about the Capitol attack]. But at the same time, we were very upset, as well, by...

Bitcoin jumped to a fresh record high on Monday after U.S. electric car manufacturer Tesla (TSLA) announced its purchase of $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency. Tesla is the latest to join a growing list of publicly traded companies buying bitcoin for their corporate treasuries, led by Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy (MSTR).

Concerned that dissenting views could undermine the nation's unity, the Communist Party decreed that a government issued license be obtained by anyone wishing to comment on politics, economics, the military, diplomacy, and other major news on social media. Minister of Information Technology Xiao Yaqing explained that "the development of social media has enabled virtually anyone to communicate with millions of others without the intervention of editors and censors. Unfortunately, too many individuals have abused this opportunity to promulgate unapproved ideas and opinions. We now find it necessary to introduce a license requirement to the system. This will allow the government...

If President Trump had been colluding with Russia, the first thing he would have done would have been to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline and otherwise prevent our achieving energy independence. Russia was once described as being a gas station masquerading as a country. Its only commodities of value are weapons and oil. Building Keystone XL and unleashing fracking was Trump’s way of screwing with Putin’s ambitions, not rewarding them. We would have to wait for Joe Biden to collude with Russia on energy by banning Keystone XL and declaring war on fracking. As Helen Raleigh, writing in The Federalist,...

I picked up a full DVD set of World at War, the eleven volume set, narrated by Sir Lawrence Olivier, brings to life a stunning and sometimes shocking account of the time before, during and after World War II.In this set, the first episode, A New Germany, outlines the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party in what I was stunned to realize is oddly similar to the current rise of the Democrat party and the events of the last four years and the current election.While watching this video I was slapped in the face time and...

LONDON - Misuse of climate models could pose a growing risk to financial markets by giving investors a false sense of certainty over how the physical impacts of climate change will play out, according to the authors of a paper published on Monday. With heatwaves, wildfires, massive storms and sea-level rises projected to intensify as the planet warms, companies are under growing pressure to disclose how the disruption could affect their businesses. But the authors of a peer-reviewed article here in Nature Climate Change warned that the drive to integrate global warming into financial decision-making had leap-frogged the models used...

Dear "libertylover", Knowing of your concerns about voter fraud and irregularities during the 2020 presidential election, I want to take the opportunity to share with you some of the steps I am taking as your representative in Congress to reform our election system and secure the future of American democracy. Allegations of fraud and other irregularities arising out of the 2020 presidential election dealt a devastating blow to Americans’ confidence in our electoral process. While most of the national media and social media platforms ignored, censored, or falsely reported no evidence of fraud or other irregularities, serious legal and constitutional...