Free Republic

President Joe Biden reportedly intends to expand the administrative state by appointing an infrastructure czar to oversee the implementation of the $2.1 trillion infrastructure bill. According to two Axios sources, the czar would be called an “infrastructure implementation coordinator” and would be responsible for managing the “grant-and-spending process” among those eligible to win taxpayer funds.

A Columbia professor has accused the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case of using 'racist stereotypes' because he joked about Asian food for lunch being delayed by the supply-chain crunch. Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder had said: 'I hope the Asian food isn't coming... isn't on one of those boats from Long Beach Harbor'. Schroeder appeared to be referencing the queues of boats waiting to dock at Long Beach Harbor that have exacerbated the supply-chain crunch across the US. Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and Professor of History at Columbia University Mae Ngai said: 'All I...

I am highly educated and reasonably perceptive, and it was only today that I learned the Kyle Rittenhouse victims were white. My progressive bubble made this seem like a very different case than it is.

At the COP26 U.N. climate change conference, a group of 450 financial firms pledged $130 trillion in capital to finance the transition to net-zero emissions. Government mandates have already driven large private capital flows into expanding renewable energy, and now financial firms are eager to kick the phaseout of fossil fuels into high gear. The finance industry’s palpable excitement is electrifying to climate activists and the politicians who cater to them. Wall Street is now squarely on their side. Yet the enthusiasm of asset managers and banks is hardly surprising. Any government mandate that a large amount of capital must...

The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who brought an illegally obtained AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a chaotic street protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and shot three people, killing two of them, has the country riveted this week. The judge and the prosecutor have been at each other's throats, the top prosecution witnesses turned out to be more helpful for the defense, and defense attorneys unexpectedly put the baby-faced Rittenhouse on the stand, where he breathlessly sobbed like a toddler. Meanwhile, the judge got a phone call as he sat at the bench, revealing his ring tone to be Lee Greenwood's...

Much as the liberal media might celebrate the conviction of Kyle Rittenhouse — someone, as our Curtis Houck has documented, they have tried to brand as a white-supremacist vigilante — the MSM is grudgingly having to admit that conviction could be unlikely. Friday, back on Morning Joe, Scarborough and former prosecutor Charles Coleman used the same term—"uphill battle"—to portray the prosecution's predicament. Coleman said that the defense should be "feeling pretty good" going into closing arguments. And Scarborough capped the bad news for those calling for a Rittenhouse conviction by saying that things are "going to be extraordinarily difficult for...

You may have heard KKHV Hill Valley, Calif. They’re the station playing in the car when Marty McFly and Lorraine Baines arrive at a dance. It’s also the station that Biff Tannen listens to for sports scores. It’s a pretty widely heard station considering that it didn’t exist. KKHV is the station in the “Back to the Future” movies. But until Nov. 19, you can hear a tribute to it, thanks to Sydney-based Richard Phelps, whose full-time job is Senior Digital Producer for Xperi’s All In Media. Phelps’ sister is a fan of the “Back to the Future” movies. She’s...

Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” network contributor former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) praised President Joe Biden for his handling of the economy, which saw the consumer prices rising at their fastest rate in decades last month. As “Morning Joe” discussed an op-ed saying “competence” was hurting the Democratic Party more so than “wokeness,” McCaskill asserted that “Biden has done a great job on the economy with the asterisk around inflation.” She said if both gas prices and inflation go down, there would be “amazing job creation.

Connecticut State Police are trying to track down a bold set of shoplifters who stole $1,600 in items from a grocery store as angry bystanders looked on, video shows. The footage — shared thousands of times on Facebook — shows four masked suspects in dark clothing loading shopping carts packed with items like laundry detergent into two waiting cars outside Market 32 in Oxford early Tuesday. “Look at all that,” one witness says in the clip as the thieves shamelessly stock up without paying. “That’s why prices go up, because of these a–holes … can’t get a job like the...

The U.S. State Department urged Americans to “depart Haiti now” before not even the government is able to help them leave as widespread fuel shortages triggered by growing violence in the Caribbean nation continued while 17 missionaries, including 16 Americans, were still being held hostage by a local gang demanding a $17 million ransom. “The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to make plans to depart Haiti now via commercial means. U.S. citizens should carefully consider the risks of traveling to or remaining in Haiti in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges,” a statement from the U.S....

Loudoun County, Va., is in the news again, but this time it’s not about raucous school board meetings or parents being branded terrorists. According to Washington News4, 112 young children were given the wrong dosage of the COVID-19 vaccine—one meant for adults—at a Ted Pharmacy in Aldie.Dasha Hermosilla told News4 that her 7-year-old daughter was given a dose of the vaccine meant for those 12 and older.The Loudon County Health Department’s “clinical guidance” document notes that the 0.3 ml dosage that the children were given “is authorized for individuals 12 years and older only” and the approved dose of the...

As a citizen historian, I find it both "funny" and annoying how skewed history is and how few treat leftist historians compared to their leftist journalist counterparts. Its a huge problem for us. Pimping a new book that he will hope you will buy, Andrew Roberts (the Book's author) writes this glowing piece for The Smithsonian about you know, George III, he wasn't all that bad of a guy! Hey I have an idea. Maybe we should've stayed under monarchism. That whole "liberty thing"? Perhaps that's overrated. Sarcasm aside, take a look at paragraph number 2: We can now see,...

Ma Chun-man is a Hong Kong democracy advocate famous for holding Captain America’s shield at pro-democracy rallies in the city.But Ma ran afoul of the draconian and ill-defined Hong Kong “national security law” and has been sentenced to nearly six years in prison.What dangerous activity was Ma sentenced to 6 years in prison for?According to the BBC, “The slogans Ma is said to have chanted included ‘liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times’ and ‘Hong Kong independence, the only way out.'”Dangerous, indeed.“The Hong Kong government must stop endlessly expanding its definition of ‘endangering national security as a means of locking...

The inflation crisis has gotten so bad that multiple liberal outlets are now admitting that it spells disaster for President Joe Biden’s economic agenda. CNBC published an eye-opening piece headlined, “Inflation has taken away all the wage gains for workers and then some.” The story analyzed that “Real average hourly earnings when accounting for inflation, actually decreased 0.5% for the month. A 0.9% inflation increase negated a 0.4% rise in wages.” In essence, “[w]hat looked like a big jump in workers’ wages during October turned into just another gut punch after accounting for inflation,” according to CNBC. So much for...

The radical left has taken over the culture. From racialized and sexualized curriculum in K-12 to the American Medical Association policing the language of its members to ensure that it is “inclusive,” the ideologies from the university sociology department are being shoved down America’s throat. You are not supposed to believe your own lying eyes, and a person’s lived experience supersedes all objective data. Now, the word “woke” is problematic, even though the progressives coined it.If you violate the ever-changing rules of the woke coalition, you can lose your social media account, your reputation, and even your job. They govern...

Why on earth is Rachel Levine still employed anywhere in the government?The department he used to lead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, was apparently one slipshod operation on its COVID response, and is now engaging in some kind of cover-up:According to the Epoch Times:The Pennsylvania Department of Health is refusing to share complete information about how it counted COVID-19 deaths for reports ordered by the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.The reports were ordered when the House unanimously approved a resolution in November 2020 requiring the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) to review the Department of Health's reporting of COVID-19 testing...

Why on earth is Rachel Levine still employed anywhere in the government? The department he used to lead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health, was apparently one slipshod operation on its COVID response, and is now engaging in some kind of cover-up... The Epoch Times focuses on the role of Pennsylvania's incompetent governor, Tom Wolf, and its current acting secretary for health... But who the heck was running the show when all this slipshod data and data management was happening? Dr. Rachel Levine, who's now failed upward to become Joe Biden's officious assistant secretary for health in Xavier Becerra's Department of...

Longtime Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who’s high atop former President Donald Trump's GOP hit list, on Friday announced that she’s running for reelection in 2022. "My heart is, and always has been, in Alaska, and that’s why I am proud to announce my campaign for reelection to the US Senate in 2022," the senator said in a campaign video announcing her candidacy.

“Earthgrazers” are fireball meteors with a trajectory so shallow that they skim long distances across the upper atmosphere, NASA says. The fireball appeared Tuesday, Nov. 9, around 6:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, officials say, and was “detected by three NASA meteor cameras in the region.” It entered the atmosphere “at a very shallow angle — only 5 degrees from the horizontal.” In fact, it was flying for so long that NASA had to recalculate its data to determine how far it traveled across the planet. “The meteor was first seen at an altitude of 55 miles above the Georgia town...

Ukraine and Russia have been in a standoff since Russia overran Crimea in 2014. Russian-backed “separatists” control large chunks of Ukrainian territory, and Russia is now preparing for what looks like a final push to crush Ukrainian aspirations of an alliance with the West and a future free of Kremlin domination.