Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump unveiled a key talking point for his 2024 campaign - an "America First" trade plan which would include universal tariffs on most goods imported into the US. Trump laid it out in a Feb. 27 statement, which called for a system of universal baseline tariffs on most foreign products, while rewarding American domestic production. The new policy will "tax China to build up America," according to Trump."Joe Biden claims to support American manufacturing, but in reality, he is pushing the same pro-China globalist agenda that ripped the industrial heart out of our country," Trump said in...

WASHINGTON, March 1 (Reuters) - The United States is sounding out close allies about the possibility of imposing new sanctions on China if Beijing provides military support to Russia for its war in Ukraine, according to four U.S. officials and other sources. The consultations, which are still at a preliminary stage, are intended to drum up support from a range of countries, especially those in the wealthy Group of 7 (G7), to coordinate support for any possible restrictions. It was not clear what specific sanctions Washington will propose. The conversations have not been previously disclosed. The U.S. Treasury Department, a...

Rapidly rising food, housing, medical, and tuition prices are squeezing Americans, and many do not understand the real cause of their falling living standards...That confusion opens the door for opportunistic politicians who promise supposed freebies to ease the pain of inflation. Many, unfortunately, succumb to this siren’s call.Perverse as it is, the policies offered to people suffering from inflation create even more inflation. In other words, inflation has a way of perpetuating itself, much like a heroin addiction.We are already seeing cockamamie schemes in the US, like “inflation relief checks,” which attempt to solve the problems of inflation by creating...

The US Postal Service is buying 9,250 Ford E-Transit battery-electric vehicles and 14,000 EV charging stations from three different suppliers as part of its plans to electrify a large portion of its mail delivery fleet. In an announcement post on Tuesday, the agency said it hasn’t finalized plans for where the vehicles and infrastructure will be deployed but intends to “begin building out its charging infrastructure across a minimum of 75 locations within the next 12 months.” USPS will order 9,250 Ford E-Transit EVs and 14,000 EV chargers (Image: Ford) The chargers will help power a growing number of EVs....

This is a story that most of you are familiar with by now. Ever since taking office, Joe Biden has received complaints about the high price of gasoline and other fuels as well as the slow collapse of America’s energy grid. Critics point to Biden’s own policies, specifically the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline and his failure to issue any more drilling permits beyond the bare minimum mandated by law. (And he’s missed some of those targets as well.) In response, Biden points the finger of blame at the oil and gas industry, claiming that the oil companies are...

"The anarchical activists led by Lapid continue to cross red lines. Right now they are harassing and threatening my wife in Tel Aviv..." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu On One Protest That Targeted His Wife Inside A Hair Salon In Tel Aviv This Evening It took hundreds of Israeli police to extricate Sara Netanyahu... Following today's events Mr. Netanyahu tonight with a statement that said in part: "The freedom of demonstration is not a license to plunge the country into anarchy, because a sovereign country cannot tolerate anarchy... It's a slow walk for the legislation that will make Israel's judicial system...

The quote in the title comes from a new op-ed published at Politico by Ryan Graves, a Navy F/A-18 fighter pilot who was one of many military officers who encountered anomalous objects in our restricted military airspace off the coast of Virginia in 2014. In the article, he reviews some of the recent activity of balloons (or “objects” or “balloon-like entities” or whatever we’re calling them this week) in American airspace and the Pentagon’s response to them. Graves has plenty of experience with UFOs because “those damn things” had been plaguing his fighter squadron for eight months during the period...

Its decline wasn’t inevitable. It stands as a warning to all Western nations about the speed with which bad (read: leftist) management will destroy a country. I received an email from a South African friend today, infuriated at his country’s destruction at the hands of his own government’s ideology and incompetence. This was not hyperbole. In fact, the power grid is on the verge of complete collapse, which will leave people without food or water, and, when combined with South Africa’s decay in all other areas, may lead to civil unrest on a scale that could trigger a full civil...

Did the FBI get a bad rap in the wake of the raid on Mar-a-Lago? According to the Washington Post, the raid took place only after months of debate between the FBI and prosecutors from the Department of Justice. The FBI argued that a request for a full search of the property would have sufficed, according to two senior officials from the bureau. The prosecutors wanted a raid, however, and the DoJ agreed: "Prosecutors argued that new evidence suggested Trump was knowingly concealing secret documents at his Palm Beach, Fla., home and urged the FBI to conduct a surprise raid...

When he made his surprise wartime trip to the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv last week, President Biden reassured that country with great confidence that “the Americans stand with you.” But the question that remains unanswered is: For how long?

Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania want newly-elected Democrat US Sen. John Fetterman to show his face or resign. The new senator, who was sworn into office Jan. 3 after defeating Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz in a hotly-contested race last November, has been MIA since mid-February, when he was checked into the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center reportedly suffering clinical depression. “Regarding the absent Senator,” the Washington County Republican Party wrote in a press release Monday.

Bill Weir, CNN's chief climate correspondent, delivered a story to viewers on some scientists' warning that "90% of ice around Antarctica has disappeared in less than a decade." The topic and angle are normal fare for CNN and Don Lemon who hosted the segment, but it's notable that Weir reported on the scientists' warning while in Ushuaia, Argentina near the tip of South America. "For the second year in a row, the south pole is shrinking, the ice down here is shrinking," Weir reported. "It's very worrying because Antarctica is a continent surrounded by oceans, and that sea ice protects...

Members of the UNC Board of Governors are not happy. A years-long effort to align teacher training with the best scientifically proven methods to teach reading has fallen flat on its face. Given the grim state of literacy in the state, a January report outlining UNC-System schools’ failures is particularly egregious. According to a recent third-party review of UNC educator preparation programs (EPPs), only UNC Charlotte’s EPP is properly grounding teachers in research-based literacy instruction methods, also known as the “science of reading.” The skills addressed in that science include phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and...

He’s called the mayor of Benkard. Liebert Galloway, better known to his friends as Lee, had lived in his Benkard Street apartment in Newburgh for the last 20 years. “We get along like one family," Galloway said. "I never walk on the street without somebody calling to me.” Sitting out on his front stoop, willing to talk to anyone and everyone, he was a staple there. But now he lives in a hotel, blocks away. He’s already had to switch rooms because he found blood on one of the blankets. His former apartment was recently purchased by New York City-based...

On Wednesday, former Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake took her election integrity lawsuit to the highest court in the state. After having her case rejected by both the superior and appellate courts over lack of evidence, Lake has appealed to the Arizona Supreme Court in an effort to overturn the results of the 2022 gubernatorial election.

The United States made multiple mistakes in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including widespread lockdowns and the aggressive promotion of faulty vaccines, experts testified to a new congressional panel on Feb. 28. “During the last three years, we have seen the worst public health mistakes in history,” Martin Kulldorff, a professor of medicine on leave from Harvard University, told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in Washington. The mistakes included not crafting policies focused on protecting those highest at risk—the elderly and otherwise infirm—and the denial and downplaying of post-infection immunity, Kulldorff said. He and Dr. Jay...

Attorney General Merrick Garland told senators Wednesday that the fentanyl epidemic ravaging the US has been “unleashed on purpose by the Sinaloa and the new generation Jalisco cartels” — as lawmakers pressed him for a plan to stop the deadly drug. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) kicked off the hearing by telling Garland that ranking member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) had “basically challenged me — and I accept the challenge — to show as much concern about the gun deaths, show as much concern about fentanyl deaths in this country, and I want to do that.” SNIP He also...

A U.S. union official alerted the Biden administration to health problems caused by the Norfolk Southern derailment in February, saying that some workers have become sick. In a letter obtained by CNBC, union representative Jonathon Long said Wednesday that rail workers have fallen ill at the East Palestine, Ohio, crash site. "Many other Employees reported that they continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment, and they all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of NS [Norfolk Southern]," the letter reads.

According to the study, gender-confused individuals who use cross-sex hormones have nearly seven times the risk of stroke and nearly six times the risk of heart attack. (LifeSiteNews) — A study released this month shows that the use of cross-sex hormones among gender-confused individuals leads to “substantially increased risk” of serious cardiac issues, including heart attacks and strokes. The research, presented at a conference of the American College of Cardiology, found that “people with gender dysphoria taking hormone replacements as part of gender affirmation therapy [sic] face a substantially increased risk of serious cardiac events, including stroke, heart attack and...

A team of scientists from Scripps Research and the University of North Carolina (UNC) has found antibodies in the blood of certain COVID-19 donors that can block infection from a broad set of coronaviruses—specifically, in people who have recovered from the virus and were then vaccinated. They found this includes not only the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2, but also SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV. The scientists' detailed study of the antibodies and their virus binding sites, reported on February 15, 2023, in the journal Immunity, could lead to the development of a broad coronavirus vaccine and related antibody therapeutics. Both could be used against...