Free Republic

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation Friday that prohibits credit card companies from tracking gun sales in Florida. His office posted an announcement to the Florida Governor’s home page saying, “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill (SB) 7054 and SB 214 to protect the personal finances of Floridians from government overreach and woke corporate monitoring.” The post noted, “SB 214 prohibits credit card companies from using firearm-specific Merchant Category Codes and institutes a fine for violations of Florida’s consumer protections against gun owner registries.”

After getting lucky for his first few years in office, Newsom now faces his first major budgetary crisis. How he responds will show a lot about his leadership skills. Gavin Newsom is perhaps one of the luckiest governors in California history given that he has presided during an economic boom that, at one point, left the state with an almost unimaginable $97.5-billion budget surplus. Mainly, all he had to do was propose spending programs—and he had compliant Democratic supermajorities to give him what he wanted. Even the COVID-19 situation, despite posing a serious public-health challenge, was a godsend for the...

Russia tried to destroy a US-made Patriot air defense system in Ukraine last week with a hypersonic missile, two US officials told CNN. The attack failed, and the Ukrainian military instead intercepted the missile using the Patriot system, the officials said, marking their first known successful Ukrainian use of the advanced air defense system only weeks after it arrived in country.

Former Minnesota officer Kimberly Potter has been released from prison after serving 16 months of a two-year sentence in the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright, whom she shot after mistaking her gun for a Taser during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Potter was released from the Minnesota Correctional Facility-Shakopee at 4 a.m. on Monday, the department said, noting the early hour was due to safety concerns and the potential for violent protests outside the facility. Potter was convicted of two counts of manslaughter in the killing of 20-year-old Wright, an unarmed Black...

Title 42 migrant expulsions will finally come to an end. And good riddance. A bad COVID-era policy adopted by the Trump administration and extended by the Biden administration, Title 42 upended a longstanding process outlined in immigration law and allowed border agents to quickly eject refuge-seeking migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum in the U.S. The Title 42 order applied to people entering the country from Canada or Mexico, though expulsions overwhelmingly took place at the U.S.-Mexico border. Around 2.7 million migrants—largely from Mexico and Central America—were expelled under this order and sent back to Mexico or their...

The Department of Homeland Security listed pro-life mothers as potential “radicalization suspects” in a violence prevention training guide just days after President Biden took office, documents obtained by a conservative legal watchdog show. DHS’s Office of Terrorism and Violence lists profiles of various domestic extremists in an internal memo dated Jan. 29, 2021 — including a “middle-aged pro-life advocate” — and asks participants to make “real-life decisions” to confront each. “This is Ann, a resident of Elkville in rural America,” one profile reads. “Ann has always been religious but since the death of her mother, she’s become increasingly devout. She’s...

Ron DeSantis always makes a big deal about signing all of the Florida laws that stem from new legislation the people behind his administration submit from his office. However, when he signed the new law that sealed all his travel records [Previously Discussed Here], he did so quietly. .... Snip.... Ron DeSantis ’24 is 100%, guaranteed to be an absolute construct of the billionaires, multinationals, and hedge fund managers who must stop Donald Trump and the America First platform. Look backward at the professional Republican outcomes in 2018, 2020 and 2022 to see the background of what this is all...

Much has been written about the remarkably large percentage of Americans who don’t want President Joe Biden to run for a second term. Most of the commentariat, however, tiptoes around the obvious reason they want him to retire after one term. When they can’t avoid discussing Biden’s bizarre behavior and weird maundering, most pundits hide behind vague allusions to his age, but the public has long known that the real problem is his steady cognitive decline.As far back as November of 2021, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that only 46 percent of voters agreed with the following statement: “Joe Biden...

BUENOS AIRES, May 12 (Reuters) - Argentina's annual inflation rate soared to 109% in April, the country's statistics agency said on Friday, smashing past analyst forecasts and stoking anger among hard-hit consumers who are increasingly having to skimp and save to get by. The price spike has pushed one in four people into poverty in a country that has battled for decades with high inflation, along with cyclical debt and currency crises. Dwindling central bank reserves are now imperiling the government's finances. "They've turned us into a country of beggars," Carlos Andrada, a 60-year-old self-employed worker, told Reuters as he...

Jamie Dimon warned that a U.S. default would be “potentially catastrophic,” and pleaded with politicians to “please negotiate a deal” before the country breaches its borrowing cap in early June. If the U.S. defaults on its debt, the JPMorgan CEO warned in a Thursday interview with Bloomberg TV, it would hit “contracts, collateral, clearing houses, and affect clients definitely around the world.” Dimon expressed some hope that the U.S. would be able to negotiate a solution if markets begin to worry that a default might happen. "The closer you get to it, you will have panic" in terms of market...

More than 40 years after he tried to kill the president, John Hinckley Jr. is trying to to forge a new path. In 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after shooting and wounding President Ronald Reagan, as well as the White House press secretary, a Secret Service agent and a Washington police officer. Then 27, Hinckley was committed by the court to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he lived until 2016, when the court granted him convalescent leave, allowing him to live with his mother in the gated Kingsmill community outside of Williamsburg. He...

Ron DeSantis is set to unveil the endorsements of more than three-dozen Iowa state legislators ahead of his trip to the state on Saturday — giving him a boost in a state that traditionally hosts the Republican Party’s first presidential nominating contest. DeSantis has spent the last few weeks reaching out to Iowa Republicans, according to a person familiar with the calls. The governor did not explicitly ask for their support during those conversations, which were instead focused on legislative matters taking place in Florida and Iowa. The endorsements, however, provide a political jolt for DeSantis as he readies for...

A top Republican has sparked a diplomatic row with Mexico after he said their citizens would be 'eating cat food' without the United States. GOP Senator John Kennedy was labelled as a 'racist' by the Mexican government after his explosive remarks on how to crack down on drug trafficking. The Louisiana lawmaker said Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill that the Biden administration could use troops to swoop in and break up the cartels because Mexico was so dependent on U.S. trade. 'Without the people of America, Mexico, figuratively speaking, would be eating cat food out of a can...

[Satire] Pope Francis on the couchFinally, even Pope Francis has realised that there is something badly wrong with his psychological make-up, and has checked in with the great Dr Kopfschrumpfer, psychiatrist to the Vatican. "Now Holy Father, what seems to be the problem?" Help me, doctor, I have this obsessive phobia about everything that happened before I founded the Church in 2013. What is it that troubles you? There is terrible support for restorationism... indietrismo... backwardism... a nostalgic disease... we cannot turn back... I see. Have you considered discussing the issue with some friends? I don't have any friends, apart...

In little over an hour, Donald Trump suggested the United States should default on its debts for the first time in history, injected doubt over the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, dangled pardons for most of the Capitol rioters convicted of crimes and refused to say he would abide by the results of the next presidential election. The second-term vision Trump sketched out at a CNN town hall event Wednesday would represent a sharp departure from core American values that have been at the bedrock of the nation for decades: its creditworthiness, its credibility with international allies...

They started shelling at sunrise. In the dawn haze, under the cover of their own artillery, small groups of Ukrainian soldiers advanced toward a Russian position on the outskirts of the embattled city of Bakhmut. Drone footage had identified an avenue of attack on Russian lines on the outskirts of the besieged city. Intelligence suggested the Russians were so focused on the intense street battles playing out inside they were not expecting an assault in this direction, according to two battalion commanders in Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade who help plan and execute the operation and spoke by telephone. For nine...

FAU's survey is the strongest in-state poll for Trump yet. Another Florida poll shows that Ron DeSantis may have difficulty selling in-state Republicans on his presidential ambitions. A just-released survey from Florida Atlantic University shows former President Donald Trump leading the Florida Governor, 59% to 31%, among 1,081 registered Republican voters in Florida polled in mid-April. That margin is well outside the +/- 3-percentage-point margin of error.

oe Scarborough is angry at his fellow Biden fans who are scared by the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll showing Biden with a historically low approval rating, and losing badly to Trump in a head-to-head match-up. On Friday's Morning Joe, Scarborough lashed out at what he sees as weak-kneed Dems: "Some of the Obama people would always talk about Democratic bedwetting. Let me tell you something: all the beds in Washington, D.C. were, were, were wet after that poll came out." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Elon Musk has hired former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino as the next Twitter CEO. "I am excited to welcome Linda Yaccarino as the new CEO of Twitter," Musk, the current Twitter CEO, tweeted Friday. "@LindaYacc will focus primarily on business operations, while I focus on product design & new technology. Looking forward to working with Linda to transform this platform into X, the everything app." Yaccarino's appointment comes as the platform has been in turmoil, with mass resignations and some companies pausing advertising, since the Musk acquisition in October. She previously spent 11 years with NBCUniversal where she most recently...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) “clearly has thought about the challenges of a third party presidential bid” and could launch one at the end of this year, Washington Post columnist George Will wrote Friday. The two-term incumbent faces a tough reelection bid — if he decides such an avenue — in deep red West Virginia. He would likely face well-liked Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV), who announced his candidacy last month and led Manchin by 14 points in a recent poll, or five-term Rep Alex Mooney (R-WV).