Free Republic

Business groups are pushing back against a new Biden administration rule that would allow third-parties, including union representatives, to accompany federal inspectors of job sites. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued the final rule earlier this year, but critics say the rule goes beyond safety needs and panders to unions and their recruitment efforts. The rule would apply even to job sites where workers have not unionized. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, are helping lead the charge against the new “walkaround” rule, which takes effect May 31...

It has taken quite a while to get to this point but the first group of Kenyan police have arrived in Haiti this week and hundreds more will be arriving later this week.A small advance group of Kenyan officers – part of a larger UN-backed “multinational security support mission” designed to stabilize Haiti after months of mayhem – landed in the capital, Port-au-Prince, late on Monday as the city’s airport reopened nearly three months after a gang uprising forced it to close. Kenyan media reports said another 200 officers were due to arrive later this week with their deployment coinciding...

Coal and natural gas plants provide 60% of the U.S.’ affordable, reliable, and baseload power. In a time of increased electricity demand, America needs to double down on harnessing these sources—not abandon them.The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s recently finalized Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP) rule, however, takes the country in the wrong direction. Under this regulation, one that is arguably illegal, existing coal and new natural gas power plants will be mandated to install emissions control technologies that aren’t yet commercially viable. Plants that don’t comply risk permanent closure. This unrealistic mandate is advanced under the guise of reducing greenhouse...

Days before Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate former President Donald Trump, experts who had been following the Justice Department investigations questioned its necessity. Mr. Smith was appointed on Nov. 18, 2022.Would the appointment of an “independent” lead prosecutor undermine the Justice Department’s own appearance of independence from politics? Would the newly appointed prosecutor slow the case down?Those concerns have now materialized, though not for the predicted reasons.On June 22, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will hear arguments on a motion to dismiss the classified documents case against President Trump based on the unlawful...

Pennsylvania’s State Department issued a directive in 2018 that may allow noncitizens and other ineligible applicants to register to vote in violation of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), according to a complaint brought by America First Legal (AFL) and obtained first by The Federalist. HAVA requires a voter to provide a valid driver’s license number — or, if and only if he has no driver’s license, the last four digits of his Social Security number — on his voter registration form. Election officials are then required to confirm whether the numbers provided are valid by checking them against...

Terrorists have been arrested at both universities, which are rife with pro-terror activity, antisemitism, and Hamas-linked student groups.The Department of Education and the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $1,508,888 between 2010 and 2022 to a research institution with close ties to two Palestinian universities that are hotbeds for terrorism. The Palestinian American Research Center (PARC) has maintained a close relationship for years with Birzeit University and An-Najah National University, located in the West Bank cities of Birzeit and Nablus, respectively. PARC has taken at least two delegations to both universities and even hosted a conference at Birzeit. Groups of...

In 2021, Ford announced its goal to sell only EVs in Europe by the end of 2030. It's important for companies to remain flexible with their EV strategies at a time when the market is slowing. Ford is doing just that.

‘There is no trail for requesting a ballot. … This would make the mail-in delivery system untraceable,’ Rep. Brandtjen warned.Three days after a Wisconsin judge slapped a temporary restraining order on the state’s election regulator, the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) still wasn’t commenting about its latest legal scrape. But state lawmakers were — including the former chairwoman of the Assembly’s Elections Committee, who called WEC’s alleged violation of election law the “absentee ballot scandal of 2024.” As The Federalist first reported on Friday, Judge James Morrison issued the restraining order, enjoining WEC from requiring that Wisconsin’s approximately 1,900 local election...

Pennsylvania’s State Department issued a directive in 2018 that may allow noncitizens and other ineligible applicants to register to vote in violation of the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), according to a complaint brought by America First Legal (AFL) and obtained first by The Federalist.HAVA requires a voter to provide a valid driver’s license number — or, if and only if he has no driver’s license, the last four digits of his Social Security number — on his voter registration form. Election officials are then required to confirm whether the numbers provided are valid by checking them against state...

The FBI was authorized to use “deadly force” against former President Donald Trump when the Biden administration agency raided Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents, according to newly unsealed court documents shared on X by independent journalist Julie Kelly.Attorney General Merrick Garland personally approved the unprecedented raid on Trump’s Florida home in the summer of 2022, after which special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents. Notably, President Joe Biden also retained classified documents following his tenure as vice president but was not charged by his own Justice Department because prosecutors said he would likely “present himself...

[Catholic/Orthodox Caucus] Pope Francis gives prisoners silent blessing ‘so everyone receives it from God in the way they believe’‘All religions, all cultures, look at the one God in different ways,’ the pontiff told a group of prisoners in Verona from various religions.“God is one: our cultures have taught us to call him by one name, by another, and to find him in different ways, but he is the same father of all of us,” Pope Francis said. “He is one.” “And all religions, all cultures, look at the one God in different ways.”“Please do not forget, please pray for me...

Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released hostages and Palestinian Arab prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the discussions. The ceasefire agreement that Hamas said on May 6 it had agreed to was not what the Qataris or the Americans believed had been submitted to Hamas for a potential final review, the sources told the network. The changes made by Egyptian intelligence, the details...

An exhibit filed today by Donald Trump in a motion to suppress evidence seized during the FBI’s August 2022 raid of Mar-a-Lago revealed shocking new details about the bureau’s plans to use deadly force and even engage the former president and his security detail that day if necessary.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it will sell off 1 million barrels of gasoline held in case of emergencies — with the Energy Department explicitly citing an interest in keeping gas prices low over the summer driving season ahead of the November election. The fuel will be released from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, a component of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that was established in 2014 after Superstorm Sandy disrupted gasoline supplies in the New York City area. “The Biden-Harris Administration is laser focused on lowering prices at the pump for American families, especially as drivers hit the road...

Donald Trump’s campaign deleted a video shared on his Truth Social account that included the phrase “unified reich” amid blowback from the Biden administration and a handful of Republicans. On Monday afternoon, Trump’s Truth Social account posted a 30-second video that described a vision of America if he wins in 2024, and included fake newspaper headlines that said “Trump Wins!” and “What’s next for America?” At first glance, the video seemed like typical campaign media — except that the background included text about “the creation of a unified reich,” and “German industrial strength.”

Vatican makes fresh overture to China, reaffirms that Catholic Church is no threat to sovereigntyThe Vatican has made another big overture to ChinaROME -- The Vatican made another big overture to China on Tuesday, reaffirming the Catholic Church poses no threat to Beijing's sovereignty and admitting that Western missionaries had made “errors” in past centuries in their zeal to convert the Chinese faithful.The Vatican hosted the head of China's bishops conference for an unprecedented, high-level commemoration of a landmark 1924 meeting in Shanghai that affirmed the need for foreign missionaries in China to give way to local church leaders.The presence...

The White House is continuing to praise “Bidenomics” — the culmination of President Joe Biden’s economic policies — as a success despite reams of data and other evidence showing average Americans falling further behind in their personal finances amid high inflation, lending rates, and housing costs. Administration officials have highlighted various indicators, such as major stock indices, jobs reports, and inflation rates, to demonstrate an improving economic situation. However, this message does not seem to have strongly resonated with the American public, Just the News reports. According to a recent Harvard Center for American Political Studies (CAPS)/Harris survey, far from...

'You know why? One of them will always love you. Not the same one. One of them is always going to be on your side,' Biden says President Biden explained why he advises young men to marry into families with 5 or more daughters."I say to every young man thinking of getting married, marry into a family of five or more daughters. I did. My wife is the oldest of 5 sisters," Biden said during a speech on Tuesday in Nashua, New Hampshire."You know why? One of them will always love you. Not the same one. One of them is...

he U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday sued the state of Oklahoma to stop implementation of a new law targeting undocumented residents. The suit in the Western District of Oklahoma follows a DOJ warning last week that it considered the law unconstitutional and a violation of federal law. Tuesday's filing restates that claim and asks for injunctive relief and for House Bill 4156, the legislation creating the law, to be overturned. “Oklahoma cannot disregard the U.S. Constitution and settled Supreme Court precedent,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, in a...

President Joe Biden is trailing, and liberal pundits are increasingly saying he has mainly himself to blame. The New York Times’s Ezra Klein unfurled seven theories for why Biden is losing to former President Donald Trump. “The electorate hasn’t turned on Democrats; a crucial group of voters has turned on Biden,” he writes. Biden is losing to Trump in states where Democratic Senate candidates are still ahead. “The point here is that Democrats have a Joe Biden problem, not a partywide problem,” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote. “Regular, mainstream Democratic candidates are holding up just fine in the purple...