Free Republic

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that China’s escalation of tariffs is a “big mistake” because it is playing a “losing hand.” Bessent said, “If we put up a tariff wall, the ultimate goal would be to bring jobs back to the U.S. But in the meantime, we will be collecting substantial tariffs. If we’re successful, tariffs would be a melting ice cube, in a way, because you’re taking in the revenues as the manufacturing facilities are built in the U.S., and there should be some level of symmetry between the taxes we begin taking in...

Japan expressed interest Tuesday in participating in the NATO command for its Ukrainian mission based in Germany in what would be a major boost in ties with the largely European alliance. Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani announced his country’s interest during talks with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Tokyo. After providing the war-torn country with defense equipment and support, Japan now wants to join NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine, or NSATU, headquartered at a U.S. base in the German town of Wiesbaden. Nakatani said Japan wants to further deepen security cooperation with NATO and that participation in...

https://babylonbee.com/news/analysts-clarify-that-trump-is-only-responsible-for-the-stock-market-when-it-goes-down/U.S. — With investors pleasantly surprised that a crash has thus far been avoided and the market had rebounded in the wake of new trade tariffs, top analysts clarified that President Trump was only responsible for the stock market when it goes down. Many experts had predicted a devastating market crash following the uncertainty caused by Trump's implementation of tariffs, leading advisors to remind the public that while the stock market's quick stabilization should not be attributed to Trump in any way, any potential crash most certainly should be. "He only does the bad things," said economist and stock market...

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer told a committee full of skeptical senators Tuesday that escalating trade tensions won’t “be resolved overnight,” but insisted the US economy is strong enough to withstand President Trump’s duty regime. “Our trade deficit, driven by these nonreciprocal conditions, is a manifestation [of] the loss of the nation’s ability to make, to grow, to build, and the president recognizes the urgency of the moment,” Greer told the Senate Finance Committee. “Our large and persistent trade deficit has been over 30 years in the making, and it will not be resolved overnight, but all of this is...

The soccer coach accused of killing a 13-year-old boy whose body was found in ditch in Ventura County last week is an undocumented immigrant who was previously accused of sexually assaulting minors, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Federal prosecutors revealed that Ryan Routh, the accused would-be assassin of President Donald Trump, sought to obtain military-grade weapons – including a rocket launcher – from a Ukrainian contact as part of his alleged assassination plot. Routh told his associate to "send me a rpg [rocket-propelled grenade] or stinger, and I will see what we can do… [Trump] is not good for Ukraine," according to court documents obtained by Fox News. The pair discussed Routh's purchase options, with Routh inquiring if his associate could "ship it to me???" before explaining his intent for the military-grade weapons: "I need equipment so...

I just had a great call with the Acting President of South Korea. We talked about their tremendous and unsustainable Surplus, Tariffs, Shipbuilding, large scale purchase of U.S. LNG, their joint venture in an Alaska Pipeline, and payment for the big time Military Protection we provide to South Korea. They began these Military payments during my first term, Billions of Dollars, but Sleepy Joe Biden, for reasons unknown, terminated the deal. That was a shocker to all! In any event, we have the confines and probability of a great DEAL for both countries. Their top TEAM is on a plane...

Breitbart News @BreitbartNews Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby gets confirmed in a bipartisan 54-45 vote. China-linked Senator Mitch McConnell was the only Republican to vote no. 2:00 PM · Apr 8, 2025

Colleges around the country are reporting some of their international students' visas are being revoked unexpectedly, expressing alarm over what appears to be a new level of government scrutiny.Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but college leaders say the government has been quietly terminating students' legal residency status with little notice to students or schools. That marks a shift from past practice and leaves students vulnerable to detention and deportation.The list of colleges that have discovered students have had their legal status terminated includes Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.The Trump administration has targeted students...

The real reason for the Ukraine war is to eliminate Europe.

Pro-Israel activist and evangelical leader Laurie Cardoza-Moore called on US President Donald Trump on Tuesday to place a tariff on conservative media personality Tucker Carlson's show after he tweeted in support of Iran. “Tucker Carlson is acting like a foreign agent, doing the bidding of Iran and Qatar instead of America. It’s time for the White House to impose a Tariff on Tucker Carlson for illegally importing anti-Semitic Iranian talking points and putting America last,” Cardoza-Moore said. Cardoza-Moore, who hosts Focus On Israel on NRB TV, claimed that Carlson has used the term ‘neocons’ as a dogwhistle meaning ‘blame the...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed three gun control bills on Thursday. The bills ban certain gun mods, make gun shops post clearer warnings, and change how gun sales are tracked. “New Yorkers are sick of weapons manufacturers ignoring their role in the gun violence epidemic,” said Democratic Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, who sponsored the bill in the Assembly. “Glock has known that its pistols can be easily and cheaply converted into illegal fully-automatic machine guns. It’s time to put people over profit.” S745/A439 changes how credit cards categorize gun vendors, requiring the companies to use new merchant codes for...

Astronomers have just revealed that a day on Uranus is longer than was previously thought, at 17 hours, 14 minutes and 52 seconds. This is 28 seconds longer than the previous estimate, which was made by NASA's Voyager 2 probe during its flyby of the ice giant planet back in 1986. The new figure—which is 1,000 times more accurate—was calculated based on a decade's worth of observations of Uranus's aurorae made by NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope. The long-term data on the planet's auroral emissions enabled the researchers to track the positions of the planet's magnetic poles and, by extension, its...

President Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff will lead the U.S. delegation for nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday in Oman, two sources familiar with the plan tell Axios. -snip- So far, there have only been negotiations about the negotiations — which don't yet seem to be resolved. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, whom Iranian press reports say will be Iran's chief negotiator, insisted the talks would be "indirect" — with Omani mediators passing messages between the sides. Trump insisted the talks would be "direct." Two U.S. officials told Axios that is indeed the plan. Whatever the format, the stakes are clear....

The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS into a mass-deportation machine, analysts say.

Last week’s “Liberation Day” marked a kind of D-Day in the effort to reorder the international economic system. That reordering is desperately needed to address the system’s imbalances, which have led to deindustrialization and annual trillion-dollar trade deficits for the United States. But remember, far from striking World War II’s decisive blow, D-Day was just the start of the European campaign. Eleven months of vicious fighting followed, with more than 100,000 Americans killed before victory was secured. With the tariffs, too, success or failure depends on what happens next, and the nation will have to bear real costs while the...

Suchir Balaji, the OpenAi whistleblower who allegedly committed suicide was shot twice in the head, according to his parents. Balaji, 26, was found dead in his San Francisco apartment with a gunshot wound to the head in November shortly after he told the New York Times that OpenAi was violating copyright laws. His death was initially ruled a suicide by a medical examiner, however his parents immediately hired a private investigator and did a second autopsy. ..... Snip..... His parents, Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy, insist he couldn’t have killed himself, and paid for their own autopsy, toxicology, and other...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson 🚨Rep. Tim Burchett Says The Deep State Sees President Trump as Expendable, Allowed Assassination Attempts to Happen To Get Rid of Him:

Explanation: Sometimes, the Moon visits the Pleiades. Technically, this means that the orbit of our Moon takes it directly in front of the famous Pleiades star cluster, which is far in the distance. The technical term for the event is an occultation, and the Moon is famous for its rare occultations of all planets and several well-known bright stars. The Moon's tilted and precessing orbit makes its occultations of the Seven Sisters star cluster bunchy, with the current epoch starting in 2023 continuing monthly until 2029. After that, though, the next occultation won't occur until 2042. Taken from Cantabria, Spain...

National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett appeared on Fox News to discuss the first week impact from President Trump’s global trade reset and implementation of reciprocal tariffs. Director Kevin Hassett notes that so many countries are calling and requesting to renegotiate their trade agreements, the National Economic Council is having difficulty keeping up with appointment scheduling and establishing a prioritization list for President Trump to review. That said, Hassett notes that Japan and South Korea will likely be the first two nations for U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and President Trump to engage with. Apparently, Xi Jinping (China) and Ursula...