Free Republic

On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said that “If you believe in capitalism, like I do, if you believe that the market has given us this incredible country,” you should address healthcare costs, housing, child care, and reducing the amount of debt the U.S. has and Congress “should be reducing some of the burden on people who make less, but actually increasing some of the corporate taxes so we can bring more funds in to do something about the debt.” Klobuchar said, “If you believe in capitalism, like I do, if you believe that the...

I think that, by now, it’s pretty clear that the Trump administration has a set of priorities that focus on illegal immigration, international trade, and removing absolutely anything that falls under the category of waste, fraud, and abuse. Everyone knows this. It’s obvious. Which is why it’s hilarious to me that the acting head of the IRS quit because of an agreement to share data with immigration officials. Melanie Krause, the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), will be resigning after barely six weeks on the job, in advance of the agency sharing taxpayer data with federal immigration...

By now, Americans have grown painfully familiar with the new breed of soft-on-crime, far-left attorneys general. They’re everywhere—installed in one liberal hellhole after another like little ticking time bombs, handpicked to do one thing: dismantle law and order from the inside. They let violent criminals walk free, ignore looters, and go after political opponents instead of real threats—because that’s the whole point. These AGs aren’t just soft on crime; they’re part of the plan to destroy US cities. ... But the AG in Massachusetts? Well, she takes the cake. This isn’t just your run-of-the-mill Soros-style puppet. We’re talking about a...

President Trump is wielding tariffs to try to close the massive U.S. trade deficit in goods, which he sees as a sign of economic weakness. It is only part of the trade story. While the U.S. buys more goods from abroad than it sells, the opposite is true for services, which include everything from streaming subscriptions to financial advice. Trump left these service exports out of his tariff math, but they are being pulled into his trade wars. On Wednesday, Trump ratcheted up the U.S. trade war with China, but put broader tariffs above 10% on most other countries on...

snip... ~This, for example, is an interesting development. From the Reinickendorf district of Berlin: Mann stürmt mit Machete in Bäckerei – und wird mit Baseballschlägern totgeprügelt Which means: Man storms into bakery with machete - and is beaten to death with baseball bats Who takes a baseball bat to a bakery? Well, as usual, the local media coverage is minimal and designed to obfuscate. The 38-year-old deceased had apparently been living in a homeless shelter and was a regular of the baker's who believed him to be Romanian. He entered the shop on the Residenzstraße bearing the increasingly popular Euro-accessory...

New York state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal has called for a ban on sightseeing helicopter tours in New York City — sensationally saying Thursday’s tragic crash in the Hudson River narrowly avoided disaster had the chopper crashed into a densely-populated area. Including this week’s harrowing tragedy, a total of 25 people have died in the Big Apple during sightseeing helicopter tours in the last 40 years. Now, Hoylman-Sigal (D-Manhattan) expressed a strong desire to limit traffic over the city to just first responders and press — and said NYC should ditch sightseeing chopper tours. “There’s no reason to allow tourists and...

China announced Friday that it will raise tariffs on U.S. goods from 84% to 125% — the latest salvo in an escalating trade war between the world's two largest economies that has rattled markets and raised fears of a global slowdown. While U.S. President Donald Trump paused import taxes this week for other countries, he raised tariffs on China and they now total 145%. China has denounced the policy as “economic bullying" and promised countermeasures. The new tariffs begin Saturday.

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(4/11/25)[Prayer]Names and Titles of God the Holy Spirit (The Spirit of Assignment) Ezekiel 3:1812 Then the spirit took me up, and I heard behind me a voice of a great rushing, saying, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place. 13 I heard also the noise of the wings of the living creatures that touched one another, and the noise of the wheels over against them, and a noise of a great rushing. 14 So the spirit lifted me up, and took me away, and I went in bitterness, in the heat...

KEY POINTS NYU Langone Health patients will be able to check in for appointments using Amazon One, the company's palm-scanning technology. The service will help NYU Langone speed up the sign-in process, reduce wait times and alleviate administrative workloads. NYU Langone will be the largest third-party deployment of Amazon One to date. Patients at NYU Langone Health facilities will soon be able to check in for appointments using Amazon's palm-scanning technology, the company announced Monday. The contactless service, called Amazon One, can identify patients "securely and quickly," according to a release. NYU Langone said the technology will help it speed...

“‘For I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven’” (Matthew 5:20). Many people today—and sadly, more and more within the church—have redefined biblical concepts to fit their own human perspectives. Like the scribes and Pharisees, religionists know they can’t match God’s righteousness, so they simply change the definition of holiness. A prime example from Old Testament times is how the Jews reinterpreted God’s command, “Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). They turned this from a call for inner holiness...

An ongoing national legal dispute regarding vaccinations of children with COVID-19 shots concerns whether school officials are immune from traditional legal claims. An ongoing national legal dispute regarding vaccinations of children with COVID-19 shots concerns whether school officials are immune from traditional legal claims -- particularly, battery -- when administering Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) shots without parental consent. North Carolina’s Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of parents for violating their informed consent rights in violation of a state statute. Still, even that court denied common law state claims for battery -- the physical touching of another against their will....

The BRICS group of nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—has long aimed to challenge Western-controlled financial systems and reduce the world’s reliance on the US dollar. Now, that mission is getting an unexpected push, thanks to new tariff policies introduced by US President Donald Trump. BRICS Bloc Gains Momentum Amid US Trade Setbacks Trump has declared what he calls “Liberation Day,” a move that marks one of the biggest protectionist trade shifts since the 1930s. These new tariffs target both enemies and allies, and are expected to slow trade, increase prices in the US, and put brakes on global...

Since April 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been notably absent from public view, sparking speculation as to his whereabouts. However, today may mark his return as he's rumored to meet with Donald Trumps envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg. -snip- Despite daily television broadcasts showing a weary-looking Putin, now 72, engaging with local officials and other domestic agendas, these appearances are assessed by experts as likely "canned"suggesting they were pre-recorded. The enigmatic Russian leader has once again vanished from the public eye, marking the second time this year he's been absent for over a week, fueling widespread speculation about...

Today’s Left is at peak political insanity. Who could imagine massive rallies supporting government bureaucratic bloat and wasteful spending? Or that young women, undoubtedly feminists, protesting on behalf of Muslim terrorists? Why do public officials defend boys participating in girls’ sports? Why would climate activists vandalize Tesla despite the company’s stellar environmental record? Meanwhile, college professors toss around terms like “Nazi” and “fascist” in ways divorced from their actual meaning. Why is a free sex-change operation for incarcerated illegal migrants a riveting presidential campaign issue? Such madness defies rational explanation. America is not in an existential crisis. For nearly everyone,...

Xi Jinping has said his nation is “not afraid,” in his first public comments on the escalating trade war with the United States, as Beijing raised tariffs on US goods to 125%. tariff hike is the latest in a tit-for-tat battle between the world’s two largest economies, after Trump raised tariffs on China to 145%. However, China has indicated it does not intend to go higher than 125%, saying it would be meaningless to engage in further escalation. “The successive imposition of excessively high tariffs on China by the US has become nothing more than a numbers game, with no...

The goal of the healthcare industry in the United States is to take as much money away from you as possible. I truly wish that I was exaggerating, but I am not. Can you guess which nation spends the highest percentage of GDP on healthcare? Without looking it up, you probably already know that it is us. Gigantic pharmaceutical corporations and massively bloated health insurance companies are raking in colossal mountains of cash, and yet the quality of the healthcare that we receive in return is rather quite poor. People living in Albania, Panama and Kuwait have higher life expectancy...

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Ukraine’s key allies are meeting in Brussels on Friday with a noticeable absence at the table: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is only attending virtually. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was created by former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the Biden administration, is a group of roughly 50 nations that meet regularly to discuss bolstering military support for Ukraine. It will mark the first time a US defense secretary has not attended the meeting in person since the group was established in 2022 just months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which comes amid a series of...

President Trump's diplomatic envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia and is expected to meet President Vladimir Putin on Friday, according to a source familiar with the trip and FlightRadar data. -snip- If no ceasefire is reached by the end of the month, Trump could move forward with additional sanctions on Russia either through executive power or by asking Congress to pass new sanctions legislation, a source familiar with the issue told Axios. "We will know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not. I hope they are," Secretary of State Marco...