Free Republic

"Those who perpetrated the greatest ruse in American presidential history by staging the Biden presidency will never tell us what their ultimate agenda was" — Victor Davis Hanson. One baseline truth in current American life is that our bodily well-being gets worse as the so-called health care industry gets ever-larger — it is now 17.6-percent of the economy (GDP). This is clearly the basis of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that attached itself to the Trump 2.0 program. You hear almost no arguments against MAHA itself, even from the Party of Hustles and Hoaxes, but plenty of calumny...

Putin could reject his own offer to Zelensky. UKRAINE is now piling the pressure on Russia as Vladimir Putin stays silent on his own offer to meet for peace talks on Thursday. Moscow's bungle has seen Volodymyr Zelenksy take up Vlad's offer to for a face-to-face meet in Istanbul for long-awaited negotiations between the two leaders. But the Kremlin has gone deathly silent as Putin weighs rejecting the offer he sent to the Ukrainians. Zelensky has filled the dead air and now said he will definitely go to Istanbul - but will only meet with his counterpart Putin and not...

On average, U.S. counties grew by 1,000 people from 2023 to 2024. But the level of population growth varied widely from place to place. This chart, in partnership with BGO, shows the fastest-growing counties. Ranking the Largest Population Increases in U.S. Counties Using the latest data available from the U.S. Census Bureau, here are the counties that had the largest population growth measured in number of people. Harris County, which includes Houston and neighboring communities, had by far the biggest population growth. The primary driver of the county’s growth was international migration. On a domestic basis, more U.S. residents moved...

I picked a J6 case at random to review because I wanted to see how bad it was. And let me tell you the random one I picked did not disappoint. This defendant went into the capital and walked down the corridor. He was not accused of violence. He did not break anything. He did not hurt anybody. He was sentenced by a jury to 19 months in prison he was overcharged by the prosecutor to the point where it should be called malicious prosecution, and a judge rubber stamped every single thing the prosecutor asked for. The most egregious...

What's with the left? After ushering in tens of millions of unvetted illegal migrants and defending their 'right' to stay with extraordinary tenacity, President Trump lets in about 50 South Africans Boers this week, victims of extreme violence, discrimination, and Hugo Chavez-style land expropriation, and already they're having a cow. The far-leftist South African government is hurling abuse at the refugees as they go, and unwittingly making the case that Trump was right all along to grant them that refugee status -- nobody acts like they do without a guilty conscience: Joel Pollak @joelpollak South Africa’s foreign minister @RonaldLamola moves...

Rarely has an economic policy been repudiated as soundly, and as quickly, as President Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs—and by Mr. Trump’s own hand. Witness the agreement Monday morning to scale back his punitive tariffs on China—his second major retreat in less than a week. This is a win for economic reality, and for American prosperity. Make that a partial win for reality. The Administration agreed to scrap most of the 145% tariff Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods on April 2 and later. What remains is his new 10% global base-line tariff, plus the separate 20% levy putatively tied to...

The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back fuel economy incentives for start-stop technology, a system that automatically shuts off a car’s engine when stopped at a red light or in traffic. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the decision, calling the feature a “climate participation trophy” that drivers overwhelmingly dislike. The move marks a significant shift in federal policy, reversing regulations that encouraged automakers to include the system in new vehicles. Start-stop technology was introduced as part of Obama-era emissions rules, designed to reduce fuel consumption and lower carbon emissions. The system became widespread, with 65 percent of new cars featuring...

Is it just me, or is this a sight to behold? Seeing Trump & MBS as co-hosts greeting all of them...I've never seen anything like it.. The MSM made it sound like a dozen or so CEO's & business leaders would be there. It seems like maybe 50.

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These photos of a South African farm show the effects of the country’s land reform. I got these two photos from this link:Original: https://martinplaut.com/2024/09/02/the-utter-failure-of-the-south-africas-agricultural-reforms/Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240902055937/https://martinplaut.com/2024/09/02/the-utter-failure-of-the-south-africas-agricultural-reforms/This is the first photo. The caption says, “Irrigated fields of potatoes and other vegetables at Dawn Valley farm in 2002, six years before the land claim settlement. (Source: Google Earth Pro).”This is the second photo. The caption says, “A satellite image of the same fields in 2022, shows few signs of any cultivation. (Source: Google Earth Pro).”

House Republicans are proposing to bar most non-citizens from receiving taxpayer-funded benefits, including food stamps, in President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” GOP lawmakers are pursuing an extensive overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help offset the cost of the president’s tax priorities. The House Agriculture Committee will include a provision in their draft bill to restrict SNAP benefits to those who are citizens or lawful permanent residents following Republican Illinois Rep. Mary Miller’s request to the panel to prohibit certain non-citizens from receiving food stamps. “Taxpayer-funded benefits like SNAP are intended for Americans in need,...

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This Easter, the University of Notre Dame saw a record number of students enter the Catholic Church. This trend is happening not just at Notre Dame but around the country. Los Angeles welcomed more than 5,500 new Catholics. The New York Post ran an essay entitled “Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse [. . .]” As reporter Matthew McDonald wrote in another article, “Dioceses are reporting increases of 30%, 40%, 50% and even more than 70%.” Not just in the United States but around the world, a growing number of adults—mostly young adults—joined the Church. In Austria, there...

The Georgia college student in federal custody who could be deported after she was pulled over by local cops should have never been stopped, officials admitted Monday. Mexican national Ximena Arias-Cristobal was wrongly accused by Dalton police of making an illegal turn at a red light after an officer confused her with another driver on May 5, city leaders said in a press release. During the stop, authorities said the 19-year-old, who is in the country illegally, didn’t have a proper driver’s license and was taken into custody at the scene and later detained by immigration enforcement authorities. While all...

A group of 59 white South Africans has arrived in the US, where they are to be granted refugee status. President Donald Trump has said the refugee applications for the country's Afrikaner minority had been expedited as they were victims of "racial discrimination". The South African government said the group were not suffering any such persecution that would merit refugee status. The Trump administration has halted all other refugee admissions, including for applicants from warzones. Human Rights Watch described the move as a cruel racial twist, saying that thousands of people - many black and Afghan refugees - had been...

The Democratic National Committee’s credentials panel voted Monday to void activist David Hogg’s election to vice chair of the party. Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was elected vice chair in February but has drawn criticism from some Democrats over his plans to spend $20 million to take down long-serving Democratic House lawmakers in primaries. “[It’s] impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote,” Hogg said in a statement after the vote, according to Politico. “The DNC has...

TAMPA, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis is stepping up immigration efforts with the announcement that more than 100 Florida Highway Patrol troopers have been sworn in as Special Deputy U.S. Marshals. This means troopers can now serve federal warrants and help remove dangerous, criminal illegal aliens without waiting for the federal government to get directly involved in the operation.

For more than half a century, there was just one place on the UC Berkeley campus where you’d run into 20-year-old Aaron Rodgers rocking a bowl cut, see a stand-up set from comedy legend Robin Williams or hear Grateful Dead icon Jerry Garcia perform live. The Bear’s Lair — Berkeley’s only on-campus pub — was both the only bar with beer dripping from the ceiling after a Jason Kidd-led Cal team shocked Duke in the NCAA Tournament and the only location that made any sense to drop off the torn-down goal post following the 2002 Big Game (I remember, because...

DULLES, VIRGINIA — White South African refugees were welcomed into the United States by the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday, as President Donald Trump condemned the “genocide that’s taking place” against them. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy Edgar visited Washington Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia outside of Washington, DC to meet the group of Afrikaners — which included families with small children: The 59 South African nationals — many of whom were waving American flags when they entered the airplane hangar to meet Landau and...

Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) filed paperwork Monday to run for Iowa governor in 2026, as multiple Republicans continue to weigh the opportunity to replace Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) when her term ends. The Hill’s attempts to reach Feenstra and his campaign team were unsuccessful. Feenstra, who was first elected to the House in 2020, has been openly mulling a gubernatorial bid since Reynolds announced on social media last month that she won’t seek a third full term. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m focused on fulfilling and making sure that we get Trump’s agenda completed,” Feenstra told reporters after an...