Free Republic

White House economists estimate the United States has a shortage of 10 million houses, according to a new report out Monday — and say regulatory cuts could lead to more construction to stabilize prices, increase home ownership and fuel faster economic growth. The analysis, part of the Economic Report of the President, outlines both a political risk and a messaging opportunity for President Donald Trump, whose public approval has slumped because of concerns about his tariffs, the Iran war and his unfulfilled promises to slash inflation and unleash stronger growth. Trump signed two executive orders in March directing federal agencies...

Two vessels, including an Indian-flagged supertanker, were forced back out of the Strait of Hormuz after being approached by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) naval units, shipping monitor TankerTrackers said on Saturday. It said audio recordings indicated IRGC gunboats fired during the encounter as the ships were redirected westward. One of the vessels was a very large crude carrier transporting about two million barrels of Iraqi oil, it added. “Meanwhile, India is still importing Iranian oil. With friends like these,” TankerTrackers said. According to two Channel 16 audio recordings captured today, two Indian vessels were forced back west out of...

Dr Oz confirms that after stopping payments to 450 hospices in California, still NOT ONE has called and asked to have their payments reinstated 450 hospices out of 450 hospices in California were fraud He says collectively they stole $750 million in just on year

The speaker of Iran’s Parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Qalibaf, said Friday that Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz again amid the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, contradicting President Trump, who said the strait was “open for business” earlier in the day. His remarks came as Trump was on stage delivering a speech in Arizona at a Turning Point USA event. “With the continuation of the blockade, the Strait of Hormuz will not remain open,” Qalibaf wrote in a post on social platform X, adding that passage through the strait will be “conducted based on the ‘designated route’ and with Iranian authorization.”...

Soldiers and members of the Basij militia stationed in several districts of Tehran have moved to mosques. Additionally, Iranian special forces and police moved – according to witnesses – to the mortuary in the city of Karaj, located near Tehran. Witnesses also reported that members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and border guards in the western part of Iran, neighboring Iraq and Turkey are sheltering in mosques. In such border towns as Paveh, Mariwan, Bane and Sardasht, Muslim temples were turned into outposts, among others. The Kurdistan Human Rights Network reported that on the Turkish-Iranian border, members of...

Hunkered down in a mountain-top ravine, armed only with a pistol, and with gun-toting tribesmen bearing down on him, the US Airforce colonel probably had slim hopes for his survival.However, after what is being called the 'most daring' Special Forces rescue operation in US history, he is now safely out of Iran.It took hundreds of Special Forces commandos, a CIA drone operation, and some lateral thinking to avert last-minute disaster.Step-by-step, this is how the rescue operation unfolded.

A Russia-flagged tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil has docked in Cuba, marking the first time in three months that an oil tanker has reached the island nation. ...The Anatoly Kolodkin entered the Bay of Matanzas under clear skies and light winds at sunrise. Much of the nearby city – and the majority of Cuba – was without power when the tanker arrived at the port area. Cuba has not received an oil tanker in three months, according to President Miguel Diaz-Canel, exacerbating an energy crisis that has led to seemingly endless blackouts across the country of 10 million people...

@Acyn Boebert: I am so tired of spending money elsewhere. I am tired of the industrial war complex getting all of our hard earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can't afford to live. We need America first policies right now.

As a cofounder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, Peter Thiel is widely recognized for his expertise in tech. But for a while now, the billionaire venture capitalist is sounding the alarm on an entirely different sector: real estate.During an interview with Common Wealth Canada in late 2024, Thiel drew upon the insights of 19th-century economist Henry George to underscore the gravity of America’s real estate crisis (1).snip“The dynamic ends up being that you add 10% to the population in a city, and maybe the house prices go up 50%, and maybe people’s salaries go up, but...

President Trump told The Post Monday that he’s not ruling out sending US ground troops into Iran “if they were necessary” — adding that Operation Epic Fury was “way ahead of schedule” by taking out dozens of Tehran’s top officials. “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground — like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground.’ I don’t say it,” Trump said after launching strikes Saturday to decapitate Iran’s military and political leadership. “I say ‘probably don’t need them,’ [or] ‘if they were necessary.'” Trump told the Daily Mail on Sunday...

Donald Trump will not rule out putting troops on the ground in Iran while warning that the next 'big wave' of strikes is impending. The President said on Monday that he would allow for US service members to enter Iran 'if they were necessary.'

I am following with deep concern what is happening in the Middle East and in Iran during this tumultuous time. Stability and peace are not achieved through mutual threats, nor through the use of weapons, which sow destruction, suffering, and death, but only through reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue.

Clearly, the “Saturday Night Live” writing team had a lot of work to do on Saturday, as they opened the show with a sketch about President Trump’s early morning attack on Iran. In the Feb. 28 cold open, Trump (played by James Austin Johnson) gives a press conference about the military action. “It’s me, Donald Trump, FIFA Peace Prize winner and Nobel Peace Prize taker,” he began. “Remember that? I launched this attack after me and my board of peace…we were bored of peace. As we all know, Iran has been two weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon for...

Who are these people, heckling Trump, and refusing to stand for America's heroes? here is something terribly, horribly wrong with the current crop of Democrats. This was true before Trump’s glorious State of the Union speech Tuesday night, but their behavior during and outside of it further exposed the death of any loyalty they ever had to this nation. They behaved badly during last year’s SOTU, refusing to stand for the victims of illegal migrant murders or the little boy who was surviving brain cancer. They are a hardhearted bunch. They were no better during this speech. Again, they did...

Bill Gates "took responsibility for his actions" over ties to late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in a town hall meeting with employees of the Gates Foundation, a spokesperson for the philanthropic group told Reuters in a written statement on Tuesday. The spokesperson's comments came in response to a Wall Street Journal report, which said that Gates had apologized to staff during the town hall over his ties with Epstein. Documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) have indicated that Gates and Epstein met repeatedly after Epstein's prison term to discuss expanding the Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new...

"If you tolerate the intolerable, you’re communicating that it’s okay to mistreat you." —Aimee Terese on X. Hillary and Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) at MunichDid you think the American zeitgeist — our collective spirit plus our thinking — could not get crazier? Gird your loins. It’s getting worse by the hour. The Jeffrey Epstein files suggest that people will do anything and that people will believe anything. Pizza, hot dogs, white sharks. . . boys, girls, babies, teens, Russian ---res. . . celebrities by the score. . . billionaires. . . cannibal orgies. . . vivisection parlors. . . adrenochrome....

With only nine months until the midterm elections, Democrats will scrutinize every move President Donald Trump takes as they fight to reclaim control of the House and the Senate. Victor Davis Hanson lays out the narrow road ahead to victory for Trump and the GOP during the 2026 midterm elections. History is not on the incumbent’s side. Messaging mistakes and unforced errors could shift key voters and hand Congress back to Democrats. Hanson explains what it will take to hold a Republican majority—and why the stakes for these midterm elections could not be higher—on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson:...

Lawmakers are not yet finished with Attorney General Pam Bondi. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) led a new charge on Friday morning, demanding Bondi testify before the House Oversight Committee while raising concern about Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary panel on Wednesday. During the hearing, a photographer captured an image of Bondi with a document appearing to show Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s (D-WA) searches on the Epstein Files — which she and other members of Congress were given access to two days earlier. “In the Judiciary Committee, she had a folder open, and you saw an image of a search history...

@RepThomasMassie Yesterday in @JudiciaryGOP, @AGPamBondi hurled personal insults instead of answering my legitimate questions about major gaps and serious flaws in the Epstein Files Transparency Act document production.

snip Evans' affidavit, dated Jan. 28, cited five major areas of irregularities under investigation, including that: Fulton County has admitted that it does not have scanned images of all the 528,777 ballots counted during the Original Count or the 527,925 ballots counted during the state's first recount, a major loss of evidence. Fulton County has confirmed that during the Recount of votes, some ballots were scanned multiple times. "Ballot images made available in response to public record requests show ballots with unique markings duplicated within the ballot images," the affidavit said. During the Risk Limiting Audit, auditors counting the votes...