Free Republic

Turning Point USA founder said in July that young Americans could start feeling like 'permanent renting class.' ... "How do we get more young people under the age of 35 to have equity in the system? Not the Democrat version of equity, where they want to have redistribution, but actually, are they paying a mortgage? Do they own stuff? Or are they permanent renters?" Kirk asked during a July 11 appearance on "Fox & Friends." "A permanent renting class in this country is the prerequisite, is the leading ingredient for radical politics that nobody wants to see," he continued. "We...

Like a master chef promising a five-course meal in fifteen minutes, Washington’s latest promise on affordability might be biting off more than it can chew. The word “affordability” has become the political equivalent of a Swiss Army knife—everyone’s wielding it, but few seem to know which tool to pull out first. From New York City’s mayoral race to the halls of Congress, “affordability” has emerged as the buzzword du jour, a catch-all solution to Americans’ economic anxieties. President Trump has seized on this narrative with characteristic gusto, promising sweeping changes to make life cheaper for working families. His One Big...

Gas prices have been falling since President Donald Trump took office and major cities like Denver are actually seeing prices dip well below $3 per gallon, right ahead of Thanksgiving.According to Gas Buddy, the average price for fuel per gallon in Colorado is $2.590, with figures showcasing the lowest average this year. For greater perspective, that is down 24 cents from last year’s average of $2.830.KDVR also reported that one gas station in the Denver region dipped below $2:Here’s where the cheapest gas prices were in Denver on Sunday and Monday:Shell, 7273 E. Evans Ave. – $1.94Sinclair, 2101 S. Holly...

U.S. Vice-President JD Vance made a series of posts criticizing Canada’s political leadership, public broadcaster and immigration system, saying our living standards are “stagnating” because of all the “foreign-born” people living here. “While I'm sure the causes are complicated, no nation has leaned more into ‘diversity is our strength, we don't need a melting pot, we have a salad bowl’ immigration insanity than Canada,” he said. …“With all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you...

Everywhere in the media today, politicians and commentators repeat the drumbeat, “crisis of affordability.” Headlines warn that younger generations are locked out of the housing market, that homeownership is slipping away, and that the American dream is fading. Yet beneath the noise lies a deeper question: is this truly a crisis of affordability, or is it a crisis of priorities? Perhaps what communities and society need is not simply cheaper homes, but a rediscovery of sacrifice. You cannot have it all, but you can have what is most important. It is a choice. The language of crisis is powerful. It...

President Trump has always defied the laws of political gravity, seemingly impervious to setbacks that would sink any other figure and immune from the traditional ebb and flow of campaign cycles. But his capitulation in the fight over releasing the Epstein files, and other recent developments, suggest that, when it comes to Congress, the president is subject to at least some of the same currents as his predecessors, as the first signs of his lame duck status emerge. The willingness of congressional Republicans to defy Mr. Trump and back legislation requiring the disclosure of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein, the...

In the hope of shifting the debate on divestment from Israel to the real issue—the nature of the divestment campaign—and not the specious accusations regarding University President Lawrence H. Summers’ speech on the issue, I would like to suggest why I believe the campaign is properly characterized as “anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent.” I would like to look carefully—if necessarily briefly—at the strategy of the campaign and the rhetoric of the petition, in order to show how it implicitly demonizes Jews. Supporters of the divestment campaign insist they seek to protest the policies of the Sharon government, and...

Notionally, Americans have never been better off. The ructions in tech stocks over the past few weeks cannot detract from the fact that the US economy has been outgunning other developed economies all century. The overall graph of real disposable income for Americans continues to trend upward, almost as if the sharp dip during the pandemic had not happened. That is certainly not true everywhere: in many countries, Covid has been followed by stagnation in GDP and wages. Yet, for all the wealth generated, many Americans simply do not feel that they are living in a thriving country. On the...

What’s clear is that the 2024 election was not the final boss. It didn’t destroy wokeism. You have to picture the spider in The Lord of the Rings, Shelob, crawling back into her cave after being stabbed by Samwise. Is she injured? Yes. Dead? No. She will probably be back to kill you. Republicans and pundits and podcasters will come up with all sorts of reasons for the latest losses (including blaming the Jews), but it comes down to fundamentals. Ground game. Optics. And of course, “It’s the economy, stupid!” The GOP has no ground game in part because it...

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump was unapologetic about putting America first. He promised to secure the nation’s borders, strengthen the domestic workforce and be tough on countries he thought were taking advantage of the United States.Now, 10 months into his second term, the president is facing backlash from some conservatives who say he is too focused on matters abroad, whether it’s seeking regime change in Venezuela, brokering peace deals in Ukraine and Gaza or extending a $20-billion currency swap for Argentina. The criticism has grown in recent days after Trump expressed support for granting more visas to foreign students...

Homeowners vote red. Renters vote blue. Will President Donald Trump's 50-year mortgage make a red voter out of you? That is what the president hoped on Saturday, when he posted the idea of stretching out the customary 30-year repayment terms for home mortgages to 50 years. Turns out, that idea is smoke and mirrors. But at least Trump is recognizing that home affordability is a real crisis, not fake news. "Affordability" is the campaign pledge that produced big wins on election day, and most of the winners were Democrats. Affording a home is increasingly out of reach. The median age...

-50 year mortgages -600,000 chinese students -ANTIFA riots -Bombing Iran -No Epstein Files -Antisemitism crackdowns -ISIS in White House -InflationMAGA is losing me, to he honest.My life has seen zero improvement since Trump took office. It's actually worse.Americans Last.

With the election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York, much conversation has been made of his appeal to “affordability.” As I’ve written previously, this is a noble conversation, but one that has been dishonestly framed (by Democrats and media) to date. I will use Mamdani’s comment in his acceptance speech to re-frame the debate. We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.Mamdani and the Democrat party have effectively defined a binary choice: Should government or “the market” control affordability? The Democrats are...

Way back in January 2020, Peter Thiel wrote an email to Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreessen and others warning that Millennials turn toward socialism needed to be taken seriously. Here's that email which started going viral this week in the wake of Zohran Mamdani's win in NYC. Here is Peter Thiel’s email to Zuck and Andreessen in Jan-2020 predicting socialism.Tl;drtoo much student debt and lack of affordable housing keeps young people with negative capital for too long. And without a stake in the capitalist system, they will turn against it. pic.twitter.com/BOKgwJ2cV0— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) November 5, 2025His conclusion was...

This is my two cents, and the information arrived after some interesting texts with my little brother, Crusader.Some of it, now that last night's results are in, needs to be attended to immediately, as he said.Trump really needs to focus on what can be done for the economy... He needs to light a fire under congresscritters to ratchet down on outsourcing and h1bs; the job market is not getting better and grocery prices aren’t getting better eitherSome grocery prices are better, sure - those damn eggs, for one thing. But the hamburger you feed a family with is still through...

Voters who are 65 or older are especially passionate about health care – nearly all say access to quality, affordable health care is important to their vote (97%). Nine in 10 voters ages 50 to 64 say the same (90%). Eighty-three percent of voters 50 to 64 and 92% of likely voters 65 and older say a candidate’s stance on improving the response plan for natural disasters is important to their vote. The state’s youngest and oldest voters consider a candidate’s position on housing affordability more important to their vote than those in between. Ninety-two percent of voters ages 18...

When the headlines scream about trillion-dollar defense budgets vanishing into black holes, it’s a rare jolt to see the Pentagon back a project that actually delivers firepower without draining the taxpayer’s wallet dry. Enter Castelion, [https://www.castelion.com/], the scrappy California-based defense outfit that’s just locked in contracts to bolt its Blackbeard hypersonic missile onto Army and Navy gear—real platforms, not pie-in-the-sky prototypes. Announced yesterday, this deal is a straight shot at fielding weapons that can outpace threats from Beijing to Moscow, all while keeping costs grounded in reality. Castelion, barely three years old and holed up in Torrance with outposts in...

If there are two issues that dominate America’s online discourse, they’re the soaring cost of housing and the even steeper price of staying healthy.The U.S. pours almost $13,000 per person into healthcare, yet average life expectancy is below nearly every other high-income nation.It’s a study of contrasts.As Visual Capitalist's Pallavi Rao notes, the country boasts of state of the art facilities and cutting edge research, while nearly 10% of Americans can’t afford healthcare.This number comes from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data that lists the share of surveyed adults who skipped seeing a...

We’re hearing it everyday that Americans are facing an affordability crisis. Housing, tuition, health care, and grocery prices are rising fast. But over the first six months of Trump’s second term, affordability has gone up, not down. Through June inflation adjusted median household incomes are up about $1,100 per household.The stress that consumers are feeling about affordability is the hangover effects of the near 20% rise in prices under Bidenomics from 2021-23.Who Caused the “Affordability Crisis?”Also, don’t forget that the average family will see a near $2,000 tax savings next year due to the Trump tax cut passed in July.

Those of us fortunate enough to live anywhere but New York City may take comfort from reading the news about what is arguably NYC’s biggest campaign issue in 2025 -- the lack of affordable housing in the nation’s biggest city. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we may say, shaking our heads in flyover country, where apartment rents and home prices may also be too high, but where there is at least some kind of availability. But NYC’s problem is only local in part; many of the inputs are nationwide issues, which a new mayor, regardless of...