Free Republic

After the 2024 humiliation, the left is back. It could hurt the party in 2026. Kim Strassel speaks with law professor Jonathan Turley about why the charges were dismissed against James Comey and Letitia James and how Donald Trump is separately using the legal system to the executive branch’s benefit. What could get in the way of a coming 2026 Democratic wave, given history and the current public mood? Nothing but the Democratic Party itself, which is sitting placidly by as the progressives who lost them last year’s election mobilize to take over even more of the party. Bernie Sanders...

The current political buzz term is affordability crisis. Every day, political pundits and politicians talk about the affordability crisis because they know it represents an existential threat to the American dream.The affordability crisis faced by tens of millions of Americans is more than a political slogan; it is a visceral struggle that causes chronic stress and anxiety, breeds hopelessness and apathy, begets envy and rage, and sows disillusionment and nihilism.In other words, the affordability crisis that is making it impossible for hard-working Americans to get ahead is untenable. If it is not solved holistically, it will likely foster social chaos...

My guest today is Andrew Kolvet, who was Kirk’s close confidant. Since the assassination, he’s taken on many of Kirk’s responsibilities, including hosting “The Charlie Kirk Show.” Andrew Kolvet: …“Now, Charlie’s mission was to say: Hey, before us are two roads. You can either go grievance politics, socialism, free stuff populism, Mangione-ism, Mamdani-ism, or you can go MAGA.“ …“I think this is the through line for Israel — is you do not have to support Israel to belong to the team, at least in a traditional historical sense…I’m an American. I’m born in this country. My kids are going to...

President Trump will head to Pennsylvania on Tuesday for his first rally in five months amid signs of growing anger among his supporters at a failure to bring down the cost of living. Trump has touted the falling cost of petrol and eggs as evidence that his economic strategy is working and blames Democrats for talking about the “hoax” and “con job” of an affordability crisis. Inflation remains at 3 per cent, however, the same as when he took office, and some staples such as beef and coffee are up much more than that. Polling for Politico suggests that 37...

Disapproval of the state of the economy is widespread today, despite many indicators improving since the start of the year. The reality is that most Americans’ financial situation deteriorated so much under the Biden administration that there’s a long way to go before this affordability crisis is resolved. Fortunately, there are ways to speed up the process. Perhaps the best illustration of where most Americans are economically today, and where they’ve been, is to look at real, meaning inflation-adjusted, average weekly earnings. This tells us not only how much the average American makes each week, but what those weekly paychecks...

Owning a home is a cornerstone of the American Dream. But with the recent rise in home prices and mortgage rates, homeownership feels like a far-off dream for an increasing share of Americans, especially those in their 20s and 30s. In 2019, the median first-time homebuyer was 33 years old. Today, the typical first-time homebuyer is 40 years old. That shift didn’t happen on its own. It’s an unintended consequence of the federal government’s COVID-era policies that included pumping trillions of dollars into the economy and driving short-term borrowing costs down to near zero. These policies briefly led to a...

Hispanic voters — crucial to Trump’s 2024 victory — are abandoning him in significant numbers. Sure, the Hispanic flight from the Trump camp is slower among Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans in Florida, but the cracks are already visible. In New Jersey, Trump won 46% of the Latino vote in 2024. But this time, Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli got only 31% of the Hispanic vote in the Nov. 4 election, CNN exit polls show. The Democratic winner, Mikie Sherrill, won by a landslide, thanks in part to the Latino vote. In heavily Hispanic Passaic County, where Trump won...

We hear it everywhere: housing affordability crisis, health care affordability crisis, childcare affordability crisis. The language is so common that we don’t stop to ask what it actually means — or what it conceals.Here’s the problem: “affordability” isn’t a real thing you can fix. It’s a word that makes concrete problems disappear into fog.The Language TrickCompare these two statements: “I can’t pay my rent because my wages haven’t kept up with costs.” “There is an affordability crisis.”The first one is clear. You know what’s happening and why. The second one? All the critical details vanish. Who raised the costs? Why...

During last week’s excruciating Oval Office make-nice between an insultingly buddy-buddy American President and a fraudulently obsequious New York City mayor-elect, the contest was over which pol was the more patronizing. At one point Trump graciously granted his petitioner permission to call him a “fascist” while clearly implying the guy’s OTT campaign rhetoric had been embarrassing. Donald Trump sat regally on his throne, patting Zohran Mamdani’s arm while commending “Attaboy!” as if petting a golden retriever that had fetched a ball. For his part, Mamdani stood mutely by the Resolute desk with cartoonish humility, hands over crotch. This cowed performance...

Today, Tupelo, MS is the nation’s most affordable city, where your dollar can stretch 21% further than the U.S. average.Similarly, several Southern cities have the lowest cost of living in the country, typically seeing smaller populations and more affordable housing. In contrast, New York and California continue to rank among the most expensive places to live.This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the U.S. cities with the lowest and highest cost of living, based on data from the Council for Community and Economic Research.Where Are America’s Affordable Cities?Below, we rank cities by their cost of living index, which measured...

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...