Free Republic

Last Wednesday, standing at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the United States threw the world’s economy into turmoil. Having declared that America’s trade deficit represented a bona fide “emergency,” President Trump revealed a completely rewritten federal tariff regime. The result of these alterations was an increase in protectionist barriers that exceeded even the infamous Smoot-Hawley law in its scope. For two days, the stock market responded to this move by diving sharply downward. Monday morning, after a false report that the president was planning to endorse a 90-day pause in implementation, there was a...

Russia's ability to outmatch Ukraine with artillery barrages on the battlefield has significantly reduced to just 1.5 Russian rounds for every Ukrainian shell fired back, Western officials have said. This compares with Russian forces launching at least five times as many artillery rounds as Ukraine could in the war previously - with the ratio at times much higher even than that. The Western officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, put the levelling out down to a "wide variety of factors". These factors include limitations in Russia's defence production lines, difficulties with transporting more rounds to the frontline by rail,...

It seems like that Toyota still doesn’t get it: people want electric cars, not hybrids. Despite all the evidence pointing to the inevitable rise of electric vehicles in the automotive industry, Toyota insists on sticking with hybrids, saying: “It’s our strategy and we’re sticking to it.” Well, Toyota, you may end up being left behind as nearly every other automaker, nation, and organization moves toward sustainable, all-electric vehicles. The growth of the electric vehicle market around the worldToyota is one of the few automakers that hasn’t yet realized what the future holds. Electrician called for the transition to electric cars...

June is just around the corner and with it will come one of the most highly anticipated rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court. While we don’t know the specifics of the ruling yet, we do know that the justices are taking a hard look at the text of the Constitution. They’re also considering the meaning of several laws and regulations as they have been understood by generations of Americans during the nearly 250-year history of our country. Finally, they are weighing the rights of adults seeking to engage in private decisions about potential risks to their health and welfare vs....

Ukraine has accused Russia of staging airstrikes in Belarus to get its ally to join the conflict. Meanwhile, shelling hit a mosque sheltering more than 80 people in the port city of Mariupol.

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy, who’s running for governor in Idaho, has been arrested after refusing to leave a hospital in connection with a child-welfare case, police said Saturday. Bundy was arrested at about 1:15 a.m. on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing at St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center in Meridian, west of Boise, the Idaho Statesman reported. Bundy is well-known for participating in armed standoffs with law enforcement, notably at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon in 2016, which left one man dead, and on federal land near his family’s ranch in Nevada in 2014.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders ripped the anonymous senior White House staffer who wrote an op-ed for the New York Times slamming President Trump’s conduct. “The individual behind this piece has chosen to deceive, rather than support, the duly elected President of the United States,” she said in a statement. “He is not putting country first, but putting himself and his ego ahead of the will of the American people.” This coward should do the right thing and resign,” she added. The statement follows criticism from Trump himself, who called the op-ed’s author “gutless.” The author of the op-ed...