Free Republic

President Trump on Monday tried to shoot down a report that said he "suggested multiple times" to top officials that they should look into whether a nuclear bomb could stop a massive hurricane in its tracks. Axios, citing unnamed sources, reported Sunday that Trump made the comments to Homeland Security and other officials. Their source paraphrased the president talking about how hurricanes form off the coast of Africa. "As they're moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can't we do that?" he reportedly asked. The National Oceanic and...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is facing 2 lawsuits for blocking Twitter users based on their personal viewpoints. Details: Former Democratic New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind filed a suit against Ocasio-Cortez after a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that President Trump violated the Constitution in blocking critics on Twitter. YouTuber and NY-11 Republican Congressional candidate Joey Saladino tweeted he'd also filed a suit against the freshman lawmaker after she blocked him.

With its acceleration of Prime shipping from two days to one, Amazon established a new normal. Soon after, Walmart and Target came out with their own super-speedy shipping options. Why it matters: Flying, trucking and delivering millions of packages a day comes with a cost — as shoppers demand faster and faster speed, there has been a sharp environmental impact. The big picture: Consumers have gotten hooked on speed — and the efficiencies that e-commerce injected into retail are getting erased because now there are more deliveries of smaller numbers of packages. With this trend, emissions have grown: The annual...

This week, The New York Times ran a massive piece detailing the supposed radicalization of one Caleb Cain. Cain moved from political liberalism toward self-ascribed "tradcon" status from watching YouTube videos. The New York Times charted this nefarious move by following those videos. The suggestion by The Times was simple: If you watch typical conservative content hosted by people like me, you will eventually end up watching material hosted by alt-right figures. The only solution, presumably, would be for YouTube to downgrade material The Times dislikes. This attitude isn't only springing from The Times. Axios chief technology correspondent Ina Fried...

The midterm elections may have been a sign of what's ahead for the 2020 presidential election: experts say the voter turnout could be the highest in a century. The big picture: According to Michael McDonald, an elections expert at the University of Florida, turnout for the 2020 presidential election could be as high as 67% — the highest it's been since at least 1916. If that happens, President Trump will have a tougher fight for a second term. •He's driving turnout among those most unhappy with him (younger voters and people of color) even when he's not on the ballot....

Axios' editor in chief, Nicholas Johnston, said on Thursday that controversy surrounding the Russia investigation was far from over, given the criminal referrals and the copious redactions in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. "This is the beginning of the beginning," Johnston said of the report, which included 14 criminal referrals and concerns about obstruction of justice. "There are 14 referrals from the Mueller investigation -- we know what two of them are. There are 12 more that were completely unknown which can also lead to other criminal prosecutions," Johnston told Fox News host Shepard Smith.

Last year was Earth's 4th-warmest year on record, coming in behind 2016, the planet's warmest recorded year, as well as 2015 and 2017, according to information released Wednesday by NOAA, NASA and the U.K. Met Office. Why it matters: The yearly rankings don't tell the whole story of long-term climate change, since natural variability can still push or pull an individual year up or down the rankings. However, the overall picture is growing starker with each passing year. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record since reliable data began in 1880 have occurred since 2005. At the same time,...