Free Republic

Floridians will vote next year on whether to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, an amendment initiative led by Orlando attorney John Morgan that’s already drawing opposition from Republican leaders and the business community. The initiative that will be called Amendment 2 made the November ballot after its wording was approved by the Florida Supreme Court in a decision released Thursday. Court review was the last obstacle to getting the measure on the ballot after Morgan’s Florida For A Fair Wage collected more than 770,000 of the required 766,200 signatures. The amendment would raise the...

President Trump on Friday signed two spending packages totaling $1.4 trillion, averting a government shutdown at midnight. The bills included all 12 annual appropriations bills for the 2020 fiscal year that started Oct. 1. They also included a slew of tax cuts, extending expiring and expired tax breaks and eliminating other taxes that amount to an additional $426 billion in lost revenue, bringing the total cost of the bill to more than $1.8 trillion. The government spent the first quarter of the fiscal year operating on stopgap funding that was set to expire on Friday. Trump reportedly signed the bill...

At first glance, the new nationalism of conservatives will seem benign and even uncontroversial. In his book “The Case for Nationalism,” Rich Lowry defines nationalism as flowing from a people’s “natural devotion to their home and to their country.” Yoram Hazony, in his book “The Virtue of Nationalism,” also has a rather anodyne definition of nationalism. It means “that the world is governed best when nations agree to cultivate their own traditions, free from interference by other nations.” There is nothing particularly controversial at all about these statements. Defined in these terms, it sounds like little more than simply defending...

President Trump signed a bipartisan bill on Monday that makes certain acts of animal cruelty a federal felony, saying it’s important for the nation to combat “heinous and sadistic acts of cruelty." The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act (PACT) prohibits extreme acts of cruelty, including intentional crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, impalement, carried out against "living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians." “Aaaw isn’t this wonderfully heart-warming!” respond some amigos. “Especially as President Trump cited the hero military dog Conan during the signing ceremony!”Perhaps. But let’s look more closely at the issue—especially at some of this legislation’s most fervent sponsors:“The...

This month’s announcement from Party City that it’s closing more than 40 stores as it grapples with new challenges, including diminishing helium supplies, likely came as unwelcome news to customers who count on the store for their balloon and event planning needs. But for scientists like Mark Elsesser, the announcement was something of a relief, inflating hopes that the public, and the government, might start paying closer attention. “When it comes to helium, we’re at a tipping point,” said Elsesser, who is the associate director of government affairs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit association of physicists. “Party City...

LECANTO — When Florida lawmakers signed off this year on a bill creating more than 300 miles of toll roads, they did so with scant evidence the project was needed. More than five months later, after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law and the project has been vetted in two rounds of public hearings, local officials are growing frustrated by the persistent lack of details about what would be the largest expansion of Florida’s toll system in decades. “We’re beating a dead horse right now before it’s even born,” said Dixie County Commissioner Mark Hatch, who sits on a...

Brace opened the Newsboys Lodging House at 9 Duane St., in the building then owned by the New York Sun. At this location, he would do much more than provide a clean bed. He opened savings accounts for the kids, gave them books and healthy food — all part of a larger vision. “Those who have much to do with plans of human improvement,” he wrote, “see how superficial and comparatively useless all assistance or organization is which does not touch . . . the inner forces which form character.” Many of his charges (including girls, housed in their own “industrial school”)...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said Monday that he believes all commercial gun sales should be subject to a background check and signaled he's open to supporting bipartisan legislation from Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). "It certainly should be applied to commercial sales and finding a more comprehensive way to make sure that people are in the system that ought to be in the system," Romney told reporters when asked about expanding background checks.

The Department of Energy announced this week that it’s withdrawing the Obama administration’s energy-rationing mandate for certain lightbulbs. Opponents criticized the rule change, arguing that the move would be bad for consumers and the climate. The reality, however, is that families and businesses will be better off, and the change will have a negligible impact on the environment. The Energy Department’s decision to withdraw energy-efficiency standards for candle-shaped, globe-shaped, three-way and reflector lightbulbs is a victory for consumer choice. Whether it’s buying a lightbulb or a new car, families have different preferences and needs. They consider the various trade-offs in...

There is an exceptional amount of lying in Washington these days, and our media and politicians are entranced by it. Lies must achieve extraordinary bulk and quality to impress the sport’s most ardent practitioners: Only a particularly nasty outbreak of mendacity could draw Washington’s attention to a subject it knows with such intimacy and depth. Most Americans are unsurprised. Long ago, they learned lies are the oxygen of the political world. They know the phrase “political deception” is a redundancy, like “false pretense,” “free gift,” or “foreign imports.” Most electoral lies, they’ve found, are dandruff on the body politic, pedestrian...

Former House Speaker John Boehner and former Rep. Joe Crowley are joining forces in a bipartisan effort to combat a looming pension crisis affecting nearly 1.3 million American retirees Opens a New Window. Boehner, the Ohio Republican who retired in 2015, is part of the Retirement Security Coalition, a leading force that is raising awareness to the underfunded multiemployer benefit plans. “The job Joe and I have taken on is to try to elevate the seriousness of this problem," he told FOX Business’ Neil Cavuto Opens a New Window. on Thursday. "And Congress really does in fact need to act."...

Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism. At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright...

Once upon a time, long, long ago they actually taught this stuff in grade school along with reading, writing, arithmetic--and--history, basic economics, the Constitution, patriotism, and other useful subjects to help youngsters learn a trade, etc. And then the left took control and decided indoctrination was more useful (to them) than educating the next generation. Why? Ronald Reagan summed it up: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Big government/socialism destroys free-markets, productivity, the economy, private property, wealth (capital), individual liberty, national sovereignty and your country. Why is the UK no longer a superpower? The Labour Party...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

President Donald Trump is trying to take an ax to federal advisory committees, ordering that their numbers be slashed. Trump signed an executive order Friday that directs every federal agency to evaluate the need for all of its advisory committees created under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. And it gives agency heads until September to terminate at least one-third of current committees created by agency heads. Federal advisory committees are typically made up of private citizens who offer advice and assistance to the executive branch. The White House did not immediately provide any justification for the order. But it appears...

Democratic congressional leaders said they held a constructive meeting with President Trump on Monday at which they agreed to seek a deal on a $2 trillion infrastructure bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) left the meeting at noon sounding a decidedly positive note, calling the meeting with Trump at the White House constructive and good. They said they had not agreed on how to pay for a $2 trillion bill to improve the nation's roads, bridges, waterways and broadband, but that they had agreed to meet in another three weeks. And they said the...

Travelers may have to take a trip to the DMV if they’re looking to fly, even domestically, after October 1, 2020. The Transportation Security Administration details on their website that they won’t be accepting standard driver’s license as form of identification to board domestic flights. TSA says that travelers will be required to present a REAL ID compliant license in order to travel within the U.S. Drivers can tell the difference between a REAL ID and a standard license by a gold star generally marked in the upper portion of the card. If there’s no gold star, then it’s a...

Who will investigate the investigators?” The Mueller Nothing Burger Report vindicated President Trump, but our attention now must turn to investigating the last days of the Obama Administration. Targets of the Special Counsel were persecuted by aggressive prosecutorial practices designed to win capitulations. Mueller team members threatened “suspects” with separate investigations of family members and others risked being buried by legal briefs from lawyers who possessed unlimited government budgets. The reckless machinations of the Special Counsel Office again validates the virtues of limited government: in this case, not to attract and nurture those seeking personal aggrandizement and consolidation of power...

Leftist Democrats, led by Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., introduced a revised government-funded Medicare for All Act on Wednesday as Republicans ready their opposition and Democratic presidential hopefuls face questions about what Medicare for All could mean and the role government should have in setting rates for private insurers. Jayapal’s bill largely mirrors a 2017 proposal by Sen. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., but the heart of every “Medicare for all” proposal to date has been the same: government price controls for private health coverage. The price controls question could be one of the major policy issues of the 2020 Democratic primary and...

The national debt hit $22 trillion this week. You won’t find many in either major party who think this is a healthy development. But isn’t part of the reason people vote Republican because that party presents itself as fiscally responsible compared to Democrats? For as long as the debt has grown, Republicans have been promising to stop it. Yet, in 1981 the national debt topped $1 trillion after former President Ronald Reagan’s first year. When former President George H.W. Bush left office in 1993, it was more than $4 trillion. His son, former President George W. Bush, would push it...