Free Republic

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., together with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Mary Makary, announced a new round of food dye bans on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference here. The agencies shared their intent to phase out the use of petroleum-based synthetic dyes from the nation’s food supply. "Today, the FDA is taking action to remove petroleum-based food dyes," said Makary as he kicked off the press conference. "For the last 50 years, American children have increasingly been living in a toxic soup of synthetic chemicals. The scientific community has conducted...

Do you want your taxpayer dollars funding studies on preventing pregnancy in “transgender boys” or HIV stigma in Thailand? Fortunately, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary also considers that a waste, so he’s cutting numerous idiotic woke studies. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Trump’s new agency heads have uncovered billions of dollars of egregious fraud and waste, including the previously unknown agency whose employees lived “like kings” and the Social Security funding for 150+ year olds. Now HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is looking to streamline the massive, unwieldy, unconstitutional, and harmful federal healthcare agencies. It’s time...

President Donald Trump is using every tool he has to challenge woke practices in America — and he has a lot of them. Notably, none of the mechanisms that the president is using were put in place by conservatives for leverage against progressive institutions. No, Trump is simply availing himself of the vast federal apparatus created by liberals on the assumption that an ever-more powerful and extensive federal government was synonymous with righteousness. Now that someone is in charge who doesn’t agree with them and who is willing to use all the influence that the progressive state affords him, they...

Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – a freedom from worry that the air you breathe, the food you eat and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could make you sick. But several of the environmental freedoms Americans experience today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – could soon be in jeopardy from the Environmental Protection Agency's deregulation plans, several experts told ABC News. The EPA, with its mission to protect human health and the environment, is fundamentally a...

… Oregon transportation officials say that without more funding, residents like (Timothy) Taylor could see further declines in the quality of roads, highways and bridges starting this year. But revenues from gas taxes paid by drivers at the pump are projected to decrease as more people adopt electric and fuel-efficient cars, forcing officials to look for new ways to fund transportation infrastructure. States with aggressive climate goals like Oregon are facing a conundrum: EVs can help reduce emissions in the transportation sector, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, but they also mean less gas tax revenue in government...

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive order issued on Tuesday to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), pro-life organizations and advocates are expressing concerns over the destruction of embryonic human life that the process involves, highlighting alternative fertility treatments that are more effective, and encouraging guardrails to be put in place regulating the IVF industry and ensuring that conscience protections are established. Trump’s executive order, entitled “Expanding Access to In Vitro Fertilization,” argues that “Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000. Providing...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday prohibiting federal funding of K-12 schools that promote Critical Race Theory or radical gender ideology.

Meet historical fascism’s true heirs.In the famous anecdote usually attributed to Bertrand Russel, a scientist lecturing on the earth’s position in the solar system is corrected an old lady who says the earth is actually supported by a giant turtle. When the scientist asked what supports the turtle, she triumphally answered, “It’s turtles all the way down!”Since the Twenties and the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism––which eventually become the main referent of the word––the term has become an all-purpose question-begging epithet so promiscuously abused in the Thirties that, as George Orwell said in 1944, “The word Fascism has...

Life is good in America as long as you’re able to keep sleep-walking through life, cocooning yourself in political fantasies that depict a world in which your party is always right and everyone else is wrong, and distracting yourself with bread-and-circus entertainment that bears no resemblance to reality. Life is good in America as long as you don’t mind being made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to...

POTTERVILLE, Mich. — Former President Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that if he is elected, his administration would not only protect access to in-vitro fertilization but would also have either the government or insurance companies cover the cost of the expensive service for American women who need it. "We are going to be, under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying for that treatment," Trump said before adding, "We're going to be mandating that the insurance company pay." Asked to clarify whether the government would pay for IVF services or whether insurance...

The new VP candidate has made enemies and allies in Silicon Valley, while on a quest to regulate the tech cartel. Last night, Sen. JD Vance officially accepted the Republican nomination for vice president at the 2024 Republican Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sending optimism to Silicon Valley and the tech community. A right-wing populist, Vance has been critical of the old right’s market fundamentalism in favor of the new right’s pro-worker economic nationalism — one that calls for antitrust crackdowns on Big Tech. A New York Times article described Vance as “pro-labor, a fan of crypto and the F.T.C.'s Lina...

<p>Part of what brought Vance to the dance may be his undoing. Donors are scared of him.</p><p>In his rise from Donald Trump critic to viable contender to be the presumptive Republican nominee’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio has come so far. But he may fall just short thanks to some risk-averse GOP donors.</p>

During the pandemic, the American people started to feel that Big Government was very cozy with Big Pharma. Now we know just how close they were. New data from the National Institutes of Health reveals the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists. Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists....

Today, April 22, 2024, marks the 30th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s passing. The 37th President died in New York City in 1994 after suffering a stroke and was buried five days later on the grounds of the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda at the side of his First Lady. The Nixon Foundation commemorated the anniversary with members of the United States Army lowering the flag to half staff over his birth house, the playing of Taps and a ceremonial wreath laying. A commemorative display is currently available for visitors to view in Annenberg Court featuring items from President Nixon’s...

Over the course of the last week, some of President Trump’s most ardent and vocal online supporters have engaged in a bit of cognitive dissonance, praising the former president for his foresight and wisdom in calling for a federalist solution to one of the nation’s most intractable problems while simultaneously singing the praises of the one man who likely did more than any other American to crush the nation’s federalist history and culture. Specifically, President Trump called for the question of abortion to be handled by the states, for the federal government to relinquish its power over the issue and...

The Biden-Harris regime should be embarrassed. The latest inflation numbers are out, and they don’t look good. Core inflation – a general inflation estimate tool that leaves out volatile things like gasoline, food and beverages – is up 3.8% per year. And that means that when you add in those cleverly-removed items – you know, all the things you really spend your money on, day in and day out – your real inflation level is still well over 10%. And that’s now, after it’s settled down a bit from the double-digit nightmare levels of the first two years of the...

It is 2024, and the State of the Union is broken. It’s been that way for a while, frankly, but the Biden-Harris regime has sped up the process. Every year, a man stands before Congress and delivers a State of the Union Address, as the Constitution requires; sometimes it feels like that’s the only constitutional requirement they obey in their entire term. They cheer the good things, as they see them, and they attack the things they consider bad. Then they often either disregard the most serious threats entirely, or they blame them on their political opponents. And all too...

Congress unveiled the first six appropriations bills on Sunday to fund the government for most of 2024. The rollout of the appropriations bills follows Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other congressional leaders striking a deal to avert a government shutdown and fund the government for most of 2024. The six appropriations bills would fund the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, Justice, Commerce, and Energy. The bipartisan package amounts to 1,050-pages and includes more than $450 billion in funding for the fiscal year 2024.

Congress faces more government funding headaches in 2024 as lawmakers stare down what could be steeper spending cuts than leaders bargained for as part of a previous bipartisan budget deal… Lawmakers agreed under the FRA to cap base discretionary spending in the next fiscal year to $1.59 trillion. That includes a ceiling of about $886 billion for defense spending and almost $704 billion for nondefense spending. Experts say a handshake agreement made as part of the larger debt limit deal would allow for north of $60 billion in additional funding on the nondefense side. Lawmakers were expected to work from...

The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed energy efficiency standards on water heaters it said would save consumers $11.4 billion on energy and water bills annually. The standards on residential water heater efficiency, which are required by Congress, have not been updated in 13 years. Water heating is responsible for roughly 13% of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs, the DOE said. The proposal would require the most common-sized electric water heaters to achieve efficiency gains with heat pump technology and gas-fired water heaters to achieve efficiency gains through condensing technology.