Free Republic

Trump Administration Moves to Block the U.S. Travel of Mexican Politicians Who It Says Are Linked to the Drug Trade The list of Mexicans who could be targeted for U.S. visa restrictions includes leaders of President Claudia Sheinbaum’s party, state governors and former Cabinet ministers. In what could be a significant escalation of U.S. pressure on Mexico, the Trump administration has begun to impose travel restrictions and other sanctions on prominent Mexican politicians whom it believes are linked to drug corruption, U.S. officials said. So far, two Mexican political figures have acknowledged being banned from traveling to the United States....

In this shocking interview, Martin Armstrong delivers what may be the most important forecast of his career: Ukraine will disappear. This isn’t a guess. It’s based on decades of data from the Socrates AI forecasting system — and it’s never issued a warning like this before. We also cover: --Why Ukraine is finished, no matter what the West says --Why Europe needs war to stay afloat --How the next economic collapse will ripple from the periphery inward --And what you can do to prepare before the clock runs out Armstrong’s model has never been wrong about direction — and now...

In a chaotic scene, roughly two dozen protesters stormed the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s budget reconciliation markup, protesting rumored cuts to Medicare. Despite the shameful and potentially illegal actions of the protestors, Democrats capitalized on the event by thanking the protestors, prompting widespread condemnation. For context, since the January 6 debacle, Democrats have treated the date as if it were a national day of mourning. Despite the broad media support for the dangerous George Floyd riots, far-left pundits in the mainstream media have reduced themselves to hysterics while discussing the events of the Capitol riot. Breaking the news on...

Oh, my GAWD -this is getting so good.I mean, to the point where there's no 'Republic of Alberta...YET,' good.The morning after the country went to the polls, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith laid down the law to newly elected Canadian Prime Minister and WEF/Davos climate cult toadie Mark Carney that she - meaning Alberta - wasn't going to stand for any NetZero nonsense out of Ottawa. They'd quite had their fill, thank you.Danielle is one of the few people left in Canadian politics that has a brain, and a big set of balls.— profit xp (@profit_xp) May 1, 2025At the same...

So what’s happening to the bill in the Ways and Means committee? We’d guess it’s realpolitik. It sounds like Cox and Rep. Kustoff have recognized that they have a snowball’s chance in Hell of passing the bill delisting suppressors and rather than throwing their hands up and saying, ‘Oh well, we gave it the old college try,’ they’ve decided to take a big step in the right direction.A tax stamp has cost $200 since it was enacted as part of the NFA in 1934. While inflation has whittled the real value of that away over the decades, it’s still not...

This week, much of the mainstream media ran with the headline that the economy contracted in the first quarter of this year. Predictably, they promptly blamed President Donald Trump. But a quick glance under the hood shows the data points to a much stronger economy than the headlines suggest. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its estimate of economic growth measured by gross domestic product (GDP) for January through March. The topline figure pointed to a contraction of 0.3 percent—a number that certainly doesn’t seem positive. If we learned anything from economic data under former President Joe Biden,...

Mr. Armstrong, I fully appreciate that you have no interest in winning a Nobel Prize. However, the computer you have developed is far more accurate than anything regarding markets or geopolitics that has ever been created. This week was the turning point, as is May and then June, with a Panic Cycle. You forecast in 2019 that war would come to India and Pakistan in 2025. Nobody has ever been able to provide such accurate forecasts years in advance. I do not know what to say, but I believe everyone reading this should send a letter to the Nobel Commission...

When Americans were experiencing inflation and shortages during the Biden presidency, there was an internet meme going around that juxtaposed a paltry egg with the iconic 2019 image of a grinning Donald Trump, welcoming the national championship–winning Clemson Tigers to the White House, spreading his arms to display a massive bounty of burgers piled in front of him. The underlying message behind that joke became a central part of the 2024 campaign: Under Trump, Americans had plenty; under Biden-Harris, they had less. Yet bizarrely, the man who for decades has been a symbol of unapologetic American excess is now defending...

Michelle Obama says she’s back in therapy as she begins her “transition” to the “next phase” of her life. I’m not kidding; that’s exactly what People magazine is reporting. According to the article, during a recent appearance on Jay Shetty’s "On Purpose" podcast, Obama opened up about her current focus on mental health. She revealed that after years in spotlight — including eight in the White House as first lady — she’s now turning to therapy to help guide her through this personal transition. “At this phase of my life, I’m in therapy right now because I’m transitioning, you know?”...

Why not? I'm all for incentives set toward beneficial outcomes. And cost-savings, too .... assuming they materialize. Throughout the last presidential campaign, as well as in 2016, Donald Trump promised a massive exodus of illegal aliens from the US. In both campaigns, Trump promised to focus on expelling more dangerous criminals first, but claimed that enforcement would prompt many to "self-deport." That seems to be working now more than in the first term, not to mention the near-complete shutdown of new border crossings in larger scale. However, Trump's efforts at accelerated deportations have run afoul of the federal judiciary, threatening...

Being an American citizen used to mean something; now, not so much. We are on the decline, lacking focus and unable to answer the most important question that matters: what is an American? By 1800, America was largely an established and cohesive nation. We had an almost industrialized process of taking people in and producing fundamentally similar people, thoroughly American, within a generation or two. This process continued for the next 160 years with laws and policies aiming to integrate immigrants into a predominantly Anglo-Saxon, Protestant identity. Laws were enacted to encourage English language learning and cultural conformity. ... An...

Trump Derangement Syndrome on steroids. You think American leftists have Trump Derangement Syndrome? They’ve got nothing on Canadians, who just chose to remain on the path of national decline and self-destruction that they’ve been on for the last ten years, just to spite Donald Trump. In order to demonstrate their nationalism, Canada just chose a socialist internationalist as prime minister. Yes, it’s that crazy, and worse. The Liberal Party’s Mark Carney, who succeeded the disastrous eternal boy Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister on March 14, was elected in his own right in Canada’s Monday election. It was an outcome...

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2025/05/02/an-unavoidable-trade-war-with-canada-is-looming-trigger-date-july-august-2025/According to the people present, when former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with President-elect Donald Trump, his primary objective was to inform President Trump his public demands for U.S. trade reciprocity with Canada were unachievable. Trudeau was not lying. In this outline we will explain a dynamic that is certain to surface this summer. President Trump has deferred all North American trade negotiations with Canada and Mexico until later in the year, after the priority trade deals with other large trade partners are completed. The USMCA trade pact is due for review and renegotiation this...

If we learned anything from mainland China's slow-motion take over of Hong Kong, it should be that China has option other than rolling tanks in the streets. In Hong Kong it used legal measures and police action to stop protests and jail activists. Then it threatened everyone into silence and shut down independent news outlets, raiding their offices and jailing publishers. And the bottom line is that freedom from the mainland is now just a memory. Hong Kong's oldest pro-democracy party shut down this month because talk about democracy leads to prison these days.The Democratic Party, one of the leading...

New York Magazine’s Ben Terris saved the most important part of his extensive profile of Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman for last: “I didn’t find any indication that the stroke had left him cognitively impaired,” he wrote in its concluding paragraphs. That is not the impression that a reader would have gathered from the worried former Fetterman staffers, jilted progressive activists, and anecdotes detailing the senator’s declining mental health that preceded this observation. The piece paints a portrait of a broken man, a shadow of his former self, plagued by depression and demented episodes. None of that was especially apparent to...

In response to ongoing concerns about Boeing’s delays, President Donald J. Trump has asked L3Harris Technologies to provide an interim presidential aircraft by the end of the year, according to The Wall Street Journal. This decision marks a significant change in how presidential flights will be handled. Boeing, which was awarded a $3.9 billion contract to deliver two next-generation Air Force One aircraft, has fallen significantly behind schedule by years and is now billions of dollars over budget. Trump’s newly selected contractor, L3Harris, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is tasked with retrofitting a previously Qatari-owned Boeing 747 as a temporary command...

“I will use my presidential authority to set import quotas. . . . We can manage the short-term shortages more effectively and we will, but there are no short-term solutions to our long-range problems. There is simply no way to avoid sacrifice.” — Jimmy Carter, the “malaise speech,” July 1979 “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.” — Bernie Sanders, May 2015 “Access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American Dream.” — Scott Bessent, March 2025. “[China] made a...

The absolute key to the first quarter GDP result is to remember that ‘imports‘ are a deduction in the economic equation of Gross Domestic Product. The GDP is the valuation of all goods and services produced in the USA *minus* the value of imports.The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) releases the results of the first quarter GDP. The overall economic growth seems low at –0.3% until you look at how U.S. companies responded in February and March to the tariff announcement.Companies proactively purchased massive amounts of products in advance of the tariffs leading to an overall increase in imports of...

[Note: This article has been updated to include a new response from the office of Hakeem Jeffries.] HOUSE MINORITY LEADER Hakeem Jeffries was asked Monday whether Democrats should continue to advocate for the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and the other men wrongly shipped to El Salvador, by making the trip to the country to put a spotlight on the issue. “Our reaction is that Donald Trump has the lowest approval rating of any president in modern American history,” Jeffries responded. But while Jeffries may be publicly agnostic on El Salvador trips like the one Reps. Robert Garcia, Yassamin Ansari,...

To hear the Democrats say it, the country is in chaos, the economy is collapsing, and it’s all Trump’s fault. But nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Trump administration marked its first 100 days with impressive economic achievements, as Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent detailed in Tuesday's briefing. Leavitt revealed strong job growth numbers, announcing, "345,000 jobs have already been added since the start of President Trump's term. Last month's jobs report saw nearly 100,000 more jobs than economists predicted." "It was the fourth highest month for private payroll growth in the...