Free Republic

The U.S. House has passed legislation barring all noncitizens, except permanent residents from acquiring Small Business Administration loans. The American Entrepreneurs First Act of 2025, which passed in a 217-190 vote Friday, would require the SBA to verify the citizenship status and age of every applicant, codifying reforms recently implemented by the agency. If the bill passes the Senate and becomes law, the SBA will permanently exclude illegal immigrants, refugees and asylees, visa holders, DACA recipients or nonimmigrants from obtaining taxpayer-funded SBA loans. It would also disqualify companies partially or completely owned by such individuals. Co-sponsor of the bill, Rep....

American President Donald Trump has once again threatened Russia. He claims that if Russia crosses the line, the United States will respond, Trump made this statement during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House. Furthermore, Trump recently said that in two weeks, he would know whether Putin is trying to deceive him about ending the war. According to Trump, if the Russian President lies about peace, the US will change its approach. "If i see somebody's out of line. If I see Russia's out of line — you will be amazed. Remember this: they like to...

UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found. Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant. In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care...

…. The 10-year Treasury yield added more than 7 basis points to 4.468%. The 2-year yield rose more than 9 basis points to 4.016%, while the 30-year bond yield advanced more than 4 basis points to sit at 4.931%. One basis point equals 0.01%. Yields and prices move inversely in the bond market……

PULSE POINTS:❓What Happened: The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) says its analysis of President Donald J. Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” finds the legislation introduces historic fiscal reforms, achieving $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings and reducing the deficit by $1.407 trillion. This analysis contradicts a fiscal score released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that claims the bill would increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion.👥 Who’s Involved: President Donald J. Trump, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), OMB Director Russ Vought, Elon Musk, and the U.S. Congress.📍 Where & When: The OMB’s top-line...

It’s been a while since Americans could actually sit back and enjoy June. Now, instead of bumping into rainbows in every aisle and choking on the colored logos of every conceivable brand, there’s some freedom from the suffocating fumes of Pride Month. In these last two years, the march to pull companies back to neutral has outperformed everyone’s expectations. But in this process of rolling back decades of corporate wokeism, one thing is clear: this isn’t over. No matter how much success conservatives have, not everyone will go quietly. When it comes to LGBT activism, some businesses are playing for...

Following the horrific and incredibly destructive fires in southern California earlier this year, hundreds of residents of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood are opting to sell their homes rather than rebuild. For months now, various people have predicted that this would happen because the bureaucratic red tape in California is a nightmare to deal with, not to mention the exorbitant costs. It is absolutely awful that so many of these people find themselves in a position where they’re unable to rebuild homes they have lived in for years. This is all on the Democrat leaders of the city and the state....

The U.S. economy added jobs in May at a slower pace than in the past two months as uncertainty over the direction of trade, tax and monetary policy caused employers to pull back on hiring. The Labor Department on Friday reported that employers added 139,000 jobs in May. That figure was slightly above the estimate of economists polled by LSEG, who projected 130,000 jobs added – though it was cooler than the initial report of 177,000 jobs added in April or the 185,000 jobs gained in March. The unemployment rate was 4.2%, unchanged from the past two months and in...

President Donald Trump is “not interested” in a call with Tesla CEO Elon Musk to resolve their feud, a senior White House official told NBC News on Friday morning. The two billionaires launched a war of words on Thursday over Musk’s continued criticism of Trump’s proposed tax bill. Trump said that Musk, who until a week ago was one of his top government advisors, had gone “crazy” and threatened to kill federal contracts with his companies, which include SpaceX. Musk, in turn, said Trump could not have been elected president without his massive financial support, and accused the Republican of...

A cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars, including 800 electric vehicles, caught fire off the coast of Alaska and continues to burn. The Coast Guard says that all 22 crew members escaped the ship and were picked up by two nearby freighters. The ship, a Liberian-registered car-carrier named "Morning Midas," was on its way to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, from Yantai, China.. ... the Coast Guard is going to let the ship burn, since trying to put out a lithium-ion fire is nearly futile. ... In 2022, the Felicity Ace, a car carrier slightly larger than Morning Midas, sank in the Atlantic...

BOSTON – A federal judge in Boston on Thursday temporarily blocked US President Donald Trump from barring US entry of foreign nationals seeking to study or participate in exchange programs at Harvard University. Under a two-page temporary restraining order granted to Harvard, US District Judge Allison Burroughs enjoined Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter amid an escalating dispute between the Ivy League school and Republican president. The judge ruled that Trump’s directive prohibiting foreign nationals from entering the United States to study at Harvard for the next six months would cause “immediate and irreparable injury”...

Are the tariffs working? The headline from the BBC, Tariffs prompt record plunge in US imports.The details, Goods brought into the US plunged by 20% in April, recording their largest ever monthly drop in the face of a wave of tariffs unleashed by US President Donald Trump. You literally have to go down to the final two sentences to learn the bottom line of the report, Exports so far this year are up about 5% compared with 2024. The overall goods and services deficit in April was $61.6bn, down from $138.3bn in March. Wut? Exports are up? How can that...

One reason America has become the economic superpower is that the 50 states comprise one giant free trade zone. The Europeans wanted to emulate that model with the creation of the EU, but it hasn’t worked. Here is a stunning fact from the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Sternberg: The International Monetary Fund calculates that Europe’s complex economic regulations impose the same costs as would a 44% tariff on goods traded between EU countries. For services, the costs of complying with different national rules are equivalent to a 110% tariff. By comparison, the regulatory costs associated with trading manufactured goods across...

SummarySanctions target ICC judges over Afghanistan, Israel cases ICC condemns sanctions as undermining judicial independence Sanctions complicate financial transactions for targeted judges WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE, June 5 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal's cases regarding alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and over the court's issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin, and Beti Hohler...

A Harvard graduate, a doctor and an actress have been at the center of social media storms over perceived privilege. Some see economic anxiety behind it. What do a Chinese commencement speaker at Harvard, an actress posting selfies and a trainee doctor at a Beijing hospital have in common? Not much — except that they’ve all found themselves at the heart of fierce online debates in China about privilege and inequality. The three disputes, which have dominated Chinese social media in recent weeks, all featured accusations that the main players had gotten ahead by dirty means, whether that was true...

By every honest metric, President Donald J. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill dramatically improves the fiscal trajectory of the United States and unleashes an era of unprecedented economic growth.HOAX: The One Big Beautiful Bill increases spending.FACT: The One Big Beautiful Bill delivers nearly $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings — a fact that even the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) admits is true.FACT: This is the highest level of mandatory savings in history — dwarfing spending reductions from similar reconciliation bills in 2005 ($140 billion), 1997 ($800 billion), 1993 ($370 billion), and 1990 ($440 billion) on an inflation-adjusted basis.FACT: The One Big...

For months, US economic data has shown resilience, with layoffs remaining low and business activity staying steady despite fears over policy uncertainty. But the tide may be shifting. Multiple data points this week have shown signs of slowing as a wide swath of tariffs has been in effect. On Thursday, weekly filings for unemployment benefits hit their highest level since October 2024, adding to a slew of data showing a cooling economy leading into the Friday morning release of the May jobs report. Earlier in the week, the Institute for Supply Management's Services PMI registered a reading of 49.9 in...

Once again, the consensus of government and private weather forecasters is that this coming summer will witness above-average temperatures in most parts of the United States. Already, warnings have been sounded that America’s power grids will be under great stress—as has been the case for a number of years—with a strong probability of blackouts and brownouts in some parts of the country. For example, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) summer reliability assessment published on May 18 cited the 15-state Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) as the regional grid most likely to see a meltdown this summer. NERC’s warning...

President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to cut Elon Musk’s government contracts as their fractured alliance rapidly escalated into a public feud with Trump suggesting he would use the U.S. government to hurt his fellow billionaire financially. The spectacular blow-up between the president of the United States and the world’s richest man played out on their respective social media platforms after Trump first broached the topic in a White House meeting with Germany’s new leader. The rancorous breakup happened less than a week after they appeared together at the White House and Trump thanked Musk for his brief but tumultuous...

Order books are now open for the 2026 Ram 1500 with the 5.7-liter engine. The Hemi-powered Ram 1500 is back, and it goes on sale this summer for the 2026 model year. It won't be the standard engine in the pickup, but if you're a cylinder counter and can't live without eight of them, it'll cost up to $1,200 to upgrade. Order books are open now. “Everyone makes mistakes, but how you handle it defines you,” said Kuniskis. "Ram screwed up when we dropped the Hemi—we own it and we fixed it.” The brand shifted to a six-cylinder engine lineup...