Free Republic

America’s natural gas industry celebrated Monday after President Donald Trump signed into law a resolution repealing Biden-era fees on methane emissions. The Waste Emissions Charge, which Republicans say is the equivalent of a natural gas tax, was authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency in November 2024. The resolution rescinds that regulation under the Congressional Review Act. The CRA legislation gives Congress the authority to repeal regulations issued during the final months of a previous administration. House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., called the repeal “a victory for the...

An alleged robber is hospitalized after being shot by a Houston, Texas, mechanic shop owner around 1:40 a.m. Friday morning. Click2Houston reported the shop owner spotted the alleged burglar on surveillance cameras and went to the shop to investigate. Once there, he confronted the suspect, who allegedly became “aggressive.” KHOU 11 noted proprietor then shot the alleged robber, hitting him once in the abdomen.

Five months after Hurricane Helene severed a critical Appalachian freight corridor, a 12-mile stretch of Interstate 40 through North Carolina’s Pigeon River Gorge reopened Saturday. Though still a construction zone, the highway is mostly operational. Its four lanes have been reduced to two, with the roadway held together by nails drilled deep into the mountainside. Tractor-trailers now thread between 9-inch concrete barriers as engineers continue their work. Reopening that stretch of I-40 restores a vital freight corridor that supports both regional industries and national supply chains. Before Hurricane Helene washed out a 4-mile stretch of I-40 connecting North Carolina and...

Islam leads global religious growth with 2.04 billion adherents worldwide, representing 25% of the global population.Growth Statistics and Projections of IslamMuslim population expands rapidly, and projections show a 70% increase between 2015 and 2060. This growth surpasses the expected 32% increase in global population during the same period. Muslims will likely reach near parity with Christians by 2050, reaching 2.8 billion followers that represent 30% of the world’s population.Factors Driving Islamic Population GrowthThree main factors drive Islam’s rapid expansion:Demographic Advantage: Muslims maintain the youngest median age (24 years) among all major religious groupsHigher Fertility Rates: Muslim women have an average...

Can you remember the last customer service experience that left you fuming? Not too hard, right? We all want to be treated with a level of respect, and with so many people veering on the edge of a boiling rage these days sometimes all it takes is one nasty exchange with a company's representative to send you teetering over the edge. It happened to me recently when I made a call about an item I'd returned to a company for an exchange that had seemed to vanish. The agent on the phone interrupted me repeatedly and was actively unhelpful. Even...

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) touted bringing home the bacon to Kentucky and his “unfinished business” perpetuating a national defense strategy crafted in the 1980s in a Senate floor speech Thursday announcing his retirement. McConnell, who turned 83 Thursday, has been expected to retire following his resignation under pressure as Senate Republican Leader in early 2024, but reports of his upcoming retirement announcement Thursday morning still reverberated across Washington. In his speech, the longtime Senate leader told colleagues, “I’ve only really answered to two constituencies, the Republican Conference and the people of Kentucky.

President Trump has now started implementing his promise to impose new or additional tariffs on goods from various countries, starting with China, Canada, and Mexico. Trump already imposed tariffs in 2018 against various countries. Now, once again, the media are all over how prices are going to jump for consumers because tariffs are a “regressive consumption tax,” and how tax receipts from tariffs won’t go up, etc. etc. Now we’ll look at what tariffs did and didn’t do last time. One, they didn’t trigger inflation, which stayed below the Fed’s target. Two, they more than doubled tax receipts from customs...

Recognizing that free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it, allow me to offer Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent some insight on his new gig as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The bureau, originally the brainchild of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was built on the misguided principle that protecting consumers in the financial services arena should be “above politics.” In Washington-speak, that means an entity that’s not accountable to elected politicians — or, by extension, to the people who elected them. That was bad enough. But under the leadership of Barack Obama appointee Richard Cordray, the bureau...

Target was one of corporate America’s most forceful supporters of diversity and inclusion initiatives and vowed to support Black Americans in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police in Target’s home city of Minneapolis in 2020. But less than five years later, Target has dialed back its high-profile DEI program. In 2020, Target CEO Brian Cornell said Floyd’s murder, which took place just 10 minutes from Target’s headquarters, had a personal impact on him and Target employees, and Cornell vowed to reopen one of Target’s stores damaged in protests against police violence. George Floyd “could have been one of...

Across the world, public finances are stretched dangerously thin. Per-person growth continues dropping while costs are climbing for pensions, education, health care and defense. These urgent priorities could easily require an additional 3%-6% of GDP. Yet green campaigners are loudly calling for governments to spend up to 25% of our GDP, choking growth in the name of climate change. If climate Armageddon were imminent, they would have a point. The truth is far more prosaic. Two major new scientific estimates of the total global cost of climate change have been published recently. These are not individual studies, which can vary...

Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. joins a growing list of companies that are pulling back on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Like others before it, the social media giant cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision in July 2023 that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. Conservative activists have gone after companies — both in the courts and on social media — seeking to set a similar precedent in the working world. They've been targeting workplace initiatives such as diversity programs and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups, and have widened their objections to include programs focused...

Well, sadly, it seems some people didn’t learn anything from that violent, deadly disaster. Meet the “Tenacious Unicorn Ranch,” another Antifa-armed commune out in Custer County, Colorado, where queer and trans radicals tried—and miserably failed—to build their own Marxist utopia. Of course, right on cue, leftist media swooned, hailing it as a stunning and brave progressive safe haven. And while the left was busy congratulating themselves for their “brave” new utopia, the ranch was busy cashing in on phony “right-wing threat” stories and stunts. They squeezed every dime they could out of Patreon, GoFundMe, and PayPal. Nothing like a fake...

@realDonaldTrump Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!

Though he won't officially take office until January 20, 2025, President-Elect Donald Trump is already getting things done. His threat to impose 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in retaliation for their thus far puny efforts to prevent the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States has inspired Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to order the seizure 2400 lbs. of fentanyl before gangs could smuggle it into the US. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg for mercy, saying "we are unable to impede the entry of persons and drugs from our country to the...

President-elect Donald Trump, keeping with his promise for a crypto-friendly administration, plans to nominate former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins to head the agency, according to his Truth Social post. Currently the CEO at Patomak Global Partners, Atkins is a well-known veteran of the financial world and Republican political circles specifically. He had been widely expected to get the position as the nation’s top financial market regulator. If confirmed, Atkins would succeed Gary Gensler, a widely reviled figure in the digital currency community for his many efforts to clamp down on the $3.5 trillion crypto market. Trump has promised a easier...

President Biden took to social media to promote Small Business Saturday and his administration’s efforts to boost small businesses, including investing more than $50 billion into the space. “Every small business is an act of hope,” he wrote on social platform X. “This Small Business Saturday, we’re celebrating all small businesses, including the 20 million new business applications — 20 million acts of hope — since I took office,” he added.

Egg prices are rising once more as a lingering outbreak of bird flu coincides with the high demand of the holiday baking season. But prices are still far from the recent peak they reached almost two years ago. And the American Egg Board, a trade group, says egg shortages at grocery stores have been isolated and temporary so far. “Those are being rapidly corrected, sometimes within a day,” said Emily Metz, the Egg Board's president and chief executive officer. The average price for a dozen eggs in U.S. cities was $3.37 in October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics....

Just when you think that things might be about to turn around with regard to the explosion of unbelievably stupid laws and regulations to harass and annoy the people, along comes another one that’s stupid enough to top them all. This one has sprung up seemingly out of nowhere in the past few weeks, in notices that have gone out among the New York co-op and condo communities. But the law’s application is far broader than just these communities. I suspect that many readers have received such notices in many diverse contexts. The law in question is a federal statute...

Washington state’s trucking industry is urging Gov. Jay Inslee to reconsider a first of the year commitment to align with California’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) regulation, which requires a certain percentage of so called "zero emissions" (ZEV) trucks to be sold in the state. This goes back to 2020, when Washington lawmakers committed to follow California’s strict emissions mandates. It got more critical last month when on Oct. 23, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) amended its ACT standards to require manufacturers to gradually increase the percentage of zero-emission vehicles they sell with targets from 4% to 7%. Washington has...

With Thanksgiving less than two weeks away, Walmart, Target, Aldi and other grocers are competing for a place on holiday tables with turkey dinner deals and other promotions to tempt Americans who haven't recovered from recent food price inflation. Walmart, the nation's largest food retailer, first bundled the makings of a traditional turkey feast into a meal deal three years ago. This year, the 29-item offer, which includes a frozen turkey and ingredients for side dishes, costs less than $55 and is intended to serve eight. That calculates to less than $7 per person. Target's version for four people costs...