Free Republic

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would limit the Department of Energy’s authority to set energy conservation standards for household appliances, a measure Republicans argue would prevent the agency from imposing unrealistic standards that raise costs for families. The House voted 217-190 on Tuesday to pass a bill written by Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) that would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which requires the DOE to set minimum efficiency standards for consumer appliances and commercial equipment. The bill would “prevent future administrations from prioritizing a radical rush-to-green agenda over the affordability and availability of reliable household...

Retired Navy Capt. E. Royce Williams has been keeping a secret for more than 50 years. To his friends, family, and others he served with, Williams was known as a decorated fighter pilot, who led a successful career in the Navy, where he served for more than 30 years and flew more than 220 missions in Korea and Vietnam. However, even his wife wasn’t aware of what he’d done on Nov. 18, 1952. That morning, Williams was continuing what had become a daily routine for him as a young Navy pilot stationed onboard the USS Oriskany off the coast of...

China’s carrier program is accelerating fast, with the Fujian already in sea trials and reporting suggesting a fourth “supercarrier” could follow. -The Fujian’s flat-deck design and electromagnetic catapult approach resemble the U.S. Ford-class, raising concern about how quickly Beijing is closing the capability gap in launch efficiency and sustained sortie generation. -Yet carriers matter only as much as their air wings. China’s current deck-aviation weakness—limited fifth-generation carrier fighters—still constrains near-term combat credibility against U.S. Navy F-35Cs and allied regional AirPower. -The danger is trajectory: mass production, improving catapults, and the J-35 could shift the balance sooner than expected. China is...

ccording to documents posted online by a family who formerly lived in California, the Golden State is trying to collect income taxes years after the family moved to Florida. The documents, sent on Jan. 6, 2026, asked for receipts, invoices, canceled checks and other documentation showing that the family moved from California to Florida nearly four years ago. The California Franchise Tax Board, which sent the letter, also asked the family for a “narrative of the circumstances” surrounding the family’s move out of state. Hari Raghavan, who with his wife, Mitali Gala, was the subject of the investigation by the...

“Civil death” was a punishment under ancient French law—abolished in 1854—that extinguished the legal personality of the convicted individual: loss of property, family rights, and civil existence, while leaving the person physically alive. Civil death—cruel, total, annihilating—was believed to belong to a bygone era. The European Union has just reinvented it—and made it worse. The case of Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud, who has been struck with civil death by the EU, first caught my attention. By a sovereign decision dated December 15, 2024, the EU banned Mr. Baud from its territory and “froze” all his assets. However hard I searched,...

While Maduro played dictator and CNN ran humanitarian crisis segments, American money was flowing into Caracas. The objective was acquisition. US foundations were buying Venezuelan bonds, debt, equity, gold, and oil. Pennies on the dollar while the country collapsed into starvation. Members of Congress with financial stakes through careful proxies. Through humanitarian language. Through the same laundering networks that have operated for 50 years. Two months earlier, President Trump had signed an executive order prohibiting transactions with Venezuela’s oil sector. Standard sanctions on the surface. Financial guillotine underneath. The order severed Congressional money. Cut foundation stakes. Killed portfolios belonging to...

LOWERING DRUG PRICES FOR AMERICAN PATIENTS: Today, President Donald J. Trump announced nine new agreements with major pharmaceutical companies to lower prescription drug prices for Americans in line with the lowest prices paid by other developed nations (known as the most-favored-nation, or MFN, price). The nine manufacturers include Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis, and Sanofi. The agreements reduce prices on drugs that treat numerous costly and chronic conditions, including type two diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), hepatitis B and C, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and certain cancers,...

Mamdani didn’t win because affluent Brooklynites suddenly became Marxists. He won big because he identified something real that cuts across traditional class boundaries: a pervasive sense that the fundamental bargain of American economic life has broken down. Look carefully at Mamdani’s coalition and you see two distinct phenomena that shouldn’t be confused with each other. The core—the engine of his victory—was the gentrified neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Bushwick, Fort Greene: these delivered 60-70 point margins. This wasn’t tactical voting or lesser-of-evils thinking. This was enthusiasm. These neighborhoods turned out at near-presidential levels and voted as a bloc....

November morning in New Hampshire. Pat Buchanan is standing among the men and women of a footwear factory, listening to the assembly-line cobblers about the threats posed by cheap imported shoes to not only their jobs but their communities and their country. It’s an early winter evening in Wheeling. The guys at the pub [wonder] what they will do when the smelter shuts down, never to be re-opened. How could we lose? Surely America will see what’s coming? Surely conservatives and the Republican Party will embrace the cause of these Americans whose efforts defeated first fascism and then communism, only...

1. The Classification of the AfD by an Administrative Agency In the spring of 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, Germany's domestic intelligence service) classified the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a "right-wing extremist" organization. This classification granted the authorities the power to place its members and supporters under police surveillance without prior judicial authorization, including measures such as intercepting private communications or the BfV recruiting informants within the party. This "judgment" was not delivered by an independent court. It was created by an administrative agency directly under the authority of the Interior...

Florida Congressman Jimmy Patronis (R) announced his cosponsorship of Florida Rep. Randy Fine’s (R) “No Shari’a Law Act”. The bill aims to restrict all aspects of Shari’a Law from influencing judges to rule based on the laws of the U.S. Constitution, rather than the laws of religion. “Proud to be an official co-sponsor of HR 5512- The No Shari’a Law Act by [Rep. Fine] a bill that reaffirms our commitment to upholding the U.S. Constitution and protecting American values.” Patronis shared on social media. Rep. Fine, a longtime critic of Islam in America, is headlining the No Shari’a Law Act....

The hysteria merchants are in high gear again as they respond to the news that Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC talk show has been “preempted indefinitely.” Kimmel’s show wasn’t suspended because of Trump, Carr or the Big Bad Wolf. It was suspended because ABC and parent company Disney are in the business of generating audiences and advertising revenue. The corporate bigshots have decided that Kimmel can no longer deliver viewers and generate commercial dollars to their satisfaction. The nonsensical comment Kimmel made about Kirk was likely one straw too many even for Disney’s broad corporate shoulders. Big media corporation executives have to...

Daniel Richman, a law professor, met with prosecutors on Tuesday, sources said. A Columbia law professor who is a friend and adviser to former FBI Director James Comey was subpoenaed last week by federal prosecutors in connection with a criminal probe into whether Comey allegedly lied in testimony before Congress, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News. Daniel Richman has previously acknowledged his role as an intermediary between Comey and reporters in the wake of Comey's 2017 firing by President Donald Trump during his first term over Trump's anger with the FBI's investigation into his 2016 campaign. In public...

In 2019, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping Executive Order, 13877 that placed the needs of patients first. It called for hospitals to provide price transparency for patients. This was the type of healthcare cost reform that was needed for decades, as prices were often hidden from patients. Unfortunately, with the advent of the administration of President Joe Biden, progress was halted on this issue. The Biden administration refused to pressure hospitals and health care plans to provide price transparency for patients. As noted by Ilaria Santangelo, Research Director of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, under the Biden administration compliance with the regulations was...

The triumph of the Convention of 1787 is that in raising a standard to which the wise and honest could repair, it also raised one that met the threefold test of legitimacy, popularity, and viability.One reason the Convention was able to strike the right balance between the urge to lead the people and the need to obey them, and between the urge to be noble and the need to be practical, was the disposition of most delegates to be “whole men” on stern principles and “halfway men” on negotiable details. Another was the way in which it worked with familiar...

Unless you live under a rock, you're aware that pickleball has become the fastest-growing sport in America, attracting tens of millions of players, especially geezers like me. Sure, injuries are common, if not required. But there are real benefits. Let's explore the madness. Once you reach a certain age, people you know start checking out faster than at the front desk at a Ramada Inn. It colors your perspective. Example: while waiting for our turn at the pickleball court (aka the opium den), the geezers (one guy’s 88!) trade the usual banter. But sometimes it veers dark: Like “So… what’s...

Democrats so enjoyed forcing Americans to do silly things during COVID, like starving their children of oxygen and letting Grandma die alone, that they leapt right back to their hectoring at the Senate hearing this week with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Blithely unaware that public health authorities have become objects of seething hatred throughout the land, Democrats -- and a few Republicans -- harangued Kennedy for not trusting "science" and "experts." Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., began the idiot-fest by accusing RFK of prevaricating during his confirmation hearing when he claimed to be "pro-safety and pro-science."...

Free Government is that happy condition wherein government respects and protects the unalienable, Natural Rights of the nation, and makes no law without its consent. Our Bill of Rights actually grants nothing, but rather serves to recognize God-given individual and societal rights. But rights don’t defend themselves. James Madison famously regarded Bills of Rights as mere “parchment barriers” easily breached by ambitious men. To keep them in force requires institutions designed for their defense, and an active citizenry covetous of liberty. So, how many are actually respected and protected by government? How near or distant is free government? I posit...

Director of the National Institutes of Health Jay Bhattacharya yesterday claimed that the First Amendment is a “dead letter”. Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington DC, the former Stanford professor warned that America’s constitutional protections for free expression dissolved during the Covid pandemic and remain unenforceable even today. “The First Amendment still doesn’t apply in practice,” he said. “Free speech rights exist right now only because the administration has chosen to allow them, not because the First Amendment is protecting us.” Bhattacharya, best known for co-authoring the 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, said his own experience during the pandemic...

Taylor Swift’s $17 million Rhode Island mansion isn’t just a star-studded backdrop anymore—it’s ground zero for a growing tax revolt aimed at the wealthy. Starting next summer, the state will slap a new surcharge on vacation homes worth $1 million or more, a move already dubbed the “Taylor Swift Tax.” The goal: Make deep-pocketed second-home owners pay more, and set the stage for a wave of similar crackdowns from Montana’s mountains to Connecticut’s suburbs. And yet, at the very top of the market, wealthy buyers are still scooping up real estate. As of April 2025, the $1 million-plus category has...