Free Republic

On Monday’s edition of NBC’s “MTP Now, Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) blamed the close polling margins between President Joe Biden and 2024 GOP candidate former President Donald Trump in part on people being “tired after three years of COVID,” and responded to the President’s poor economic polling numbers by stating that “We have a reduction in inflation. So, for people who are looking at their pocketbook, they should find that things are less expensive than normal.” In response to polling showing Biden and Trump in a dead heat, Chu said, “I can’t believe it either. However, I do say that,...

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said Saturday that Rep. Lance Gooden’s (R-TX) accusation that Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) could have a connection to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is “false, racist, and xenophobic.” Clinton’s remark came after several Democrats in Congress spoke out against Gooden for drawing attention to Chu and asserting she was an “honorary president” of a group called the All America Chinese Youth Federation (AACYF), leaders of which, Gooden said, allegedly belonged to front groups for the CCP.

On Friday’s broadcast of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) said that the House’s version of the Women’s Health Protection Act, which she sponsored and which passed the House in 2021 “was actually the most pro-abortion bill passed in Congress in history.”

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “MTP Daily,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) stated that she hopes the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on Roe v. Wade “would ensure that some justices change their minds.” And that while she believes we need to know how the leak happened, “the information was important for us to know,” and “I am at least glad that this came to light.” Host Kristen Welker asked, “This is a draft decision, but do you think — and do you think part of the purpose of this leak was to try to build momentum to change...

A former "Jeopardy!" champion and prominent Twitter leftist stated that the death of a pro-Trump protester and military veteran on Wednesday was "one of the few good things that happened as a result of the Capitol 'protest'" and that people should "feel less bad than you do about putting down a rabid animal." Ashli Babbitt, a 14-year veteran of the Air Force, was apparently shot by Capitol Police amid protesters breaking into the Capitol building, reported The New York Post. "Ashley [sic] Babbitt feeding the worms is one of the few good things that happened as a result of the...

Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) spoke at the Planned Parenthood protest against Alabama’s new law to ban abortion and said if women can’t get an abortion they will be “terrified” of their bodies. Chu recalled a woman she knew who had an illegal abortion before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion on demand the law of the land. “But now we have states like Alabama, like Georgia, like Ohio that are going to make even more women terrified about their own bodies and their future,” Chu said. In recent weeks some states, including New York and...

Next Thursday, I will get a vagina. The procedure will last around six hours, and I will be in recovery for at least three months. Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagina as a wound; as a result, it will require regular, painful attention to maintain. This is what I want, but there is no guarantee it will make me happier. In fact, I don’t expect it to. That shouldn’t disqualify me from getting it. I like to say that being trans is the second-worst thing that ever happened to me. (The worst was being born...

City Controller Alan Hevesi took sides yesterday in a City Council primary slugfest, endorsing Pauline Chu in her contest with veteran Flushing incumbent Julia Harrison. Hevesi, of Forest Hills, cited controversial remarks made by Harrison last April, when she was quoted as saying Asian immigrants in Flushing "were more like colonizers" than other groups that had settled in her district. Chu, an Asian-American who lost a primary to Harrison in 1991, is president of Community School Board 25.

My friend Monica Crowley was the subject of a major hit job by CNN a few weeks back. She is a serious scholar, but she was portrayed as a serial plagiarist who never had an original idea in her head. The emotional toll of the uproar caused her to withdraw from her appointment by President Trump to be the senior director of communications at the National Security Council. It is the country’s loss. Over the last two decades, Monica has been one of the most effective commentators on the national scene regarding the geopolitical challenges confronting the United States, and...

For over five years, the Obama Administration has delayed a decision on the Keystone pipeline because of alleged concerns about environmental impacts, especially climate change. The Administration’s non-decision process has been strongly supported by its activist environmental allies who have made extreme and unsupportable claims. Now, the truth comes out from the former Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, who finally admitted that the decision is “a political one, and one founded in science” and just yesterday by former Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, who said that Keystone is a “win-win.” In spite of these admissions, environmental activists continue their...

While the White House is still — still — adamantly insisting that their eventual Keystone XL pipeline decision (whenever that may be) will be absotively, posilutely not-at-all political after their former Energy Secretary Steven Chu openly conceded that “the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one and not a scientific one, Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says he believes the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada should be built. Salazar said at an energy conference in Houston Wednesday that the pipeline could be built safely, as long as conditions are imposed. Those conditions would require the...

WASHINGTON—Former Energy Secretary Steven Chu is joining the board of directors of a Canadian company that says it has a cost-effective way to capture and reuse carbon dioxide from power plants fired by coal and natural gas. Vancouver-based Inventys Thermal Technologies says it has developed a process that it says uses less energy than conventional carbon capture techniques and is less expensive. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Chu served as energy secretary in President Barack Obama's first term and now teaches physics at Stanford University. "It's a cause I believe in, and it is also something that has a shot at...

Ex-energy secretary Steven Chu is still praising Solyndra-style loans. He did it most recently in an interview with San Francisco Chronicle. The paper asks, "When you look back, is there anything you'd do differently about Solyndra?" Chu responds: We were evolving. Solyndra was the first loan, the one where the career people who started with the Bush administration said, "This looks like an exciting technology." The Wall Street Journal said it was one of the top 25 companies to watch. And then prices started to crash. And as we got more sophisticated in the loans, from 2009 to 2010, we...

Sen. Amy Klobuchar has asked the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate the steep increase in Minnesota gas prices over the past few weeks. Gasoline industry officials say regional gas prices have jumped 80 cents in the past month and 30 cents in the past week because of both unexpected and planned shutdowns at gasoline refineries. But Klobuchar said the impact of temporary closures shouldn't have so much impact on the price consumers have to pay. In a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Democratic senator called on the Department of Energy to thoroughly examine the closures and timing...

Steven Chu, the retiring Secretary of Energy, is blaming the power outage at the Superbowl on the Republicans. Steven Chu had arranged to have the Superbowl completely powered by solar panels as a final act of demonstrating the reliability and feasibility of solar power. To accomplish it, he had asked the Food Stamp President to request Congress to change the day/night ratio to 80% daylight versus 20% night to support the increased light requirements. The Republicans laughed off the request and the resultant unexpected darkness rendered the solar panels inoperable. The battery and generator backups proved to be up to...

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced his resignation from the Obama Administration this week. Chu had clashed frequently with critics of Obama's so-called green investment approach. He took the occasion of his pending departure to fire off a final volley at these critics. “Much as these people would like to portray the bankruptcies of a large number of recipients of government aid as a failure of the Administration's green investment policy, they are wrong,” Chu maintained. “Take the Solyndra Company as a example. The contention is that the $500 million we invested in this now bankrupt company was a waste...

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist frequently the target of Republican criticism, announced Friday that he was stepping down in the latest shake-up of President Barack Obama's Cabinet. Chu, who disclosed his decision in a letter to Energy Department staff, frequently clashed with GOP lawmakers over gas prices as well as government backing for green-energy companies like the failed firm Solyndra. In his letter, Chu took aim directly at his critics, saying the clean-energy efforts were a success—and blasted climate-change skeptics as trapped in "the Stone Age." He also scolded climate-change skeptics and urged a shift from fossil-fuels...

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who won a Nobel Prize in physics but came under questioning for his handling of a solar energy loan, is stepping down. Chu offered his resignation to President Barack Obama in a letter Friday. He said he will stay on at least until the end of February and may stay until a successor is confirmed. Chu’s departure had been widely expected and follows announcements by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lisa Jackson and Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that they are leaving.

In the fall of 2010, the Michigan Economic Development Corp. — the state's "corporate welfare” arm — uploaded a video to YouTube highlighting the battery manufacturer A123 Systems. At the time, the company was promoted heavily by President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and U.S. Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow. Since then, A123 has shed money, laid off half its workforce, recalled products and seen its stock price plummet to about 26 cents this week from a previous high of $26. Now, just two years after the initial roll-out, A123 is...

We've had some unusual Cabinet secretaries in past administrations ...but never anything quite like the present bunch. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has overseen some $5 trillion in new debt. To help pay for it, he wants the rich — the top 1% already contributes more in income taxes than does the bottom 90% — to pay more for what he calls "the privilege of being an American." Geithner, whose department oversees the IRS, should have taken his own advice: As a rich American one-percenter, he once failed to pay his own self-employment taxes, and improperly claimed his children's camp costs...