Free Republic

At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt didn’t hold back. In a clear, methodical takedown, she laid out exactly who the deported suspected MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia is — and it’s everything the Democrats don’t want the public to know. Spoiler alert: This is no innocent victim of Trump’s deportation policy. “When Kilmar Abrego Garcia was originally arrested, he was wearing a sweatshirt with rolls of money covering the ears, mouth, and eyes of presidents on various currency denominations,” Leavitt said. “This is a known MS-13 gang symbol of ‘Hear no evil. Speak no evil. See no...

The Treasury Department is phasing out penny production by early next year after President Donald Trump ordered the government to halt the “wasteful” minting of the coins. The Treasury will stop making pennies by early 2026, which will require businesses to start rounding up or down to the nearest five cents, the agency confirmed in a statement to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

KEY FACTS: The Texas House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 21 (SB 21) with a 101-42 vote, approving the creation of a state-level strategic Bitcoin reserve. The bill, authored by Senator Charles Schwertner and sponsored by Representative Giovanni Capriglione, allows the Texas comptroller to invest in cryptocurrencies with a market cap exceeding $500 billion, currently limited to Bitcoin. Following New Hampshire and Arizona, Texas would be the third U.S. state to establish such a reserve if Governor Greg Abbott, a known crypto advocate, signs the bill within 20 days.

Cash is dead. Speech is scored. Freedom is conditional.. ... Mark Carney didn’t rise through politics. He was not elected. He was installed — by the very institutions that profit most from technocratic control and public obedience. Goldman Sachs. The Bank of Canada. The Bank of England. The Financial Stability Board. The World Economic Forum. Bilderberg. The Trilateral Commission. The Council for Inclusive Capitalism. This is a man who has spent his entire adult life inside the machinery of global finance and elite governance. Now, he’s running a country. Carney is no fool. He speaks in the hushed tones of...

In a massive sting operation straight out of a crime thriller, Spanish police have smashed one of Europe’s most powerful underworld banks – a slick, secretive syndicate laundering millions using the ancient and shadowy “hawala” method. Cash, crypto and contraband – the works. In unbelievable scenes, Spain’s National Police, backed by EUROPOL and EUROJUST, swooped on a web of luxury and illegality. The secret January raids – now revealed – saw over 250 officers hit 13 locations across Spain and Belgium in a coordinated blitz, nabbing 17 suspects, seizing mountains of loot and blowing apart a money-moving machine that had...

From ancient Rome to modern America, the impulse to wall off economies in times of crisis has proven consistently disastrous. Whether through tariff wars, currency debasement, or autarkic fantasies, economic nationalism has repeatedly triggered collapse -- not recovery Politicising structural economic fundamentals always leads to chaos, as history tells us. In the early 1930s, American President Herbert Hoover faced an agonising decision. The global economy, already reeling from the crash of 1929 and the calamity of the Great Depression, presented Hoover with mounting demands from his supporters for protectionism as a means of shielding the American economy from further harm....

It all happened overnight and in a matter of minutes. Ben Zhou, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, made a series of routine transfers from his home computer. A short while later, his company called to inform him that his reserves of Ethereum, the second most-used cryptocurrency after Bitcoin, worth $1.5 billion, had vanished. By then, the ethers had already been transferred to thousands of other people’s digital wallets. Bybit had just suffered the largest theft in history. Five days later, the FBI confirmed what some analysts suspected from the outset: the attack was the work of Lazarus, a hacking...

Are you ready for the Circle IPO? The “stablecoin” giant just filed to go public. It’s aiming for a valuation between $4 billion and $5 billion and plans to list on the NYSE as early as June under the ticker CRCL. It will be the biggest crypto IPO since Coinbase (COIN) went public back in 2021. Circle is the company behind USD Coin (USDC)— the world’s second-biggest stablecoin. I’ll share my favorite way to profit from the rise of stablecoins in a minute. First, let me quickly break down what stablecoins are and why they’re a huge disruption to the...

During an appearance on FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” White House senior economic counselor Peter Navarro explained the long-term implications for the Trump administration’s tariffs and how they will function to ensure fair trade for the United States. “Let’s not forget, every economic report that’s been coming out in the last month has been pushing us towards expansion and strength,” Navarro said. “And we just had a blowout jobs number on Friday, 228,000 jobs. That was 50 percent higher than was predicted. So, again, there’s cognitive dissonance between what the media is saying, wanted to push us into recession, and what’s...

"What this is all about is an attempt to change the face of our country..." The Irish government has frozen the bank account of an Irish teacher after his continued refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns for a student at Wilson’s Hospital School. Enoch Burke, who has spent more than 500 days in jail for refusing to comply with a court order, also had his salary payments halted. Burke attempted to withdraw funds from his Bank of Ireland account last week but found that he was unable to access his money. The account reportedly holds over €40,000—his personal savings from years...

For almost 20 years now, the physical act of making some of our money has weirdly been a money-loser for the United States Mint. Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are apparently looking to undo that paradox. Stop making cents In one of the first DOGE posts on X after the department was established, it highlighted the well-known oddity that each individual penny costs more than 3 cents to make and distribute. It also wrongly claimed that producing the coin set US taxpayers back more than $179 million in FY23. (That figure was the loss of minting...

Mr. Armstrong, I just had to write in to say thank you for explaining that Bitcoin was just a trading asset, not some new currency that would replace the dollar. I understand that money must be elastic to grow with society in economic booms and population. I just read a quote reported by Bloomberg: “After four years of political purgatory, Bitcoin and the entire digital-asset ecosystem are on the brink of entering the financial mainstream.” I know a programmer who said you were correct that the Deep State created blockchain. Has this recent rise been orchestrated to get us to...

Before 2002 analyst Frank Veneroso estimated that between a third and half of all central bank gold had been leased or swapped, sold into the market and lost. More recently, leasing centres such as the Bank of England transferred ownership from lessor to lessee by book entry transfer, the gold not normally leaving the vault. That changed with the recent panic, with lessees queuing up to take gold out of the bank's vault and ship it to New York. ... Dispatch continues below ... This article is about the gold leasing trade, and why the sudden return to conditions before...

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson BREAKING: President Trump just announced the creation of a U.S. Crypto Reserve.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to host an event on cryptocurrency at the White House next week. The Crypto Summit will be held on Friday, marking the first-ever White House event of its kind. Trump is expected to deliver remarks during the summit, the White House said. The event will include "prominent founders, CEOs, and investors from the crypto industry, as well as members of the president’s Working Group on Digital Assets," according to the White House. The summit will be led by venture capitalist and White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and will be administered by the...

Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) has announced that he’s drafting legislation to create a $250 bill featuring President Trump. Rep. Wilson wrote in a post on X, “Grateful to announce that I am drafting legislation to direct the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design a $250 bill featuring Donald J. Trump. Biden-flation has destroyed the economy, forcing American families to carry more cash.” Wilson added, “Most valuable bill for most valuable President!” A policy advisor for Rep. Wilson shared the amount of $250 was chosen to commemorate the United State’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

A major cryptocurrency exchange says it was the victim of a sophisticated hack that stole about $1.5 billion worth of digital currency, marking one of the biggest online thefts of all time. Bybit said Friday that a routine transfer of Ethereum, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, between digital wallets was “manipulated” by an attacker who transferred the crypto to an unidentified address. The company sought to reassure customers that their cryptocurrency holdings with the exchange were safe. The company added that news of the hack had led to a surge in withdrawal requests and there could be delays in...

For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful! I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let's rip the waste out of our great nations budget, even if it's a penny at a time.

Canada’s dollar and Mexico’s peso took a hit Saturday, with Canada’s dollar sliding to its lowest level since 2003, one day after President Trump imposed tariffs on the two nations. The Canadian dollar dropped 1.4% to roughly C$1.47 against one U.S. dollar. BREAKING: Canadian dollar plummets to the lowest level against U.S. dollar since 2003: pic.twitter.com/3DSc30FlKu — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 2, 2025 The Mexican peso also fell more than 2% to 21.15 against one dollar U.S., Financial Times reports. Chief economist at Mexico’s Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, says, “If the tariff stays on for several months, the [peso’s] exchange...

During his 2024 presidential campaign Donald Trump repeatedly and in grave terms highlighted the possibility of the US dollar losing its world reserve currency status. This occurred at summits with business leaders at the New York and Chicago Economic Clubs.Trump occupies a rather unique position in this debate since he recognizes the real possibility of the dollar losing its world currency status, he opposes this change and wishes to prevent it, and yet he is not a paradigmatic member of the ruling class. However mainstream he is—today or in the past—he doesn’t possess the establishment credentials of a Ben Bernanke,...