Free Republic

For years now, the U.S. Export-Import Bank -- an under-the-radar agency that provides subsidized loans to foreign firms willing to buy American products -- has tried to remain relevant. After a semi-hiatus alongside criticism for functioning as the "Bank of Boeing," Ex-Im convinced the Trump and Biden administrations that it may be a tremendous weapon to fight Chinese influence. While it can do no such thing, Ex-Im is now moving on to something else: extending its domestic influence. Ex-Im's grandiose claims shouldn't distract us from its mediocrity. In 2019, Congress handed the agency a seven-year reauthorization and restored a quorum...

Washington -- Last week, while reading The Wall Street Journal, I came across an op-ed piece that for a moment led me to believe that the sober and serious Journal was opening a comics section. Why not? If the Journal executes "the funnies" as competently as it covers serious news, I can see it earning a Pulitzer Prize for its comics page. It would be a first for the Pulitzer Prize committee, but, well, in this day and age, there is a first time for almost everything. The piece I have in mind was written by Douglas Schoen and Andrew...

It was the statement that caused all the pearls to be clutched – when Chamath Palihapitiya, part owner of the Golden State Warriors, said he didn’t really care about the genocide the Chinese communists are committing against its Uyghur Muslim population. The Pavlovian virtue signaling reflex kicked in, from almost everyone, about how outrageous such a statement was. Then everyone who made it went right back to not giving a damn about the Uyghurs, just without saying it. First, what did Palihapitiya say? “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay. You bring it up because you care and...

The Joe Biden who swore his oath of office on the west front of the United States Capitol one year ago on January 20, 2021, is not the Joe Biden Americans see shuffling around the White House today. Last year, Biden presented his policies as a can't-fail way to "build back better," "shut down the virus," and lead the American economy out of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Flanked by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, Biden's party controlled two-thirds of American government, and it seemed, on paper at least, that Biden would be able to do what he wanted. For those...

When Glenn Youngkin first stepped out of the C-suite to joust with the windmill that was the Virginia governorship, he looked like just another Miracle Whip Republican ready to bland his way to gentlemanly failure. But he did not fail. He won, against all odds. And he did it not by tacking to the squishy center and trying to please the Washington Post, but by ignoring the consultant consensus that he should disregard issues the people were concerned about and focus on the same losing platform that these hacks haven’t changed since 2005. And then he followed up by keeping...

Not only has Islam transformed Jesus Christ into a Muslim, and a “Palestinian” one at that; Palestinians are apparently trying to transform him into a “heroic martyr” -- a term often translated by those infidels on the receiving end of such heroism as a “terrorist.” As a January 14, 2022 article by PMW explains: The PA uses many euphemisms and terms to refer to terrorists, and they are applying two of them to Jesus. The first is Fida’i, literally “self-sacrificing fighter.” For example, terrorist Ashraf Na’alwa, who brought a rifle to work, tied up a young mother of a 15-month-old,...

The Democrats and the propaganda ministry have tried to portray the events of January 6 as the greatest assault on democracy… in like, forever. But it seems like that narrative is starting to unravel. The unraveling began when many people began to suspect that the whole thing was a setup and started looking into it. It wasn’t law enforcement or MSM journalists investigating -- they could be controlled. It was amateur citizen investigators using the power of the internet. Ah… the internet -- allowing average citizens to cross reference and collate a limitless sea of information. Our Founders would approve....

When it comes to Western governments and jihadism, willful blindness is never fully cured. While critical of the FBI in a column yesterday, I argued that we should cut the bureau some slack. Its Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) had performed bravely in bringing the Texas synagogue hostage crisis to a successful conclusion. The hostages escaped unharmed. The lone fatality was of Malik Faisal Akram, the British jihadist who had created the lethal risk and who’d been shot under circumstances that suggested his capture alive was unlikely. Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, were justifiably nettled by agent Matthew DeSarno, who heads the...

Your Democratic neighbors won’t be ordered to vote for laws that ostracize you from society, steal your property, or send you away to a concentration camp. They will do it burning with pride.

William Kilpatrick is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His books include Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West (Ignatius Press), What Catholics Need to Know About Islam (Sophia Press), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad.Note: This piece was written several days before the attack on a synagogue in Texas by an Islamic jihadist. The hostage situation, which resulted in the death of the Muslim gunman, is in the news now, but if the media's handling of such events holds true to form, the story will soon be dropped down the...

Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign famously said elections were about “the economy, stupid.” As we begin 2022, Joe Biden better hope voters don’t judge him by that same standard in this year’s upcoming midterms. The Labor Department recently released economic data from December, and the numbers revealed Biden ended his disastrous first year in office not with a bang, but a whimper. First there was December’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) that showed prices rose a whopping seven percent last month. That’s the sharpest spike in nearly 40 years, and it’s a searing indictment of just how miserably Biden has failed...

“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, uh, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, uh, but we’re continuing to work to find motive and, and we will continue on that path.” That was Matt DeSarno, FBI special agent in charge, after the hostage incident in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday. It was bizarre statement, as Robert Spencer noted, because the hostage-taker’s demands revolved around imprisoned jihadist Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al Qaeda.” The FBI knew that but was “continuing to work to find motive.”...

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute. The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of November, 2021:The Muslim Slaughter of ChristiansUganda: Muslims slaughtered a Christian leader for refusing to remove his church from a Muslim-majority region. Pastor Stephen Lugwire, 58, was working on his farm with one of his daughters when three men dressed in Islamic attire and brandishing long knives shouted at them. One yelled that Pastor Stephen was a “kafir” (infidel) who had harmed the religion of Allah....

Twelve European Union (EU) members condemned Israel for housing expansion in the West Bank, which they claim jeopardizes the two-state solution. Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, and Sweden issued a joint statement last October in which they expressed their opposition to Israeli government approval of constructing 3,000 housing units in area C of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), as well as 1,600 units for Palestinians in the same area. The EU claim is that the housing units for Jews infringe on the so-called “occupied Palestinian territory.” Yet, area C has been designated...

In the city of Los Angeles, where I live, you can’t enter a restaurant, a government building, a gym, a bar, or a coffee shop without showing proof of vaccination. I know some establishments are less apt to check than others, but each time I walk past a “no vaccination, no service” sign, my heart skips a beat.

The dramatic exit last Friday by Rep. John Katko (R-NY), who announced he would not run for reelection, may have shocked liberals but was no surprise to Trump supporters. One by one, the Republicans who voted for the second impeachment or who publicly blamed Trump for the Jan. 6th rally at the Capitol are leaving public office. Katko was the third to prematurely retire among the impeachers, and the most significant due to his seniority and otherwise bright future. He was in line to become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee after the predicted takeover of the House by...

PARIS -- Should people be denied the right to earn a living because their job suddenly requires them to inject a substance into their body that is still technically in clinical trials and whose known efficiency and impact is literally evolving in real time? When faced with that question, most developed countries came down on the side of politics rather than pure science - at least until a court rules otherwise, as was recently the case with the U.S Supreme Court and Joe Biden's vaccine mandates for private employers. In other words, the political impetus to be seen to be...

Dulles, Virginia – A friend was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery this week. At 38-years old, natural causes claimed him too soon, but there is solace in knowing his memory is preserved in a place of earthly honor and his soul rests in eternal glory. A 16-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, GySgt Josh Miles was quietly patriotic and intensely engaged in serving his country and her citizens. Josh grew up on a ranch in New Mexico where he learned to ride horses and to take care of himself. He loved the sense of freedom offered by...

When the Supreme Court blocked enforcement of the Biden administration's vaccinate-or-test rule for private employers last Thursday, the response from the three dissenters was familiar. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan argued that courts should not override the judgment of the government experts who know best how to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The dissenters were right that the courts are not charged with formulating public health policies. But the courts are charged with deciding whether those policies are legal, and they forsake that responsibility when they reflexively defer to politicians and bureaucrats who claim an emergency justifies...

Fail to study the past (history), from energizing grand aspirations to how-it's-done tactics, and you will fail the present. Failure to study the basics definitely occurred when the Biden administration clan committed its disastrous 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal. The relevant history Biden administration bigwigs failed to study was how to safely and professionally conduct a Noncombatant Evacuation Operation from a combat zone. The Biden bunch has no excuse. All the essential operational details (based on hard lessons learned) are laid out in a Joint Chiefs of Staff pamphlet titled Joint Publication 3-68. Anyone literate may read the "Joint Pub" on the...