Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge has ordered President Donald Trump's administration to temporarily lift a funding freeze that has shut down U.S. humanitarian aid and development work around the world, and he has set a five-day deadline for the administration to prove it's complying. The judge's ruling late Thursday cited the financial devastation that the near-overnight cutoff of payments has caused suppliers and nonprofits that carry out much of U.S. aid overseas. The ruling was the first to challenge the Republican administration's funding freeze. It comes amid a growing number of lawsuits by government employees' groups, aid groups and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine’s daring ground offensive has taken the fight to Russia, but not nearly as much as its leaders would like because, they say, the United States won’t let them. The U.S. restricts the use of long-range ballistic missiles it provides to Ukraine, which wants to aim them at military targets inside Russia. Ukraine’s offensive, along with a barrage of drones and missiles that Moscow launched this week, has intensified pressure on the Biden administration to ease its cautious approach to the use of Western weapons in escalating Ukrainian attacks. The Biden administration says its careful deliberations, including...

The signs are abundant of how Ukraine frustrated Vladimir Putin’s hopes for a swift victory, and how Russia's military proved far from ready for the fight. A truck carrying Russian troops crashes, its doors blown open by a rocket-propelled grenade. Foreign-supplied drones target Russian command posts. Orthodox priests in trailing vestments parade Ukraine’s blue and yellow flag in defiance of their Russian captors in the occupied city of Berdyansk. Russia has lost hundreds of tanks, many left charred or abandoned along the roads, and its death toll is on a pace to outstrip that of the country’s previous military campaigns....

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden hit back Thursday against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unleashing robust new sanctions, ordering the deployment of thousands of additional troops to NATO ally Germany and declaring that America would stand up to Russia's Vladimir Putin. He also acknowledged that the invasion -- and efforts to thwart Putin -- will have a cost for Americans. But he sought to reassure that the economic pain that may come with rising energy prices will be short lived in the U.S. As for the Russian president, Biden said, “He’s going to test the resolve of the West to...

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden heads to a vital U.N. climate summit at a time when a majority of Americans regard the deteriorating climate as a problem of high importance to them, an increase from just a few years ago. About 6 out of 10 Americans also believe that the pace of global warming is speeding up, according to a new survey from The Associated Press. As Biden struggles to pass significant climate legislation at home ahead of next week’s U.N. climate summit, the new AP-NORC/EPIC poll also shows that 55% of Americans want Congress to pass a bill to...

The Trump administration is rejecting appeals to slow its deregulatory drive while Americans grapple with the coronavirus, pushing major public health and environmental rollbacks closer to enactment in recent days despite the pandemic. As Americans stockpiled food and medicine and retreated indoors and businesses shuttered in hopes of riding out COVID-19, federal agencies in recent days moved forward on rollbacks that included a widely opposed deregulatory action by the Environmental Protection Agency. The proposed rule would require disclosure of the raw data behind any scientific study used in the rulemaking process. That includes confidential medical records that opponents say could...

The Trump administration is moving forward with a proposal to revoke part of California’s authority to set its own automobile gas mileage standards, a government official said Thursday, confronting a state that has repeatedly challenged the administration’s environmental rollbacks. The Environmental Protection Agency was preparing paperwork for the White House for the move, meant to help the administration set a single, less rigorous mileage standard enforceable nationwide, according to the official, who is familiar with the regulatory process and spoke on condition of anonymity because the plan has not been made public. President Donald Trump has pushed for months to...

The Environmental Protection Agency acted again Thursday to ease rules on the sagging U.S. coal industry, this time scaling back what would have been a tough control on climate-changing emissions from any new coal plants. The latest Trump administration targeting of legacy Obama administration efforts to slow climate change comes in the wake of multiplying warnings from the agency’s scientists and others about the accelerating pace of global warming. In a ceremony Thursday at the agency, acting EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler signed a proposal to dismantle a 2015 rule that any new coal power plants include cutting-edge techniques to capture...