Free Republic

As a warming planet delivers more extreme weather, experts warn that the Trump administration is dismantling the government’s disaster capabilities.In an effort to shrink the federal government, President Trump and congressional Republicans have taken steps that are diluting the country’s ability to anticipate, prepare for and respond to catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather events, disaster experts say. Staff reductions, budget cuts and other changes made by the administration since January have already created holes at the National Weather Service, which forecasts and warns of dangerous weather. Mr. Trump’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year would close 10 laboratories...

PARIS/JERUSALEM, June 16 (Reuters) - France shut down the main Israeli company stands at the Paris Airshow on Monday for refusing to remove attack weapons from display, sparking a furious response from Israel and inflaming tensions between the traditional allies. Stands including those of Elbit Systems (ESLT.TA), opens new tab, Rafael, IAI and Uvision were blocked off with black partitions before the start of the world's biggest aviation trade fair. Smaller Israeli stands, which didn't have hardware on display, and an Israeli Ministry of Defence stand, remained open. France, a long-time Israeli ally, has gradually hardened its position on the...

In a reversal, President Trump appears to have backed off joining a European push for new sanctions on Russia, seemingly eager to move on to doing business deals with it. For months, President Trump has been threatening to simply walk away from the frustrating negotiations for a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine. After a phone call on Monday between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that appears to be exactly what the American president is doing. The deeper question now is whether he is also abandoning America’s three-year-long project to support Ukraine, a nascent democracy that he...

Much of the federal workforce is on edge and bracing itself for the likelihood its ranks will be purged when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump, who has derided civil servants as agents of the “deep state,” promised on the campaign trail to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F, giving him the power to commence mass firings of nonpartisan federal employees who might spoil Trump’s partisan plans. “The objective is to create space to put loyalists in what were, what are still, career civil service positions,” former Trump appointee Ronald Sanders – who resigned over Trump’s politicization...