Free Republic

Washington — President Trump on Thursday announced the United States will contribute $10 billion to the "Board of Peace" he established as part of his 20-point peace plan for Gaza, although the funding source isn't yet clear. "I want to let you know that the United States is going to make a contribution of $10 billion to the Board of Peace," Mr. Trump told representatives from roughly 50 countries on Thursday. "The president called that a "very small number when you look at that compared to the cost of war."

In a vote that GOP leaders fought hard to avoid, a half dozen Republicans sent a blunt message to President Donald Trump that they do not support the tariff regime that he has made the centerpiece of his second term. Six Republicans joined with Democrats in a vote to effectively repeal the president’s tariffs on Canada, the culmination of months of consternation in the GOP over the president’s trade war that has quietly rattled even some of his staunchest loyalists in Congress. And it won’t be the last tough tariffs vote for Trump: Democrats have successfully unlocked a procedural power...

EU Europe is increasingly abandoning a civilized approach to dissenting opinions. The raid on the Paris offices of Elon Musk’s company X appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. Today, those who resist are being attacked on multiple levels, while those who submit are largely spared. It is time to increase pressure on Brussels. Elon Musk’s communications platform X has become caught between systemic fronts. On one side stands the American understanding of free speech, which has experienced a political revival under Donald Trump’s new presidency. On the other, an increasingly repressive EU control regime is eroding the...

Say "NO!" to a Global Digital ID

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday he told U.S. President Donald Trump that he meant what he said in his speech at Davos, and told him Canada plans to diversify away from the United States with a dozen new trade deals. Carney rolled his eyes and rejected U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s contention to Fox News that he aggressively walked back his comments at the World Economic Forum during a phone call with Trump on Monday. “To be absolutely clear, and I said this to the president, I meant what I said in Davos,” Carney said to reporters as...

“This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all.” —DataRepublican. Davos — The World Economic Forum (WEF)— is toast. Trump, Bessent, and Lutnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left...

Top business leaders this week delivered an expletive-laden plea in defense of climate action, describing the backlash to Europe’s green transition as an “aberration.” In an interview with CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte said he disagreed with the suggestion that it may just be a matter of time before net zero is dismissed in Europe, saying short-term thinking on this issue is “bulls---.” Asked about political leaders backtracking on their much-vaunted European Green New Deal and Norway’s oil fund reportedly defending a push from companies to water down their climate goals, Bäte...

"Timing, not haste, drives what will happen next." —Thomas Sowell. Larry Fink of BlackRock and the World Economic Forum. Minneapolis, the sucking chest wound on America’s body politic, gets a break this week from Gawda’mighty, who is turning the heat down to subzero so that ICE-Watch nose-rings can hole-up in their Soros-paid motels, play League of Legends with their DoorDashed Chick-fil-A nuggets, and rest up for the next inning of their motley revolution. ICE itself might even have to lay off its daily round-up of rapists, cut-throats, and child-molesters, to wait out the cold-snap. Meanwhile, things elsewhere roughen up a...

A large U.S. delegation, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio are traveling with President Trump tonight to Davos. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and all of the key members of the cabinet are already there. According to the official WEF schedule, President Donald Trump’s address is in the mid‑afternoon Wednesday January 21, with the Davos session set for 2:30 to 3:15 p.m. local time (8:30 to 9:15 a.m. ET). The entire world will be watching this speech considering the geopolitical events of the past year, the current trajectory of global relationships that...

Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a frank assessment of how he views the world in a provocative speech in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, where he said the longstanding U.S.-led, rules-based international order is over and middle powers like Canada must pivot to avoid falling prey to further "coercion" from powerful actors. Without invoking U.S. President Donald Trump by name, Carney referenced "American hegemony" and said "great powers" are using economic integration as "weapons." "Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid," Carney said. As it grapples...

Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) – The collective wealth of the planet's billionaires soared to a record level in 2025, charity Oxfam reported Monday, warning of "highly dangerous" political consequences as the global elite gathers for the World Economic Forum. US President Donald Trump's policies in particular spurred the fortunes of the ultra-rich, which jumped 16.2 percent in the first year of his second term to $18.3 trillion, the NGO said in a report released each year ahead of the Davos forum. "Actions of the Trump presidency including the championing of deregulation and undermining agreements to increase corporate taxation have benefited the...

One of the European Central Bank’s most complex and controversial projects is heading for a crucial test in the first half of 2026, when the European parliament is expected to vote on the digital euro. The plan cleared a key hurdle in late December, when the European Council backed the ECB’s plan to launch an electronic equivalent to cash: a digital currency that works in stores, online and in peer-to-peer transactions. One of the European Central Bank’s most complex and controversial projects is heading for a crucial test in the first half of 2026, when the European parliament is expected...

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney raised eyebrows when he made a comment about a “new world order” in a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Thursday. “The world has changed much since that last visit. I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the new world order,” said Carney. His comment was met with questions from lawmakers and commentators, as the phrase “new world order” is often one used by conspiracy theorists. Carney is in China to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The visit comes as traditional trade agreements and...

Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has announced the launch of what he called a “new strategic partnership” with China, following high-level talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, marking the first visit by a Canadian leader in eight years. Speaking alongside Xi at the Great Hall of the People, Carney said the two countries had an opportunity to reshape their relationship in light of a changing global landscape. “Together, we can build on the strongest elements of our past relationship and forge a new one suited to today’s realities,” he said. On Friday, Carney revealed that Ottawa and Beijing had...

For many of us who grew up in the fifties, sixties, and seventies, Britain had a distinct identity—one rooted in tradition, culture, and a shared sense of belonging. But over the past few decades, that Britain has slowly transformed, replaced by a new, complex reality. From the days of neighborhood corner shops, Sunday roasts, and traditional family values, to a country that now feels more fragmented and uncertain. This video takes you through the journey of how Britain’s identity evolved and why so many of us feel like we're losing touch with the country we once knew. The slow disappearance...

Subjugation is a deadly cocktail of fear and chaos. You can’t fight what you can’t see. So allow me to ask a blunt question: How blind are we? Talk of war is everywhere. A good number of military academics would tell you that WWIII began sometime between the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks and President Obama’s decision to use the international banking system to freeze out nations deemed insufficiently compliant with the West’s brand of “globalism.” The more that Washington, London, and Brussels have insisted that the “rules-based international order” empowers Western officials to confiscate foreign assets or disrupt normal currency...

Fifty-year mortgages is one of the worst ideas to emerge from his cabinet. But, in the Ingraham interview, Trump seemed to discount his supporters' frustration over these issues.When Ingraham asked him why we need those 600,000 Chinese students, and that the placements they take should be given to American students, he replied that without them, many schools would go out of business. She said, “So what?” Indeed! Trump asserted that all those foreign students pay full fare but that is not true. They get financial aid in about the same percentage as citizen students. He must backtrack on this issue....

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Hundreds of top economists and other experts, including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, called on Friday for the world to set up an independent international panel on income and wealth inequality. The call in an open letter came before the Group of 20 summit in South Africa next weekend, when a report on global inequality chaired by Nobel Prize-winning American economist Joseph Stiglitz is due to be presented to world leaders. That report, which was released this month, said that the world is facing an inequality emergency as well as a climate emergency,...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the economy, boosting productivity while simultaneously threatening widespread job displacement. As AI progresses, a growing number of workers face unemployment or precarious employment, fueling political pressure for Universal Basic Income (UBI)—typically understood as unconditional payments aiming to guarantee a basic standard of living. However, behind this policy response lies a fundamental truth: income provided by UBI is redistributed wealth, funded predominantly by taxing others. Taken to its fullest extent, this scenario envisions UBI becoming the total income for many individuals, fundamentally transforming the economy’s reliance from earned wages toward government transfers. Traditional UBI proponents...

One year after the discovery that golden mussels had invaded the Delta, thick colonies coat boats and piers and threaten water supplies for cities and farms. Yet the state has no specific funding or plans to tackle harms in the heart of the invasion.