Free Republic

Ireland’s 40-year-long era of burning coal — the dirtiest fossil fuel imaginable — to generate electricity came to an end in June. That was when ESB announced it had ceased burning coal at its Moneypoint power station in County Clare, six months ahead of schedule. Throughout those 40 years, the coal was transferred on noisy conveyer belts through what must surely have been the longest, ugliest, sequence of brown tunnels in the country. They ran from the jetty at Moneypoint, where the coal ships pulled up, to a huge coal storage yard and then right into the powerplant and furnaces...

Nothing says "saving democracy" and "preserving norms" like totally rigging the system. It's like calling sterilizing and mutilating children "care." A complete inversion of reality wrapped up in comforting words. Since at least 2016, the Democrats have focused all their attention on rigging elections, both within their own party and for the electorate as a whole. As the Democrats have seen their coalition disintegrate, they have responded by employing ever more Byzantine tactics to ensure victory. Not that victories have been ensured, yet...they have only stacked the deck in their favor...so they move on to the next step. Let's take...

Republican push for gerrymandered congressional maps triggers down-and-dirty from new generation – will it work?It was a stirring speech that brought Democrats to tears. “When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level,” Michelle Obama told them in Philadelphia in 2016. “No, our motto is: ‘When they go low, we go high.’”Fast forward to Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, speaking in Chicago this week. “This is not the Democratic party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to the knife fight,” he insisted. “This is a new Democratic party. We’re...

In a case of strange bedfellows, William Barr, former U.S. attorney general to President Donald Trump, has teamed up with Fani Willis, the Democratic prosecutor who tried the president before being tossed off the case, to try and take Trump down. A whistleblower in the investigation has alleged that Barr conspired with Willis to stop Trump’s return to the White House through her prosecution, which saw the president and 18 co-defendants charged with attempting to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Barr, whistleblower Patrícia Lélis said, joined Willis and other participants like media figure Armstrong Williams for secret meetings in Washington,...

The murderous terrorist organization Hamas has harshly criticized comments made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Fox News regarding Israel's plans to take control of Gaza. In the interview, Netanyahu was asked if Israel would take control of all of Gaza. He answered that "we intend to, in order to ensure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of [Hamas], and to pass it to civilian governance that is not Hamas and not anyone who seeks the destruction of Israel. We want to liberate ourselves and the people of Gaza from the awful...

Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer called out the GOP’s effort to implement a new congressional map in Texas for being an unfair power grab. In a post to X on Tuesday, the former press secretary for President George W. Bush spoke out against the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting plan — which would make five districts favorable to Republicans in areas currently represented by Democrats.

In a dramatic twist of irony, the Secret Service’s attempt to dismiss agents hired under Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has been thwarted by an Obama-era judge, sources have confirmed. The agency, which had been planning to return to a merit-based hiring system, was stopped in its tracks by a court ruling deeming the layoffs illegal. In response, President Trump took a mischievous approach by reassigning these agents to provide personal security for former presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden. However, the trio quickly declined the service, citing a preference for agents selected through traditional, merit-based criteria—specifically requesting male agents...

Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell. That’s when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky’s longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday’s Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state’s political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn’t seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris:...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is threatening felony charges and replacement of Texas state Democrats as they push to block a vote for a Trump-backed congressional map. House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) joins Ana Cabrera, slamming Republican leaders in Texas and the Trump administration for the gerrymandered map.

‘How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference. Within government, Donald Trump’s appointee as BLS commissioner, William Beach, has been a leader in calling for modernizing the surveys that...

Six months into Donald Trump's return to the White House Marjorie Taylor Greene has about had it with the Republican Party. The conservative firebrand who surged onto the political scene in 2021 and has been an ever-present figure in the House GOP and MAGA orbit ever since told the Daily Mail in a 45-minute call this week that it may be time for her to walk away. 'I don't know if the Republican Party is leaving me, or if I'm kind of not relating to Republican Party as much anymore,' she revealed. 'I don't know which one it is.' Her...

Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks. Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses. Read what our legacy media predicted in March for...

President Trump has now imposed his new tariff regime on the world, and the triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land. But maybe hold the euphoria, as this week’s reports on jobs and the economy suggest the new golden age may take a while to appear. Friday’s labor report arrived with a particular jolt, with a mere 73,000 net new jobs in July. Even more bearish were the downward revisions of 258,000 jobs in May and June. Job gains over the last three months are barely more than 100,000. The details in the report provide little solace. The jobless rate ticked...

"We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified," he added.

Republican senators were appalled by President Trump’s rough treatment of 91-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s most senior Republican, on social media and are pushing back on Trump’s attempts to squeeze the senator into abolishing an arcane procedure known as the Senate blue slip. GOP senators were not pleased that Trump piled so much pressure on Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to get rid of a long-established Senate tradition. Trump piled on by reposting on Truth Social posts accusing Grassley of being a “RINO” and “sneaky” and standing in the way of Trump’s agenda. Sen. Thom...

The president clamors for the Fed to lower interest rates because it serves his wild spending.No one likes to be told no, especially Donald Trump. To refuse the president is to invite a battle that he will pursue to the bitter end. So the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday to leave interest rates unchanged, at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, was hardly a routine vote. It was a loud no from the majority of voting members — including the president’s designated nemesis, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell — to Trump’s demand that “interest rates have to come down.”The retributive president...

Egads! After a disastrous first 100 days, Donald Trump is starting to have a much more successful presidency. This is not what we, his foam-at-the-mouth critics, had planned or perhaps secretly hoped for. Some of this is a function of good policy, like getting NATO’s European members and Canada to spend much more on their defense, something previous American presidents asked for, but much too politely. Far from destroying the Atlantic alliance, as his critics feared, Trump may wind up being remembered for reviving and rebalancing it, to the advantage of both sides. Some of this is courageous policy: Joining...

When labor leader David Huerta was arrested last month during a high-profile anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest in Los Angeles, Democrats rushed to denounce his detention.

President Donald Trump's tariffs, scheduled to increase on August 1, could result in significantly higher prices for a range of food groups. This is according to an analysis published Monday by the bipartisan Tax Foundation, which found that these will impact nearly 75 percent of U.S. food imports, which it said will "likely lead to higher food prices for consumers." Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment. Why It Matters It has repeatedly been warned that the higher import taxes implemented as a result of the Trump administration's economic agenda will increase costs for U.S. businesses...

With each passing week, Chief Justice John Roberts and his Republican-friendly colleagues bestow never-before-enjoyed authorities upon the Trump Administration. The plan seems to be — if we grant the president everything he dreams of, maybe he’ll leave the high court unmolested. The republic may fall but we’ll still have the cool robes and life tenure. John Roberts is becoming the Neville Chamberlain of post-democratic government in America. Recent steps by the Supreme Court have allowed the executive branch to decimate the Department of Education, summarily fire tens of thousands of other civil servants, permit “third country removals” to notoriously dangerous...