Free Republic

China’s carrier program is accelerating fast, with the Fujian already in sea trials and reporting suggesting a fourth “supercarrier” could follow. -The Fujian’s flat-deck design and electromagnetic catapult approach resemble the U.S. Ford-class, raising concern about how quickly Beijing is closing the capability gap in launch efficiency and sustained sortie generation. -Yet carriers matter only as much as their air wings. China’s current deck-aviation weakness—limited fifth-generation carrier fighters—still constrains near-term combat credibility against U.S. Navy F-35Cs and allied regional AirPower. -The danger is trajectory: mass production, improving catapults, and the J-35 could shift the balance sooner than expected. China is...

"The South Carolina GOP senator is using golf, good humor and frequent White House visits to try to influence foreign policy and keep Trump close as he faces a primary challenge.I’m his north star,” Graham told NBC News in an interview this week, a bold remark few in his party would dare make. “We disagree, but he knows where I am coming from. He sees me helping him as much as anybody in the Senate.” ADVERTISING Late last month, Graham temporarily blocked a $1.2 trillion deal to avert a government shutdown. Asked by reporters why he would block something that...

@ElectionMapsUK "Yesterday, Rupert Lowe MP launched a political party named Restore Britain. If there were a General Election tomorrow, how would you vote in that election?" RFM: 25% GRN: 20% LAB: 15% CON: 13% RES: 10% LDM: 10%

It's NOT ENOUGH: Voters Say Trump WINS Aren't WORKING!

It’s known as “Don Colossus.” At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf. For more than a year, the golden statue has been at the center of one of the stranger moneymaking ventures of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create it as a tribute to Mr. Trump, an outspoken crypto proponent. Then they used it to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT....

“Wokeness” is often seen as the product of radical Marxism imported to America from Europe. In fact, “woke” is a capitalist phenomenon that emerged in the U.S., which exported it to the vassals of its empire. The least woke places in Europe are represented by the former Soviet bloc; the most woke places are those most closely tied to the U.S., such as the UK and Germany, which is still under military occupation. All the woke prerequisites—mass immigration, feminism, equality laws, etc.—are the inevitable fruits of capitalism. It pretends to make individuals “sovereign” after drawing them into the labor pool,...

The White House deleted a meme video posted on President Trump’s Truth Social that depicted former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes — after a prominent GOP senator called the clip the “most racist thing I’ve seen” and demanded it be taken down. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the post and accused critics of fomenting “fake outrage” — but the video was taken down a little before noon Friday. A White House official added that a staffer had “erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the highest-ranking black...

Here we go again. President Donald Trump says he wants to make a deal with Iran and avoid war. And he’s sending negotiators to Oman for talks with Iranian diplomats on Friday. Sound familiar? Ahead of scheduled U.S.–Iranian talks in Oman last June, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran, instigating a war that Trump later briefly joined with a bombing raid on Tehran’s main nuclear facilities. Not quite eight months later, the world anxiously waits to see if recent history will repeat itself, this time with America leading the charge. Israel, of course, is worried that Trump won’t attack....

Who wrote these words? "Congressman Thomas Massie is a Conservative Warrior for Kentucky's 4th Congressional District! An MIT graduate and a first-rate Defender of the Constitution, Thomas fights hard to Protect your Liberties, especially the First and Second Amendments, which are under siege by the Radical Left. Strong on the Border and our Military and Vets, Thomas Massie has my Complete and Total Endorsement!"

"Amazon fired 16,000 employees last week. At first glance, the terminations appeared standard. Online retail demand fluctuates with the seasons, and orders always decrease following the holidays. Factor in a few extra weeks of busyness due to post-Christmas returns, and late January makes sense as a time for layoffs. The gift-giving rush is over, so warehouses no longer need as many people. That is not a defense of a multi-trillion-dollar company pulling the plug on $15-per-hour workers, but if you’re a shrewd capitalist, the justification checks out. But there’s more to the story. It turns out the 16,000 fired Amazonians,...

My sister saw Gary Cooper in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as a teenager, so that she became a political junkie.She watched LBJ's "Gulf of Tonkin" speech live on t.v.; she stated that she could tell he was lying because his knuckles were white clutching the podium. History records that it was a false flag operation designed to ensure LJB's election in the 1963 Presidential Campaign, as documented in "Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973" by Robert Dallek.This strategy was repeated in Operation Cyanide, the false flag attack upon the U.S.S. Liberty which nearly resulted in the nuking...

Democrats seem to be getting their mojo back as the midterm season heats up. Democrats topped Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by a considerable six points, 52% to 46%, scoring the highest of any party on that metric in the history of the survey commissioned by Fox News.The minority party also made massive gains on key issues, crushing Republicans on affordability by 14 points, health care by 21 points, helping the middle class by 14 points, transgender issues by 22 points, and even taxes by one point.<“Democrats are taking back the House in November,” a confident Democratic Congressional Campaign...

@Holden_Culotta Thomas Massie just exposed that Trump is threatening to “ruin” his supporters’ businesses if they fund his campaign. “I’m not talking about IRS audits.” “It’s bigger than that.” “Here’s what happens behind the scenes … ” First, Trump allies are coercing Massie’s consultants into quitting his re-election campaign: “Three of my consultants have quit on my campaign, all three for the same reason.” “They were told: your other 30 clients will fire you if you keep working for Massie.” “They make it hard to hire people.” “I really love the consultants I got now, because they’re the ones who...

Around here I don't need to explain the dynamics of a huge confrontation between globalists-Democrats-leftists and the president and his team and support base. It is the extension of the confrontations of the past three elections. I've been uneasy with Trump's performance and behavior, I think some people want a Pinochet type leader which might in itself be incompatible with the fundamentals of a constitutional republic, but in fact, the president seems a little closer to Mussolini in style than to Pinochet. I think some of his moves on the world stage have been clumsy and ill-advised. And this is...

I'm losing faith in republicans to be completely honest, I believe in "Liberal Democracy" I mean people should have the freedom to choose and elect what is they system and political alignment that best suits their values and worldview having a goon squad shoot American citizens is nowhere near what my values are I am a conservative, I believe in Person responsibility, governance by consent, limited government control over personal legal enterprise and entrepreneurship

PARIS/OSLO, Jan 19 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump linked his drive to take control of Greenland to his failure to win the Nobel Peace Prize, saying he no longer thought "purely of Peace" as the row over the Arctic island on Monday threatened to reignite a trade war with Europe. Trump has intensified his push to wrest sovereignty over Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, threatening punitive tariffs on countries which stand in his way and prompting the European Union to weigh hitting back with its own measures. The dispute is threatening to upend the NATO alliance that has...

Denmark said it did not manage to dissuade President Donald Trump from seeking to conquer Greenland during high-level talks at the White House on Wednesday. "It's clear the president has this wish of conquering Greenland," Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said at a news conference after a closed-door meeting attended by Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "We had what I will describe as a frank but also constructive discussion," he added, standing alongside Greenland’s minister of foreign affairs, Vivian Motzfeldt. "The president has made his view clear, and we have a different position.” Trump...

Democrats and Republicans are united in opposing U.S. military strikes against Iran to retaliate for the killing of protesters amid a wave of massive demonstrations against the Iranian government in recent weeks, according to a new national poll.Seventy percent of voters questioned in a new Quinnipiac University survey said they think the U.S. should not get involved militarily in Iran, with 18% saying the U.S. should take military action.The vast majority of Independents (80%-11%) and Democrats (79%-7%), as well as a majority of Republicans (53%-35%) said the U.S. should not get involved if protesters in Iran are killed while demonstrating...

Did Obama really deport more people than Trump? On the surface, the answer is yes. During his two terms in office from 2009 to 2017, Barack Obama’s administration oversaw roughly 2.7–3.2 million deportations (removals and returns), making him, by some measures, the president with the highest total deportations in modern US history. Since Obama’s era included a higher share of border returns counted as deportations, his total figures appear higher even though the populations targeted were different. Under Trump, enforcement has increasingly focused on interior arrests and removals but these often lag in official numbers due to legal backlogs and...

WASHINGTON — The Senate fired a warning shot at President Donald Trump, voting Thursday to advance a bipartisan resolution to block him from using military force “within or against Venezuela” unless he gets prior approval from Congress. The vote of 52-47 on the war powers measure came after an unsuccessful plea by Republican leaders to sink it and preserve Trump’s authority, as he threatens a “second wave” of attacks on Venezuela. Trump has declared that the U.S. would “run” the country temporarily after he ordered a military operation last week to capture and extradite leader Nicolás Maduro. Five Republicans joined...