Free Republic

The bottom 50% of households in the U.S. own only $4.27 trillion of the nation's $174 trillion in available wealth. By contrast, the top 0.1% own $25.07 trillion, and the top 99 to 99.9% own a little under $30 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. With AI now supercharging the stock market, and richer families already owning the majority of those assets, that divide is only likely to widen. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is well aware of this phenomenon. In fact, the man worth more than $3 billion according to Forbes says he understands why people are "anti-rich."...

Brian Poindexter had just finished wolfing down a Reuben sandwich in a deli outside Cleveland when he delivered a message that, coming from a Democratic House candidate in the year 2026, sounded almost provocative. “There’s nothing wrong with being masculine,” Poindexter told me. It’s okay, he said, to be “a manly man.” Poindexter’s own manliness credentials are fully in order. The 46-year-old started working in a machine shop as a teenager and spent years hauling furniture across the country before finding stability as a union ironworker. He drives a Ram Big Horn pickup truck and built, with his buddy turned...

Former Navy Secretary John Phelan is calling on the help of Congress and the Pentagon to help the Navy work better, faster and smarter to keep up with U.S. adversaries.Phelan, in a new op-ed published Tuesday in The Washington Post, "The depleted Navy needs immediate rebuilding as dangers rise," argues that the United States is at most responsible for the current state of the naval fighting force. His heeded warning comes amid an ongoing war in Iran played on the backdrop of the major international shipping channel, the Strait of Hormuz, which has been strategically used by Iran to flummox...

Cincinnati — For Avondale resident Christopher Adams, going to the grocery store was a twice a week trip. After the store closed, that task may become a lot harder. The neighborhood of Avondale’s only sizable grocery store, The Country Meat Co. Marketplace, announced that it’s shutting its doors on Facebook in early July. It opened in February 2025, and when it closed the “now open” banner still hung above the door. Before the store opened, Avondale was considered a “food desert.” Many of its residents lived more than a mile away from a grocery store that could provide nutritious, fresh...

On Monday’s edition of CNN's This Morning, a panel discussed the Senate race in Maine. CNN panelist and TikTok babbler V. Spehar weighed in: "We need to be talking about what we're gonna do for people, not what any kind of scandal coming up is, because there's so much getting lost in the conversations that we're having if we're trying to police, and do purity culture on every single candidate, and that's kind of an issue." Great point, V! Because the Democrats and the liberal media haven't spent years obsessing over every real and imagined scandal involving Donald Trump, or...

After the sudden death of US Senator Lindsey Graham was announced Sunday morning, the race for the US Senate in South Carolina has burst wide open, and it appears Nancy Mace wants in. South Carolina Congresswoman Mace finished last in June's GOP primary for South Carolina Governor, after garnering just 12 percent of the vote. Yet, multiple reports circulated on Sunday morning that Mace was considering re-entering the political arena. South Carolina's current Governor, Henry McMaster, who is term-limited, will select a temporary replacement for Graham, and that candidate will need to win both a primary and a general election...

Hunter Biden, the son of former President Biden, was awarded $1.7 million in damages on Friday as part of a defamation lawsuit against former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne. Byrne, a known denier of Biden’s victory over President Trump in the 2020 presidential election, accused the younger Biden of taking part in an $800 million bribery scheme involving Iran and failed to defend his claims in court. U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California ruled the ex-executive acted with “intentional misrepresentation” and “conscious disregard” for Hunter’s rights, and said Byrne continued to amplify the false allegations even...

The US congressman Ro Khanna says armed Israeli settlers detained him during a visit to the Israel-occupied West Bank recently, describing the experience as a first-hand view of the realities faced by Palestinians living under occupation. In an interview with Reuters on Thursday from a Palestinian village, the progressive US House Democrat from California said his detention happened the previous day while his delegation visited an area of the southern West Bank that has experienced repeated attacks by Israeli settlers. Khanna recounted how settlers carrying US-made M4 rifles surrounded the group’s van. “We were at a village that Israeli settlers...

Maine Democrats announced it will hold its convention July 25 to pick a new nominee for US Senate to run in Graham Platner’s place in November — but some party members aren’t waiting until a new name emerges from the ashes of the accused rapist’s campaign. Prominent lefties in Congress are already raising money — claiming the fate of the entire party is at stake. “Our path to flipping the Senate runs directly through Maine. If we flip Maine, we flip the Senate,” Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) wrote in a desperate fundraising email Friday. “But if Susan Collins wins, Trump...

During the heated exchange, Behar insisted she was simply focused on “winning” in what she called an “emergency” situation under President Donald Trump. There is something hilarious about women who spent years demonizing white men suddenly treating them as saviors and their only path to victory. Behar began by floating a list of white male candidates she believes could actually win, naming Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. She framed the suggestion as cold political reality, telling her co-hosts they needed to face facts after watching the country...

Even people who dislike Donald Trump tend to give him credit for one thing: getting NATO to pay its fair share. American presidents have long grumbled about burden sharing. Trump has been crude, theatrical and transactional, but the sentiment he expressed was broadly shared. And Europeans got the message. Non-American NATO countries collectively spent 1.4 percent of their combined gross domestic product on defense in 2014; in 2025, it was close to 2.3 percent.But be careful what you wish for.The usual assumption is that if Europe spends more, the United States will spend less. This is demonstrably wrong. European defense...

The gap, between what the paper assumed its readers would feel and what they actually felt, is the most revealing thing about the piece. The American economy grew by 2 percent during the first three months of 2026, hardly the picture of collapse that critics of the Trump administration keep promising is just around the corner. The country has not tanked under Donald Trump, not even with tariffs in place. Trump has been accused of putting black women out of work by cutting positions in the federal government, and it is true that federal cuts have hit black women disproportionately...

According to Wisconsin socialist Democrat candidate Francesca Hong, "I think that when folks hear 'socialism,' they may be taken aback, but I bring it back to potholes and the [Green Bay] Packers and public education." That was how Hong explained to an MSNOW interviewer her deceitful strategy to slip evil past Badger State voters. Maine's garbage-hearted Graham Platner may have quit his electoral effort, but the communist wickedness that today wields great influence in the Democrat party ain't goin' nowhere. Hong's 'spoonful of sugar' skullduggery is common to scheming electoral subversives. Rather than concede communism has murdered some 100 million...

Johnson recently told "Esquire" he is "going to keep my politics to myself."Key Points: -Wil Wheaton called Dwayne Johnson a 'coward' for declining to share his politics publicly. -Johnson recently told Esquire he wants to "keep my politics to myself." -The Moana star previously endorsed Joe Biden in the 2020 election, but said he regretted that decision in 2024. Wil Wheaton doesn't care for Dwayne Johnson's approach to politics. The Stand By Me actor called out the Jumanji: The Next Level star for declining to publicly comment on his political views. "So disappointing to find out he is such a...

Yahm Levin is a diehard Democrat who lives in one of the nation's most liberal cities. And yet the 39-year-old Jewish woman from Los Angeles is sometimes afraid to use her first or last name when meeting people — even those who share her progressive politics. Levin has learned from recent experience that being identified as a Jew, especially one who lived in Israel, can trigger uncomfortable questions from fellow Democrats. Or worse. So, she introduces herself by her middle name, Shelly, which she said feels safer.

President Donald Trump said it is “ridiculous” for the United States to maintain its current level of support for NATO “when the relationship is not reciprocal." Referring to the alliance as a "one-sided path” late Thursday, Trump doubled down on his long-argued criticism of allied nations’ defense spending ahead of next week’s planned NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. Alongside his Truth Social remarks, Trump posted a chart displaying contributions from NATO members, showing the U.S. vastly outspending its allies. The President had earlier complained that the U.S. “spends more money on NATO than any other country, by far, to protect...

WASHINGTON -- Three-time U.S. Olympian David Hearn has been indicted in Washington, D.C., for allegedly "maliciously" destroying the lining at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Hearn was indicted in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on a single count of destruction of property worth $1,000 or more, a felony charge that carries up to 10 years in prison. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced the charges at a press conference on Thursday, saying Hearn will face "accountability." "The indictment is in response to an incident that occurred on June 19 of 2026 in which...

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggests to a classroom full of youngsters that Donald Trump has been “humiliated” by his war in Iran – and the President cancels deployment of the long-range missile systems around which Germany had planned its defense strategy for the coming decades. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez observes a strict neutrality on Iran, declaring his country’s bases out of bounds – and Trump urges Spain be kicked out of NATO. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer hesitates to sacrifice his country’s navy in a war on which he wasn’t consulted – and Trump mocks him in public for...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was planning to head to Brussels last month to deliver what would be a bombshell announcement in a meeting with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military chiefs. The U.S., he planned to say, was preparing additional cuts to its forces in Europe that would go beyond the canceled deployment of an armored brigade to Poland and the earlier withdrawal of an infantry brigade from Romania, people familiar with the matter said. But Hegseth’s proposal was nixed after it was shared with Marco Rubio—President Trump’s national-security adviser—and other senior officials, the people said. Instead, Hegseth said...

Donald Trump has exposed a weak link in American democracy. It is dependent, as the Founders would put it, on its leaders having a modicum of good character. Benjamin Franklin warned that without strict character requirements, government roles would attract “the bold and the violent,” rather than the wise and peaceful. Trump’s new financial disclosure forms, released Tuesday, provide only the latest confirmation that the President and his family has gotten richer while he has served as president, stemming from a set of actions that have been brazen, if not illegal. This Trump family buckraking, as revealed in the new...