Free Republic

Artificial intelligence data centers have been a hot topic in Utah this summer, and reforms could be on the way. Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters at his Aug. 20 monthly news conference to expect efforts to change the approval process and additional regulation for data centers when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill in January. Central to that move toward reform, he said, was the contentious Stratos Project in Box Elder County, which experienced incredible public pushback earlier this year. “The process was not good, and the MIDA process, especially,” he said. “I think we need major reform when it comes...

For years, the United Arab Emirates has been a lifeline for Iran’s sanctions-battered economy, despite political tensions between the two countries. But that relationship was imperiled on Tuesday, when the Emirates announced a total embargo on trade and transactions with the Islamic republic. If the threat holds, Iran would lose not just a major market for its goods but a portal to the world economy, analysts say. The embargo highlights both the depth of the economic relationships that Iran has cultivated across the Gulf region and the strain they are now under. The war that the United States and Israel...

Bond yields climbed Thursday, erasing most of the pullback they saw the previous day after the Treasury Department announced an intervention aimed at easing pressure on longer-dated government debt. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond — the primary focus of the accelerated buyback — was up more than 4 basis points at 5.236%. Yields on 10-year U.S. Treasurys — the main benchmark for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt — moved more than 4 basis points higher to 4.696%. The 10- and 30-year yield levels were right around the level they held before the 8:30 a.m. announcement...

President Donald Trump proclaimed on Tuesday that talks with Iran were not happening, a direct contradiction to his own son-in-law and top negotiator Jared Kushner, who said a day earlier that the negotiations were ongoing. “There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the president posted to Truth Social on Tuesday. “The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” But Trump’s post may have been news to Kushner,...

The U.S. military has enough assets to maintain a naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday, adding ships could be rotated in and out ​of the region as needed. Hegseth's comments suggest he is advising U.S. President Donald Trump that the ‌U.S. military can keep applying economic pressure on Iran for as long as needed to help so-far failed negotiations to end the conflict, begun in February. He spoke in Panama after addressing the crew aboard ​the USS Gridley, a guided-missile destroyer, which had previously deployed to the Middle East.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier undercut President Donald Trump’s baseless claim that the U.S. “totally” controls the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil flows. On Tuesday, Trump spoke with reporters and addressed the strait, which Iran effectively closed after the U.S. and Israel launched the current war on the country in February. But somehow, the president insisted the U.S. has it all under control. “We totally control the Strait of Hormuz,” he said, reality be damned. “We have control over it. Nobody else. Only us. Our navy is unbelievable, and things are going...

President Donald Trump on Wednesday boasted the U.S. has “total control” of the Strait of Hormuz, despite what the “FAKE NEWS” may report to the contrary, before praising Allah for the nation’s stranglehold on the critical shipping passage. “I THINK WE WILL KEEP IT!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Our Naval Blockade is being called, by everyone, ‘A WALL OF STEEL,’ and there is nothing Iran can do about it.” The president repeated claims that Iran’s military had been decimated: "They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, their remaining soldiers are unpaid, the IRGC is decimated and fleeing,...

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice threw in the towel in its attempt to prosecute David Hearn for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, but the White House is now asking them to try again, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal. White House officials are now asking the DOJ to “consider a new prosecution” of Hearn, citing sources “familiar with the discussions,” the Journal reported. Any attempt to bring new charges “would be highly unusual,” the article noted, because the U.S. Attorney Office for the District of Columbia, headed by Jeanine Pirro, already admitted it...

Oil prices jumped about 5% Monday as doubt grew that the U.S. and Iran will reach a deal to increase ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures climbed about 5% to close at $82.13 per barrel. Brent crude , the international benchmark, also settled around 5% higher at $87.72 a barrel. President Donald Trump told Axios on Sunday that the U.S. is “only semi-negotiating” with Iran, after he insisted last week that Washington and Tehran were in fact holding talks. Trump indicated that he would rely on the U.S. naval blockade to pressure Tehran rather...

President Trump said Sunday that increasing prices of oil are “a very small price to pay” for “safety and peace” amid the U.S. conflict with Iran. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said in a Sunday evening Truth Social post. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” he added. The U.S. conflict in Iran caused a recent surge in domestic oil and gas prices, with the U.S. national average for a gallon of regular gasoline...

With the threat of a U.S. strike on Iran looming, the United States embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers that they may leave Israel and warned them that if they want to, it is vital that they do so immediately, according to an email from Ambassador Mike Huckabee sent to the U.S. mission Friday. The move followed meetings and phone calls through the night, Mr. Huckabee told embassy workers in the email, and resulted from “an abundance of caution” and conversations with the State Department in which officials agreed that the safety of embassy staff was a priority. Those...

President Donald Trump went off on Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) on Wednesday, branding him a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — who got it all “WRONG” when he claimed the president was only inviting Republican governors to an upcoming annual meeting. Trump’s searing response came after the Associated Press reported the bipartisan meeting was “unraveling” on Monday. Stitt — who chairs the National Governors Association — said the group was ditching the annual meeting because Trump had not invited his Democratic colleagues, who are equal members of the group. Trump posted on Truth Social that he was only...

Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) publicly undercut President Donald Trump’s push to federalize America’s elections on Thursday, flatly warning he did not support the idea, which would require a constitutional amendment. The proposal, first floated by the president on Tuesday in a podcast interview with Dan Bongino, his former FBI deputy director, came alongside Trump’s familiar unsubstantiated claims that he won states where he was officially defeated in past presidential elections, which he again branded “crooked.” The president said Republicans should “take over the voting” in at least 15 jurisdictions. Trump repeated the claim on Wednesday night in an interview with...

President Donald Trump a week ago told the credit card industry it had until Jan. 20 to comply with his demand for a 10% cap on interest rates. With just days to go, consumer groups, politicians, and bankers alike remain unclear on what the White House has planned and whether Trump even remains serious about the idea. So far, the White House has not provided any detail about what will happen to credit card companies that don’t lower card rates. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president has “an expectation” that credit card companies will accede to his...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was reportedly in the dark about the Trump administration’s plan to invade Venezuela and depose President Nicolas Maduro. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the White House excluded the nation’s top intelligence from discussions about the planned ouster, which was carried out on Saturday. People familiar with the situation said that Gabbard had previously opposed U.S. intervention in the South American country. “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” Gabbard, then a Democratic member of Congress, tweeted in 2019. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rebuffed the Trump administration over its plan to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois over the strenuous objections of local officials. The court in an unsigned order turned away an emergency request made by the administration, which said the troops are needed to protect federal agents involved in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area. In doing so, the court at least provisionally rejected the Trump administration’s view that the situation on the ground is so chaotic that it justifies invoking a federal law that allows the president to call National Guard troops into federal service...

President Donald Trump rattled off how his economic policies have pulled America from "the brink of ruin" following former President Joe Biden's tenure during his primetime address to the nation on Wednesday. "Here at home, we're bringing our economy back from the brink of ruin," Trump said Thursday. "The last administration and their allies in Congress looted our Treasury for trillions of dollars, driving up prices and everything at levels never seen before. I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down very fast." Trump said that under the Biden administration, car prices rose by at least 22%,...

President Trump referred to the late actor and director Rob Reiner as having “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME” in a social-media post Monday less than a day after authorities said the Democratic activist and donor and his wife were found dead in their Los Angeles home. Trump said Reiner, a critic of the president, was “tortured and struggling” and attributed the death “to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” “He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump,...

President Donald Trump suffered a major political setback on Thursday in his push to pass congressional redistricting in red states. After months of arm-twisting by the president, top allies and aligned groups, the Indiana Senate voted down a new map championed by Trump that would have created two more right-leaning congressional districts in the solidly red Midwestern state, where the GOP controls seven of Indiana's nine U.S. House seats. The districts of Democratic Reps. Frank Mrvan and Andre Carson would have been eliminated. The vote in the chamber was 31-19, with 21 Republicans joining 10 Democrats in voting against the...

A federal appeals court said on Monday that Alina Habba had been serving unlawfully as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, dealing a blow to the Trump administration and most likely setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court. In its ruling, the three-judge panel, based in Philadelphia, affirmed an earlier ruling by a Federal District Court judge, shooting down each of the government’s arguments for why Ms. Habba could continue to serve. In their opinion, the judges wrote that the Trump administration appeared to have become frustrated by the legal and political barriers that have prevented its preferred U.S....