Free Republic

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 13, 2023, at Hillsdale College’s 171st Commencement Ceremony. Congratulations to the Hillsdale College Class of 2023. It is a thrill to be here at Hillsdale, which I have heard about for a long time. Last night I had a wonderful tour of campus, and the evening culminated in a concert in your beautiful chapel. The concert included Mahler’s First Symphony played by the student orchestra and was just marvelous. When I was a theology professor, I taught a course on the Reformation for many years, taking seriously the works of...

Surprise: everything is expensive. That seems to be especially true in Illinois. At the very last minute over the weekend, Illinois passed their budget for the next fiscal year. Major elements of it included adding a tax to online sports betting and tobacco tax. Not every part of the budget passed since it came down to the 11th hour. Besides issues involving Chicagoland transit, there was another part of the proposal that restaurant allies are calling the "pizza tax". The bill would include a $1.50 delivery tax (on food, Amazon deliveries, etc.) on anything delivered with a motor vehicle. It's...

Unfortunately, Raskin was not arguing that people really need to learn to use their guns against terrorists more quickly and with deadly accuracy, which is the lesson that any normal human being would have to stop crazed Islamist terrorists from setting Jews on fire. Instead, he really went on television to argue that the attack in Colorado, in which an enraged Islamist attacked Jewish protesters, is a prime example of why we need more gun restrictions and stricter background checks for gun purchasers.

Establishment Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is giving is “more proof of who he is” with his recent visit to Ukraine, the senator’s GOP challenger, businessman Mark Lynch, said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday. Host and Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked Lynch to respond to the fact that Graham recently traveled to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “I mean, yesterday we were talking about it. When did he become our Secretary of State?” Lynch asked. “You know, like you said, a week ago, Zelensky and Lindsey were left there by themselves. Putin and...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Tuesday that he believed President Donald Trump found his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, more irritating than him because of his dishonesty. The comments were in response to a journalist directly asking Zelensky at a press event who he thought the White House was more annoyed with, him or Putin, after a week in which Trump has published increasingly frustrated statements condemning Putin for expanding attacks on civilians in Ukraine, according to the state outlet Ukrinform. The news agency published the remarks on Wednesday. Trump campaigned throughout 2024 on the promise of helping end...

Confidence is growing that a more active than average Atlantic hurricane season is about to begin in just over a week. NOAA is now forecasting a 6-in-10 chance of an above-average hurricane season. By The Numbers: NOAA expects 13 to 19 storms to form in 2025, six to 10 of which will become hurricanes and three to five of which will reach Category 3 status or stronger, according to the outlook released Thursday. These ranges are on the high side of the 30-year average for both hurricanes and storms. The range for the number of hurricanes is slightly shy of...

AP — Russia and Ukraine have no direct peace talks scheduled, the Kremlin said Thursday, nearly a week after their first face-to-face session since shortly after Moscow’s invasion in 2022 and days after U.S. President Donald Trump said they would start ceasefire negotiations “immediately.” “There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “They are yet to be agreed upon.” During two hours of talks in Istanbul on May 16, Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, in what would be their biggest such swap. Apart from that step, the...

President Donald Trump’s approval rating in New Jersey bests that of Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ), according to a poll, marking a negative sign for Democrats. The Emerson College/Pix 11/the Hill poll, published Thursday night, finds that Trump has a neutral rating in the Garden State, with 47 percent approving and 47 percent disapproving of his performance. Another six percent did not have an opinion or had neutral feelings about his performance. Conversely, Murphy has a negative approval rating in the traditionally blue state. Of the respondents, 40 percent give him positive marks, while 45 percent disapprove. This equates to a...

More than 8 in 10 likely voters want President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts extended before they expire at the end of this year, according to a new poll released as Congress rushes to finalize a “big, beautiful” bill making those provisions permanent. A Public Opinion Strategies survey exclusively obtained by The Post found 84% of possible US voters would back keeping the current tax rates if they were in Congress — while just 16% would favor a tax increase. By party affiliation, 95% of Republicans, 81% of independents and 74% of Democrats prefer the status quo in terms of taxation....

EXCLUSIVE: Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said President Donald Trump has accomplished more in the first 100 days of his tenure than "most politicians or presidents accomplish in their entire lifetimes." The top House Republican said this first period of a new GOP trifecta in government has been a "flurry of activity" used to set the stage for the party's plans to pass a massive piece of legislation setting up Trump's priorities on defense, taxes, energy and the border. "So much of what we've done is leading up to the big reconciliation bill, and that is the legislative vehicle, as I've...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that Ukraine is “ready to purchase” more American-made Patriot missile systems from the United States, noting that it was a “top priority” for Ukraine to secure “air defense systems for Ukraine.” In a video on X, Zelensky said he had “held a Staff meeting” and added that, among the top priorities were Ukraine’s “agreements” with its partners, and Ukraine’s “readiness to produce air defense systems in Ukraine.” Zelensky added that Ukraine would “seek to reach a corresponding agreement” with the U.S. regarding “an agreement on Patriots for Ukraine.”

On Tuesday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) pushed for more gun control in her state, claiming, “Guns are the number one killer of young people in America.” Whitmer made the comments in Lansing, with members of the gun control lobby gathered behind her for Annual Advocacy Day. For years the left was called out for claiming guns were the number one cause of death for children in America. Breitbart News showed this claim to be false when President Joe Biden first made it on June 2, 2022. We noted the claim was based on reported 2020 CDC data, then dug...

On Friday’s broadcast of PBS’s “Washington Week,” New York Times Chief White House Correspondent and MSNBC Political Analyst Peter Baker stated that there have been instances of political violence from the left “But it does seem, at times, that Trump and his people seem to be more willing to use words like traitor and treasonous that might excite people to take action.” Baker stated, “On the physical violence part, and that has also been seen on both sides too, of course. President Trump was the target of two different assassination attempts last year. Just this last week, I think the...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a law that will spend $181 million on fire prevention in the state — and $2.8 billion on Medi-Cal, the state Medicaid provider, whose costs have ballooned thanks to his decision to cover illegal aliens. The San Jose Mercury News reported on the bill, which Republicans opposed — despite the provision for fire prevention, including controlled burns — because of the massive spending on Medi-Cal: California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Monday that allocates $180 million for wildfire prevention projects, such as prescribed burns and vegetation management, throughout the state. …...

8 Apr 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump shot down the European Union’s offer of a zero-tariff trade relationship on some goods, demanding that the bloc do more to rectify the significant trading imbalance, such as purchasing more American-produced energy. With markets putting pressure on politicians worldwide, leading Eurocrats came out on Monday, attempting to appease Washington with concessions. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that Brussels had relayed an offer of “zero-for-zero” tariffs on industrial goods, while trade envoy Maroš Šefčovič suggested a “boost in strategic areas” like semiconductors and minerals. 8 Apr 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump...

TAIPEI, April 6 (Reuters) - Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te on Sunday offered zero tariffs as the basis for talks with the U.S., pledging to remove trade barriers rather than imposing reciprocal measures and saying Taiwanese companies will raise their U.S. investments. President Donald Trump announced across-the-board import tariffs on Wednesday, with much higher duties for dozens of trading partners, including Taiwan, which runs a large trade surplus with the U.S. and faces a 32% duty on its products. The U.S. tariffs, however, do not apply to semiconductors, a major Taiwanese export.

California now has more electric vehicle (EV) charging stations than gas nozzles, but consumer demand is struggling to meet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s target of ending gas-powered vehicle sales by 2035, and federal support is in doubt. The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday: Electric vehicle charging ports now outnumber gas nozzles across the Golden State, a sign of the increasing number of zero-emission vehicles on the road. But the milestone arrives as the federal government has moved to deprioritize the shift away from gasoline-powered cars. … The number of accessible chargers across California has nearly doubled since 2022. Just since August,...

During Saturday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Life, Liberty & Levin,” House Speaker Mike Johnson gave his take on his inability to work with the other side of the aisle, which was demonstrated during last week’s passage of the continuing resolution to fund the federal government. Johnson argued those difficulties showed there were Democrats who hated Trump more than they loved the country. “[S]o the next big thing on our plate is the reconciliation process, and that’s what we call the one big, beautiful bill,” he said. “And in that will be all of our campaign commitments, the promises we made on...

Independent Veterans of America CEO Paul Rieckhoff claimed Friday on MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour” that Ukrainians are “more American” than the American people. Rieckhoff said, “Donald Trump has completely betrayed Ukraine. He has stabbed them in the back and every week he needs to twist it and drive it deeper with a new move that cuts more of their legs out from under them.” Host Stephanie Ruhle asked, “What do you say to the person who says, I don’t care about Ukraine, I want Donald Trump to stand up for Russia?”

Former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has admitted that his government was not in a position to actually fulfil his promise to the public of ending the illegal migrant crisis in the English Channel while expressing regret over the “stop the boats” slogan. In yet another admission from the so-called Conservative Party of misleading the public on promises to cut immigration, former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted this week that his “stop the boats” pledge was “too stark” and that it couldn’t actually be delivered. Speaking on the BBC Radio 4’s Political Thinking With Nick Robinson podcast, Sunak appeared to...