Free Republic

U.S. President Donald Trump's moves to take China to task on trade are likely to backfire as his sweeping global tariffs hit allies as well as rivals, according to former national security advisor John Bolton.

Foreman won the heavyweight title at the age of 24 and then again at the age of 45, becoming the oldest title holder in history. But, he says, it was a near-death incident in between those two titles that changed his life and prompted him to become a pastor. That life-altering event occurred in 1977. He had already lost his first title (against Muhammad Ali in 1974) and was attempting to reclaim his place in another heavyweight championship bout. “I was in the dressing room … walking back and forward and saying, ‘I don’t care about this boxing match I...

The NED, which are the architects of color revolutions in Eastern Europe including Ukraine and Georgia, states that as a result of the freeze “it has been unable to meet its obligations and has been forced to suspend support for nearly 2,000 partners worldwide.” “Ninety-five percent of NED’s funding is directly appropriated by Congress and is not considered foreign assistance. This funding therefore was not subject to the executive order freezing foreign assistance for a ninety-day review. However, despite being exempt, access to these funds has been inexplicably cut off, forcing NED to halt all partner support and furlough the...

The main reason why the Left is freaking out over DOGE and President Donald Trump taking a chainsaw to USAID and federal spending is because he's cutting off the endless spigot of taxpayer money the Left used to fund and maintain its 'resistance' and hold onto political power. It's why the Left screams DOGE is not only making stuff up, but are filing lawsuits against it. They don't want the gravy train to end. But all their bloviating does is make Americans more likely to support DOGE and less likely to feel sorry for them, and this revelation certainly won't...

One of Elon Musk’s latest targets is a nonprofit dedicated to bolstering democracy overseas that has long been a darling of the GOP. Yet prominent Republicans with ties to the group — including a lawmaker who serves on its board — are staying conspicuously silent.Musk, in recent posts on X, has demonized the National Endowment for Democracy — a 41-year-old organization rooted in efforts to counter communism that provides grants to democracy and civil society groups abroad — is “rife with corruption” and guilty of unspecified “crimes.” He posted in early February that the “evil organization needs to be dissolved.”The...

@elonmusk: Those who know, please reply to this post listing all the evil things that NED has done. It’s a long list. https://x.com/elonmusk/statu After that merciless arm-twisting, I have no choice but to recap my National Endowment for Democracy bashes going back to shortly after it was launched in 1983. In a November 29, 1985 piece in the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as “one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac.” But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things—an International Political Action Committee, the Taxpayer Funding of Foreign Elections Program, and...

Kyle Becker @kylenabecker This is way bigger than the Politico scandal. U.S. taxpayers have been funding an obscure news agency called Internews Network for years. Internews is funded heavily by the U.S. government, primarily through USAID. There are 467 grants for Internews totaling a whopping $476.4 MILLION on the http://USASpending.gov website. These massive figures track with Internews' Form 990s, where it discloses tens of millions of dollars in government grants every year. What is Internews? The organization claims to be an "international nonprofit" that supports "independent media" in emerging democracies and uses media as a tool to reduce conflict. A...

Billionaire Elon Musk has criticized the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a nonprofit organization established by the U.S. government during Republican Ronald Reagan's presidency. "NED is a SCAM," Musk wrote on his social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, in response to a user who used Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok to identify "red flags of corruption or concerns" with NED. Why It Matters Musk ... is running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a Trump administration task force assigned to find ways to cut wasteful federal spending and "dismantle" government bureaucracy. Musk said in October that he could...

On November 24, at the southeastern frontier of the European Union and NATO, Romanian voters delivered an unexpected victory to a rightwing populist named Călin Georgescu in the opening round of the country’s presidential election. Always considered a longshot, Georgescu had been polling in the single digits just weeks before surging to claim first place with 23 percent of the vote. The result shocked Romania’s two dominant parties, who found themselves on the sidelines as Georgescu campaigned for the runoff against another anti-establishment candidate who came in second place, Elena Lasconi of the reformist Save Romania party.Then, on December 4,...

Obama’s ‘Censorship’ Office Goes Bankrupt COMMENTARY By Gabe KaminskyDecember 30, 2024 Obama’s ‘Censorship’ Office Goes BankruptAP The Global Engagement Center, an office housed within the State Department and aiming to thwart disinformation and misinformation, has been forced by Congress to close up shop. It’s no mystery why; the taxpayer-backed GEC violated its mandate to work only overseas and devolved into a partisan enabler of speech suppression in the United States. Here’s how. Founded in 2016 and technically the product of an Obama-era executive order on counterterrorism, the GEC lapsed in December and lost congressional funding. Over the last two years,...

Going further than the Treasury Department's tacit support for debanking alleged "hate groups" after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, a State Department component that "strengthen[s] resilient democratic societies" developed a more sweeping plan for financially choking off disfavored narratives a month later. The U.S. Agency for International Development wrote a "Disinformation Primer" that appears to have been started in "late 2020," judging by a reference to the most up-to-date "social media initiatives" by Facebook and Twitter "to address disinformation and misinformation."It was still being written at least 10 days into the Biden administration, referring twice to the Jan. 31,...

Feb 20, 2024- Alexei Navalny's political activities were funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as part of an effort to repeat US-backed 2014 Ukraine regime change inside Russia itself; - The Western media had previously (and reluctantly) revealed Navalny as far-right, racist, and xenophobic despite efforts to pass him off as a progressive pro-democracy activist; - US government-funded polling agencies consistently found Alexei Navalny extremely unpopular in Russia with single digit approval ratings; - After an alleged 2020 "Novichok" poisoning, Navalny's popularity "surged" to 20% as the Western media accused Moscow of being behind...

This is the full post, minus the photos and some formatting. If you don't know who Jimmy Lai is, how the NED is funded through the CIA, and what John Bolton is all about, this article is for you. Here, in this article, we look at the United States involvement with HK. We [1] study how the United States uses Hong Kong to exert pressure on China for trade and geopolitical advantage. We also [2] take a look at the various people “behind the scenes” that are pushing for American involvement, for their own personal gain. Finally, [3] we study...

The billionaire founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, is using his fortune to further shape journalism into partisan activism to help Democrats win elections. He is the nation’s leading financier of the “mis”- and “disinformation” industries and is now the largest private stakeholder in America’s legacy journalism schools. The most recent Twitter Files released by Matt Taibbi add a deeply disturbing new layer to the story. They show Newmark is at the very heart of an incestuous web of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and corporate media institutions operating in concert to censor political opponents on social media. Newmark is financing the...

A U.S. government body held a Congressional briefing plotting ways to break up Russia as a country, in the name of supposed “decolonization.” The participants urged the United States to give more support to separatist movements inside Russia and in the diaspora. They proposed the independence of numerous republics in the Russian Federation, including Chechnya, Tatarstan, and Dagestan, as well as historic areas that existed centuries ago such as Circassia. This is far from the first time that hawks in Washington have fantasized about carving up foreign countries. During the first cold war, the U.S. sponsored secessionist groups inside the...

The Puppet Masters of UkraineDems, Repubs and NATO(All links open in new tab/window) It seems NGOs and in particular, the president and CEO of one of them are in charge of shaping US policy in Eastern Europe and have been for many years.NED is funded by congress and also helps fund the a couple of other NGOs , one made up of democrats and one made up of republicans both of which are also funded by congress. Can you say incest? I knew you could.The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)https://www.ned.org/about/board-of-directors/The National Endowment for Democracy has supported democracy-building efforts in Ukraine...

Nadia has asked me to reflect on Ukraine’s experience – and its success – after 25 years. NED was there from the beginning, nurturing the active roots of civil society in the 1980’s. Ukraine is different from Russia, where (as NED’s Nadia Diuk has pointed out) the state has been the concept around which all ideology and values have revolved, whereas in Ukraine, society or “hromada” has been at the center, and NGOs have been called “hromads’ki orhannizatsii” or civic organizations. In 1988-89 NED supported work on the Ukrainian Catholic Church through Keston College, among others; Americans for Human Rights...

Ned Beatty -- a veteran character actor, famous for his work in "Superman," "Network" and several other iconic films -- has died ... TMZ has learned. A family member tells TMZ ... Ned passed away in his sleep Sunday while surrounded by family at his home. No other details surrounding the exact circumstances of his death were immediately available -- however, we've been told his passing is NOT COVID-related.

The foreign-headquartered company that recently purchased the leading U.S. electronic voting firm is boasting that it was highlighted in a report on how technology is making the election process more efficient, secure, transparent, accessible and reliable. The report, WND has learned, was authored by a firm with links to billionaire activist George Soros. The information comes after WND reported two weeks ago that SCYTL recently acquired the software division of a non-profit election organization tied to Soros’ Open Society Institute. Yesterday, WND reported SCYTL announced its technology will be deployed at more U.S. jurisdictions ahead of the 2014 midterm elections....

Jihad Watch Court Docs: Iranian-American Lobbying Group NIAC Defrauded Feds, Lied to Congressmen, Paid for Congressional Testimony, and Arranged Secret US/Iran Meetings Pamela Geller has just published this revealing and important message from the Iranian-American human rights activist Arash Irandoost: Dear Friend,حرف بس است. متحد شویم. عمل کنیمIt is time to act. Court documents released as a result of a lawsuit filed by NIAC against Hassan Dai paint a very disturbing picture of Trita Parsi and the NIAC. They range from defrauding the federal government, lying to members of Congress, arranging secret meetings between the US and the criminal regime,...