Free Republic

The lights have finally gone out on this project. In an extraordinary fire sale, the state Power Authority is auctioning off a huge storehouse of unused decorative bridge lights — which were supposed to be part of a $106 million project to brighten up the city’s spans by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but which never got installed. With a minimum bid of just $25, the lights are only expected to fetch pennies on the dollar — and leave the state out a massive amount of cash for the failed lighting project, officials told The Post of the sale, which was...

Walmart is reportedly laying off more than 100 employees in its technology offices in Silicon Valley, part of larger corporate layoffs across the country. The company’s tech workers in the San Francisco Bay Area are being axed as part of Walmart’s plan to lay off around 1,500 corporate employees across the country, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle. Positions within Walmart’s global technology, U.S. e-commerce fulfillment, and advertising divisions will reportedly also be hit as a result of the company being restructured. The company, however, did not disclose all of the locations that will be affected.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Chicago workers making minimum wage are set to get a raise starting next month. Starting July 1, the city's minimum wage will be $16.60 and the minimum wage for subsidized youth employment programs, the minimum wage will be $16.50. Under the One Fair Wage Ordinance, the wages of tipped workers such as restaurant servers, bartenders, bussers and runners who earn a subminimum wage of $12.62 per hour will increase by eight percent per year until it reaches parity with Chicago's standard hourly minimum wage on July 1, 2028. Other regulations for paid leave, paid sick time and...

U.S. consumers just delivered a clear message: they’re not as worried as the experts thought. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index jumped by 12.3 points in May, the largest monthly gain in four years, as Americans grew more upbeat about the economy, the job market, and their own financial prospects. The reading came in at 98.0, up sharply from April’s 85.7, and blew past all forecasts by economists. Econoday’s survey had a range of forecasts from 84.0 to 91.3, with the consensus at 87.3. It wasn’t just a bounce—it was a breakout. The Expectations Index, which measures how consumers see...

A bronze statue of First Lady Melania Trump has apparently disappeared from her hometown of Sevnica, Slovenia. Local media said the statue was sawed off at the ankles and carried away from the area, the Associated Press (AP) reported on Friday, noting police are investigating and trying to find those responsible. “The original wooden statue was torched in July 2020. The rustic figure was cut from the trunk of a linden tree, showing her in a pale blue dress like the one she wore at Trump’s presidential inauguration in 2017. The replica bronze statue has no obvious resemblance with the...

Beege's excellent post on the financial bonanza that Trump's tariffs have brought highlights one side of the story that the Pravda Media didn't expect. JP Morgan's reversal of its prediction that Trump's trade policy would usher in a recession tells the other side. All the "best people" have missed the point of Trump's moves to reshape world trade. JP Morgan's prediction that the tariffs would usher in a serious recession was not insane. Any economist will tell you that, all other things being equal, reducing the friction involved in people trading will reduce the efficiency of the market. Inefficient markets...

The energy company behind a partially completed wind farm off Long Island’s coast warned it will scrap the project “within days” if it’s kept in limbo by the Trump administration. Norwegian-based Equinor said it’s losing a whopping $50 million a week since Trump’s Department of the Interior halted construction on the controversial project that is expected to deliver energy to 500,000 homes in New York City, its leaders told The Post. “We will have to terminate the program within days if we don’t have a resolution with the federal government,” said Molly Morris, Equinor’s president of Renewables in America. “This...

Friedrich Merz is spending his first day as leader of Germany visiting France and Poland, promising a “fresh start” to EU relationships and signalling defiance to President Trump in saying they will never accept an “imposed” peace on the Ukraine War. The French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed newly appointed Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Paris on Wednesday, the leaders of the two largest and richest countries in Europe publishing a joint statement vowing greater cooperation on defence, economics, and the Ukraine War. Merz will later today travel to Poland for more meetings, which in both cases he said were to launch...

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is flipping off Donald Trump, announcing Tuesday he will oppose the president’s nominee for the crucial U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia just hours after Trump called for Senators to support him. Tillis’s decision, first reported by Breitbart News nine hours before Tillis’s confirmation, could sound the death knell for Trump’s nominee, Ed Martin, who has been serving in the office on an interim basis. Breitbart News reported Monday that Tillis withholding his supporting was the critical impediment to Martin’s nomination being advanced before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Without Tillis’s support, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IO)...

Gov. Kathy Hochul is delivering a big win to businesses that have been pressuring her to pay off their billions of dollars in unemployment-insurance debt — but she’s stealing the cash from state reserves to do it. Hochul said Monday that the state will cover the roughly $7 billion debt still lingering for employers from the pandemic. The businesses had hoped federal money that the state received during COVID-19 would at least partly be used to help cover the deluge of unemployment claims spurred by the pandemic, as most other states did.+ But the state used the money for other...

President Trump said Japan is set to kick off tariff negotiations with the US in Washington on Wednesday — becoming one of the first countries to test his willingness to relent on the sweeping tariffs. “Japan is coming in today to negotiate Tariffs, the cost of military support, and ‘TRADE FAIRNESS’,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “I will attend the meeting, along with Treasury & Commerce Secretaries. Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!” It comes a day after the Trump administration said it had been presented with offers from...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that it was “absolutely a fallacy” that the United States is getting ripped off because they have a trade deficit with another country. Paul said, “I mean, the whole debate is so fundamentally backwards and upside down. It’s based on a fallacy, and the fallacy is this, that somehow, in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow, when you trade with someone, there’s a loser and someone’s taking advantage of you, and China is ripping you off, or Japan is ripping you off. It’s absolutely a fallacy. Every trade that...

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on any trades made with the United States. This "secondary tariff" will take effect on April 2, Trump said in a Truth Social post. Trump is imposing the move because, he said, Venezuela has sent "tens of thousands" of people to the United States who have a "very violent nature." Benchmark crude oil futures jumped nearly 1.5% on the news of the tariff. Earlier this month, Trump issued a 30-day wind down of a license that the U.S....

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that if President Donald Trump continued to make statements about impeaching judges, he could “tick off” the Supreme Court and lose cases. Christie said, “Look, it is the MO of this first quarter of the Trump administration, which is we are going to try to use the power of the presidency in every way we can, and in this instance to intimidate people from availing themselves of the rights they have as American citizens to access the court system if they think the government has done something wrong....

Worried Tesla owners are begging Elon Musk to add a feature to their vehicles that would warn off vandals trying to damage their car. The clamoring for help comes amid vandals and arsonists destroying Tesla dealerships and vehicles across the country. “I really hope Tesla is working on some sort of defensive measures… just something extra to make Tesla owners feel a little bit better about parking in public parking lots,” Tesla owner Sawyer Merritt said Tuesday, according to a report by Fortune. “Honk, flash the lights, do something.” Merritt’s request came the same day an arson attack was carried...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) signaled Thursday that President Trump’s threat to levy tariffs on key trading partners of the U.S. is hurting his constituents, saying “when we start losing, you back off.” “Almost every industry in Kentucky has come to me and said, ‘It will hurt our industry and push up prices of homes, cars,’ and so, I’m going to continue to argue against tariffs,” Paul said late Thursday in an interview with CNN. The Kentucky Republican argued the U.S. has “more leverage” than any other nation, but not “all the leverage.” He urged the Trump administration to be “smart”...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday rejected a call from Parliament member Jagmeet Singh to bar President Trump from attending the Group of Seven (G7) summit that is set to take place in Canada in June, saying it is “not responsible.” Trudeau, who announced his intent to step down as prime minister and as the leader of the Liberal Party last month, will not be the country’s head during the G7 summit of leading industrialized nations in Kananaskis, Alberta, this summer. Despite the resignation, he called the demand to disinvite Trump from the gathering “shocking.” “I think it’s easy...

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Monday he is prepared to cut off electricity exports to the U.S. if President Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canadian goods go through. “If they want to try to annihilate Ontario, I will do everything — including cut off their energy with a smile on my face,” Ford told reporters at a mining convention in downtown Toronto, the Toronto Sun reported. Ford doubled down on his pledge to retaliate by matching tariffs, noting the U.S. is a major customer of Canada’s electricity. “They rely on our energy. They need to feel the pain. They want...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Sunday that Israel will be halting all movement of goods into Gaza, following Hamas’s apparent rejection of a ceasefire proposal suggested by President Donald Trump’s envoy. As Breitbart News reported Saturday, “Israel accepted a new proposal by the Trump administration on Saturday night, under which all of the 63 remaining hostages would be released over the course of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, en route to a permanent ceasefire.” It was not clear at the time what Hamas’s response would be to the proposal, which had been conveyed by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.

Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky departed from the United States for Britain on Saturday, landing in London ahead of talks with European leaders earlier than expected after a dressing down in the Oval Office by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Following a sensational White House meeting on Friday, which devolved into a public sparring match, with the Ukrainian leader being accused of acting “disrespectful” to President Trump and the American people, Zelesnky quickly jetted off to the United Kingdom in the early hours of Saturday morning ahead of Downing Street talks with European allies. He is expected to...