Free Republic

The U.S. national debt exceeded the total amount of output from the entire economy as of March 31, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total value of goods and services in the economy, was $31.215 trillion. The ratio of GDP to Debt was 100.2%, up from 99.5% in September 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal. The government now spends $1.33 for every dollar it collets in revenue, with budget deficits running consistently at around 6% of GDP. That figure will continue to rise...

History does not whisper. It warns. Empires do not collapse because of a single moment of weakness. They erode from within, slowly hollowed out by overreach, moral ambiguity and the false belief that their power exempts them from consequence. The question before us is not whether America is strong. It is whether we are wise enough to endure the burden that comes with being the world’s lone superpower. Scores of empires have come before us. Each one believed itself indispensable. Each one believed its reach was justified. And each one eventually fell, often not at the hands of foreign enemies...

Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth, the European State of the Climate Report for 2025 has found. From the Mediterranean to the Arctic Circle, its climate is shifting in ways that are no longer subtle, no longer gradual, and no longer distant. The consequences are cascading across Europe’s environment, economy, and ecosystems. With hotter air, warmer seas, shrinking ice, drying soils, and stressed ecosystems, the warning signals are screaming from every part of the climate system. Europe has been warming at a rate of 0.56°C per decade throughout the past 30 years. This is more than twice as fast...

A new app launched in July allows users to chat with biblical figures from both the Old and the New Testaments. The app, which is named Chat with Jesus, is described by its website as a place where "users can find comfort, guidance, and inspiration through their conversations." Among the characters available to chat with are Jesus and the Virgin Mary, the apostles, prophets such as Moses and Jonah, Hebrew kings such as David and Solomon, Adam and Eve, the Patriarchs, and more.

As stocks soared this week and oil prices dropped amid an apparent cooling of tensions between the United States and Iran, it may have left the impression that the energy shock that rattled the world would quickly fade, along with the risk of sending the global economy into recession.The optimism may have been short-lived. On Saturday, Iran’s military announced it would reimpose restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz, throwing the critical waterway’s status into doubt.The uncertainty highlights that beneath that surface, a starkly different reality is unfolding. It is defined by disrupted supply lines and damaged infrastructure, sparking increased concern...

American intelligence agencies have obtained information that China in recent weeks may have sent a shipment of shoulder-fired missiles to Iran for its conflict with the United States and Israel, according to U.S. officials. The officials said that the intelligence is not definitive that the shipment has been sent, and that there is no evidence that the Chinese missiles have yet been used against American or Israeli forces during the conflict.

US intelligence indicates China is preparing to deliver new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks, CNN reported late on Friday, citing three people familiar with recent intelligence assessments. According to intelligence outlined in the CNN report, Beijing is preparing to transfer shoulder-fired anti-air missile systems known as MANPADs. These systems pose an asymmetric threat to low-flying US military aircraft, as demonstrated during the five-week war, and they could continue to do so if the ceasefire breaks down. Two sources informed CNN that there are signs Beijing is attempting to route shipments of the weaponry through third...

Hide the sharp objects—at least if you take Nicolle Wallace seriously. On Friday’s edition of Deadline White House, Wallace began by painting an apocalyptic picture of the situation in Iran. Grim enough to have Trump supporters reaching for the Lexapro—if they believed her. After laying out her bleak scenario, Wallace went a step further, warning of: “A full-scale global economic crisis that might actually be even worse than those headlines, and worse than we think.”Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Goldman Sachs has issued a stark warning to workers caught up in the AI-driven layoff wave – finding a new job could take longer, and it may pay less when they do. The Wall Street giant says tech employees displaced by automation are facing a tougher road back into work than those in more stable industries. To make matters worse, the very technology replacing them also erodes the value of their skills. In March alone, US employers announced 60,620 job cuts - a 25 percent increase from the previous month - with AI linked to roughly one in four of...

Jamie Dimon has issued a stark warning that the Iran war could send inflation surging again and deal a fresh blow to financial markets. The JPMorgan boss said rising oil and commodity prices risk pushing up the cost of living - and forcing interest rates higher just as Americans were hoping for relief. That combination could hit everything from mortgage rates to stock portfolios.For households, that means higher prices at the gas pump, in grocery stores and across everyday essentials as rising energy costs ripple through the economy. It could also spell trouble for retirement savings, with Dimon warning that...

The month-long closure of a crucial waterway for the global energy supply has sparked warnings the world is heading for problems worse than those caused by the 1970s oil crisis. Lars Jensen, a shipping expert and former director at Maersk, told the BBC the impact of the US-Israeli war on Iran could be "substantially larger" than the economic chaos seen in the 1970s. His comments follow a warning from the director of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, earlier this month that the world is "facing the greatest global energy security threat in history". "It is much bigger than what...

On Friday, Republican Congressman Sam Graves of Missouri became the 36th Republican -- and 57th House member -- to announce plans not to seek re-election, saying it was time to "pass the torch" to a new generation. In fact, more Republicans are retiring ahead of the midterms than at any point in nearly a century, according to an ABC News tally of retirement announcements and a review of historical data since 1930 compiled by the Brookings Institution. Heading for the exitsThat's a larger cohort than the 34 Republicans who did not run to keep their seats in 2018, when Republicans...

Someone should do a wellness check on The New York Times. Looks like its journos read the portents wrong — AGAIN — on another one of its apocalyptic prognostications on the economic consequences of President Donald Trump taking out the Islamist regime in Iran. Times business reporter Emmett Lindner nonsensically tried to dig up the corpse of the 1970s oil price shock following the Yom Kippur War as a comparative case study to what is transpiring around the Persian Gulf as Israel and the U.S. decimate Iran’s war machine. “Echoes of the ’70s in What’s Now the Largest Oil Shock...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In the two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran, President Donald Trump increasingly has been knocked on his political heels. He’s grown more agitated with news coverage and has failed to find a way to explain why he started the war — or how he will end it — that resonates with a public concerned by American deaths in the conflict, surging oil prices and dropping financial markets. Even some of his supporters are questioning his plan and his overall poll numbers are declining. Meanwhile, Moscow is getting a boost...

America should not play global judge, jury, and executioner. This role is bad for us. It harms our economy and rots our national character. Moreover, foreign wars distract from much more important goals here at home. Trump’s decision to pursue the Iran war, for instance, distracts from his much more important domestic policy goals on immigration, inflation, and dismantling leftist-controlled institutions. The political capital required to wage this war of choice is simply too high. The downside risks of being sucked into a months- or even years-long war are too great. The threat to the global economy from a sustained...

President Donald Trump and some of his closest advisers were caught off guard by the scope of Iran’s military response to U.S. strikes, while key Gulf allies have privately expressed anger at the White House’s decision to escalate the conflict, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The publication reported Friday that “the president and some aides were surprised at the breadth and scope of Iran’s retaliation,” which included missile and drone launches targeting regional countries from Azerbaijan to Oman, according to people familiar with the matter.” Gulf allies have reacted sharply behind closed doors. “Allies in the Gulf are...

A former U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) official said Iran is holding the world’s energy supply hostage using "World War I-style" tactics. Iran has responded to U.S. and Israeli strikes by halting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil. The regime is using sea mines, which it has reportedly stockpiled by the thousands, to make traversing the strait difficult and deadly. "This is a nightmare more than 30 years in the making," former CENTCOM Communications Director Col. Joe Buccino (Ret.) said Saturday on "Fox & Friends Weekend." "What you just indicated there on your wall is...

For around 15 years, many American leaders — including all three presidents in that period — believed that the country was too deeply entangled in trying to reorder the societies of the Middle East. They felt the more pressing challenges included rebuilding America’s industrial base and confronting the rise of China. Yet here America is, once again, fighting a war to reorder a society in the greater Middle East. And like in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, this war seems unlikely to turn out quite as its proponents may hope. Why does this keep happening? To understand the present, look at...

MIAMI — President Trump said Monday that he’s brought prices down so much that Democrats have stopped using the word “affordability.” “They also gave us very high prices and then they said the word, ‘affordability.’ That’s first time I ever heard it,” Trump said at the annual House Republican retreat in Miami. “My first day in office, they said, ‘affordability,’ They’re the ones that caused the problem,” he continued. “But we’re really bringing down prices big. “Do you notice you don’t hear that word anymore? … They don’t say it anymore because we brought down prices so much.” Trump said...

Eight months before the crucial midterm elections, the administration of President Donald Trump is battling high living costs. The strike against Iran threatens to undo the first successes achieved in the struggle against inflation via falling energy prices. Ludwig Erhard understood the formula for sustained political success. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: stable money circulating in free markets coordinates the millions of individual decisions made by households, businesses, and credit institutions -- day after day -- in the most efficient manner. Stable money requires a lean state. Public debt, meanwhile, is widely regarded as the primary...