Free Republic

Administration officials and members of billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service — aided by local and federal law enforcement agencies — seized the institute’s privately owned headquarters in March and summarily removed its leaders.“The President’s efforts here to take over an organization outside of those bounds, contrary to statute established by Congress and by acts of force and threat using local and federal law enforcement officers, represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better,” Howell wrote in her 102-page opinion.The judge said...

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that his move to impose wide-ranging tariffs is based on the simple concept of reciprocity: The U.S. should put the same conditions on imports from other countries that they impose on our goods through tariffs and other trade barriers. But the tariff scheme he announced isn’t reciprocal and isn’t based on measuring foreign trade barriers. Instead, it simply measures bilateral trade deficits and comes up with tariff numbers from there. Those are two very different things, and could be one reason why global financial markets are reacting so badly. The upshot is that, in the...

Count me in the ranks of those who have quit Tesla.

FOR TEN DAYS, since the shouting-match in the Oval Office, Ukraine has been scorched by Donald Trump’s wrath. Now comes a moment of catharsis—or another round of brutal punishment. On February 11th America and Ukrainian delegations are due to meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The American side says the goal is to create “a framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire”. Yet on the Ukrainian side, amid the hope, there are fears the meeting could be a shake-down, a delaying tactic or an attempt by Mr Trump to win concessions that benefit Russia. The summit comes as Russia...

Before the intimate hour-long press conference began at Stansted Airport, a seasoned industry veteran leaned toward me and remarked: “This may be the most important conference you and I will ever attend in our careers.”

Who steals baby formula? A lot of people, apparently; including two alleged thieves that West Sacramento police say stole $5,000 worth of formula from local Target locations a few days ago. Baby formula is a commonly stolen retail item because of its shelf life and essential value to many people. There’s even a black market for it — but the buyers aren’t who you’d guess

President-elect Trump suggested to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week that if a tariff for failing to address trade and immigration issues would kill the neighbor to the north’s economy, maybe it should become the 51st state, sources told Fox News. Last Friday, Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago unannounced after Trump threatened to impose sweeping tariffs on Canadian products. Specifically, Trump is threatening to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico over their failures to curb the flow of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs from those countries into the U.S. Now, new details are beginning to emerge about the meeting...

CNN will introduce a “metered” paywall early next month for online readers, part of a broader plan by chairman/CEO Mark Thompson to restructure the news giant into profitability.The plan was first reported Thursday by the New York Times. A CNN spokesperson declined to comment.The metered paywall will require frequent users to pay for access after clicking on a set number of articles. The model is common among major news outlets, including the New York Times and the New Yorker.CNN first hinted at the plan in July, when it said it would be launching a digital subscription service as a part...

The most-visited news website in the United States is trying out a paywall. In early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide, according to two people with knowledge of the decision. The company is planning a so-called metered model, which will require the site’s habitual users to pay after reading a certain number of articles, the people said. Many other publishers, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, have used metered paywalls to generate subscriptions over the past...

Major General Salami: "You Will Hear Good News About Revenge" The Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) responded to the puIsrael, saying, "You will hear good news about revenge, God willing." However, Khamenei knows that due to the explosive situation in society, the bankrupt economy, internal divisions, and the failure in the presidential election, he would lose if he takes direct action.so it is sacrificing its proxy forces to create chaos in the region. on Sunday Morning Hezbollah of Lebanon Announced That It Fired 320 Missiles at Israeli Military Positions in the Northern Part of the Country Israel carried...

Candidates have made plenty of blunders, quirky comments and plain old bad choices through the years | Running for a second term in 1976, President Gerald Fold declared during a debate, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” Since the Soviets did, in fact, occupy much of the region, moderator Max Frankel gave Ford a chance to recant, but Ford held firm.

EV INDUSTRY ON THE BRINK OF COLLAPSE It has become clear that the electric vehicle industry is on the brink of collapse. Profits at the German auto giant Mercedes plunged on Friday as sales of its new range of EVs went into freefall Porsche abandoned its sales targets for battery-powered cars amid waning demand from customers. Ford is losing nearly $50,000 on every EV it sells, while Tesla’s profits dropped 45pc. Meanwhile, battery manufacturers such as Germany’s Varta are getting wiped out. As concluded by Matthew Lynn, writing for the telegraph.co.uk, hundreds of billions have been pumped into this industry...

A Texas-based general surgeon who exposed his Houston children’s hospital for secretly continuing a child transgender mutilation program faces four felony counts from President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice for speaking out. Shortly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered his state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate the transing of children as abuse in 2022, Texas Children’s Hospital — the largest children’s hospital in the U.S. — claimed that it would no longer offer chemical castration and other body-butchering services to pediatric patients.As 33-year-old whistleblower Dr. Eithan Haim soon discovered, however, at least three Texas Children’s physicians continued...

From the very beginning, the Moscow Metro was designed as an instrument of propaganda as well as transportation. Its grandiose stations were not only a projection of the power of the regime but also designed as a promise of sorts, a glimpse for the Soviet people of the heaven on earth that communism would (one day) deliver. It was perhaps thus appropriate that some of its marble was said (probably accurately) to have come from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which had been blown up on Stalin’s orders just a year or two before work on the metro began...

WWII re-enactments draw dozens in Nazi uniforms — and one Jewish educator working to make sure the Holocaust is remembered (Can only be linked to, per FR rules)

Think of it as a rare instance of cross-aisle consensus or else a sartorial trend gone badly wrong. But it did not go unnoticed when, in a photograph from the Oval Office posted to President Joe Biden’s account this week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, Senator Mitch McConnell and Representative Hakeem Jeffries were all captured wearing some variant of the dreaded footwear hybrid: the sneaker shoe. Weighing in on Twitter, cult men’s wear commentator Derek Guy (@dieworkwear) called out the footgear as a clear lapse in dignity, if not actual protocol. Why pay a visit to a sitting president...

R. Hurt/K. Miller (Caltech/IPAC) =========================================================== Ask any astronaut or astronomer and they’ll tell you: Space wants to kill us. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the extreme life threatening cold and hot temperatures, or extinction-level gravity events, or the enormous radioactive explosions, or the planets that rain lava. Pretty much everything out in the twinkling cosmos has our number. Luckily, those of us on Earth are safe from the dangers of space (well, most of us anyway). However, there are some things that we won’t ever be able to avoid—like the inevitable moment when our planet is swallowed up...

Matt Hancock wanted to “deploy” a new Covid variant to “frighten the pants off” the public and ensure they complied with lockdown, leaked messages seen by The Telegraph have revealed. The Lockdown Files – more than 100,000 WhatsApp messages sent between ministers, officials and others – show how the Government used scare tactics to force compliance and push through lockdowns. In another message Simon Case, the Cabinet Secretary, said that “the fear/ guilt factor” was “vital” in “ramping up the messaging” during the third national lockdown in Jan 2021. In a WhatsApp conversation on Dec 13, obtained by The Telegraph,...

<p>Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has had a better few months than just about anybody in Republican politics, and Donald Trump the worst. Trump is hoping to reverse his fortunes and revive his moribund presidential campaign with a big event in South Carolina this weekend. A short video message his campaign released a few days ago was a positive sign — and one that should make DeSantis wary.</p>

When Covid-19 first erupted in 2020, the U.S. struggled to balance the trade-off between lives and livelihoods. Infections and deaths soared while lockdowns devastated economic output and sparked demonstrations across the country. China, by contrast, was a model of authoritarian efficiency. Mass testing, lockdowns and closed borders suppressed outbreaks. This allowed most Chinese to live normal lives without fear of infection, sustaining broad support for “zero Covid” (as best as outsiders could tell). The ruling Chinese Communist Party held out these divergent responses as proof of its superior governance model. The U.S. had lost its historical “capacity for self-rectification,” one...