Free Republic

In a sweeping ruling, a single district judge blocks policy changes, elevates an advisory committee to gatekeeper status, and locks federal health policy in place A federal district judge in Boston has issued a sweeping order halting major changes to federal vaccine policy. In a single ruling, the court blocked the CDC’s revised immunization schedule, invalidated the newly reconstituted Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), and voided every action taken by that committee. This decision is being framed as a procedural correction. It is not. It is a substantive intervention that freezes an elected administration’s policy direction and replaces it...

In the United States — and the civilizational “West” more broadly — we are a society divided by slogans, propaganda, and social media memes. It is an unfortunate part of our present reality that we no longer engage in honest “public debate.” We haven’t done so for a very long time. The Founding Fathers wrote essays and pamphlets and delivered hours-long speeches during which they articulated the reasons for their beliefs. We get pink-hatted people — who may or may not identify as women — “shouting their abortions.” We get automatons screaming, “Black lives matter,” “Free Palestine,” “Trump is Hitler,”...

The history of the global trading system is a story of narrow and vulnerable waterways: the Suez and Panama Canals, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Straits of Dover and the Skagerrak, which defends the entrance to the Baltic. But none has the power to seize up the global economy as much as the Strait of Hormuz. Barely 30 miles wide at the narrowest point and bounded on one side by the state of Iran, this passage is used for a quarter of the world’s oil supplies and a fifth of its liquified natural gas (LNG). As we have now discovered,...

AwakenedOutlaw⚒️ repostedGood Lawgic@goodlawgicI have been asked why I give Trump latitude on the Iranian military engagement. Here is why: The trust is because Trump got in and got out of Iran last summer without loss of a single American life.The trust is because he killed Solemaini and Baghdadi finishing ISIS without loss of a single American.The trust is because he got Maduro without losing a single American.The trust is because there are over a dozen foreign nations who said "Trump got us out of [x] war." Again, without loss of a single American.The trust is because of the Abraham Accords.The...

Mr. Putin is also grappling with the arrival of a new world of unbridled American power under President Trump, which is checking Russia’s global influence and ripping up Moscow’s playbook for partnerships abroad. For years, Mr. Putin supported anti-American authoritarian governments in Iran, Venezuela and Cuba, with little worry that Washington would use its overwhelming military power to kill, capture or push out their leaders. That has now changed, as Mr. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to disregard international norms and engage in foreign adventurism by fully exploiting Washington’s might. The last two months have brought the U.S.-Israeli killing of...

Elite fashions harden into dogma, dissent becomes taboo, institutions fall in line—and only when reality intrudes does yesterday’s madness begin its overdue collapse. How do destructive ideas and bouts of collective madness so quickly become policy, law, and the status quo? After all, most have little public support—and are not Western nations supposedly rationally governed? There is usually a multi-step process on the road to these self-destructive fits of society-wide insanity. The suicidal impulse so often begins with left-leaning researchers in elite universities (i.e., the tenured in search of a novel, grant-getting theory). They begin insisting that a new existential...

China has seeded the West with thousands of agents pushing propaganda, engaging in espionage, fomenting protests, and silencing domestic dissent. In 2023, the FBI arrested two Chinese-Americans, Lu Jianwang and Chen Jinping, for operating a Chinese police station in Manhattan. Chen pleaded guilty and faces up to five years in prison for acting as a Chinese agent, while Lu, who has connections to Chinese authorities, pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. He faces 20 years for obstruction of justice. According to the Department of Justice (DoJ), the police station was established to monitor and intimidate Chinese dissidents in the...

The Trump Administration will take the following actions in short order to ensure continuity in reaching these goals and as part of our negotiated agreements with numerous trading partners: Immediately impose a temporary 10 percent surcharge on articles imported into the United States, pursuant to Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. Initiate several investigations under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (“Section 301”) to deal with unjustifiable, unreasonable, discriminatory, and burdensome acts, policies, and practices by many trading partners. We expect these investigations to cover most major trading partners and to address areas of concern such...

How many times do Americans have to vote for Donald Trump to make the point that they want illegal immigrants deported? They voted for him in 2016, despite sheer hysteria from Democrats, the entire media, and nearly all elected Republicans. They voted for him again in 2024 by an even larger margin, with some misgivings, because he promised a mass deportation force. Do we have to make Stephen Miller president so you finally get the point? Is this Groundhog Day? Why do we always have to start at square one on the question of: Should we have a country? The...

President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday announced the repeal of a 2009 policy allowing the federal government to regulate the emissions of fossil fuels by declaring them dangerous to public health. Trump called the repeal “the single largest deregulatory action in American history” and said it would “save American consumers trillions of dollars.” “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said in the White House Roosevelt Room. “Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding...

Transcript SummaryThe text draws parallels between Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971 film, based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel) and perceived real-world trends in criminal justice, particularly in Canada under Liberal policies, and extends to the UK.Key parallels claimed:Dystopian society with rampant youth violence, yet government favors "rehabilitation" over punishment, including lenient bail, short sentences, early transfers to lower security, and a "hug-a-thug" approach that avoids deterrence.In the film, the Ludovico technique uses drugs and forced exposure to violence to condition aversion to it; the author likens this to Justin Trudeau's 2017 stance against revoking citizenship of returning ISIS fighters...

[Catholic Caucus] Cardinals’ letter against Trump’s foreign policy is a blatant political attackCardinals Cupich, McElroy, and Tobin speak of their concern for ‘religious liberty’ and ‘the right to life’ after years of silence under the Biden administration, even when it spied on Catholics and locked up pro-lifers.By now it shouldn’t be surprising when Catholic clergy counter-signal President Trump. It happened first when Pope Francis attacked him for wanting to build a border wall in 2016. It happened in December of last year when Leo indirectly rebuked him for his peace plan in Ukraine, which he said would “break apart” the...

Over the past couple of years, I have had several posts here expressing skepticism about whether electric vehicles (EVs) were really the wave of the future. Most recently, I had a post on December 17 noting the rapid decline of EV sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2025, following the expiration of certain tax credits on September 30. Overall, my take has been that the EV market has been propped up by government subsidies and benefits and, like all businesses dependent on government handouts, would likely shrink drastically (if not completely disappear) without them. For a different...

Syria’s Al Qaeda regime is massacring Kurds to free imprisoned ISIS terrorists, state sponsors of Hamas in Turkey and Qatar are being named to boards running Gaza and thousands of democracy protesters are being massacred in Iran while Al Jazeera defends the regime. This isn’t American foreign policy, but it is Qatar’s foreign policy. The White House’s foreign policy in the Muslim world is now virtually identical to Qatar’s foreign policy apart from Israel. And as thousands die in Iran after empty promises of support, there is a bigger picture here of institutional capture by a tiny and powerful Islamic...

Either the federal government exercises authority over immigration enforcement or the state of Minnesota does. It has been disconcerting to watch Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey go out of their way to defend not only the violent actions of illegal aliens residing in their state but also the criminal behavior of citizens who endanger the lives of law enforcement officers and everyone around them by obstructing necessary arrests. The Department of Homeland Security has been spectacularly transparent about the targets of its operations in the North Star State. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are going after...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Sunday said it’s “very unlikely” that the Supreme Court will overturn President Donald Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose tariffs, with a potential decision from the court looming as early as this week. “I believe that it is very unlikely that the Supreme Court will overrule a president’s signature economic policy,” Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They did not overrule Obamacare, I believe that the Supreme Court does not want to create chaos.” In June, the Supreme Court upheld a key Affordable Care Act provision that set up a panel to recommend...

Events in Europe, the Middle East, and here are moving so quickly, it seems that decades of deceit, corruption, and just plain stupidity are nearing their end sooner than we could have imagined. Here’s a sample of the tremors this week which promise to undo the near past. IranCredible reports indicate 23,000 civilians have been murdered by the mullahs’ forces, and videos (again made public due to the extraordinary efforts of Elon Musk’s teams to work around the mullah's blackouts) reveal incredible brutality. Corpses with catheters and heart monitors still attached support accounts of persons being snatched from hospitals and...

Every time I write about this subject it has gotten yet a little more ridiculous. The background is that back in 2019 New York, both State and City, set themselves targets for “emissions” reductions and energy transformation that are quite literally impossible as a matter of physics, thermodynamics, and cost. And then, just to show who is the boss here, they made the impossible targets mandatory by statute. In the case of New York State, the statute in question is the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA or Climate Act). Among the many requirements of that statute, the most...

For him, extreme volatility and risk are not a problem but an opportunity.Is Iran next? That was the question the world was asking this weekend. As both protests and repression escalated, President Trump repeatedly warned that the U.S. would not stand idly by if the theo-thugocracy in Tehran fired on protesters. The mullahs’ response came from their usual playbook. They carried out a bloodbath and threatened to attack American bases and assets across the region if Mr. Trump raised a hand against them. As in Venezuela, Russia and China aren’t doing much either way. Joint exercises involving the Chinese, Russian,...

The United States and Venezuela announced Friday they are pursuing the possibility of reestablishing diplomatic relations, coming a week after a U.S. military operation that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and extradited him to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.A U.S. delegation, including diplomats and security personnel, visited Venezuela to evaluate the potential reopening of the American Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement sent to media outlets. The department did not immediately return a request for comment.The embassy has been shuttered since 2019, when ties were severed during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term...