Free Republic

Move over, Smoot and Hawley. President Trump has anointed himself America’s greatest protectionist, and he’s launching a global trade war to prove it. On Wednesday, Trump slapped a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, plus additional “reciprocal” tariffs on 60 other countries that have the temerity to sell us things we want to buy. He dubbed it “Liberation Day” to mark the freeing of Americans from the supposedly oppressive burden of trading with others.

The Biden administration is banning certain natural gas water heaters from the market as part of its climate change agenda, a move critics say will jack up energy costs for low-income and senior households. The move in the final days of the administration will take non-condensing, natural gas-fired water heaters off the shelves by 2029 in a bid to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which climate change advocates and President Biden say cause global warming. The new rules will require new tankless gas water heaters to use about 13% less energy than today’s least efficient tankless models. The rules apply to...

San Francisco 49ers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell refused to enter Thursday’s game against the Rams, according to head coach Kyle Shanahan. Campbell was spotted heading into the locker room during the third quarter of the 12-6 home loss. When reporters asked Shanahan about this, he replied, “He said he didn’t want to play today.”The coach clarified that this conversation happened in the third quarter, when Campbell was asked to come in for Dre Greenlaw, who was dealing with Achilles fatigue and subbed out of the game. Shanahan added that this was the first time in his career that a player had...

Legal challenges by conservative lawmakers and activists against guaranteed basic income programs are heating up nationwide. And one of their arguments is surprising: Some say the programs are discriminatory because they are not universal. Numerous cities and counties are experimenting with guaranteed basic incomes to support their most vulnerable populations. They typically offer no-strings-attached monthly payments between $500 and $1,000 to specific groups, like new moms, Black women, or trans people, all of them low-income residents. Guaranteed basic income programs differ from their idealistic cousin — a universal basic income. UBI, made famous by Andrew Yang during the 2016 presidential...

Joe Biden’s massive electric vehicle (EV) agenda will subsidize the lifestyles of America’s well-to-do while hitting average people the hardest.... The Biden administration is aggressively regulating the U.S. auto market to drastically increase the proportion of EVs sold over the coming decade, but consumer demand has not taken off as quickly as proponents had projected despite the subsidies made available by Biden’s flagship climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Manufacturers are slashing prices of their EVs to make the vehicles more appealing to consumers, which will increase prices for internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to compensate; this dynamic will...

Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to have stolen from the rich to give to the poor. Politicians have created the new “Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. Part of the problem with the reverse Robin Hood model is the Federal Reserve itself. They helped punish the 99% with inflation due to excessive money printing. The share of total net worth held by the top 1% has exploded since The Fed’s rate cuts following the 2001 recession. The...

From student debt cancellation to green subsidies, the White House is giving handouts paid for by hardworking lower-wage Americans.If you had any doubts that those in power have dropped the pretense of fighting for the working class, you can dispense with them after President Joe Biden administration's latest concessions to the laptop class. From student loan forgiveness to subsidies for people who drive pricey electric cars and profitable semiconductor company CEOs, this administration is working hard to shower its friends with handouts paid for by hardworking lower-wage Americans. We learned of the most outrageous handout of them all, of course,...

President Joe Biden’s “poor memory” was a key factor in not charging him, Special Counsel Robert Hur told Congress Tuesday. Hur, who described Biden in his report as “an elderly man with a poor memory,” told the House Judiciary Committee that he could not charge the president with “willfully” retaining classified documents due to the president’s lack of mental cognition and the impact that would have on a jury. “I understood that my explanation about this case had to include rigorous, detailed, and thorough analysis. In other words, I needed to show my work,” Hur said. “I knew that for...

Keep sending money. That was the urgent call Saturday from U.N. Secretary Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as he implored the world to not stop funding the embattled National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) — the special refugee agency for Palestinians — after staff members were shown to have been part of the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. The veteran Portuguese socialist promised anyone caught having been involved in the attack would be sternly dealt with, but in the interim seeks no halt to the flow of money from countries that donate to UNRWA coffers, the Times of...

Chicago's wealthiest citizens are investing millions in its poorest neighborhoods in an attempt to help solve the city's spiraling crime crisis. Billionaire businessman James Crown, who leads the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, has made it his goal to make Chicago 'the Safest Big City in America.' The tycoon, whose family was ranked the 34th richest in America by Forbes in 2020 with an estimated worth of $10.2 billion, plans to leverage his national influence and work with other businessmen to combat crime in the murder capitol of the U.S. Crown introduced his crime-fighting plan Thursday, announcing...

As support for assisted suicide in Canada climbs despite an excruciating series of stories reporting that the poor and disabled are opting for lethal injections out of pure desperation, we are witnessing the emergence of a truly post-Christian culture. As a headline in the U.K. magazine The Spectator asked last year: “Why is Canada euthanising the poor?” The response from some bio-ethicists appears to be: Well, why not? In fact, a new paper by two bioethicists at the University of Toronto makes the case that euthanizing the poor should be socially acceptable. Kayla Wiebe, a PhD candidate in philosophy, and...

President Joe Biden said Thursday that he was seriously considering a visit to Africa, joking that poor relatives always accepted invitations. “I’m eager to visit your continent,” Biden said, during an appearance at the Africa leaders summit recalling that he had received some invitations from the leaders of African countries to visit. “Be careful what you wish for because I may show up,” Biden joked, explaining that only the poor accepted all of the invitations.

Hunter Biden is trying to lower his child support payments for his four-year-old love child with Lunden Roberts, claiming he's having financial difficulties. According to documents obtained by DailyMail.com, the president's son filed a motion to adjust child support Monday, citing 'a substantial material change' in his 'financial circumstances, including but not limited to his income In a November 2019 filing in the child support case, he claimed, 'I am unemployed and have had no monthly income since May 2019,' adding he had 'significant debts.' Meanwhile, Hunter just moved out of a $20,000-per-month Malibu home where he lived with his...

King Kwesi Kyei Darkwa, a senior Ghanaian broadcaster, has predicted the doom that awaits politicians who steal from the national coffers. Politics in Africa, especially in Ghana, has been tagged with corruption and bribery. While not all politicians are corrupt, most of them have been caught in an unexplainable situation when it comes to financial decisions they take for their country. On corruption among politicians, King KKD advised politicians to stop stealing from the public purse or risk suffering an incurable disease before their death. He said, “Stealing from the public purse(as a politician) is like stealing from a blind...

* Robert Kiyosaki touted canned tuna as a better investment than gold, silver, or bitcoin. * The "Rich Dad Poor Dad" author warned soaring food prices could lead to starvation. * Kiyosaki noted cans of tuna and baked beans can be eaten, unlike metals and cryptocurrencies.Hoarding cans of tuna is a better strategy to ride out inflation than buying gold, silver, or bitcoin, Robert Kiyosaki declared in a bizarre tweet on Sunday night. "Best INVESTMENT: Cans of Tuna Fish," he said. "Inflation about to take off. Best investments are cans of tuna & baked beans. You can't eat gold, silver,...

A majority of the world’s wealth is concentrated in just a few countries. In fact, as Visual Capitalist’s Carmen Ang details below, almost a third of household wealth is held by Americans, while China’s population accounts for nearly a fifth. Using data from Credit Suisse, this graphic by Eleonora Nazander shows the distribution of household wealth worldwide, highlighting the wealth gap that exists across regions. Top 10 Wealthiest CountriesTo help simplify things, this graphic shows how much household wealth each country would have if the world only had $100. As the graphic illustrates, the top 10 wealthiest countries would hold...

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Reuters) - Americans living in poorer counties died during the pandemic at almost twice the rate of those in rich counties, a study released Monday by the Poor People's Campaign showed. "The neglect of poor and low-wealth people in this country during a pandemic is immoral, shocking and unjust, especially in light of the trillions of dollars that profit-driven entities received," said William Barber, director of the Poor People's Campaign, an activist group that aims to correct the United States' income inequality.

Liz Truss has defended the Falklands as “part of the British family” after China backed Argentina’s claim over the South American islands. The Foreign Secretary tweeted that “China must respect the Falklands’ sovereignty” after Argentinian president, Alberto Fernandez, met with China’s President Xi on the fringes of the Beijing winter Olympics. According to a statement on London’s Chinese Embassy website, the two leaders spoke of their “deep friendship” and Argentina signed up to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, a state-backed campaign for global influence. But they also signed an agreement in which China reasserted its support for Argentina’s claim...

President Biden on Friday celebrated a jobs report that showed far fewer Americans were added to payrolls than expected last month — then claimed Republicans concerned about high inflation simply want people to be too poor to afford cars. The president accused GOPers of spewing “malarkey” about the economy in remarks following the release of the December jobs report, which showed the unemployment rate dropping to 3.9 percent — but also showed just 199,000 jobs were added to the economy, fewer than the 210,000 added in November and far below the predicted 422,000.

A key component of the Biden plan is the push for a nationwide transition to electric vehicles, which takes up some $174 billion in subsidies from the package, but one of the largest problems with the proposal is its disregard for the negative downwind effects it would have on those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder. As of 2019, the average cost of an electric vehicle was $55,600, far greater than the cost of other vehicles more affordable for lower income families. In fact, another recent study showed that the average income of electric car owners is at...