Free Republic

The Biden administration is funneling $1 billion in taxpayer funds to America's northern and southern borders to make dozens of federal ports of entry more climate friendly. The General Services Administration (GSA) announced it would direct Inflation Reduction Act funds to support the climate initiatives at the border, even as the ongoing surge of migrants strains federal resources. While GSA Administrator Robin Carnahan and Andrew Mayock, President Biden's Federal Buy Clean Task Force co-chair, said the action would reduce "harmful emissions," the move was slammed by Republicans and experts. “As usual, the Biden administration is refusing to address a problem...

Joe Biden's weaknesses are obvious, but the State of the Union last Thursday and the president's $7.3 trillion budget proposal this week are reminders of just how tough he can be. Biden isn't simply an old politician, he's an old-fashioned one — the kind who believes in buying the vote. He tried it in the 2022 midterms with a student-loan forgiveness push that had little chance of surviving the courts. Donald Trump gets called a "transactional" politician, yet Biden is an absolute master of the traditional pork-barrel method of courting constituencies. He learned something in his 36 years in the...

Attorney General Merrick Garland made an unannounced visit to Ukraine, where he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to assist Ukrainian officials in pursuing war criminals, Fox News Digital confirmed. On Friday, March 3rd, Garland made the surprise to Lviv, Ukraine at the invitation of the Ukrainian prosecutor general to join President Volodymyr Zelensky at the "United for Justice Conference," Justice Department officials confirmed. Garland's trip was not disclosed "for security reasons."

Mission UpdatesFeed Upper Stage Liquid Hydrogen and Liquid Oxygen in Fast Fill Teams are in fast fill operations for the interim cryogenic propulsion stage’s (ICPS) liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks. The ICPS is the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket responsible for giving the Orion spacecraft the big push it needs in space to head toward the Moon. Teams continue to work toward a … 44 minutes ago

After 36 years in Congress, all of it on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I can confidently say this is the most transformative session of Congress for our transportation system since President Eisenhower established the Interstate Highway System. Let’s review the tape. Last fall we passed the historic bipartisan infrastructure law. This transformational legislation provides $660 billion for transportation—the largest ever one-time infusion of federal funds into our nation’s transportation system. It will provide over $400 billion in funding for roads, bridges, and major multimodal projects. In my state of Oregon alone, that means over $3.7 billion to rebuild and...

Ticket sales for the Artemis 1 launch, which is targeted for Aug. 29, were so popular after opening Tuesday (Aug. 2) that the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's website was briefly overwhelmed, Florida Today reported(opens in new tab) late last week. A "quick fix" to the website, however, allowed the complex to sell out two of the three package deals within 2.5 hours of opening ticket sales, the report added. The news comes amid expectations that more than 100,000 people will show up on the Space Coast of Florida, which includes the Kennedy Space Center and the nearby Cape Canaveral...

The third attempt at a final prelaunch test for NASA's Artemis I mega moon rocket began Thursday morning, but the trial hit some snags and ended prematurely at 5:10 p.m. ET. The agency will host a news conference on Friday to share updates and next steps for the test. The mission team had been attempting to fuel the 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) Artemis I rocket stack, including NASA's Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, but encountered a number of delays.

In a statement late Dec. 17, NASA announced that SLS engineers decided they needed to replace the controller for engine four in the core stage of the SLS. One of two redundant channels in the controller failed to power up consistently during tests of the integrated vehicle at the Kennedy Space Center. That controller operated as expected during the core stage’s Green Run test campaign at the Stennis Space Center that concluded with a full-duration static-fire test in March. An initial investigation failed to identify the root cause of the problem. NASA did not give a schedule for the work...

Russ Vought, former President Donald Trump’s White House budget director president of the Center for Renewing America (CRA), and Tom Jones, American Accountability Foundation (AAF) President, will launch the “Congressional Pork Map” accountability project on Thursday, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. Vought and Jones’ goal is to expose Republican and Democrats’ most “corruptive” earmarks and hold lawmakers accountable for their lobbying for pork in various bills. The AAF and CRA project aims to hold Republicans and Democrats accountable for stuffing legislation with special interest projects. The Congressional Pork Map project serves as an interactive map so that Americans can see...

MOSCOW. July 16 (Interfax) - The Russian government has approved talks between NPO Energomash and America's Orbital Sciences LLC on a contract for the use of the RD181M engine in the Antares launch vehicle, under a directive published on the official website for legal information. "To accept a proposal by the Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, which was agreed with concerned federal executive authorities, on conducting negotiation between the joint-stock company NPO Energomash named after Academic V.P. Glushko and Orbital Sciences LLC (United States of America) on the conclusion of a contract for the use of the RD181M liquid-propellant...

If you thought our Democrat legislators wouldn’t try to push through more pork in the Covid-19 congressional barrel, you have been living in a fool’s paradise. The House has just completed its response to the bipartisan Senate bill, the Cares Act. With its $2.2T price tag, what this act is “helping” entails a lot more than a coronavirus response. Of course, much of the money is targeted at necessary things that will directly mitigate Covid-19’s impact on our nation. But as Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel points out, “A rough calculation suggests the single biggest recipient of taxpayer dollars in...

Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker (D) September 2019 Porker of the Month for signing a $40.1 billion budget without any spending restraints and $1.4 billion in pork-barrel projects. Illinois currently has a $223.9 billion shortfall, which breaks down to a debt burden of $52,600 per taxpayer. The state has $6 billion in unpaid bills and the lowest credit rating of any state in the country. Its unfunded pension liability tops $130 billion. Illinois taxpayers are so saddled with debt, taxes, corrupt local government, and dwindling middle-class jobs that 157,000 residents have left over the...

Dear friend, This week, the Trump Administration announced plans to take $3.6 billion away from military construction projects so the President can build portions of his border wall. That includes taking away more than $77 million from projects in Virginia. President Trump's decision to pull funding from critical national security projects is deeply concerning. Our military construction funding should be used for safety improvements that protect our troops and bolster our national security, not for a vanity project. The Department of Defense informed me that the Administration plans to take funding away from the following military construction projects in Virginia:...

Now, government officials are dialing up the pressure on Boeing to speed up development of the long-overdue rocket, called Space Launch System or SLS. The space agency contracted Boeing in 2012 to build SLS's core components. Bridenstine's remarks came after US Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday at a National Space Council meeting in Alabama that news of more hangups with the SLS program were a "great disappointment," and the current timeline is "just not good enough." Boeing began building SLS's core stage, the backbone of the rocket, about seven years ago. Officials said at the time that SLS would...

NASA wants ideas for moon landers, space tugs and refueling ships. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine details the agency's plans to land astronauts on the moon by 2028 to space industry teams. (Image: © Joel Kowsky/NASA) =================================================================== WASHINGTON — NASA really wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. But to do that, the agency is looking to commercial space companies to build the landers, space tugs and refueling stations required to make a moon exploration effort that lasts. "This time, when we go to the moon we're going to stay," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a roomful of space...

Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced a seven-point family protection action plan in his state-of-the nation address in Budapest. “This is Hungary’s answer to challenges, rather than immigration”, the prime minister said. Listing the points of the action plan, Orban said: * every woman under 40 years of age will be eligible to a preferential loan when they first get married. * The preferential loan of the family home purchase scheme (csok) will be extended; families raising two or more children will now also be able to use it for purchasing resale homes. * The government will repay 1 million forints...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, working alongside Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne, has demonstrated that it can successfully fire the AR-22 booster rocket engine 10 times over 240 hours. The test outcome marked a major step in the development of DARPA’s Phantom Express experimental spaceplane, officials said July 10. “We needed to show that main propulsion system, the AR-22, … could in fact support rapid turn operations,” said Scott Wierzbanowski, DARPA’s program manager for the spaceplane. “We were extremely successful. We completely destroyed previously held records of how … you deal with a liquid-hydrogen, liquid-oxygen-type engine.” The agency also proved...

When Elon Musk and his team at SpaceX were looking to make their Falcon 9 rocket even more powerful, they came up with a creative idea — keep the propellant at super-cold temperatures to shrink its size, allowing them to pack more of it into the tanks. But the approach comes with a major risk, according to some safety experts. At those extreme temperatures, the propellant would need to be loaded just before takeoff — while astronauts are aboard. An accident, or a spark, during this maneuver, known as “load-and-go,” could set off an explosion. The proposal has raised alarms...

Boeing and NASA are working together in order to build the Space Launch System (SLS). The rocket is believed to be capable of transporting humans and cargo into deep space. According to reports, the rocket is estimated to be the most powerful rocket system ever built. Boeing also set up a promotional website for the rocket in which it calls out Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, calling the Falcon Heavy too small for deep space exploration. “The Falcon Heavy launch turned heads in February, but SpaceX’s rocket is a smaller type of rocket that can’t meet NASA’s deep-space needs,” the statement...

NASA is pressing forward on plans to build a Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, an outpost for astronauts positioned in the space near Earth's moon. According to NASA, the Gateway will not only be a place to live, learn and work around the moon but will also support an array of missions to the lunar surface. And scientists foresee a host of uses for the station. By making use of a suite of instruments housed on or inside the structure itself, or free-flying nearby, scientists could make Earth and solar observations. They could also carry out astrophysics and fundamental physics experiments. ......