Free Republic

While tariffs make wars more likely, embargoes make wars difficult to avoid. Senator Lindsey Graham’s Sanctioning Russia Act calls for 500% tariffs on dozens of countries and essentially amounts to an embargo.If this bill were to pass, it would cause an economic calamity on a scale never before seen in our country.In its insistence that Moscow be a permanent enemy of the United States, the foreign policy establishment is pushing to impose more punitive measures on Russia should they refuse to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. The Sanctioning Russia Act seeks to inflict a series of additional sanctions and...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) immediately announced his opposition to the House-passed bill Thursday, vowing to vote against it unless Senate Republican leaders remove a provision to raise the federal debt limit by $4 trillion over the next two years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), an outspoken fiscal hawk, said Thursday that there are four Senate Republican conservatives who will vote against the House bill as currently drafted, which would be enough to sink the bill if there is full attendance. Johnson said: “I think I’ve got at least four right now that this is not going anywhere.”

The 1,116-page bill the House passed early Thursday morning to enact President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda faces a swarm of objections from Senate Republicans. GOP senators are calling for a rewrite of the bill to address concerns ranging from Medicaid reforms and the phase-out of clean energy incentives to the sale of government owned spectrum bands and the bill’s projected impact on the federal debt. The deal that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) struck with Republicans from blue states to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions from $10,000 to $40,000 is also a sticking point with Republican...

BBC'S SUMMARY In an extraordinary Oval Office meeting, Donald Trump confronts South Africa's leader with video over discredited claims of a white genocide in South Africa Trump says white farmers are "fleeing South Africa" and plays footage showing people chanting "kill the Boer, kill the farmer" This is the first time we've seen this sort of ambush in the Oval Office, reports Bernd Debusmann Jr Responding to the footage, Ramaphosa says the chants don't represent government policy There were parallels with the infamous Zelensky meeting in the Oval Office, writes Anthony Zurcher, but Ramaphosa kept his composure A group of...

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed that federal air marshals surveilled now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard during domestic flights last year, according to documents reviewed by the senator’s office. The Kentucky lawmaker made the revelation during a Capitol Hill hearing on Tuesday involving Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, who was testifying about her department’s budget request for the fiscal year 2026. “I commend you and the Trump administration for ending all government-sponsored censorship using DHS personnel. Just last night, I received the first set of records from the department regarding Tulsi Gabbard’s placement on the TSA Quiet...

President Trump has returned from the Middle East to mounting questions about whether it’s appropriate for him to accept a luxury Qatari jet to serve as the next Air Force One, including from Republicans increasingly dubious that the move is a smart and worthwhile idea. Republicans have given the president a wide berth on a multitude of issues throughout his first four months in office as they push to enact his agenda. However, very few are rushing to his defense after he made clear he plans to accept the $400 million gift. “It’s an unnecessary distraction,” one Senate Republican told...

GOP senators have raised concerns about the deficit impact of the emerging package, as well as the cuts to Medicaid and clean energy funding. WASHINGTON — As House Republicans scramble to corral the votes to pass a massive bill for President Donald Trump's agenda, their Senate counterparts are making clear the emerging package won’t fly as written when it reaches them.Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., was categorical that the product coming out of various House committees cannot pass the Senate as it currently stands.“No. We’ll make changes,” Hoeven said. “We’ve been talking with the House and there’s a lot of things...

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. has given Iran a proposal for a nuclear deal. "Yeah they have a proposal, but more importantly, they know they have to move quickly or something bad, something bad is going to happen," Trump said. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned this week that the United States is facing a critical moment with Iran to curb its efforts to develop a nuclear weapon and limit its uranium enrichment. TRUMP WARNS IRAN FACES ‘VIOLENCE LIKE PEOPLE HAVEN’T SEEN BEFORE' IF NUCLEAR DEAL FAILS The International Atomic Energy Agency, often referred to as the...

@tomselliott Sen. @RandPaulon @SpeakerJohnson's "obscene" spending bill: "No conservative should support raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion. So, that alone is enough for me not to support the bill, even though I support large segments of the bill."

President Trump railed against CBS on Sunday night, saying the network should lose its broadcast license after “60 Minutes” aired segments on Ukraine and Greenland that the president said cast him in a negative light. “Almost every week, 60 Minutes … mentions the name ‘TRUMP’ in a derogatory and defamatory way, but this Weekend’s ‘BROADCAST’ tops them all,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post after watching Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast. “They did not one, but TWO, major stories on ‘TRUMP,’ one having to do with Ukraine, which I say is a War that would never have happened if the...

Stanford University Hoover Institution fellow Victor Davis Hanson recommends everyone “take a deep breath” when it comes to all the talk about tariffs. Appearing this week as a guest on Sirius XM’s “The Megyn Kelly Show,” the author and podcast host made several important points for Americans to consider as many in the media and Wall Street pundits predict calamity for the economy due to President Donald Trump’s trade policies. “There is a lot of misinformation,” Hanson said, first pointing out that many who are critical of Trump are only criticizing him because he is “Trump.” “Donald Trump did everything...

Donald Trump will let Vladimir Putin keep almost all the territory he has seized from Ukraine under the terms of a proposed peace deal. The condition is part of a seven-point plan to end the war that leaves Ukraine with no clear US security guarantee. It was due to be discussed in London on Wednesday, when US officials would hear Kyiv’s reaction, though the talks were downgraded when US secretary of state Marco Rubio pulled out. Foreign ministers from the UK, France, Germany and Ukraine withdrew in an apparent response. Discussions were instead scheduled to take place between senior officials...

WASHINGTON — Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach. “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit. The libertarian...

President Donald Trump’s unprecedented tariffs, particularly on China, and recent attacks on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell caused alarm among some of his top advisers and America’s biggest CEOs, who warned of financial chaos and store shelves that could go bare, people familiar with the conversations said. The warnings — and the markets’ own volatility this week — seemed to have broken through. Trump backed down Tuesday from his threats to try to remove Powell from the job, telling reporters in the Oval Office: “I have no intention of firing him.” That prompted sighs of relief on Wall Street. A...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing his push against President Donald Trump's tariffs, with legislation he is co-sponsoring against them to come before the Senate next week. Paul says lawmakers should be in control of tariffs, rather than Trump, through the use of a national-emergency law. The discussion will come less than a month after Paul was one of the only two chamber Republicans to vote against his party's budget, which is seen as a key part of the president's tax cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "I don't have any bad feelings towards the president, but this is...

@Rightanglenews BREAKING - Sen. Rand Paul is co-sponsoring a bill to strip President Trump’s authority on tariffs and hand the power to Congress, just weeks after voting against Trump’s budget.

This is intolerable the latest reports I'm hearing they've blockaded the Strip and food is running out (days away) meanwhile airstrikes continue and children are being killed. There are protests in Jerusalem DAILY by Israeli citizens against these brutal tactics and the war in general. The Israeli government says it is trying to pressure Hamas to hand over hostages. President Trump is going to have to intervene or there is going to be a massive crisis especially if the reports are right about them being days away from running out of food. Over 2.3 million Palestinians are affected.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on Sunday said he’s questioning President Trump’s “endgame” in his approach to tariffs, saying the ongoing “volatility” isn’t good for businesses. “One thing I learned in the private sector is unpredictability can work pretty well in the negotiation, but the private sector — businesses want certainty. They want stability. They don’t like to see volatility,” Johnson said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.” “And, so, I’ve just been questioning exactly what’s the endgame here? What’s the strategy?” he continued. Johnson called himself an “unabashed free trader” and touted what he sees as the...

The tip came from a lawyer, a faithful reader from Brooklyn named Harvey Herbert- An Egyptian hieroglyphic papyrus now in the Brooklyn Museum mentions an Asiatic slave named Shiphrah. Shiphrah, of course, is the name of one of the Hebrew midwives (the other is Puah) whom Pharaoh summoned to carry out his order that all boys born to the enslaved Israelites be killed (Exodus 1-15)... And here was an Asiatic slave with this same name mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus written in hieroglyphics... All I can do is report what to some (surely, to me) are previously unknown facts that...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) signaled Thursday that President Trump’s threat to levy tariffs on key trading partners of the U.S. is hurting his constituents, saying “when we start losing, you back off.” “Almost every industry in Kentucky has come to me and said, ‘It will hurt our industry and push up prices of homes, cars,’ and so, I’m going to continue to argue against tariffs,” Paul said late Thursday in an interview with CNN. The Kentucky Republican argued the U.S. has “more leverage” than any other nation, but not “all the leverage.” He urged the Trump administration to be “smart”...