Free Republic

You see, at first, when someone says, 'Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,' it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works – but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is: First, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets. And then, while all this is going on, something even worse occurs. High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by foreign countries...

Former President Reagan’s daughter says her father “would be heartbroken” by actions under President Trump that have signaled America’s shift toward isolation from longstanding allies. “I think he would be grieving,” Patti Davis said during a Tuesday night appearance on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.” “The America that I grew up in, that we all have known, is one that had alliances and was friends with other countries, and it would go to other countries who were in trouble, who were being tyrannized, or invaded, or, you know, otherwise suffering from famines, for example,” she said. Trump, since reclaiming the White...

HBO MAX funnyman John Oliver listed two positive things you could say about President Ronald Reagan: “‘He was our only president to make a movie with a chimp,’ or ‘He’s dead.’” Oliver was sounding off on what he called “centrist Democrats” and their generally fecklessness response to Rep. Al Green (D-TX) being removed from the House chamber after her refused to take his seat and cease shouting at President Donald Trump during his Congressional address Tuesday night. The Last Week Tonight host took umbrage with the split screen of Green being booted from the chamber for grandstanding, when other Republicans...

Prior to the current recession, the deepest post-World War II economic downturn occurred in the early 1980s. According to the accepted arbiter of the economy’s ups and downs, the National Bureau for Economic Research, a brief recession in 1980 — lasting only six months — and a short period of growth, were followed by a sustained recession from July 1981 to November 1982.The unemployment rate hovered between 7% and 8% from the summer of 1980 to the fall of 1981, when it began to rise quickly. By March 1982 it had reached 9%, and in December of that year the...

Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., lit into President Donald Trump on Tuesday night, suggesting that President Ronald Reagan — whose “peace through strength” mantra Trump has adopted — would be appalled by his approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine. “After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave,” Slotkin, referring to Trump’s unexpectedly contentious meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last week, said in her response to the joint address to Congress. “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s,”...

I miss Rush Limbaugh. During the Biden years, I couldn’t help imagining him up in Heaven begging God to put him back in the game. Today I imagine him sitting in a bar smoking a cigar with Ronald Reagan and buying a round for the house every time a new EO drops. When he was here however there were a few things that he used to say that I loved because of their clarity. He always pointed out that illegal immigration was all about votes and that Democrats were hypocrites on the issue. He’d suggest that if it was real...

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) on Wednesday declared that Donald Trump echoing pro-Russia propaganda and attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marks a “really disturbing day” as the U.S. president looks to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. Slotkin, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Homeland Security Committee, told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace that Ukrainians are now seeing the U.S. “walking away” from defending democracy in favor of “siding with the aggressor, with the autocratic regime.” “I can’t overstate how different this is in the post-World War II America and I think Ronald Reagan must be rolling over in his grave...

Riverside County, CA Sheriff Chad Bianco has announced his entry into the race for California Governor to replace Gavin Newsom. The election is coming in November, 2026. Sheriff Bianco will be taking on current Democrat favorite Kamala Harris and others. No Republican has ever been elected governor in California since Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected in 2006...

What does 1984, 2004, and 2024 all have in common? They were all election years, yes, but one common thread binds them all. They were revolutionary years of real outsiders and mavericks. What is fascinating about this is that in each of these years, we remembered and reflected on the resolve, leadership, and tenacity of the 40th president of the United States; Ronald Wilson Reagan. In 1984, Ronald Reagan won the biggest landslide in history, carrying 49 states in an exceedingly bold and decisive win. In 2004, Ronald Reagan passed away, which caused people to reflect on his legacy in...

In his first weeks as president, Donald J. Trump dove right in and took some significant pro-life actions. He started by signing the Mexico City Policy, which prevents federal money from funding out-of-country abortions. He pardoned jailed pro-lifers and released them from prison. He removed Biden’s pro-abortion government website. He penned an executive order declaring that life begins at conception. And he enforced the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds from paying for domestic abortions. These actions all mark incredible strides in the effort to return our country to a nation that respects and cherishes all human beings, but they...

“I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.” “The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination.” “Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

The Kremlin has accused President Trump of attempting to erode Russia and China’s nuclear potential with his plan for an Iron Dome missile defence system. The programme was “yet another confirmation of the US focus on turning space into a scene of armed confrontation and deployment of weapons”, Maria Zakharova, the chief spokeswoman of the Russian foreign ministry, said. Trump issued an executive order on Monday mandating a process to develop an “Iron Dome for America”, a reference to the aerial defence shield used by Israel. Zakharova said that this implied “a sharp intensification of the US national missile defence...

Russia slammed Donald Trump’s plan for an ‘Iron Dome’ missile defence shield in a nuclear weapons space war row. Moscow said the move was designed to weaken Russian and Chinese nuclear deterrence. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also stressed that Russia saw the “Iron Dome” plan as confirmation of a US intention to turn space into a theatre of military confrontation. Trump signed an order on Monday for the implementation of a next-generation US missile defence shield against ballistic, hypersonic, cruise missile and other forms of aerial attack. The plan is believed to be modelled on the defensive dome...

On Wednesday, January 29 an Army Helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane trying land at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Within a few hours of the crash, Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif) was able to determine that "President Trump bears the full weight of responsibility for this tragedy. The fact that this crash came so quickly following the Senate's confirmation of the appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense is a telling sign that Trump's cabinet nominees are dreadfully unqualified for the jobs to which they are being appointed." "I am sorry to say that this tragedy is...

At some point during tonight’s State of the Union, President Barack Obama will likely glance up and to the left of his podium, gesture toward the gallery, and mention one of the unknown Americans seated in the first lady’s box. This year their names include Edith Childs and Earl Smith, but insiders have a different name for them: “Skutniks,” in reference to the first everyday American invited by a president to embellish the State of the Union. Lenny Skutnik was a local hero, a Congressional Budget Office employee who plunged into the frigid Potomac after an Air Florida plane crash...

When Attorney General William Barr stated "spying did occur" against the 2016 Trump campaign, most attention was focused on the FBI's surveillance of former junior foreign policy aide Carter Page. But the spying Barr was thinking of, and which he said may or may not have been legally authorized, is more likely to be that carried out by Stefan Halper, a former Republican operative and White House aide who became a foreign policy academic with close ties to both American and British intelligence. One could be forgiven for believing Halper was a creation of the spy novelist John Le Carré....

Full Title: The Victory Squad with Ronald Reagan and John Wayne 1966

President Donald Trump added to his excellent pro-life record today by reversing Joe Biden’s policy forcing Americans to fund International Planned Parenthood. While on Air Force One today, President Trump signed crucial pro-life executive orders which pro-life advocates have strongly prioritized and advocated for. During his first week in office last term, Trump signed the Mexico City policy in one of his first acts as president. The pro-life policy prohibits American tax dollars to groups that promote or provide abortions overseas. The move defunded two major abortion chains of hundreds of millions of American tax dollars. The International Planned Parenthood...

Transatlantic trepidation By John Palmer in Brussels 22 January 1981 No inauguration of any modern American president has been viewed in Europe with such ambiguity as that of Mr Ronald Reagan. Behind the official words of welcome and the delegations of support for the administration the United States’ European allies harbour serious misgivings about the future of US/European relations. The attitudes of western Europe to a “strong” US have always been contradictory – but rarely more so than today. On the one hand, most governments are anxious to see Washington pursue a more consistent and self confident international foreign policy....

He was known as the most charismatic and consequential president of the post-war 20th century. His contagiously positive demeanor, moral resoluteness, and clear focus, as well as his ability to radiate hope, optimism, and an ambitious “let’s get this done” attitude, though commanding, pragmatic, and firm when he needed to be, enabled him to take on the threat of the most dominant and occupying force in the world since the beginning of that century; The Soviet Union. As communism spread throughout the world not only in the Soviet Union, but in Cuba and other parts of the world as well,...