Free Republic

Believing that a country is in bad shape if it imports more goods than it exports — i.e., if it has a trade deficit — is, in most cases, a harmless error in reasoning. It’s the sort of thing that seems to make sense at first glance, but any halfway decent economics professor can train it out of students in one or two lectures. That error in reasoning becomes harmful when the person who believes it is the president of the United States, and he is willing to claim emergency powers to act on it unilaterally. That’s what Donald Trump...

Monday, on CNN’s “The Lead,” Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, claimed European allies would hold back intelligence sharing because of the Trump administration’s “reckless” Signal chat among senior national security officials. Goldberg said, “Why would they just have one conversation on Signal? They were obviously feeling like this is a good place to to talk. It’s not. It’s an it’s an open access commercial app.” Host Jake Tapper said, “The Israelis are upset about this story because some of the classified information apparently came from them. Senator Warner said, what happens if the Israelis are this mad and the...

Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she did not oppose tariffs. However, she said President Donald Trump’s tariffs were “reckless and “chaotic.” Slotkin said, “I think most of us aren’t against tariffs full-stop. I think tariffs are an important tool in the tool kit. I think it’s just the way he’s handling tariffs is the way he’s handling everything else right now. We want change, but there’s reckless change, and then there’s responsible change. The way that he’s on again, off again, you know, pounding Canada as if they’re the exact same thing as...

Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi reminded Democratic California Sen. Adam Schiff that he had been “censured” by Congress for making allegedly “reckless” comments she said were “just like” the ones he made during her Wednesday confirmation hearing. Schiff questioned the nominee on whether she will have the independent ability to reject President-elect Donald Trump’s potential unlawful orders and to give him good advice that may differ from the president-elect’s viewpoints. As their exchange grew increasingly more hostile, Bondi pointed to Schiff previously being censured in June 2023 over his conduct during the investigation into the now-debunked claims that Trump colluded...

The Capitol Police officer who fatally shot Ashli Babbitt during the Jan. 6 riots and then was promoted has a lengthy internal affairs and disciplinary record that includes firearm-related incidents, a sweeping congressional investigation has found. The issues in Captain Michael Byrd's background included a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapon's purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood, according to congressional and police documents obtained by Just the News. Byrd’s record was uncovered during a larger...

North Korea is now sending troops to fight and die in Ukraine alongside Russian soldiers, according to Seoul’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun. Kim told South Korean politicians on Tuesday it was "highly likely" six North Korean officers were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Donetsk last week. "We assess that the occurrence of casualties among North Korean officers and soldiers in Ukraine is highly likely, considering various circumstances," Kim said, adding that they expect Pyongyang to send more soldiers to Russia in the near future. "The relations between Russia and North Korea are evolving to be almost as close...

Recent reports suggest that Russia is considering providing the Houthi rebels in Yemen with advanced anti-ship ballistic cruise missiles, potentially exacerbating the strategic dilemma facing Western powers as they seek to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea and beyond.

President Joe Biden on Friday defended the conviction of former President Donald Trump and claimed it was “reckless” for his gagged political opponent to call it “rigged.” Trump called the trial a “scam” and vowed to appeal the guilty verdict. About two hours after Trump spoke, Biden directly mentioned Trump by name in a carefully crafted press conference. “The American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed,” Biden claimed. “Donald Trump was given every opportunity to defend himself.” Biden pointed out that Trump’s lawyers chose the jury in Manhattan — a location from which Trump tried to...

It is not reported whether UMPC control modules will be installed on them. The Russians began mass production of three-ton FAB-3000 aerial bombs . This was reported to the Russian Ministry of Defense following the results of Minister Sergei Shoigu’s trip to the enterprises of the military-industrial complex in the Nizhny Novgorod region. “Sergei Shoigu was informed that mass production of FAB-3000 has been organized at the enterprise since February of this year,” the Russian department said in a statement.

The Federal Aviation Administration now says that the way to make the skies safer is to make their workforce more diverse, including hiring people with “severe” intellectual disabilities and psychiatric disabilities. No, this is not satire; see below, via Fox News: FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilitiesThe FAA says people with ‘severe’ disabilities are the most under-represented segment of the federal workforce. The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer "severe intellectual" disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out...

Iranians have little clue they are one stupid missile volley, or one reckless intervention away from a devastating Western response. Iran understandably believes it is riding quite high. It is flush with cash. It hints it almost has the bomb—and might use it soon. The Iranians are bragging about their new tyrannical allies like Russia and China. Iran boasts of now being the self-proclaimed leader of jihad on behalf of all Muslims. It gloats that it is feeding the Russian war-machine by exporting its own drones. Tehran proudly supplied and funded Hamas’s savage murdering of Jewish children in Israel. It...

The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law in December 2016, was created to help accelerate medical product development and “bring new innovations and advances” to patients quicker and more efficiently. Yet some researchers suggest the law is being used to bypass the once rigorous and evidenced-based standards for new drug approvals, allowing novel drugs to flood the market without adequate data and public transparency.(Maxx-Studio/Shutterstock)According to a research letter published on August 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open (JAMA), 24 of the 37 drugs approved in 2022 by the U.S. Food and Drug...

Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe said Wednesday on CNN’s “News Central” that former President Donald Trump’s “own rhetoric targeting” people “has an encouraging impact on people who are prone to violence.” Discussing an armed Utah man accused of making violent threats against President Joe Biden being killed by FBI agents Wednesday, anchor Kate Bolduan said, “He had been under investigation for months. They had been, you know, been to meet with him at least once before. And what do you think was, I’ll call it the last straw, but what led the FBI to execute this search warrant at...

Tennessee house Democrat Justin Jones, who was just reinstated to the chamber after being expelled for leading a disruptive gun-control protest on the floor, assaulted a driver and faced serious charges for other misconduct committed while attending racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020. Footage of rioting outside the state Capitol in 2020 first shared by Scoop Nashville appears to show Jones repeatedly hitting the driver of a car with a traffic cone. The video, which was resurfaced by the Post Millenial, shows Jones and other activists stopping and surrounding the vehicle before the driver escaped. Jones was charged with...

Russia has struck a deal with neighbouring Belarus to station tactical nuclear weapons on its territory but will not violate non-proliferation agreements, President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko had long raised the issue of stationing tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which borders Poland, Putin told state television. "There is nothing unusual here either: firstly, the United States has been doing this for decades. They have long deployed their tactical nuclear weapons on the territory of their allied countries," he said. "We agreed that we will do the same - without violating our obligations, I emphasize, without...

U.S. officials have released video that shows a Russian Su-27 fighter jet colliding with the propeller of a U.S. MQ-9 reaper drone. The video was released by the U.S. military's European Command on Thursday, allowing the public to view the widely-reported aerial incident. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin summarized the incident Wednesday in a press conference, saying, "Two Russian jets dumped fuel on an unmanned U.S. MQ-9 aircraft conducting routine operations in international airspace. And one Russian jet intercepted and hit our MQ-9 aircraft, resulting in a crash." Austin sharply criticized the Russian military for its actions, stating that the Black...

Three U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence said the highest levels of the Kremlin approved the aggressive actions of Russian military fighter jets against a U.S. military drone over the Black Sea on Tuesday. The Russian jets dropped jet fuel on the MQ-9 Reaper, an unprecedented action, and two of the officials said the intelligence suggests the intent seemed to be to throw the drone off course or disable its surveillance capabilities. It was “Russian leadership’s intention to be aggressive in the intercept,” said one of the officials. One official said he had not gotten indications that the signoff went...

Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake now has a criminal referral against her for tweeting photos of actual voter signatures.Secretary of State Adrian Fontes — a Democrat — wrote in his referral, “The protections afforded by this subsection prohibit posting any information derived from voter registration forms or precinct registers to the internet, and under no circumstance may a person other than the voter or [a] statutorily authorized person reproduce a voter’s signature.”Fontes referred Lake for the class 6 felony — the least severe category, typically with sentences between four months and two years if found guilty — for this...

For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces. Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today! ~ Hall of Heroes ~ Sgt. Reckless Info from here. By Nancy Lee White Hoffman - Originally Published November 1992 Today, the subject of American women in combat is a controversial issue. In the 1950s it was almost unheard of.But, during the Korean War there was at least one female who saw combat. She was a Marine named Sgt Reckless."I first saw this little lady. . .when the [First Marine]...

Sunday, during an appearance on FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for his action over the past several days, including his invasion of Ukraine. The California Republican called Putin “dangerous,” noting that no country in the world had stood with Putin.