Free Republic

Venezuela, a nation that was once the richest country in Latin America and a paradigm of democracy in the region, now bears the ravages of authoritarian socialism. An abundance of photographs, videos, and statistics appearing in the media reveal a modern-day genocide, however stubbornly many of those same media refuse to use the term. We can clearly see that government violence as well as a dearth of food and medication are killing Venezuelans; even the country’s own data show deaths from maternal mortality, infant mortality, and malaria rising rapidly. Nearly a fifth of children are reportedly malnourished and nearly four-fifths...

A global terror-finance watchdog agency is set to blacklist Iran, broadening a U.S. effort to isolate Tehran financially and potentially straining the already sanctions-battered Iranian economy. Iran’s blacklisting by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force is expected to take place Friday and comes after European governments decided to join the U.S., according to American and allied officials. The task force’s decision will place financial transactions with Iran under additional scrutiny and escalate the pressure on the dwindling number of banks and businesses still dealing with the Islamic Republic to cut their ties. The blacklisting marks a step forward in the...

Charging that so-called "sanctuary" cities that protect illegal immigrants are jeopardizing domestic security, Attorney General Bill Barr announced a slew of additional sanctions that he called a "significant escalation" against left-wing local and state governments that obstruct the "lawful functioning of our nation's immigration system."

Four US Senators, including Ted Cruz, penned a letter on February 6 to Jack Dorsey asking him to ban Iranian leadership from using Twitter as part of the US sanctions against Iran. Republican senators led by Ted Cruz in a letter Thursday suggested Twitter may be violating U.S. sanctions by letting Iranian leaders maintain accounts, which they asked company CEO Jack Dorsey to ban. The big picture: Twitter has become a major political target for Cruz and other Republicans, who claim the company and other Silicon Valley giants are biased against conservatives and the Trump administration. "While the First Amendment...

President Trump wasn’t called a racist until he ran against Hillary. That’s how liberals operate. Play the race card every time. They’ve done it for decades. Fortunately, minorities aren’t falling for it as much as they used to. The black people no longer think they are victims – but free men – to do and achieve as they can. Just like all should be able to do. In November, two polls found that President Trump’s approval rating among black likely voters had reached 34%. An Emerson poll found that Trump has a 34.5% approval rating among black likely voters and...

Tariffs were once a mainstay in U.S. trade policy. Constituting the main source of federal revenue from 1790-1914, and at one point providing over 90% of government income, they were a pivotal component of U.S. fiscal and foreign policy. Their main motivation in those times: protect U.S. industry from foreign opposition. It wasn’t until colossal industrial growth coupled with the introduction of the income tax rendered them less critical to the government balance sheet, and their use declined. Post-World War II, tariffs took on the negative connotation you see today. The West largely eschewed them in favor of free trade...

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate for United States GDP for the fourth quarter of 2019 and the entire calendar year of 2019. The release estimates that real GDP grew 2.1 percent at an annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 2.3 percent over the four quarters of 2019. Consumer spending and residential investment posted notable gains, propelling GDP growth and setting the stage for future economic expansion. These results show that the economy remains resilient despite a slowdown across the rest of the world and the continuation of the longest expansion in American...

Nancy Pelosi famously proclaimed that Democrats had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it. On the other hand, Democrats in California last year passed legislation outlawing many freelance and independent contracting jobs knowing the disruption it would cause—and voters are now discovering the damage. Ride-hailing app Uber this week rolled out changes for drivers and riders in California in an effort to duck the state’s new labor law AB5. That law reclassified a large swath of independent contractors from freelance journalists to Uber drivers as employees who are owed rest breaks, workers compensation, health benefits and paid...

I was very skeptical when U.S. and Chinese officials announced the two nations had reached a “Phase One� trade deal last December. Neither country released any details regarding the agreement. Chinese officials have been exceptionally muted since the announcement, only emphasizing that the United States would remove a number of tariffs, without mentioning any commitments China had made. Neither the United States nor China even articulated a specific dollar amount of the additional U.S. farm products China pledges to purchase.Last week, both the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office posted the full text of the agreement, immediately...

Three years ago! And one year from now (God willing!) Donald Trump will be sworn in for a second term. But in three short years, these are his accomplishments, just off the top of my head. TPP trade deal - gone Iran Deal - gone Paris Climate Change accords - gone NAFTA - gone (just last week replaced by USMCA) Individual Mandate to purchase health care - gone Corporate Taxes - slashed to 21% Regulations - large bulk eliminated Judges - Confirmed (185 total, 2 Supreme Court, 50 Circuit, 133 District) NATO - paying more of its dues ISIS Caliphate...

Watch cable news, particularly CNN or MSNBC, and hear how the “walls are closing in” on President Trump. Impeachment is underway, a solemn and sober process, celebrated by House Speaker Pelosi handing out autographed pens during the impeachment article signing ceremony. One would think she was signing landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act given the pomp and circumstance. Meanwhile the Senate passed the USMCA trade agreement, now ready for Trump’s signature, another promise made and kept by the accidental president who has no idea what he is doing. The rube of a president also announced a trade deal with...

Way back in 2015, when the rumors began to circulate about Donald Trump running for president, rumors we had heard for decades, I was shocked at how many “smart people” — those snobs I enjoy heckling as “#GOPSmartSet” — underestimated The Donald. Shrugging off the idea Trump would actually run was fair enough. Like I said, he’d been flirting with the idea for decades. Even I would have bet it was a publicity stunt. No, what surprised me was how #GOPSmartSet and the elite media laughed off Trump as a clown, a huckster, a carnival barker, and bankrupt loser. That,...

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

President Trump trashed 2020 Democrat Mike Bloomberg, calling the septuagenarian a "terrible speaker" and mocking the billionaire's height at 5 feet, 8 inches. "Mini Mike Bloomberg doesn’t get on the Democrat Debate Stage because he doesn’t want to - he is a terrible debater and speaker," tweeted Trump on Friday. "If he did, he would go down in the polls even more (if that is possible!)." The president further slammed Bloomberg in a follow-up tweet soon after, saying, "Mini Mike Bloomberg ads are purposely wrong - A vanity project for him to get into the game. Nobody in many years...

TAMPA, Florida — Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart News exclusively on Thursday that the Senate’s passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada (USMCA) trade agreement is a “huge win” for American workers and farmers. Pence’s exclusive interview with Breitbart News, which came on his bus tour between Tampa and Orlando, for which he was conducting a campaign swing up the all-important I-4 corridor in the Sunshine State, came moments after the U.S. Senate passed the USMCA, 89-10. The overwhelming Senate vote came a month after the House in mid-December similarly passed the deal with overwhelming bipartisan support, as the USMCA sailed through...

The Senate overwhelmingly passed President Trump's proposed replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Thursday, sending the deal to the president’s desk for his approval. Passage of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) represents a rare moment of bipartisanship in a bitterly divided Congress. The deal cleared the Senate by a vote of 89 to 10 on Thursday, close to a month after passing the House by a vote of 385-41. Republicans were eager to help Trump accomplish a major pillar of his economic agenda despite their preferences for a deal with looser restrictions. Democrats, who broadly shared Trump’s...

US threats to impose tariffs on European autos did not come up in trade talks in Washington, European Union Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan said Thursday. “It was not mentioned; it was hardly mentioned,” Hogan told reporters in the US capital. “I think it should be good news for Germany.” The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to put tariffs on European automobiles imported into the US, citing threats to national security. But a deadline to make a decision passed last November without a comment from the White House after the EU threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on US imports. Hogan’s remarks...

Expected live at 11 a.m. ET: The Senate is expected to vote on the USMCA trade agreement. At noon, impeachment Managers, led by the House Sergeant at Arms, hold a procession ceremony.

Not only has the “Phase One” trade deal now been signed by the United States and China, but official texts have now been released. And my initial read indicates that the Trump administration just might have come up with an effective enforcement regime – though success here will depend on U.S. governments (including this one) displaying nerves of steel. At the same time, the enforcement terms raise the question of why the President felt the need to reach this point via a treaty, rather than simply punish China unilaterally for economic transgressions – as his tariffs on hundreds of...

If you go by the Labor Department’s statistics, the job market was very hot in November. Then it became cold in December. Average the two out and — in true Goldilocks fashion — the economy (like the porridge) may now be just right. I’ve always told you that the government’s employment stats are flaky. Various adjustments are supposed to take care of things like Christmas hiring and new companies just coming into being. But they don’t. They only confuse things. And only after many months or even years of revisions do we learn what the job market was really like....