Free Republic

President Trump has reportedly told his aides to prepare for a prolonged US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical waterway for global energy flows. On Wednesday, the president told Axios he is maintaining the blockade until Iran agrees to a deal over its nuclear program. The pressure campaign carries mounting costs beyond Iran. While the near-total cessation of flows through the key waterway is cutting off hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for Tehran, it’s also choking key corners of the global market. By extending the blockade, Trump is wagering that Iran’s export-dependent economy will...

History does not whisper. It warns. Empires do not collapse because of a single moment of weakness. They erode from within, slowly hollowed out by overreach, moral ambiguity and the false belief that their power exempts them from consequence. The question before us is not whether America is strong. It is whether we are wise enough to endure the burden that comes with being the world’s lone superpower. Scores of empires have come before us. Each one believed itself indispensable. Each one believed its reach was justified. And each one eventually fell, often not at the hands of foreign enemies...

If Republicans don’t act fast, Virginia will turn into Colorado, but it doesn’t have to happen that way, although it’ll be hard to undo the damage. Election Day 2025 was a broad disaster for Republicans. Everyone could see that. New Jersey stayed blue, but Virginia went back to being blue at the state level, and the Virginia Democrat party took greater dominance over the Old Dominion’s state legislature. Nationally, Republicans could not avoid the backlash in voter turnout, since the common pattern is that the party out of power rebounds in the Virginia and New Jersey elections the year after...

Varney then concluded by noting that it seems as though Hemingway was calling Trump's current situation a "disaster" for not only him, but for the Senate and the House. Following the Fox Business broadcast, eager viewers flooded social media with their thoughts on Varney and Hemingway's discussion. Taking to X, one Fox Business viewer pointed out, "Even @FoxNews acknowledges that nearly 70% disapprove of Trump's handling of things."

The mullahs and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are driven by fervent Islamic fundamentalism. Donald Trump’s opponents have shifted the focus from the existential threat posed by their ideology, weapons, and indiscriminate attacks on civilians across the Middle East to transient oil price spikes and Trump’s alleged derangement. Although most Muslims are not Islamists (militant Islamic fundamentalists), all Islamists are Muslims. Because of immigration and fertility rates, the Muslim population in Europe and the United States has exploded, exceeding 50 million in the EU (about 8% of the EU’s population), and 4 million in the United States. Pew projects Muslims will...

Are congressional Republicans absolutely determined to forfeit this November’s midterm elections? It sure looks that way. The GOP would hardly be acting any differently if it were secretly run by its enemies. The election-security provisions of the SAVE Act enjoy overwhelming popular support. According to CBS/YouGov polling, requiring photo ID to vote is literally an 80-20 issue, commanding the support of four out of five voters. Yet the Republican Senate, with a 53-47 majority, is struggling to pass the law. Yes, the filibuster gives Chuck Schumer a powerful weapon to use against the GOP, but there are ways around that...