Free Republic

On April 10, 2025, the Missouri House of Representatives passed gun law reform bill HB 328. The bill is essentially the same as Senate Bill SB 77, put forward by Senator Schnelting. The bills remove the ban on carrying weapons aboard most public transportation for people with concealed carry permits. Similar bills were filed in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.In 2022, the Senate leadership killed the bill due to a lack of attention. The 2024 version of the bill, HB 1708, did not pass the House. The bill has an excellent chance of passing if it can be brought to...

The Trump administration is finally tackling an issue that has plagued the nation's air traffic control system for decades. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy revealed on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday morning that a "brand new state-of-the-art system" is on the way to replace an infrastructure that has remained largely unchanged for 25 to 30 years. An official announcement is coming in the next few days, but Duffy explained what’s going to happen and why. "We use copper wires, floppy disks — I mean, it's atrocious, the system we use," Duffy stated. While he reassured the public that the current system...

A fiery pileup turned a quiet Friday morning into a nightmare as an inferno raged inside an Interstate 80 tunnel in southwestern Wyoming claiming at least two lives, and leaving five others seriously injured, forcing a total shutdown of the highway. Anyone trapped in the tunnel would have been forced to escape on foot through the smoke and darkness. Rescuers desperately tried to reach victims, but the tunnel’s structure - now compromised by falling concrete and searing heat - turned into a death trap.

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) has renewed his call to repeal a little-known section of the 2021 Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA) containing a federal mandate that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch. In a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday, Massie questioned Michael Hanson who was representing the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) over the requirement for a kill switch that can disable vehicles based on a driver’s performance. Hanson affirmed that section 24220 the IIJA directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require advanced impaired driving detection...

January 2025 – including the first 10 days of Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States – likely marks the beginning of substantial changes in federal transportation law and regulation, including a number of potentially disruptive changes to regulation of the motor vehicle industry and related funding and incentives. Republican control of the White House and both Houses of Congress, combined with a federal judiciary increasingly skeptical of expansive federal agency regulation, make this a ripe time for major changes in federal law and regulation, including regulation of transportation. President Trump and his supporters have expressed strong...

AFederal Aviation Administration warning system outage could lead to “residual delays” on Sunday morning, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy wrote on X. The FAA is working to restore the system. In the meantime, the agency has activated contingency systems to allow flight operations to continue. “The primary NOTAM system is experiencing a temporary outage, but there is currently no impact to the National Airspace System because a backup system is in place,” he wrote on X, “The (FAA) is working to fully restore the system, and there may be some residual delays tomorrow morning,” he also wrote. “We are investigating...

The Trump administration released an order on Wednesday saying the Department of Transportation will prioritize grants to communities that are cooperating with immigration officials. The order sent from the Department of Transportation is entitled “Ensuring reliance upon sound economic analysis in DOT policies, programs, and activities.” The main thrust of the order is to ensure that all funding is applied to projects that make sense on a cost-benefit basis, a goal that would eliminate the left-wing political projects that Biden’s DOT funded. However, there is also a provision in the order that states that communities will be given priority for...

Outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed during an interview on Sunday, a week before he steps down, that China has penetrated America’s water treatment plants, electric grid, and other critical civilian infrastructure, and is lying “in wait” for an opportunity to cyberattack at a time and place of its choosing. Asked on CBS’s 60 Minutes about Chinese penetration of U.S. cyber and infrastructure, Wray said China’s cyber program is the largest in the world and has stolen more of Americans’ personal and corporate data than every nation combined. Then, he added: But even beyond the cyber theft. There’s another part...

Ahmad Jamal Khamees Alhendi facing multiple charges after forcing major highway closure near GreenvilleICE has issued detainer for suspect, whose origin and immigration status remain unclear Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued a detainer for a truck driver who was arrested after allegedly making a bomb threat while pulled over on I-85 in South Carolina this week, indicating he may be in the country illegally.The busy interstate was shut down for hours on Thursday afternoon after South Carolina State Transport Police pulled over an 18-wheeler with a missing license plate in Greenville County.During the stop, the driver reportedly claimed...

Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life is one of cinema’s most enduring classics, a sentimental yet profound exploration of how one person’s contributions ripple through a community. The story’s alternate timeline, where George Bailey never existed, paints a grim picture of what life would be like without his sacrifices. Inspired by this tale, let’s imagine an alternate reality of a different sort—a world where fossil fuels never existed. Could we, like George’s Bedford Falls, find ourselves in a global Pottersville? Let’s explore how the absence of fossil fuels might affect the very fabric of our lives, from economic systems to...

Thanks to The United States’ combination of lackluster train infrastructure and miserable flying experience, there often simply aren’t great choices to get places. Is the Greyhound bus our savior? No, absolutely not. Yet, despite the Greyhound’s reputation as as a last resort option, I’ve taken it several times (not as a last resort!) over the last few years.

“He will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness and Beauty when rebuilding America's highways, tunnels, bridges and airports. He will ensure our ports and dams serve our Economy without compromising our National Security, and he will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEl for pilots and air traffic controllers.”

She’s no longer the teacher’s’ pet. The head of the Big Apple’s most powerful teachers’ union flunked Gov. Kathy Hochul and “tone deaf” Democrats Thursday for socking working class New Yorkers with a $9 congestion toll — a week after the election where the party took a drubbing. “It’s not what I expected to see Democrats doing a week after the election. It’s insane! Stop screwing the working class!” United Federation of Teachers President Mike Mulgrew told The Post, saying he will continue to press his active lawsuit to stop the congestion pricing plan. Aside from Hochul, Mulgrew blamed Democrats...

The massive flooding across NC and East Tennessee happened on Sept. 27. One of the busiest Interstate highways, I-40 is closed at the border of those two states after the roadway was washed away. Bridges have washed away, trapping people who can't get out. Where is the U.S. Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg? He has not uttered one statement, for the three days after this disaster. He is proof your sexual preferences do not qualify you to manage the infrastructure in this country.

New York's Metro Transit Authority (MTA) was in the news last month for setting a world record for the sheer number of bus and rail patrons who refuse to pay a fare to ride. A full 48% of bus riders had ceased to pay the fare in addition to about 14% of subway riders. Now the MTA has approved a new capital plan, saying it needs $65.4 billion over the next several years to keep the system going.Much of the plan focuses on basic repairs, like upgrading decades-old electrical equipment and repairing elevated subway structures. There’s spending for new turnstiles...

On August 30, 2024, Judge Iain D. Johnston of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois issued an order and opinion showing the ban on carrying concealed weapons on public transportation is unconstitutional. The ban is “as applied”. It is only applicable to the individuals before the court in this case. The Chicago Transit Authority is commonly referred to as the CTA. From the opinion and order: After an exhaustive review of the parties’ filings and the historical record,as required by Supreme Court precedent, the Court finds that Defendants failed to meet their burden to show...

A U.S. District Judge ruled Friday that Illinois’ ban prohibiting concealed carry for self-defense on public transportation violates the Second Amendment. The judge, Ian D. Johnston, issued his opinion in Schoenthal v. Raoul. The plaintiffs in the case, Benjamin Schoenthal, Mark Wroblewski, Joseph Vesel, and Douglas Winston, all claimed the ban violated the Second Amendment. Schoenthal, Wrogblewski, Vesel, and Winston’s case was supported by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Firearms Policy Coalition. Judge Johnston noted: In Illinois, openly carrying firearms is unlawful. Under the Firearm Concealed Carry Act, an individual with a concealed-carry license may generally carry a concealed...

Perhaps I'm the only one who was kind of relieved to see the Olympic games draw to a close yesterday. For some reason I just found them to be extremely aggravating this year, sucking up all the headlines in the news cycle and featuring endless plaudits for two males who were beating up women in the boxing ring. (Excuse me... I understand we're supposed to call them "women with a Y chromosome" now.) But the curtain had barely fallen when people were already talking about the next summer Olympic Games in 2028. They will be coming to Los Angeles that...

California Highway Patrol says a man is being charged for not obeying a warning from a construction worker who told him a portion of Highway 1 was closed due to a slide. This incident allegedly occurred on Friday at around 11:00 a.m. and required California State Parks rangers to request a search and rescue for the man. He fell trying to cross Regent's Slide after being told by a construction crew member not to. CHP said the man rode to the worker's location on a bike at around 9:25 a.m., which was two miles south of the Highway 1 closure....

Uber’s meteoric rise since its founding in 2009 — built on the simple question “What if you could request a ride simply by tapping your phone?” — made it a poster child for the industrial “disruption” that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs sought to unleash on the world.But, despite its impact, Uber lost money for years.Launching in new cities wasn’t cheap: drivers had to be enticed, marketing campaigns had to be executed, new servers had to be spun up, and expensive lawyers had to interpret local rules and regs — whatever their advice, Uber’s strategy seemed to be “launch first, answer questions...