Free Republic

The Biden administration must take serious steps to ensure China ceases its exploitation of the COVID-19 crisis in ways that threaten our national security.Some two decades ahead of schedule, on Jan. 12, the Trump administration declassified its Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework, a document outlining its national security strategy regarding Asia. The document is critical, and the timing of its declassification was telling.As National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien noted in a statement announcing its release, the framework “has provided overarching strategic guidance for implementing the 2017 National Security Strategy within the world’s most populous and economically dynamic region.”By making the document...

As Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States of America today, while the U.S. Senate takes up the second impeachment attempt against Donald J. Trump by the House of Representatives, we are left with some thorny issues that deserve answers sooner than later.Looking Beyond WordsAs Nathaniel Fischer reminds us, “When judging a statesman, we must look beyond his words and values to assess his true impact. While good values can play an important role, impact also depends on prudence to navigate contemporary challenges, the work ethic to push for results, and the...

As COVID-19 mutates, it's becoming more contagious than the virus that invaded the U.S. about a year ago. A trip to the grocery with a mask on, which used to be low risk, is becoming riskier. As cases and deaths increase rapidly, people are scared and upset. They're spending hours on websites and hotlines struggling unsuccessfully to get vaccine appointments. President-elect Joe Biden's vaccine distribution plan, which he announced Friday, doesn't offer them much hope. Biden said he'll open 100 federal vaccine sites in school gyms, community centers and stadiums the first month. That's for the entire nation. We're in...

Joe Biden says he'll "advance racial equity" by making "bold investments" in "Affordable Housing," aiding "businesses owned by Black and Brown people," establishing an "Equity Commission," etc. Gosh, that'll do it. Others demand reparations for slavery, more social programs and defunding the police. Yet, economist Thomas Sowell says, "I haven't been able to find a single country in the world where policies advocated for Blacks in the United States lifted any people out of poverty." Sowell's a Black man who grew up in poverty. His father died before he was born, and his mother died soon after. "We were much...

It's been obvious for quite a while that our country is coming apart at the seams. People on all sides are upset, and they want to punish their political opponents. We aren't able to disagree in a productive way. We demonize one another; we are too partisan; and we are definitely too angry. This isn't unique to the right or the left. It's all of us. If the riots in Washington, and those before them in cities across America, didn't prove we have grown out of control, then nothing will. There were, of course, well-meaning people in Washington who were...

President Donald Trump's two greatest foreign policy accomplishments both involve departures from outmoded paradigms that had, for decades, enraptured bipartisan neoliberal elites: unprecedented Arab-Israeli rapprochement in the Middle East and an assertive China containment strategy in the Asia-Pacific. On the former front, Trump boldly departed from the misbegotten "inside-out" conflict resolution approach, which elevated to the forefront the need for Israeli capitulation to Palestinian-Arab intransigence; on the latter front, Trump became the first president since Richard Nixon's famous 1972 trip to China to openly call into question our relationship with that ascendant, hegemonic Communist regime. The key difference is that,...

While House Democrats improperly invoke the 25th Amendment to try to remove President Trump, House Republicans should be using the 12th Amendment to give him four more years. Last week 138 Representatives from 35 states voted in favor of Trump by objecting to the fraudulent Biden electors from Pennsylvania. dir="ltr">The significance of that vote in the wee hours last Thursday morning is that more than 2/3rds of the states, which is the quorum required by the 12th Amendment, objected to a central part of the election certification. That was after the electoral count was interrupted by the misnamed “insurrection,” so...

There seems to be only one area of common ground in our country today: agreement that something is wrong. But regarding what that "something" is, and what we need to do, there is profound disagreement throughout the nation. The violence in which the sacred ground of our nation's Capitol building was violated by unruly hooligans, resulting in the death of five, is a low point in our history. Clearly, something is wrong. But we won't be able to fix it until we define it correctly. Those on the right are entirely correct that the tone of violence, chaos and nihilism...

Donald Trump has stumbled and fallen, and the establishment is not going to let slip this last opportunity to stomp him and his movement to death. On Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a startling ultimatum: Either Vice President Mike Pence and the Trump Cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment, declare the president "unfit" for office, and remove him within 24 hours, or House Democrats will vote to impeach him again. As the Senate, which would have to hear the case and hold the trial, does not meet again until Jan. 19, the day before Joe Biden is inaugurated, what is going...

Forbes Magazine abandoned any illusion of its free-market stance by issuing a threat to any company that chooses to hire some individuals who worked for President Donald Trump. Chief Content Officer of Forbes Media and editor of Forbes Magazine Randall Lane published an asinine op-ed that threatened, “Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie.” Lane included former Trump White House press secretaries Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Stephanie Grisham in his blacklist of Trump “fabulists,” in...

First Lady Melania Trump published an op-ed Monday morning on the official White House website about "the path forward" as the Trump Administration comes to an end. Here it is in full, courtesy of the White House: Like all of you, I have reflected on the past year and how the invisible enemy, Covid-19, swept across our beautiful country. All Nations have experienced the loss of loved ones, economic pain, and the negative impacts of isolation.As your First Lady, it has been inspiring to witness firsthand what the people of our great Nation will do for one another, especially when...

Source: Official White House Photo by Andrea HanksPresident Trump has reached the ending catastrophic scene in his Shakespearean tragedy playing out on the world's stage. A man well-born, who dared to shoot for the stars, reached the stars, had the universe at his fingertips, and then crashes back to Earth in flames due to taunting media gargoyles and his deep inner failings.Nevertheless, Trump remains one of the most effective presidents in U.S. history. This is the “Trump Paradox" that will intrigue historians (and psychologists) long into the future.Ignore the media cacophony trying to convince you that Trump is the source...

I am saddened by what occurred at the nation's Capitol building on Wednesday. Such mob violence, especially against the nation's institutions of government, must be firmly and unequivocally condemned. For my entire lifetime, the Republican Party has been the party of law and order and has zealously honored the Constitution. We must and will continue to be. Most conservatives are rightly condemning the violence, but it should be noted that this is not typical of people on the right. We almost never behave this way, and we don't embrace it. Extreme leftists routinely engage in violence. In the last year...

As we end the year, reality has the ring of a novel with twisting turns, intriguing characters, and a page-turning mystery where the outcome is still unclear. Who will be left standing to lead us after the January 20th inauguration? The media and political pundits are sure it will be Biden. Trump keeps pointing to developments on January 6th as the state electoral slates make their decisions known. The future will be revealed one day at a time. But the end of any year requires a view into the rearview mirror. Millions of Americans are grateful for Donald Trump and...

In his 1981 diatribe against contemporary American architecture, "From Bauhaus to Our House," Tom Wolfe notes that seemingly every American child "goes to a school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution center warehouse." Anecdotally speaking, this still seems to be the case in East Coast metro areas like Washington and New York City, where suburban teens shuffle in and out of buildings that could double as minimum-security prisons. Wolfe traces the problem to the Lost Generation, which internalized the notion that "they do things better in Europe." In architecture, this outlook was made manifest in...

I have long believed that the radical left represents an existential threat to the republic. Indeed, my last book, "Guilty By Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win," was based on that premise. So now what? Since it appears that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will take office in less than three weeks, my deepest fears should only be intensifying. Right? We needn't carry on this disingenuous debate about whether Biden is a centrist, because his growing mental incapacity makes it a moot point. As long as he is titular president, some invisible committee, one of whose central...

As the fouled days of 2020 wane into history, the air is filled with relief and anticipation for a better 2021. In some ways, the new year is guaranteed to be better by default, in that it should feature a pathway out of the current COVID nightmare. But from the virus to the election to the culture, 2020 has been a harsh teacher, showing us things that have long needed fixing. We can make 2021 and the ensuing years decidedly better if we grasp some hard-learned lessons and demand better of our leaders, our media and ourselves. We learned in...

Who could have predicted how dreadful a year 2020 would be. By this New Year's Eve, 19 million to 20 million Americans will have contracted a deadly virus in a pandemic that exploded out of China to carry off 333,000 Americans, one of every 1,000 of us. As 2021 begins, Americans will be dying at the rate of 10,000 a week and contracting the virus at a rate of more than 1 million new cases a week. Yet, during that same year, miracles occurred. Vaccines were created, tested and mass-produced by Pfizer and Moderna that could, with 95 percent effectiveness,...

Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now? Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, "The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color." Politico reported that minorities and the poor have "been more vulnerable to job and income losses from the ensuing economic crisis, in large part because...

The press scoffed at Trump's vaccine timeline. They said it would take a 'miracle.' The miracle came, and the press just shrugged.The Food and Drug Administration approved a COVID-19 vaccine this week from Moderna, the second one to be approved after a vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech SE was authorized last week. This past Monday, the first COVID vaccination took place in Queens, New York. As of this writing, the Pfizer vaccine is being administered to health-care workers all over the country. The Moderna vaccine, which in addition to protecting individuals from infection might help curb transmission of the virus,...