Free Republic

Joy Behar told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that President Donald Trump’s plan to offer financial assistance to new mothers is to increase the number of “white children.” Partial transcript as follows: SUNNY HOSTIN: I want to reframe the issue a little bit because when I look at something like this, these proposals, I want to know why and I want to know who is making them. And so when I looked into that, they’re saying that the U.S. birth rate is declining, however, in 2024 there was a 1% increase in U.S. births, but that increase was...

The “end of history” is over and Europe is experiencing a “transatlantic crisis”, says Ursula von der Leyen, former Angela Merkel acolyte turned European Commission supremo. “Another, new European Union” is needed to shape the “new world order” emerging out of power struggles between the United States, China, and Russia the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen told a German newspaper. Speaking to Die Zeit, the top Eurocrat expressed her interpretation of events that “The West as we knew it no longer exists”, stating that beyond the old understanding of what countries were Western and which not,...

Comedian and podcaster Theo Von made a now or never pitch in support of President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs, crediting Trump for attempting to steer America off of a path that has left whole swaths of American towns and cities “empty” and “boarded up.” “The goal of tariffs is, if it costs more for people to bring their products in then they will build them here,” Von said, adding “So it’s kind of a longterm play. It’s going to take a while.” “If we don’t try this, then I think it’s a wrap. On this comedy tour, we’ve been to...

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that President Donald Trump’s tariff exemptions on technology products like phones, computers and chips were temporary. KARL: Let’s start with that news late Friday that this exemption on electronics, smartphones, laptop computers and the like. What’s the thinking? Why the exemption? LUTNICK: Well, if you remember, over the past couple of months President Trump has called out pharmaceuticals and semiconductors and autos. He called them sector tariffs. And those are not available for negotiation. They are just going to be part of making sure we reshore the core national security...

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace said Friday on “Deadline” that there was “nothing more emasculating” than the tariffs being implemented by President Donald Trump. Wallace said, “So, Mitch, I spent nine months having to learn about the power of the manosphere and seeing Donald Trump sit with all sorts of podcasters and bloggers, and people younger and hipper than me ha?ving to explain to me who they are and why they matter. And gosh darn if he wasn’t right. Right? They mattered a lot.”

The Islamic regime is weak and teetering on its own structural flaws, but no one would know it by the rhetoric coming out of Iran. In fact, just as Moscow did before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tehran is deflecting blame for troubles at home and engaging in double-talk abroad. Ask any Iranian observer and they will tell you that obfuscation has been standard practice of the regime since the Islamic Revolution. While U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is preparing to meet his Iranian counterparts in Oman this Saturday, Tehran continues to quibble over whether...

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during Thursday’s Cabinet meeting that countries are approaching the United States with offers they never previously would have because of President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Lutnick was the second cabinet member to speak after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just a day after Trump put a pause on his reciprocal tariffs on countries that did not retaliate against them. According to the White House, some 75 countries are looking to negotiate, while escalations with Beijing have led to the administration ramping up reciprocal tariffs to 125 percent on China. “They have come with offers that...

Thrifty Big Apple shoppers were rushing to stock up on the basics Wednesday after President Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs briefly went into effect — before he then announced a 90-day pause. “Pray to God that we all survive,” said Angelia Gonzalez, a 48-year-old mother who was filling her cart at the East Harlem Costco. “I feel some kind of way. I mean, I have a family.” Gonzalez travelled across town from her longtime home in West Harlem to stock up at the wholesaler over fears that prices will soon skyrocket from Trump’s massive “reciprocal” tariffs, which went into effect at...

Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy admitted he would “absolutely” vote for the Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections if President Trump continues to rattle the economy with his sweeping tariff war. The 48-year-old, who voted for Trump in the last election, told CNN Wednesday that he would still give the commander-in-chief a chance to prove his sweeping levies — but wouldn’t rule out jumping ship if the stock market continues to flounder. Asked if he’d be willing to ditch the GOP if the market doesn’t improve, Portnoy responded: “Yeah, absolutely.” “I was never some crazy MAGA guy,” the Barstool honcho...

The European Union will pause its first countermeasures against U.S. tariffs after President Donald Trump temporarily lowered the hefty duties he had just imposed on dozens of countries, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday. The bloc was due to launch counter-tariffs on about 21 billion euros ($23.25 billion) of U.S. imports from next Tuesday in response to Trump’s 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium. It is still assessing how to respond to U.S. car tariffs and the broader 10% levies still in place. “We want to give negotiations a chance,” von der Leyen said on X....

MrBeast is the latest high-profile figure to attack President Trump’s punitive tariffs, which he says will make it “way cheaper” to produce his ethically sourced chocolate brand Feastables overseas. “Ironically because of all the new tariffs it is now way cheaper to make our chocolate bars we sell globally NOT in America,” the YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, wrote on X on Tuesday. Donaldson noted it would be cheaper to produce his popular candy abroad because “other countries don’t have a 20%+ tariff on our cogs.” Feastables products are “designed” in Donaldson’s hometown of Greenville, North Carolina, and...

Nintendo is facing criticism over the high price tag of its upcoming Switch 2 console, which is set to launch at $450 in the U.S. Despite leftists eager to blame Donald Trump’s tariffs for the console’s high price, Nintendo of America’s top boss has now said that tariffs had nothing to do with the hotly-anticipated gaming machine’s price. TechSpot reports that Nintendo has found itself in the midst of a controversy surrounding the pricing of its highly anticipated Switch 2 console. The Japanese gaming giant recently announced that the Switch 2 will launch at a price point of $450 in...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday warned President Trump’s tariffs will destroy New York City’s economy and likely plunge it right into a recession — as he urged the commander in chief to “back off.” The New York Democrat claimed Trump’s “pinball tariff strategy” could result in a nearly $20 billion direct hit to the Big Apple and threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs. “President Trump’s pinball tariff strategy will wreak total havoc on New York City and is likely to drive us right into a recession. We’ve crunched the numbers, and what doesn’t look good for the nation,...

Big retail has announced its displeasure with President Donald Trump’s America First policy of reciprocal tariffs. On Wednesday, on what Trump has dubbed “liberation day,” he announced a sweeping reciprocal tariff policy, hoping to right the wrongs of decades of unfair trade policies with countries across the world. Many would think that corporate America, hoping to better the nation’s workers, would embrace the trade policies that would put American on a more even footing with its trading partners given that corporate America had embraced his America First agenda in January.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is opposing President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs after spending his career in Washington, DC, trashing the nation’s decades-long free trade policy for allowing multinational corporations to easily outsource American jobs to low-wage countries like China and Vietnam. “As someone who helped lead the effort against disastrous unfettered free trade deals with China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries, I understand that we need trade policies that benefit American workers, not just the CEOs of large corporations,” Sanders said in a statement before using economic libertarian talking points to attack Trump’s recipricol tariffs:

President Javier Milei on Thursday announced that Argentina will readjust its internal regulations to meet the requirements of President Donald Trump’s tariff proposals. Milei, a career economist and the world’s first and only libertarian president at press time, made the announcement during a brief speech at the “American Patriots Gala,” an event organized by the “We Fund the Blue” charity organization at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “In this framework, and as a result of the meetings that Foreign Minister [Gerardo] Werthein had with the U.S. Department of State and the Secretary of Commerce, Argentina will move forward to...

Wall Street kicked off Friday with another brutal stretch of losses driven by President Trump’s new tariffs despite stronger than expected March jobs data. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 1,200 points shortly before 10:30 a.m. EDT Friday, a day after the market suffered its worse single-day of trading in five years. The S&P 500 index was down 3.6 percent, and the Nasdaq composite was down 3.5 percent. All three major indexes took serious losses Thursday, the first full day of trading after Trump’s announcement of up to $600 billion in new import taxes. The scale and...

General Motors (GM) plans to expand production at one of its plants in Indiana thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs on foreign-made cars. On Wednesday evening, Trump announced a 25 percent tariff on all foreign-made cars to protect the nation’s auto industry from unfair trade competition. GM executives said they will be increasing production of light-duty trucks at the automaker’s Fort Wayne Assembly Plant in Indiana, according to an exclusive report by Reuters on Thursday.

China has reacted negatively to President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, with the country’s Communist Party-controlled foreign ministry accusing the U.S. of “bullying.” Trump unveiled a 34 percent tariff on Chinese goods at his “Liberation Day” event from the White House Rose Garden on Wednesday in response to China’s 67 percent tariff on American products. “In other words, they charge us, we charge them, we charge them less, how can anybody be upset,” the president said.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), section 604 of the Trade Act of 1974, as amended (19 U.S.C. 2483), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners’ economic policies...