Free Republic

President Biden said Friday that the United States will begin airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza amid negotiations for a temporary ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. Biden confirmed the planned airdrops during an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of Italy. The effort will provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza as watchdogs and aid agencies have warned of increasingly dire circumstances there as Israel carries out military operations throughout the enclave. The airdrops are seen as a way for the U.S. to get aid into the area while officials continue efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and...

Almost 70 percent of Americans say the U.S. would benefit from new curbs on migration at the southern border, according to an Economist/YouGov poll of 1,671 citizens. The February 11-13 poll asked, “If Congress passes a new bill restricting the admission of new migrants at the border, do you think this would be good or bad for the United States?” Sixty-nine percent of the Americans responded that it would be “good,” while only 14 percent predicted “bad.” That result shows five Americans believe migration curbs will benefit America for every one American who believes migration curbs would be harmful. The...

Mexico is our next-door neighbor but it seems many Americans are not well-informed about it. Wrong and outdated impressions of Mexico affect our policymakers as well. This is particularly true regarding border and immigration policy. Americans think of Mexico as a poor country. And it is, compared to the United States. But Mexico is wealthier and has a higher standard of living than most countries in Latin America and Africa. There are, of course, many poor Mexicans. But doesn’t Mexico itself, with all its wealth, have a responsibility to help its own poor people? In the U.S., any meddling perpetrated...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said “the U.S. is on an unsustainable fiscal path” in an 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley released Sunday. “The U.S. federal government’s on an unsustainable fiscal path. And that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy. So, it is unsustainable. I don’t think that’s at all controversial,” Powell said when asked if the national debt is a danger to the economy.

I have previously reported on my concern about the rise in stable cancer relapses that I have witnessed in my melanoma clinic. None of these patients of mine presented with the classic prodrome of relapse that I had always noticed previously, such as severe depression due to bereavement, divorce or bankruptcy. Indeed the only thing I found they had in common was to have had a recent booster mRNA covid vaccine. I phoned around my colleagues not only in the UK but also in Australia to check their experience. In no case did they deny such a link. Indeed, they...

A new set of rules from the Biden administration seeks to rein in private health insurance companies’ use of prior authorization – a byzantine practice that requires people to seek insurance company permission before obtaining medication or having a procedure. The cost-containment strategy often delays care and forces patients, or their doctors, to navigate opaque and labyrinthine appeals. The administration’s newly finalized rules will require insurance companies who work in federal programs to speed up the approval process and make decisions within 72 hours for urgent requests. The regulations will also require companies to give a specific reason as to...

FBI Director Christopher Wray is set to warn lawmakers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that Chinese hackers are preparing to "wreak havoc and cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities." Wray and other government officials are set to testify in front of the House Select Committee at 11 a.m. for a hearing titled "The Chinese Community Party Cyber Threat to the American Homeland and National Security."

An Iran-backed Iraqi militia suspected of a drone strike in Jordan that killed three US soldiers says it has suspended operations against US forces. Kataib Hezbollah, which is part of an umbrella group that claimed Sunday's attack, said this was "to prevent embarrassment of the Iraqi government".

A con artist who is accused of defrauding the US Army out of $100 million has been given the green light to retire with full benefits. Janet Yamanaka Mello, 57, who is currently under criminal investigation, brazenly claims she “earned” her civil servant retirement package despite allegedly using the funds to purchase over 30 homes, luxury cars, and jewelry through the seven-year-long scheme. The military admitted that there is nothing that can be done to withhold Mello’s benefits from her as it’s protected under a federal law that was held up in government bureaucracy. “The command has no authority to...

The US Federal Reserve’s favored measure of inflation ticked higher last month, according to government data published Friday, indicating that its long-running battle against rising prices is not over yet. The latest announcement will likely ensure the US central bank keeps interest rates on hold at its next decision announcement on Wednesday, as policymakers continue talks on when to start cuts. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose at an annual rate of 2.6 percent last month, unchanged from November, the Department of Commerce said in a statement. On a monthly level, headline PCE inflation rose by 0.2 percent...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation’s economy grew at an unexpectedly brisk 3.3% annual pace from October through December as Americans showed a continued willingness to spend freely despite high interest rates and price levels that have frustrated many households. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy’s total output of goods and services — decelerated from its sizzling 4.9% growth rate the previous quarter. But the latest figures still reflected the surprising durability of the world’s largest economy, marking the sixth straight quarter in which GDP has grown at an annual pace of 2%...

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday eagerly touted a report from two climate alarmist think tanks, Common Wealth in the United Kingdom and the Climate and Community Project in the United States, that claimed the British and American militaries “owe” $111 billion in “climate reparations” to communities supposedly threatened by their carbon emissions. The Global Times is the house organ of the Chinese government, the worst polluter and carbon emitter on Earth by a very wide margin, but it naturally left China’s emissions unmentioned as it focused on the “social cost of carbon” calculations run by the two think tanks...

Large US banks reported mixed results Friday, dented by exceptional costs connected to job cuts and to replenishing a federal fund tapped during last year’s crisis involving midsized lenders. But while consumer credit quality has diminished somewhat, executives continued to describe a relatively solid US economy, with talk of a recession replaced by a “soft landing” of slower growth. “We think the soft landing is a core thesis,” Bank of America Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said on a conference call with analysts, adding that consumers are “still in the game” even as consumption has shifted from retail goods to going...

Geert Wilders’s Party for Freedom won big in Dutch parliamentary elections last month. One of the keys to the nationalist’s party success was its large share of the youth vote. Young people in the Anglosphere tend to be more left-wing than their elders. Seeing the reverse in continental Europe always surprises outside observers. The Guardian tried to solve this mystery. It asked young Dutchmen why they voted for the Party for Freedom. The Dutch youth said they did so because it was the one party that addressed their concerns. Other European parties, such as AfD in Germany and National Rally...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday the U.S. economy is achieving a “soft landing” as inflation continues to ease without showing signs of a significant economic downturn. “What we’re seeing now I think we can describe as a soft landing, and my hope is that it will continue,” Yellen said in an interview on CNN. “The American people did it,” she added. “The American people go to work every day, participate in the labor market, form new businesses. But President Biden has tried to create incentives that give Americans the tools they need to help this economy grow.”

A professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN) has sparked backlash online over her comments at a recent teach-in regarding the Israel-Hamas war, during which she said that the "goal" is to "dismantle the settler project that is the United States." The professor, Dr. Melanie Yazzie, was speaking at a panel event hosted by The Red Nation, a Native American advocacy group "dedicated to the liberation of Native peoples from capitalism and colonialism," according to the group's website. Yazzie is a professor of American Indian Studies at UMN and co-founder of The Red Nation. Several American universities have been caught...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish, but in July he approved a law moving Christmas in Ukraine from January 7, the date in the Eastern Orthodox calendar, to the Western celebration day of December 25. See that, Moscow? All the indications are, however, that while Christmas may come sooner in Ukraine this year, it is going to be a bleak one. Mike McCord, the comptroller of the U.S. Department of Defense, informed Congress on December 15 that $1 billion of military aid will be released by the end of the month but, without legislative authorization, there is no more money...

(NEXSTAR) – While violent crime has dropped to pre-pandemic levels nationwide, the FBI announced, changes weren’t the same across the board. The crime rates remained elevated in dozens of cities around the country. Personal finance site MoneyGeek used the FBI crime data to look at crime rates in 302 large cities and 1,010 small cities and towns around the country. They looked at both violent crime and property crime, and used research by the University of Miami and the University of Colorado Denver to determine the cost of crime in each area. After crunching the numbers, the large city with...

Having "exceeded all expectations", with stirring contests in front of heaving crowds helping surpass its financial targets, the historic Major League Cricket has the foundations to build on as it eyes an expanded second season. The debut of the well-heeled T20 tournament, as cricket seriously enters the world's biggest sports market, was deemed a resounding success. Even no nonsense Sunil Gavaskar, the Indian cricket legend and broadcaster at the MLC, was left impressed. "He (Gavaskar) told me the quality of the cricket was high," Anand Rajaraman, San Francisco Unicorns co-owner, told me. "He felt the international players were giving it...

The Biden administration on Monday sent Congress an urgent warning about the need to approve tens of billions of dollars in military and economic assistance to Ukraine, saying Kyiv’s war effort to defend itself from Russia’s invasion may grind to a halt without it. In a letter to House and Senate leaders and also released publicly, Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young warned the US will run out of funding to send weapons and assistance to Ukraine by the end of the year, saying that would “kneecap” Ukraine on the battlefield. She added that the US already has...