Free Republic

Prices barely climbed in April, pulling the annual rate of inflation down toward the Federal Reserve’s two percent target, even while personal income climbed at a rapid rate. The personal consumption price index climbed 0.1 percent in April, the second month in a row in which consumers got relief from inflation that had plagued the economy throughout the Biden administration. In March, the index showed prices were flat. Compared with a year ago, prices are up just 2.1 percent. That just one-tenth above the two percent rate of inflation the Fed says it targets. In March, prices were up 2.3...

U.S. consumers just delivered a clear message: they’re not as worried as the experts thought. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index jumped by 12.3 points in May, the largest monthly gain in four years, as Americans grew more upbeat about the economy, the job market, and their own financial prospects. The reading came in at 98.0, up sharply from April’s 85.7, and blew past all forecasts by economists. Econoday’s survey had a range of forecasts from 84.0 to 91.3, with the consensus at 87.3. It wasn’t just a bounce—it was a breakout. The Expectations Index, which measures how consumers see...

A top diplomat representing the Taliban terror organization ruling Afghanistan demanded representation for the group at the United Nations this week, insisting the Taliban’s participation in the global organization was a “necessity and a right.” Suhail Shaheen, who has represented the Taliban in negotiations with the U.N. in the past and now runs the group’s embassy in Qatar, noted that the Taliban has been the uncontested government of Afghanistan for nearly four years and insisted that the group deserves some say in the operations of the United Nations. “The presence of a representative from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan at...

The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter despite underlying strength in consumer and business spending. Gross domestic product contracted at an annualized rate of 0.3 percent, the Department of Commerce said on Wednesday. The decline in U.S. gross domestic product marks a sharp reversal from the 2.4 percent growth rate recorded at the end of last year. This was the lowest rate of growth since 2022, when the economy avoided an official recession but contracted for two consecutive quarters. Final sales to private domestic purchasers, a closely watched measure of business and consumer health, expanded at a healthy pace...

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” White House Senior Counselor for Trade and Manufacturing Peter Navarro said that the market is “finding a bottom” at the moment, predicted that the Dow Jones will surge in the future and argued that the gains in the S&P 500 over the past couple years “have been basically seven stocks, the magnificent seven, the AIs. Most of the stocks in the S&P 500 have gone nowhere. Now, they’re going to go crazy” due to increased investment in the United States. Navarro said, “[W]hat I see is 50,000 on the Dow....

New York City was the world’s epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, but five years and 46,000 deaths later a memorial to the victims and their caregivers is nowhere close to being realized. A City Council bill to study building a memorial on Hart Island — the Potter’s Field where thousands were buried during the peak of the pandemic – remains stalled a year after being introduced, and state legislation to fund memorials going up throughout the Empire State sits dormant in Senate and Assembly committees.

More than 3,700 days later, he hasn't missed a single day of exercise, though he does take some easier days of light cardio to give his body a chance to recover. The 74-year-old from Rhode Island said the regular routine of combining strength training with cardio has kept him energized, healthy, and strong over time. "I am hardly ever sick, and I don't get headaches. I have maintained my drive, diligence, dedication, and determination all these years," DiMonte told Business Insider in an interview coordinated by Planet Fitness, his gym of choice.

WASHINGTON (TNND) — As the world marks over five years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, its effects continue to reverberate across the United States. A recent Pew Research Center survey reveals that only 20% of Americans now view the coronavirus as a major threat, a significant drop from 67% in 2020. "For most folks, the public health threat is in the rear view mirror," Alec Tyson, Associate Director of Research at Pew Research Center noted. However, the pandemic's impact remains profound, particularly among younger generations who may have missed out on school events and may have...

Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) said Monday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” that President Donald Trump was playing into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine conflict. Host Pamela Brown said, “Ukrainian President Zelensky will also be in Saudi Arabia but is not expected to attend these talks. Do you believe the white House is sidelining Zelensky in this peace process?” Bacon said, “That’s a terrible mistake not to have the Ukrainian leader in the talks.”

No new water storage infrastructure has been built in California, more than a decade after voters approved a $7.5 billion water bond in Proposition 1 of 2014. The San Jose Mercury-News reported Wednesday that officials are deciding what to do with nearly half a billion dollars of available cash after the “collapse” of a project to expand the Los Vaqueros Reservoir, which is east of San Francisco. Other projects have received funding for planning and permitting, but nothing has been built. The newspaper noted: A majority of the seven board members of the California Water Commission, a state agency that...

Former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for trading bribes for political favors. Federal prosecutors levied allegations of bribery, extortion and acting as a foreign agent against Menendez, then-chair of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in fall 2023. Last summer, he became the first public official ever convicted of acting as a foreign agent while in office. A New York jury found the senator and his wife, Nadine, accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, gold bars and luxury cars from three New Jersey businessmen. In exchange, Menendez protected the halal meat...

When did COVID start for you? Personally, I trace the beginning to Feb. 13, 2020. My wife and I were waiting for a plane at O’Hare when a group of Japan Airlines flight attendants walked past, wearing those masks I’d read about. I snapped a photo and sent it into the city desk. Look: news. Emotionally, it really began in March. The stripped Target shelves. A few hours before Gov. JB Pritzker shut down the restaurants, I popped into Kamehachi for a last sushi fix and was surprised to find myself the lone diner at 12:30 p.m. Watching the chef...

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there had been a “significant increase” in the past 10 years of homegrown violent extremism. Mayorkas said, “We have a heightened threat environment, as Director Wray and the attorney general both articulated, and we’ve been saying this for quite a number of months. We have not only the persistent threat of foreign terrorism that, of course, created the Department of Homeland Security, but we have adverse nation-states, and for the past 10 years, we’ve seen a significant increase in what we term homegrown violent extremism. It is...

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Fox News @ Night,” former Kamala Harris Campaign Surrogate Lindy Li stated that President Joe Biden “has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now,” and that one of her relatives reacted to meeting the President earlier this year by stating, “we’re *&*&^&.” Li said, “[L]et’s just be very honest what’s happening here, the President has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now, and it breaks my heart to say it....

President Joe Biden appears to be struggling with the prospect of retiring from public life, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday. After Democrats ousted him as their presidential candidate in July, Biden, 82, who has been a public official since 1973 (51 years), is not enjoying the prospects of sunsetting his over half a century long career at the center of American politics, the NYT’s Peter Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported. Biden reportedly told allies after he dropped out of the race that he was bored, moody, and angry. He’s apparently angry because many Democrats opposed his...

An ambitious effort to understand the Earth’s climate over the past 485 million years has revealed a history of wild shifts and far hotter temperatures than scientists previously realized — offering a reminder of how much change the planet has already endured and a warning about the unprecedented rate of warming caused by humans. The timeline, published Thursday in the journal Science, is the most rigorous reconstruction of Earth’s past temperatures ever produced, the authors say. Created by combining more than 150,000 pieces of fossil evidence with state-of-the-art climate models, it shows the intimate link between carbon dioxide and global...

Inflation fell to its lowest level in 3-and-a-half years in August, clearing the way for the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates next week. Consumer prices in August were up 2.5% from a year ago, according to a report from the Labor Department Wednesday. That's the smallest annual increase since February 2021. Here are four things to know about the cost of living report. Housing costs are still climbing, but gasoline is getting cheaper Housing costs have been the biggest driver of inflation in the last year, rising 5.2%. Gasoline prices, on the other hand, have plunged more than...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) confirmed on Wednesday he would be attending a meeting on Thursday with former President Donald Trump. McConnell told reporters he would be at a meeting with Trump and other Senate Republicans hosted at the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), signifying the first time he has seen the former president in roughly four years, according to Fox News. When asked by a reporter if McConnell planned to “confront any of the bad blood” between him and Trump, or the issues regarding the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, McConnell stated he had promised...

During an interview aired on Wednesday’s “PBS NewsHour,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that the White House has been saying that people will fully understand the impacts of President Joe Biden’s policies once they start to feel them for years, but “it takes time” for his policies to kick in. Jean-Pierre said, “Every issue that the President is working on is popular, whether it’s student loans, whether it is making sure that we’re dealing with gun violence in a way that really helps to save and protect communities, save our young people’s lives, right? He was able to...

The past 50 years have not been good for presidential impeachment. In 1974, the Constitution worked as it should have when President Richard Nixon resigned on the brink of certain impeachment in the US House of Representatives and conviction in the Senate. With substantial proof of Nixon’s misconduct assembled by the House, Senate and special prosecutor, the public overwhelmingly agreed with removing Nixon from office. In contrast, Republicans last Wednesday voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden based on unspecified, undemonstrated misconduct. There is no evidence, much less any established public consensus, that impeachment is warranted or...