Free Republic

WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has avoided impeachment for now. Democrats are pointing fingers at each other over how it happened.Republican leaders’ push to block the impeachment process passed 211 to 204 in the GOP-run House late Tuesday. Republicans stayed united—except for impeachment instigator Rep. Thomas Massie (R., Ky.)—and only a handful missed the vote, despite fears that their midterm-election drubbing last week would dent their column. But on the Democratic side, 11 members weren’t present for the roll call—potentially more than enough to have swung the result their way, angering activists and bewildering colleagues who wanted to maintain the pressure...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was planning to head to Brussels last month to deliver what would be a bombshell announcement in a meeting with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s top military chiefs. The U.S., he planned to say, was preparing additional cuts to its forces in Europe that would go beyond the canceled deployment of an armored brigade to Poland and the earlier withdrawal of an infantry brigade from Romania, people familiar with the matter said. But Hegseth’s proposal was nixed after it was shared with Marco Rubio—President Trump’s national-security adviser—and other senior officials, the people said. Instead, Hegseth said...

For thousands of manufacturers across China, it’s déjà vu—with implications for the country’s fragile economy. Earlier this year, after President Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods to 145% in April, American customers of Alan Chau’s toy factory in southern China abruptly froze orders, sparking a cash crunch ttohat brought his business to the brink. So it came as a relief when the U.S. and China reached a trade truce weeks later in mid-May, rolling back most of their tariffs on one another—and allowing Chau to resume shipping his products again. Now, less than six months later, prohibitively high tariffs could...