Free Republic

Vladimir Putin started it. Joe Biden didn’t stop it. But, no matter his efforts to the contrary, this is the week in which Russia’s invasion of Ukraine becomes US President Donald Trump’s war. The most powerful office in the world doesn’t always invite choices. Trump is mandated to address the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II because the United States was involved, under his predecessor, as Ukraine’s key ally and sponsor. Trump could have dropped the war entirely. But instead, he chose to impose the force of his personality, initially through the idea he could end it in...

Is this the start of Goo York City? UK scientists have discovered a massive “blob” of rock underneath the Appalachian mountains that’s slowly oozing its way toward New York City, per a slimy new study published in the journal Geology. “This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” the study’s lead author, Tom Gernon, Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton, said in a statement. Officially dubbed the Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA), this subterranean slimeball sits 125 feet deep underground and extends 220 miles across New England. The team reportedly discovered it using...

Republican Nate Morris had deftly warmed up a crowd of party faithful, gushing about President Donald Trump and recounting his own life’s journey — from hardscrabble childhood to wealthy entrepreneur — when he turned his attention to the man he wants to replace, Sen. Mitch McConnell. That’s when things got feisty. While bashing Kentucky’s longest-serving senator at a GOP dinner on the eve of Saturday’s Fancy Farm picnic, a tradition-laden stop on the state’s political circuit, Morris was cut off in midsentence by a party activist in the crowd, who noted that McConnell isn’t seeking reelection and pointedly asked Morris:...

Both the General Assembly and the Security Council are broken because the alliances upon which they were founded no longer exist.The world is insane, but that’s its normal state. We now have al-Qaida leaders who are about to be released from prison, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada are about to recognize a Palestinian “state,” and a hostage held by Hamas was photographed digging his own grave. In Inside the Asylum I specifically warned that the UN was employing terrorists, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. There is famine in the Gaza...

India on Monday denounced as unfair the mounting pressure from the United States and European Union over its continued purchases of Russian oil. Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said the country would safeguard its economic interests amid threats of steep tariffs from President Donald Trump. What did New Delhi say about trade with Russia? "The targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable," said Jaiswal, asserting the country's sovereign right to secure energy supplies in line with its needs. "Like any major economy, India will take all necessary measures to safeguard its national interests and economic security," he added. Jaiswal also...

‘How many people do you employ this month?” might sound like the kind of question an employer can easily answer, but it’s not. Especially for large businesses, the exact number of employees in a given month is hard to pin down. The media report layoffs and hires in round numbers, but for calculating total employment in the country, it really matters whether “500” means 478 or 523, because those discrepancies multiplied across millions of businesses make a huge difference. Within government, Donald Trump’s appointee as BLS commissioner, William Beach, has been a leader in calling for modernizing the surveys that...

Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks. Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses. Read what our legacy media predicted in March for...

When President Trump announced the terms of the pending US-EU trade deal, the world was shocked. Not only is it the biggest trade deal in history—it unequivocally puts America first. In fact, when asked what concessions America gave, EU President Ursula Von Der Leyen could not come up with a single item. Europeans went ballistic. They described this as the death-knell for the EU. Europe has been described as a collection of American vassal states (which is fundamentally accurate). Even America’s liberals went nuts—the deal was too good for America. They argued that it would undermine America’s political relationship with...

President Trump has now imposed his new tariff regime on the world, and the triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land. But maybe hold the euphoria, as this week’s reports on jobs and the economy suggest the new golden age may take a while to appear. Friday’s labor report arrived with a particular jolt, with a mere 73,000 net new jobs in July. Even more bearish were the downward revisions of 258,000 jobs in May and June. Job gains over the last three months are barely more than 100,000. The details in the report provide little solace. The jobless rate ticked...

Several millennia ago during the Trojan War, an army of Greeks built a massive wooden horse, feigned departure and left it as a “gift” outside the walled city of Troy. The Trojans brought the offering — filled, unbeknownst to them, with Greek soldiers — into their fortified city and unwittingly wrought their own downfall. At least that’s how the legend goes. So if an attack disguised as a gift is a Trojan horse, what do you call a gift disguised as an attack? One could argue that the attempted recall of Mayor Karen Bass inadvertently fits the bill.Back in early...

"We need accurate Jobs Numbers. I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified," he added.

President Trump’s executive order carved out a special tariff on goods shipped indirectly to the United States by way of other countries.Ever since President Trump began raising tariffs on goods from China during his first term, Chinese companies have raced to set up warehouses and factories in Southeast Asia, Mexico and elsewhere to bypass U.S. tariffs with indirect shipments to the American market via other countries.But on Thursday, Mr. Trump took aim at all indirect American imports, which he blames for part of the $1.2 trillion U.S. trade deficit. The president imposed 40 percent tariffs on so-called transshipments, which will...

The Hunger Narrative “Israel is starving Gaza.” That’s the line. You’ve seen it splashed across headlines, painted on protest signs, shouted from international stages. The UN calls it a “man-made famine.” Celebrities post black squares with #LetGazaLive. Social media reels show crying children with empty bowls, overlaid with dramatic music and a single, pointed caption: Genocide by hunger. The accusation is explicit, and it’s powerful. What better way to cast Israel as a monster than to say it withholds food from children? No need to mention rockets, tunnels, or terrorists when you can show an empty plate and let the...

The world’s Arab countries for the first time have joined unanimously in the call for Hamas to lay down its weapons, release all hostages and end its rule of the Gaza Strip, conditions that they said could help the establishment of a Palestinian state. The surprise declaration, endorsed on Tuesday by the 22 member nations of the Arab League, also condemned Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, which set off the devastating war in Gaza. The statement came at a United Nations conference in New York on a two-state solution to end the decades-long conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. “In...

The president clamors for the Fed to lower interest rates because it serves his wild spending.No one likes to be told no, especially Donald Trump. To refuse the president is to invite a battle that he will pursue to the bitter end. So the Federal Reserve’s decision on Wednesday to leave interest rates unchanged, at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent, was hardly a routine vote. It was a loud no from the majority of voting members — including the president’s designated nemesis, Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell — to Trump’s demand that “interest rates have to come down.”The retributive president...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow. The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors — purportedly along with former President Barack Obama himself — in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency. The released documents add some new details to what over the last decade has become accepted knowledge. Congressional committees, special prosecutors, and the inspectors general...

Somebody had to say it. It has been noted on many an occasion that we aren't all getting along. The United States of America in 2025 is a fractured place. What was once a casual political divide has become deep and difficult to navigate. One could say, "Well, it's everybody's fault," but it's not. The American Left is diving deep into reasons that they should be violent these days. They're hateful. They're combative. And they wish you grievous harm. From the top down, Democrats have been gleefully advocating for violence against people like you and me. Their politics of hate...

The West has grudgingly recognised its inability to persuade India not to buy Russian oil. However, anti-Russian lobbies continue to apply pressure on New Delhi, seeing that their goal of imposing a strategic defeat on Russia has proved illusory. Both the US and the EU seek to offload onto our backs some of their continuing failures in dealing with Russia. They have imposed a series of draconian sanctions on Russia for intervening militarily in Ukraine, but these have not caused the economic collapse of the country as they thought it would. Not just that, Trump himself, encouraged by his bludgeoning...

Black teens beat white bystanders in downtown Cincinnati as police, media, and public figures stay silent—revealing a dangerous double standard on racial violence. Recently, a large group of black youths began pummeling several white adults in downtown Cincinnati. The original altercation apparently broke out between a black and white male in he-said/he-said fashion. But that dispute soon turned into a virtual free-for-all. Numerous male and female black youths sucker-punched a middle-aged woman and a man. Others continued to kick or body slam the victims, who were sprawled on their backs and seemingly unconscious. There were many disturbing aspects to the...

Egads! After a disastrous first 100 days, Donald Trump is starting to have a much more successful presidency. This is not what we, his foam-at-the-mouth critics, had planned or perhaps secretly hoped for. Some of this is a function of good policy, like getting NATO’s European members and Canada to spend much more on their defense, something previous American presidents asked for, but much too politely. Far from destroying the Atlantic alliance, as his critics feared, Trump may wind up being remembered for reviving and rebalancing it, to the advantage of both sides. Some of this is courageous policy: Joining...