Free Republic

The US economy grew at a slower pace than expected in the first quarter. The Bureau of Economic Analysis's advance estimate of first quarter US gross domestic product (GDP) showed the economy grew at an annualized pace of 1.6% during the period. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg estimated the US economy grew at an annualized pace of 2.5% during the period. The reading came in significantly lower than fourth quarter GDP, which was revised up to 3.4%. The softer-than expected print is a sign that the Federal Reserve's historic interest rate hikes are putting pressure on consumers and the economy. Investors...

What did the founders do? They committed an act of treason by signing the Declaration of Independence. They recognized at some point you have to take on the established regime when it is not only unjust, but when there is no lawful way to get it back on track. These matters frame our own nation. Texas had just filed its original action in the Supreme Court against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan -- four swing states whose election officers had clearly violated election law in those states and with an impact that put Biden over the top in all four....

Barring some last-second surprise, on Monday a dream will come true for the Democrats, resistance warriors, Never Trumpers, and lawfare specialists who have hoped for years to put former President Donald Trump on trial. It finally happens Monday in a courtroom in Manhattan. Many legal experts, and not just those on the Right, have said the case against Trump is weak. But that doesn’t really matter. The fact is, Trump will be on trial, charged with 34 dubious felonies, and a jury in deep-blue Manhattan will likely find him guilty of something. That’s the point. After this trial, if things...

Homebuyers are feeling whiplashed by surging mortgage rates, and the outlook just turned grim. The average rate on the 30-year mortgage increased to 7.37% on Thursday, a steep climb from 7.11% at the beginning of the week, according to Mortgage News Daily. The quarter-point increase comes as rattled investors respond to a hotter-than-expected inflation reading. At the same time, a separate measure tracking weekly average rates rose to 6.88%, up from 6.82% the week prior, Freddie Mac found. Elevated rates have left would-be buyers in a pinch, causing both repeat and first-time buyers to step away from any purchase plans....

The Biden re-election campaign should be dead in the water. Inflation is surging again, wokeness is deeply unpopular with most Americans, bills are beginning to come due for the Left’s “green” initiatives, and, most of all, Biden himself is so far gone in dementia as to be dysfunctional. How can he possibly win in November? By running on abortion. We saw it in many areas of the country in 2022. What should have been a red wave petered out, as the Democrats grabbed the lifeline that Dobbs gave them and often rode it to victory. Can it happen again in...

U.S. inflation pressures quickened again last month, with core price pressures also rising past Wall Street forecasts, a reading that will cast further doubt on market bets for a June interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve. The headline consumer price index for March was pegged by the Commerce Department at 3.5%, rising from the prior month's tally of 3.2% and coming in ahead of Wall Street's 3.4% consensus forecast. On a monthly basis, inflation edged 0.4% higher, matching the 0.4% gain in February but also coming in ahead of Wall Street's 0.3% forecast. So-called core inflation, which strips out...

Unless you are deeply immersed in politics, you likely missed a major development over the last three weeks: Since his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden has seen a marked reversal of his fortunes. Indeed, since Biden addressed the nation in early March, polling shows that Biden is gaining ground, as former President Donald Trump now leads Biden by only one percentage point according to the RealClearPolitics polling average — Trump’s smallest lead since January. In the Quinnipiac poll released last week, Biden led by three points, 48 percent to 45 percent, bringing the total to 12 national...

President Biden’s reelection campaign is raising gobs of cash. And it has an election-year strategy that, in a nutshell, aims to spend more — and spend faster. Not only has Mr. Biden aimed to show himself off as a fundraising juggernaut this month, but his campaign is also making significant early investments both on the ground and on the airwaves — hoping to create a massive organizational advantage that leaves his Republican opponent, President Trump, scrambling to catch up. While the money pouring in has given Mr. Biden and the Democrats a major cash advantage, it’s also becoming clear Mr....

Huge funding from influential conservative donor networks is flowing into groups affiliated with a conservative venture aimed at creating a Republican "government-in-waiting," including over $55 million from groups linked to conservative activist Leonard Leo and the Koch network, according to an Accountable.US review shared exclusively with NBC News. Launched by the Heritage Foundation in April 2022, Project 2025 is a two-pronged initiative to develop staunch conservative policy recommendations and grow a roster of thousands of right-wing personnel ready to fill the next Republican administration. With former President Donald Trump now the GOP's presumptive 2024 nominee, the effort is essentially laying...

Joe Biden's weaknesses are obvious, but the State of the Union last Thursday and the president's $7.3 trillion budget proposal this week are reminders of just how tough he can be. Biden isn't simply an old politician, he's an old-fashioned one — the kind who believes in buying the vote. He tried it in the 2022 midterms with a student-loan forgiveness push that had little chance of surviving the courts. Donald Trump gets called a "transactional" politician, yet Biden is an absolute master of the traditional pork-barrel method of courting constituencies. He learned something in his 36 years in the...

Just before former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina suspended her presidential campaign Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump insulted his former rival — as well as her supporters — before inviting them to support him. "Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. "Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50%, according to the polls." After cheering his Super Tuesday performance, Trump invited Haley's supporters to join him in "the greatest movement in the history of our Nation" to defeat President...

As part of its undeclared role as a mouthpiece for President Biden and his administration, NBC News is trying to whitewash the FBI’s arrest of a Blaze Media reporter for covering the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol. After the FBI informed him early last week of its warrant for his arrest, Blaze investigative reporter Steve Baker surrendered himself to federal authorities in Dallas, Texas, on Friday, and was charged on four counts related to his coverage of the Jan. 6 riot. As The Federalist previously reported, Baker has been at the forefront of counter-narrative reporting on the...

In a scathing rebuke of a New York Judge’s decision to fine Donald Trump a staggering $355 million, the entrepreneur and media personality Kevin O’Leary minced no words, denouncing the ruling as “unjust,” “appalling” and ultimately “un-American.” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron’s Friday ruling not only slapped Trump with that hefty fine, but also with a temporary ban from conducting business in his native New York. O’Leary, known for his role on “Shark Tank,” lambasted the decision, arguing that it sets a dangerous precedent for the entire real estate industry. O’Leary had previously been critical of the months-long fraud...

The soft-landing dream is over; instead, the US economy is headed for a recession in the middle of 2024, Citi says. "There's this very powerful and seductive narrative around a soft landing, and we're just not seeing it in the data," Citi's chief US economist, Andrew Hollenhorst, said in a CNBC interview. "The question is where are these forward-looking indicators showing us that we're going to go," Hollenhorst said. One place the economy is showing a weakness is the labor market. January had a blowout jobs report, adding 353,000 jobs to the economy. But Hollenhorst noted that if you scratch...

In other news - the fight between Elon Musk and Disney CEO Bob Iger has added another chapter. The CEO of X is now looking for people who want to sue Disney for discrimination, even offering to help pay for their legal fees. Musk's call to arms comes on the same day that actress Gina Carano filed a lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm, accusing them of wrongfully terminating her from her role in “The Mandalorian.” Musk is also helping to pay for her case. The new addition to the feud comes on the heels of Disney’s first-quarter earnings report, in...

Biden is losing to Trump by five points in the new NBC poll. Biden is getting smoked in almost every category, including having the necessary mental and physical health to be president, not, one assumes, an incidental matter when you are seeking to be president again. These numbers represent such a debacle, I understand why so many smart people assume that Democrats will switch out Biden — because he represents an insane bet for their party. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though. They’ve got to, as I mentioned the other day, hope the economy keeps improving and that...

With Wall Street expecting continued declines in the pace of monthly growth, and consensus looking for a decline from last month's 219K print to 185K, the BLS reported that in January the US created a ridiculous 353K jobs... ... double the 185K expected, and higher than than the highest forecast estimate, which as a reminder was 300K. In fact, as shown below, this was a 4-sigma beat to expectations...and putting the beat in the context of the past year, it was an absolute blowout: What is notable is that once again there was a huge dispersion between the Establishment and...

We have our theory as to how we got here: The relative incompetence of the NFL refs combined with the league's sudden embracing of gambling has created skepticism about the legitimacy of game results. In other words, some NFL fans are now habitually accusing the league of "rigging" games - especially, of course, when that fan either loses by way of his team's failure, or loses a bet. And now comes the AFC Championship Game, with the selection of the officiating crew for the Kansas City Chiefs at Baltimore Ravens showdown ... and a respected NFL analyst floating the idea...

The left wing response to the border crisis can be summarized as a series of misleading viral stories designed to vilify anyone who believes border control is a basic operation for a nation. It started under Trump with the panic over “kids in cages.” Unfortunately for a lot of the progressive dopes who shared this image below, it was taken in 2014 when Obama was president and Joe Biden was Vice President. This next photo of a little girl crying also went viral the same year. Time cut her out and made her part of a cover montage about border...

Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman reacted to former President Donald Trump’s landslide victory in Monday’s Iowa caucuses by warning Democrats that incumbent President Joe Biden is toast. “If you haven’t figured it out already, it is now abundantly clear that @realDonaldTrump is going to crush @POTUS,” the founder and CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management wrote on his X social media account on Tuesday. Ackman, who has become far more vocal in the public sphere since the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and the subsequent eruption of antisemitism on college campuses, repeated his call for the 81-year-old Biden to...