Free Republic

The new tax bill President Trump signed into law last month hits high-tax, politically blue states like New York and California especially hard because of a new cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions. But the states hit hardest by the change are already exploring ways around it. The new law puts a $10,000 cap on SALT deductions. Previously, there was no cap on SALT deductions, which helped high-tax states raise revenue without taxpayers having parts of their income taxed twice, once at the state level and again at the federal level. The new cap means states might have...

With Sen. Orrin Hatch’s announcement that he will not run again in 2018, Mitt Romney is on the verge of gaining his revenge against President Donald Trump. Until now, the Republican establishment has lacked a figurehead behind which it could mobilize against Trump. If Romney runs for Hatch’s position, he will be poised to challenge Trump in the 2020 Republican primary and to seek to rejuvenate the GOP establishment. Having failed twice, he may believe that the third time is the charm in running for the presidency.

The United Way of Waco-McLennan County’s decision to cut 83 percent of its funding to The Salvation Army of Waco has left Salvation Army officials scratching their heads and questioning the partnership with the nonprofit going into the new year. The Salvation Army received the largest cut among the 21 local nonprofits the United Way funds. The cuts are part of an ongoing effort to transition from an allocation-based funding model to a grant-based model this year, and a result of a decline in donations in the past five years, United Way Executive Director Barbara Mosacchio said. Mosacchio, who started...

Manhattan is set to get 3 inches of snow starting around 5 or 6 a.m. Thursday, but parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island should brace for at least double that, experts warned.

Land of leaving: Moving companies rank Illinois No. 1 for outbound vans Studies by two major American moving companies rank Illinois as the top “outbound” state of 2017. On Jan. 2, United Van Lines released its 41st annual National Movers Study and Atlas Van Lines released its 2017 Migration Patterns study. United based the study on its customers’ household moves made in 2017, and Atlas studied nearly 73,000 interstate and cross-border relocations of household goods from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 15, 2017. In both studies, Illinois was home to the highest rate of outbound moves in the nation. United’s...

Tests run on a little boy allegedly forced to live in a closet in west Harris County show he was exposed to meth, according to an attorney appointed to represent the boy's interests...He told investigators he had been locked in this closet, and according to testimony in court was "...not allowed out of it for hours at a time." He also told investigators "...his friends..." were the "...rats and roaches..." that would visit him. "He can articulate some things that are really shocking and surprising that tell us he was in there for a quite a length of time," Leal-Hudson...

Is it time for conservative skeptics and opponents of Trump to stop worrying and embrace the president? Hasn’t the last year proven that our worst fears were unfounded? And, really, aren’t our remaining concerns merely trivial and possibly even elitist differences of taste and manners? Those are the questions conservative Trump skeptics face nearly every day. They’re the foundation of an argument that calls us back to our “team,” to the partisan battlefield that seems to define our time.

A recent study suggests that refugees would resort to less violence if they had better exposure to education, extracurricular activities and female influence. Criminologists are calling for better prevention measures to deal with violence committed by refugees, following the release of a study shared with the German Press Agency (DPA) and the Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others. The study recommends refugees have access to language courses, sports, internships and more exposure to women. The authors of the Ministry of Family Affairs-commissioned study are forensic scientists Christian Pfeiffer, Dirk Baier and Sören Kliem.The trio examined the increase in violent crimes observed in...

Capping a season of record-low Monday Night Football ratings, ESPN’s first Christmas NFL game in 11 years was a lump of coal. Raiders-Eagles scored a 5.9 rating and 11.7 million viewers on ESPN’s Monday Night Football Christmas night, down 42% in ratings and 38% in viewership from Week 16 last year (Cowboys-Lions: 10.1, 18.9M). ESPN’s Nielsen ratings now include streaming viewership on TV devices; comparisons are to last year’s TV+streaming numbers. The Eagles’ win, which peaked at a 6.7 and 13.4 million from 9:30-10 PM ET, was the lowest rated Week 16 MNF game since Broncos-Chargers on Christmas Eve 2007...

Washington (CNN)The most interesting Senate race in 2018 might have nothing to do with whether Republicans or Democrats control the chamber after this year's midterm elections. The decision Tuesday by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah to retire teed up Mitt Romney -- the 2012 Republican presidential nominee turned leading intra-party critic of President Donald Trump -- to run for a job that would give him major influence over the remainder of Trump's presidency. But Hatch is a Republican. Romney is a Republican. And if Romney is stopped, it'll be because another Republican won the nomination in Utah. It'll be a...

HONG KONG — President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, traded threats this week about the size, location and potency of their “nuclear buttons.” The image of a leader with a finger on a button — a trigger capable of launching a world-ending strike — has for decades symbolized the speed with which a nuclear weapon could be launched, and the unchecked power of the person doing the pushing. There is only one problem: There is no button.

It’s true -- you are not dreaming. For the first time in 28 years, snow fell on the streets of Tallahassee, Florida during rush hour Wednesday morning. The conditions are cold enough for the snow to form, but videos show it quickly melting as it hits the ground. The National Weather Service measured 0.1” of snow/sleet on their rooftop. Roughly 50 miles of Interstate 10 have been closed in Tallahassee due to snow an ice. In lieu of the traditional salt, the unusual weather has prompted Florida Highway Patrol to lay down sand to melt the ice, according to ABC...

Would Pope Francis say anything about this year’s Vatican nativity scene — which was so clearly meant as a nod to the LGBT lobby — when he paid it a visit on New Year’s Eve? He spoke not a word of course, but instead blessed it and chuckled as a few dignitaries, responsible for what some have called a “hideous” and “sacrilegious” crèche, gave him a guided tour. And yet something very eerie and ominous happened that evening. At exactly the same time as the Pope left St. Peter’s Basilica and walked to the crèche in St. Peter’s Square, a...

Trump Tower meeting with Russians 'treasonous', Bannon says in explosive bookDonald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.....He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York. A trusted intermediary had promised documents that would “incriminate” rival Hillary Clinton but instead of alerting the...

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian. Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reportedly based on more than 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle and players in...

In a volatile situation, Iranians have taken to the streets in three full days of protest with some calling for the end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s reign of power. The protesters, angry about a corrupt government, a failing economy, and a lack of basic human rights throughout the Islamic Republic, could also pose a threat to the regime of President Hassan Rouhani. President Donald Trump weighed in twice on the protests as of Saturday. On Friday, the president said, “Many reports of peaceful protests by Iranian citizens fed up with regime’s corruption & its squandering of the nation’s wealth to...

Shivering New Yorkers may have to pay more to get warm as ice in the Hudson River delayed fuel-barge deliveries and the U.S. government warned of a home heating-fuel shortage from the East Coast to Texas.

The wave of violent protests churning across Iran differs dramatically from the last major uprising that rocked the country in 2009 and could spiral out of control if the regime moves too quickly toward military-style tactics to crush the unrest. While the abortive Green Revolution eight years ago was driven mainly by the children of wealthy political elites in Tehran in the wake of a questionable election, the spontaneous protests this time around are unfolding across the country and driven by what analysts describe as “the working poor” — a segment of the population that has little to lose in...

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said during a CNN appearance Tuesday it was “reprehensible” and “disturbing” for President Trump to refer to the Justice Department as the “deep state.” Clapper said, “I think it’s reprehensible to use that phraseology. I guess who that refers to is the career civil servants who are patriots dedicated to the country. I’d point out that when you take the oath of office as a civil servant you swear to uphold the Constitution.” He continued, “It doesn’t say anything about pledging loyalty to this president or any other and if not doing so...

Fresh from a record-tying streak of cold, Massachusetts faces more weather misery Thursday: a storm that could bring high winds, near-blizzard conditions, and up to a foot of snow before giving way to another blast of intense cold on the first half of the weekend. The National Weather Service issued a winter storm watch, effective from late Wednesday night through late Thursday night, warning that damage to trees and power lines is possible. Forecasters say the possibility of power outages is especially worrisome, given the expected return to bitter cold at week’s end.