Free Republic

With midterms rapidly approaching, Republicans had appeared to catch a break on the economy. After a year in which the war with Iran sent gas prices soaring and pushed inflation to multi-year highs, both June and July’s Consumer Price Index came in tame. Even grocery prices slipped for the first time in months. But then President Trump returned to his longtime obsession: tariffs. Indeed, last weekend, talks between the White House and Canada collapsed, and Trump immediately slapped 50 percent tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian goods, reviving what the Wall Street Journal called “The Dumbest Trade War...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Water will soon return to the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, but it will only be a temporary fix for the river’s dry and cracked bed. The Albuquerque Bernalillo Water Authority, in partnership with a number of other agencies and organizations, has released more than 650 million gallons from Abiquiu Reservoir for a temporary re-wetting of the Rio Grande’s Albuquerque stretch. The water is expected to reach town by Thursday.

Tiger Woods was suspended from driving for five years and handed a fine as the golfing icon struck a plea deal at a Florida court Wednesday morning in connection with a rollover crash in March. The four-time PGA Championship winner, 50, pleaded guilty to reckless driving and refusal to submit to a lawful test at Martin County circuit court, just north of Palm Beach County. Wearing a dark blue suit and patterned blue tie, Woods looked grim-faced but said nothing as he entered the court alongside his girlfriend Vanessa Trump amid a throng of reporters. In court, he spoke only...

Visiting this monument on a boggy marsh at the very edge of England, I found myself wondering if it's even possible to go anywhere in this mad country where nothing happened. We're at Burgh by Sands, a tiny village in remote coastal country, but it has a big past. Once home to a Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall, centuries after that had slid out of view, the countrymen here found themselves at the centre of events, when the King of England went and croaked his last here. England is Nuts: Bonkers Monument in Middle of Nowhere | 13:41 WC21 (UK)...

Thursday night, New Orleans. I have flown in from Los Angeles for work and am walking off the jet bridge, thinking about dinner, when 15 men in vests coalesce around me. I have never been arrested before. Even they find it strange, because I am British, and I am in Balenciaga, and I am ever so nice about it all. They take my belt, wallet, every piece of identification, my rosary and Missal, cash. They put me in chains. Real chains. Every man they arrest, whatever he has done, ends up garlanded in steel like this: wincing, hopping, clattering. It...

The oil agreement is a foundation, not a finish line but it is a hopeful moment of progress

A couple of weeks ago, law professor Jonathan Turley devoted one of his columns to this seeming anomaly — that the Left somehow gains from its own failures. The headline of his column was “The worse it gets, the better it is: American leftism is thriving on its own failures.” The theme of the piece is that the failure of a policy of the Left is never admitted to be a failure, but rather is only seen as a reason that the taxpayers haven’t yet devoted sufficient resources to the issue, and therefore the answer is to double down and...

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem🇮🇱 (9/2/26)[Prayer]PersonalitiesPsalm 11 For the director of music. Of David. 1 In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me: “Flee like a bird to your mountain. 2 For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. 3 When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” 4 The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them. 5 The Lord...

2 September 2026 Wednesday of week 22 in Ordinary Time Saint-Just in Lyon, France Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: A(II).First reading1 Corinthians 3:1-9Neither the planter nor the waterer matters, only God, who makes things growBrothers, I myself was unable to speak to you as people of the Spirit: I treated you as sensual men, still infants in Christ. What I fed you with was milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it; and indeed, you are still not ready for it since you are still unspiritual. Isn’t that obvious from all the jealousy and wrangling...

A Maryland daughter has claimed that the nurse who provided home care to her father battling Parkinson’s transferred the deed to his South Carolina property for just $5 before he died. Nora Rowland not only learned that the property rights to her 75-year-old father Robert Rowland’s home had been transferred, but also that he had died when she paid what she thought would’ve just been a routine visit on Father’s Day in June 2024, WMBF reported last Thursday. Robert Rowland, who lived in Conway, received visits from his nurse Sarah Smalls in March 2024 before he was moved into a...

Rising interest rates, record insolvencies, and permanent recession -- the looming economic crisis in the EU is taking shape. Brussels is responding by preparing the ground for capital controls. The regulators' latest target: European citizens' foreign bank accounts. Starting January 11, 2027, trouble looms for EU citizens with foreign accounts. From that date, banks from third countries -- Switzerland, the UK, the US, or Singapore -- will be prohibited from offering so-called core banking services to European citizens. In essence, this covers three core functions: classic deposit-taking (checking, savings, or fixed-term accounts), lending, and the guarantee business. Banks wishing to...

When the US Treasury Department sanctioned the transnational organization Masar Badil last week, Washington took a much-needed step toward thwarting terrorist activity and recruitment here in the homeland. **SNIP** SUPER-UW’s rapid development from rhetoric to violence began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which killed UW alumnus Hayim Katsman along with 45 other American citizens. SUPER-UW immediately cheered the killing of civilians and venerated those responsible, later inviting UW students to a an event celebrating the slaughter “as not only a victory for the resistance, but a scientific necessity.” In September 2024, SUPER-UW encouraged followers to learn about “defending the...

WASHINGTON (CN) — A D.C. Circuit panel on Tuesday ruled a federal judge had overstepped their authority by voiding the court-martial of U.S. Army soldier Robert “Bowe” Bergdahl, who was dishonorably discharged for deserting his unit in Afghanistan in 2009. Bergdahl, who left his post without permission to report poor conditions and leadership deficiencies within his unit to headquarters, was captured by the Taliban-allied Haqqani network and held hostage for five years. President Barack Obama approved a prisoner swap in 2014 for five Taliban members detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The three-judge panel determined that Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie...

Within Western societies, there persist subcultures that treat institutions as resources to be harvested while simultaneously scorning the normative order those institutions sustain. The ideal of a democratic polity rests upon a fragile consensus: that citizens will, by and large, restrain immediate appetite in favor of reciprocal forbearance, that private property will be treated as more than a provisional convenience, and that elected officials will refuse to dignify predation as justice. While rule of law and a free press are necessary conditions for such restraint, they are not sufficient. Civil society’s everyday virtues -- queueing, mutual non-interference, the tacit assumption...

"Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God, that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil" (Eph. 6:10-11). Adequate preparation is the key to spiritual victory. The Gulf War introduced some highly sophisticated weapons that had never been proven under live battle conditions. Most of the troops hadn't experienced war either. Yet troops and machinery combined in a display of military conquest unparalleled in history. Thorough preparation proved to be an indispensible element in that overwhelming victory. That included developing and testing high-tech...

Sean Duffy commended EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin for targeting his “pet peeve” — an auto feature intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “You know the on-off, the stop-start button on your car? I hate that thing,” Duffy told the crowd at an event in Detroit. “Thank you, Lee Zeldin. He’s gotten rid of it, and the first cars without the start-stop button are rolling off the line.” In February, the EPA announced it would axe federal incentives for vehicle manufacturers that include the feature in their models. Former President Obama’s administration introduced “off-cycle” credits for vehicles that used the technology...

The alleged Chinese spy who seduced ex-Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell met him through a nonprofit accused of Chinese Communist Party ties — which is still placing interns with politicians across the US. Fang “Christine” Fang worked her way up to president of a chapter of The Asian Pacific American Public Affairs (APAPA) group, which she used to help get interns into other political offices in California, one of the group’s stated missions. Now-disgraced Swalwell told the FBI he considered glamorous graduate student Fang, whom he first met in 2012 before he took office, as his main point of contact with...

Indivisible Dallas, which hosted an event for state Rep. James Talarico (D-District 50), the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is helping organize a march against the Republican National Committee’s midterm convention as part of a coalition whose promotional materials feature the logos of communist and socialist organizations. Indivisible Dallas hosted a virtual forum titled “Meet The Candidate with James Talarico” on January 15. “In this electrifying Texas primary race, join Indivisible Dallas and Indivisible groups all across Texas in a virtual conversation with U.S. Senate candidate: TX STATE REP. JAMES TALARICO,” the event page stated. “Folks will have the opportunity...

The [Russian] Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Defense plan to launch a joint project in the coming weeks to identify future participants in the Special Military Operation [war in Ukraine] among high school seniors. “On this momentous day, September 1, I want to share some important and good news with you. We are beginning a search among high school seniors—students in their graduating classes—for reliable, patriotic, and conscientious young men and women who could strengthen our army and join the Special Military Operation shortly after graduating from high school. Over the course of the school year, we will...