Free Republic

Not since Herbert Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff has a president chosen to disregard a larger body of informed opinion than President Trump did when he instituted his protectionist trade policy. Based on a series of verifiably false grievances—wages haven’t grown in 50 years, manufacturing has been hollowed out by imports, countries with trade surpluses are “ripping us off”—Mr. Trump used constitutionally questionable powers to abrogate congressionally approved trade agreements and undermine the world’s trading system. Markets convulsed in anticipation of the massive wealth annihilation that would accompany the shredding of global supply chains and a transition to a more...

Likely Dem primary voters in the upcoming mayoral election overwhelmingly say New York City is in crisis — with nearly half saying that if things get any worse, they may leave, a dismal new survey shows. The pessimism is broad and deep. Eighty percent of the respondents say they are worried about the current level of crime, while 75% believe their city is in a state of crisis, and 70% are “fearful and anxious” about its future, according to the poll by Democratic strategists with the Honan Strategy Group. Advertisement

President Joe Biden’s final report card is in and it doesn’t read well for the departing Democrat. Americans have a darker view of the octogenarian’s tenure than they did at the end of predecessors Donald Trump’s first term or Barack Obama’s second, a poll released Friday finds. Around one-quarter of U.S. adults said Biden was a “good” or “great” president, with less than one in 10 saying he was “great,” according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Tellingly for the Democrat octogenarian, many members of his own party seeing his presidency as underwhelmingly mediocre.

he latest employment situation report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), released Friday morning, showed that the economy added only 12,000 jobs in October, or 12% of the 100,000 additions expected. It's the smallest gain in four years, since December 2020. The report "showed a material weakening in job growth," EY Senior Economist Lydia Boussour told Entrepreneur in an emailed statement.

A majority of Americans (52 percent) feel worse off today than four years ago under former President Donald Trump, Gallup polling found Friday. Four years ago the nation was in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, which greatly impacted the economy and the lives of millions of Americans. Despite the crises, Americans believe they were better off. Costs increased by about 20 percent across the board after the Biden-Harris administration assumed office and instituted “Bidenomics.” Russia invaded Ukraine, Hamas and Iran attacked Israel, illegal migrants invaded the southern border, and the nation suffered the deadly Afghan withdrawal. Gallup reported its...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CBS’s “Late Show,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) stated that “on really key issues,” 2024 Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is “Donald Trump, in some cases, only more so.” After talking about legislation the two worked on together and saying that she’ll work with anybody “who wants to reign in the giant banks.” Warren said that Vance is “now Donald Trump doubled” and that “means now, that, on really key issues, he’s Donald Trump, in some cases, only more so. So, for example, he said, yes, he wants a nationwide abortion ban, but he’s...

Vice President Kamala Harris has never been closer to the presidency after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance sent Democratic elites into a tailspin about their chances in the 2024 election. As the vice president of the United States, Harris is the natural successor of the presidency if Biden steps down. But for years, Democrats have criticized Harris’ performance and feel she should not take over for Biden before the election. One well-connected Democrat told DailyMail.com after the debate that the choice was between an ‘obviously broken Biden’ or Harris, describing the vice president as ‘extremely disliked’ and a ‘terrible’ politician....

President Biden told Democratic donors in California late Wednesday that he “served with real racists” during his decades in the US Senate — but Republicans in the 118th Congress “are worse.” “I’ve been a senator since ‘72. I’ve served with real racists. I’ve served with Strom Thurmond,” Biden said at an event in San Francisco, referring to the late segregationist senator from South Carolina. “I’ve served with all these guys that have set terrible records on race. But guess what? These guys [serving Republicans] are worse. These guys do not believe in basic democratic principles.”

Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician, said special counsel Robert Hur's report "validates" what he and many have known for years: President Biden has "serious issues." Hur, who had been tasked with investigating Biden's mishandling of classified documents, described the president in a report this week as appearing like a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." "It validates what most of us have known," Jackson told Fox News Digital. "I've been saying since he was candidate Joe Biden that this man is not cognitively fit to be our president, our commander in chief and...

The House Freedom Caucus said it's a 'total failure' Republican hardliners in the House of Representatives are pushing back against the bipartisan deal struck on Sunday aimed at avoiding a government shutdown.The conservative House Freedom Caucus led the revolt against Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s agreement on Sunday evening, recirculating a late December memo that said any funding topline higher than $1.59 trillion would be "totally unacceptable.""It’s even worse than we thought," the group posted on X. "Don’t believe the spin. Once you break through typical Washington math, the true total programmatic spending level is...

The outlook of Americans on the economy has turned increasingly pessimistic, mirroring the view of economists who see less growth next year. Back in January, when asked by pollsters for the Economist/YouGov survey whether they thought the economy was getting better or worse, half of Americans chose worse. Around 18 percent said they thought it was getting better. Twenty-four percent said it was staying the same. Nine percent said they weren’t sure. In the most recent Economist/YouGov poll the share saying the economy was getting rose was 54 percent. The share saying it was getting better was 17 percent. The...

With former President Donald Trump now facing four indictments, one recalls Lloyd Bentsen’s famous remark that Dan Quayle was no Jack Kennedy. The appropriate parallel today is to say that Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon. The Trump-Nixon comparisons are facile but superficial and in crucial respects wrong. They ignore fundamental differences between a serious and accomplished public servant whose overwrought ambition led him astray, and a self-centered dilettante whose main interest in government service is to feed his boundless ego. The contrasts between the two men are far more significant than the similarities. Confronted with clear indications that his...

CNN — Covid-19 certainly didn’t take a vacation this summer. Virus levels in the US have been on the rise for weeks, but it’s hard to know exactly how widely it’s spreading. Federal data suggests that the current increases have stayed far below earlier peaks and notable surges. But judging by word of mouth among family, friends and coworkers, it can seem like everyone knows someone who’s sick with Covid-19 right now. “We have several folks down with Covid, unfortunately,” one health-focused nonprofit told CNN when seeking comment for this story.

U.S. tennis player Sloane Stephens says the racism she’s faced has “only gotten worse” over the years. Speaking Monday at the French Open, Stephens told reporters of being on the receiving end of racist attacks, saying, “It’s obviously been a problem my entire career. It’s never stopped. It’s only gotten worse.” “Obviously when there’s FBI investigations going on with [what] people are saying to you online, it’s very serious,” Stephens, 30, said during a news conference following her first round win against Karolina Pliskova.

Monday on FNC’s “The Ingraham Angle,” host Laura Ingraham called the findings of the Durham probe into the investigation of Donald Trump and alleged Russian collusion to be “arguable” worse than the Watergate scandal that plagued former President Richard Nixon.

The American presidency is one of the strangest jobs in the world. Politicians aspire to it. The media focuses obsessively on the person who holds it and those who want to win it. Millions of books and articles have been written about it. And yet, most of the people who’ve held the job really weren’t that good. There are a few truly great presidents, some pretty good ones and a handful of complete disasters. But most can be summed up, as the Simpsons famously once did, as the “adequate, forgettable, occasionally regrettable, caretaker presidents of the U.S.A.” In fairness, the...

A new pre-print study by nine health experts from major universities showed that the COVID-19 vaccines are 98 times worse than the virus, and mandatory booster vaccination in college is “ethically unjustifiable,” as reported by Epoch Times.The study was posted on The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) in September, titled, “COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters for Young Adults: A Risk-Benefit Assessment and Five Ethical Arguments against Mandates at Universities.“It was conducted by nine top scientists from the University of Washington, University of Oxford, University of Toronto, Harvard University – Harvard Medical School, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Johns Hopkins University –...

From cattle to uncontrolled wildlife, pesky but pervasive large parasites like tapeworms have a far greater impact on the total body health of their mammal hosts than previously known, new University of Alberta research suggests. "Parasites don't have to kill the animal to control a population," says Kyle Shanebeck, a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Science's Department of Biological Sciences who led the study. Shanebeck explained that all wildlife have at least one and often multiple parasites. The less fatal a parasite, the more prevalent it is within a population, with potentially stronger negative effects. "They can affect the...

With Friday marking the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, Fox News Digital takes a look back at the media's fondness for invoking Watergate in its coverage of modern scandals. Throughout the presidency of Donald Trump, figures on CNN, MSNBC and other networks frequently referred to the infamous White House scandal that brought down Richard Nixon in their coverage of Trump, often saying what he was accused of was "worse than Watergate." From the Jan. 6 Capitol riot to the 2019 Ukraine phone call, to his handling of coronavirus and the sprawling Russia investigation...

Unfortunately, Zelensky’s leadership and the outpouring of international military and humanitarian assistance it has elicited have not prevented a shocking level of destruction to Ukraine’s cities, economy, and society. The fact that Kyiv has not fallen and Russian troops have retreated to the east masks that Ukraine is in worse shape than portrayed in the media.Russia now controls significantly more Ukrainian territory than before February 24. Putin’s army holds Kherson, whatever is left of Mariupol, all the intervening territory, and now not only Luhansk and Donetsk but the entire Donbas Oblast. For example, whereas Ukrainian authorities controlled approximately 60% of...