News Syndicates

URBANDALE, Iowa—Urbandale, population 46,000, is a slice of Americana nestled against the west side of Des Moines, the capital of Iowa. Despite being part of a metropolitan area of 700,000, Urbandale retains a small-town atmosphere. The city has suburbanized without becoming bougie, lending it a charm reminiscent of earlier days. That America-then feel combined with what locals proclaim is the...

Commentary Canada’s federal government has cheerfully proclaimed June to September to be Pride Season. Beyond the commonplace vulgarity in pride parades, one reasonably perceives a push to include new identities. And generous Canadians are inclusive. But a push for inclusion is a push for power, and that makes inclusion a complex political beast. For starters, unless every person is included, any...

The rivalry between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg has just heated up as Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has teased that it’s launching a platform to rival Twitter. Called “Threads,” the Meta-backed microblogging platform is billed as “Instagram’s text-based conversation app,” according to a listing on Apple’s App Store. The listing indicates that Threads will released on Thursday,...

WASHINGTON—Through history, the Fourth of July has been a day for some presidents to declare their independence from the public. They’ve bailed to the beach, the mountains, the golf course, the farm, the ranch. In the middle of the Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt was sailing to Hawaii on a fishing and working vacation. It’s also been a day for some...

Commentary Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently completed a “chief supplicant” mission to Beijing on June 19. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a supplicant as “a person who asks a god or someone who is in a position of power for something in a humble way.” Who could argue that Blinken acted otherwise? During the brief trip, he apparently made no “big asks” in representing U.S. interests and concerns vis-a-vis the Chinese communist...

The Chinese regime is hiding trillions of dollars in “shadow reserves,” according to an economist and former Obama-era Treasury Department official. Mr. Brad Setser, who served on President Joe Biden’s 2020 transition Agency Review Team, recently warned that China possesses far more foreign exchange reserves than what the regime is reporting. He estimated in The China Project that Beijing likely...

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries confirmed on July 4 that current Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will remain in office for another year. The announcement came after the alliance failed to settle on a candidate for the leadership position. “Honoured by #NATO Allies’ decision to extend my term as Secretary General until 1 October 2024,” Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter. “The transatlantic...

Twitter users will soon need to be verified in order to use TweetDeck, the social media company said in a tweet on Monday. The change will take effect in 30 days, the company said. Twitter made the announcement in a tweet detailing an improved version of TweetDeck with new features. It was unclear if Twitter will charge users for both...

LONDON/SINGAPORE—The dollar fell slightly against the yen on Tuesday as markets remained on high alert for signs of Japanese intervention, but the broader market was placid with U.S. traders off for a public holiday. The greenback was down 0.18 percent at 1104 GMT to 144.44 yen, after rising 0.27 percent on Monday. However, the yen remained close to last week’s...

The launcher system of the PATRIOT (Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept on Target) surface-to-air missile system at the military base of Kaufbeuren, southern Germany, on June 17, 2023. (Christof Stache/AFP via Getty Images) WASHINGTON—The U.S. State Department has approved a possible $15 billion sale of an Integrated Air and Missile Defense (IAMD) Battle Command System (IBCS) and related equipment...

Commentary It seems that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is particularly sensitive to being described as a “dictator.” When U.S. President Joe Biden used the description, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was outraged, with its mouthpiece, the Global Times calling it a vicious attack. If Biden had said that Xi was the “leader of a dictatorship,” perhaps he would not have...

Air travelers could breathe a little easier Monday, as a break in stormy weather—and lighter schedules a day before the July 4 holiday—helped airlines keep more flights moving on time. By 10 p.m. ET, about 133 U.S. flights had been canceled and 4,454 were late, according to FlightAware. Those numbers were down from more than 600 cancellations and 7,700 delays...

Georgia’s Secretary of State says political parties must address their losing candidates’ claims of election fraud. “That is not healthy for America, and so we need to really confront people that are just trying to tear apart our social fabric and not accept the results of the election,” Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, said. Whether it’s former President Donald...

A Democratic senator is talking about a crisis he sees in men these days, saying when addressing the issue, we can’t ignore that there are biological differences between men and women. What’s the impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling on religious liberty in relation to LGBT ideology? Matt Sharp, senior counsel with the Alliance defending freedom, joins us to discuss. The 2024 presidential...

Former President Donald Trump spoke at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Policy Conference in Washington on June 24. During the speech, he pledged to deny entry of all “communists and Marxists” into the United States. ...

Commentary What would George Washington say? I can ask, even about modern politics, this July 4 because America’s first president was a man of such studious self-control that his answer, though furiously indignant, would be printable. As a Canadian I should also ask what Sir John A. Macdonald would say about our southern neighbour pondering a rematch between Donald Trump...

The Department of Justice has accused a former Pfizer employee and his friend and business partner in participating in an insider-trading scheme based on confidential information about the results of clinical trials of a medicine used to treat COVID-19. Prosecutors in New York have accused 44-year-old Amit Dagar, of Hillsborough, New Jersey, of buying call options in Pfizer stock after...

SYDNEY—An Australian project management firm has filed a lawsuit against Twitter Inc. in a U.S. court seeking cumulative payments of about A$1 million ($665,000) over alleged non-payment of bills for work done in four countries, court filings showed. Sydney-based private company Facilitate Corp. on June 29 filed the suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District Of...

Commentary In the full panoply of the Biden administration’s foreign policy errors aned gaffes, perhaps none was so stupid as its failed attempt to weaponize the dollar—the world’s reserve currency—against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. It’s telling that during World War II, neither the United States nor the United Kingdom—when the British pound sterling was the world’s reserve currency—ever considered...

Commentary Estimates of U.S. growth have improved, but remain massively below the Federal Reserve’s projections. After the largest monetary and fiscal stimulus in recent years, growth remains well below trend and debt is significantly higher. It is interesting to hear Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen say that “trickle-down economics did not work,” when in reality this is the failed trickle down:...