Free Republic

Re riots in Portland and the police responding. I was thinking that perhaps the police were threatened by O-Me-Me when protesters walked on the freeway and so forth - that he would sic Loretta Lynch on them. Then I realized that no new AG has been voted in yet, right? Does that mean that Lynch is still in the position? Or is there a pro temp person in right now?? tx

WASHINGTON (AP) – The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee will request a delay on the confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general. That will push the panel vote until Jan. 31. The Judiciary panel is scheduled to vote Tuesday on Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination. But committee rules allow any member of the panel to hold a vote over until the next week, and members of both parties frequently do. A spokesman for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Monday that she will request the extra week “to give the committee more time to conduct its due...

Lou Dobbs just broke in with the report that Mike Pompeo now has 56 votes for confirmation, and has been confirmed by the Senate.

Submitted by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,I have been in Washington DC for the last three days. The ostensible reason was to participate in a board meeting of a public company, Ashford Inc. (AINC). We manage hotel REITs that own three hotels here in DC, and the group decided to move our board meeting up a few weeks and hold it in DC during the inauguration. That gave me the opportunity to set up a few meetings to try to gain some insight into what the first 100 days, the first six months, and the first year of the Trump...

President Donald J. Trump Our Final Show…. LIVE Saturday (1/21) 8 AM EST On Friday, Donald J. Trump will be sworn into office as the 45th President of the United States of America. During the darkest days of the Obama administration, it was at times hard to believe that the system could be overcome. But America came together once more to elect a fiercely patriotic man who loves this country, and has vowed to “Make America Great Again!” We at the USA Transnational Report could not be happier! This Saturday, we’ll bring you the latest news about Trump’s cabinet nominees,...

One week of confirmation hearings is down -- and there are just a few more days to go before President-elect Donald Trump is sworn in. With President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration just three days away, another round of his top Cabinet nominees are about to undergo their confirmation hearings in the Senate this week. As a reminder, Congress can’t officially confirm Mr. Trump’s nominees until after he’s sworn in, but senators can hold hearings to help expedite the process and get nominations ready for Inauguration Day -- which is why this coming week has such a packed schedule of hearings. Senate...

It would be easy to see the Trump-Obama transition as a mess for the president-elect. He continues to face criticism for his extraordinary breach of traditional financial disclosure norms, not only failing to release his taxes but making only the cursory moves toward separating himself from his businesses. Trump has had to contend with an imbroglio over an unconfirmed dossier assembled by his political opponents. His poll numbers are low for a president-elect, with only a minority Americans thinking his transition is going well. The mainstream media is shocked, shocked that many of Trump’s cabinet nominees oppose some of his...

Sessions, Tillerson, Pompeo, Mattis testify before Senate Trump to CNN: “You are fake news!” LIVE Saturday (1/14) 8 AM EST Trump’s future cabinet is cruising through Senate confirmation. And with the world in the state that it is, not a moment too soon. Terrorism once again strikes Israel in the form of a truck attack. Sound familiar? Of course, the widow of the terrorist is already collecting a pension courtesy of the Palestinian Authority. Yet these people allegedly want peace? In Hungary, the Orban government takes the dramatic step of targeting George Soros’s network of NGOs. Good for them –...

This was supposed to be the week President-elect Trump's nominees endured tough grilling and determined opposition in Senate confirmation hearings. "Trump Cabinet picks face extreme vetting ahead of confirmation," USA Today reported last month, predicting that several Trump picks could face a very difficult time on Capitol Hill. Now Week One is ending, and the tough grilling mostly didn't materialize. And all of Trump's first week of nominees seem headed toward confirmation. Seven Trump picks — Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions, Homeland Security Secretary-designate John Kelly, Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson, Transportation Secretary-designate Elaine Chao, Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis, Housing and...

Hillary Clinton’s political career is probably over, but just because she lost the presidential election to Donald Trump doesn’t mean she wasn’t prepared to win. Axios reporter Mike Allen has revealed Hillary’s list of prospective nominees for important cabinet posts in her administration, and it includes a number of interesting choices. John Podesta, her campaign chairman who accidentally exposed his entire email account to Russian hackers, was listed as the frontrunner to be Hillary Clinton’s secretary of state. Vice President Joe Biden was reportedly also being considered for the position.Facebook executive and Lean In author Sheryl Sandberg was in line...

Hillary Clinton had most of her cabinet and West Wing positions picked out by Election Day, several of her campaign hands have revealed.Mike Allen, the former Politico reporter, published the “ghost cabinet” on Tuesday at Axios, a new media company he co-founded.According to Allen’s sources, John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman whose hacked emails were published prior to the election, was set to receive a nomination to serve as secretary of state.John Podesta Getty Images/Justin Sullivan Podesta has served in two Democratic White Houses. He rose to chief of staff in Bill Clinton’s White House and was an advisor to...

Libs Try to Unhinge Trump's Cabinet After eight years of fundamentally transforming America, most liberals aren't exactly thrilled to see it transformed back. Desperate to keep their legacy of lawlessness alive, the Left is taking the surest path to protecting their "progress:" fighting the leaders who would unravel it and return law and order to America. With the New Year came a new intensity to knock down any cabinet nominees of President-elect Donald Trump's who pose a threat to President Obama's radical gains. To their disappointment, that seems to be almost everyone. The cabinet Donald Trump is assembling has been...

Republicans on Sunday defended their party against Democratic complaints that Congress is being forced to consider nominees for Donald Trump’s administration without completed ethics reviews. “All of these little procedural complaints are related to their frustration in having not only lost the White House, but having lost the Senate,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I understand that,” he added, “but we need to sort of grow up here and get past that.” …

The rules set by Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, schedule Sessions' hearings for two days, with one day mostly devoted to testimony from Sessions and the second day featuring testimony from nine witnesses -- five called by Republicans and four called by Democrats. The witness lists are still being finalized; a Judiciary Committee spokeswoman told AL.com that the names should be made public on Monday, a day before the hearing. After the two days of testimony, the 16-member committee will then vote whether to send Sessions' nomination to the full Senate, where...

The Office of Government Ethics is raising alarm over the pace of confirmation hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's nominees, saying Saturday that they have yet to receive required financial disclosures for some picks set to come before Congress next week. In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released Saturday, OGE Director Walter Shaub wrote that "the announced hearing schedule for several nominees who have not completed the ethics review process is of great concern to me" and that the current schedule "has created undue pressure on OGE's staff and agency ethics officials...

WELCOME TO THE TRUMP FAMILY TRAIN We are in the eighth week since the election until the Inauguration.

Democrats and left-wing activists are planning to vigorously attack President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees before Trump even takes office at Noon on Jan. 20. The purpose of this early resistance to the incoming Trump administration is not only to deprive Trump of political legitimacy but also to undermine his authority and make it impossible for him to govern. All this talk of a vast Russian conspiracy to hack U.S. computer networks to put Trump in the White House is also part of the leftists’ scheme. So was Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s goofy fundraising campaign disguised as recounts in...

Sen. Ted Cruz told Washington, DC radio host Larry O’Connor Wednesday that Donald Trump is filling his cabinet with “all-star” conservatives. The Texas Republican noted that Republicans have been handed a “historic opportunity” to do a “great deal of good” in repealing “the disaster that is Obamacare.” “It was one of the fundamental reasons why I ran for the Senate and promised the people of Texas that I would fight everyday to repeal Obamacare,” he continued. “I cannot tell you how gratifying it is to see us on the verge of delivering on that promise.” Cruz then pointed to the...

US President-elect Donald Trump today appointed young Indian-American Raj Shah, who played a leading role in the Republican party’s anti-Clinton campaign during polls, to a key White House position. Shah, whose parents immigrated to the US from Gujarat, has been appointed as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Communication Director and Research Director, as per an announcement made by the Presidential Transition Team. Shah, who is in his early 30s, is currently head of Opposition Research in the Republican National Committee. In this position, he led a team of experts to carry out research against Hillary Clinton, the Democratic...

Incoming Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says he regrets a 2013 decision by Senate Democrats, known as the “nuclear option” to decrease the number of senators needed to confirm Cabinet picks from 60 to 51 votes. “I wish it hadn’t happened,” Schumer said in an interview with CNN, about the move that was triggered by former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV). The move is dubbed the “nuclear option” because by altering the filibuster rules it stands to blow up bipartisan Senate relations. “I argued against it at the time,” Schumer said. “I said both for Supreme Court and...