Free Republic

Wow, 2016 was something else, wasn’t it? If you had predicted a year ago that not only would Donald Trump be the president-elect, but Hillary Clinton would lose, you would’ve been institutionalized. Beyond politics, and perhaps more amazing than the election, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. One for the books. But rather than take a last look into the rearview mirror, how about we peer through the windshield into 2017? A lot of things should change in the next 12 months. But many things will stay the same. Some may even be same-er.   What won’t change? First...

Peter Morici, economist at the University of Maryland, tells Newsmax TV that although President-elect Donald Trump is much smarter than Barack Obama, it will take some time to undo all of the regulatory damage the outgoing command-in-chief has imposed on America during the last eight years. "I have no doubt that Mr. Trump's a heck of a lot smarter than Barack Obama but Barack Obama had eight years to do this damage so it's going to take a lot of time to undo it," Morici told Bill Tucker on "The Steve Malzberg Show." "Executive orders can generally be reversed but...

Rhode Island is likely to lose one of its two U.S. House seats after the 2020 U.S. Census, according to projections by reapportionment guru Kimball W. Brace, who has for many years helped Rhode Island lawmakers draw both state legislative and congressional districts

Health Reform: On the eve of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration and the looming repeal of ObamaCare, Democrats are making claims that the law is just now starting to work as promised. It's a convenient narrative for the left, but totally false. ObamaCare advocates point to a couple bits of news as evidence that after a rough year, the law appears to be stabilizing. Last week, the Obama administration celebrated what it called "a record" level of sign-ups, with enrollment up 400,000 from last year. "Today's enrollment numbers confirm that some of the doomsday predictions about the marketplace are not bearing...

Congress is already setting the stage to cut off U.S. funding to the United Nations in the wake of a contested vote last week in which the Obama administration permitted an anti-Israel resolution to win overwhelming approval, according to congressional leaders, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the current administration is already plotting to take further action against the Jewish state before vacating office. Other punitive actions by Congress could include expelling Palestinian diplomats from U.S. soil and scaling back ties with foreign nations that voted in favor of the controversial measure, according to multiple sources who spoke to...

President Obama said in an interview released Monday that he could have beaten Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump “if I had run again.” In his most pointed critique yet, Obama said Hillary Clinton's campaign acted too cautiously out of a mistaken belief that victory was all but certain. “If you think you're winning, then you have a tendency, just like in sports, maybe to play it safer,” Obama said in the interview with former adviser and longtime friend David Axelrod, a CNN analyst, for his “The Axe Files” podcast. The president said Clinton “understandably . . . looked and said, well, given...

December 27, 2016 President Obama claims he could have won a third term if he had been allowed to run – but even if he's right, his coattails haven’t done much for the rest of his party. While Obama’s tireless campaigning, broad demographic appeal and message of “hope” and “change” helped propel him to two terms in the White House, his skills on the stump haven’t translated down the ballot. The Democratic Party suffered huge losses at every level during Obama’s West Wing tenure. The grand total: a net loss of 1,042 state and federal Democratic posts, including congressional and...

Got milk? Twenty-five members of Congress say if it's from soybeans, almond or rice, it should not be labeled as milk. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), leading the bipartisan charge against “fake milk,” signed a letter along with other congressional members, asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate and take action against manufacturers of “milk” that doesn't come from cows.

President Barack Obama said in an interview published Wednesday that reparations payments for black Americans could be a good idea but simply aren’t politically feasible. Speaking with The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, Obama said that it’s easy to make an argument for reparations for black Americans because of past sins like slavery and Jim Crow laws. . . . A report released by the United Nations’ Working Group of Experts on African Descent accused the U.S. of having a racist history. The country’s history of slavery and current police shootings, the report argued, meant that America owes the black community reparations.

President-elect Trump's pledge to "drain the swamp" in Washington struck a chord with millions of Americans ... Clean Power Plan: After failing to pass cap-and-trade legislation through Congress, Obama had his political appointees at the EPA slap coal-fired power plants with greenhouse-gas-emission limits they knew the industry couldn't meet ... In doing so, EPA usurped the states' role in regulating electricity markets within their boundaries, and even commandeered the states to enforce its new policy. ... Paris Climate Change Agreement .. entails a substantial transfer of wealth from American taxpayers into the waiting hands of Third World potentates ... Waters...

The Obama administration has finalized rules designed to reduce the environmental impact of coal mining on the nation’s streams, a long-anticipated move that met quick resistance from Republicans who vowed to overturn it under President-elect Donald Trump. The Interior Department said Monday the rule will protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing debris from coal mining from being dumped into nearby waters. …

A new congressional investigation has determined that the Obama administration fired a top scientist and intimidated staff at the Department of Energy in order to further its climate change agenda, according to a new report that alleges the administration ordered top officials to obstruct Congress in order to forward this agenda. Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, released a wide-ranging report on Tuesday that shows how senior Obama administration officials retaliated against a leading scientist and plotted ways to block a congressional inquiry surrounding key research into the impact of radiation....

The following article was published on December 7th on the Washington Examiner website By Byron York There's no shortage of people telling Donald Trump he can't build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. And maybe, in the end, he won't do it. But at the moment Trump takes office, he will have the legal authority and the money he needs to get started on the wall. Yes, there will be obstacles — what's the over/under on the number of lawsuits that will be filed trying to stop it? — but the fact is, the law is already in place that...

Four senators, including Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham, called for a select committee to investigate Russian hacking of the American election process. Robert Gates said the Russian hacking was designed to hurt Hillary Clinton. John Podesta said the F.B.I. had contacted him only once about the hacking of his emails.

It’s been more than a few months since we first began discussing the obvious internal conflict between White Hats and Black Hats within the Obama intelligence and national security agencies. Today, we see exactly how bad the fracture has become.

After the Republican avalanche of a victory in last month's elections, there was still more good news for the Grand Old Brand New Party courtesy of Nancy Pelosi. It seems she's eked out a narrow victory over a Democratic insurgency against her stultified leadership of the party in the House, a leadership that has been rusting for the past 14 years. If everything isn't coming up roses for the GOP, at least there are tulips covering the horizon the way daffodils do Wye Mountain every spring. And all Nancy Pelosi could say about her aforementioned "leadership" was the same thing...

Republican lawmakers are increasingly at odds with Donald Trump across a range of ­high-profile domestic and national security issues, an early sign that the GOP-led Congress might resist some elements of the ­president-elect’s un­or­tho­dox agenda. Although Trump maintains enthusiastic backing in many corners of the party, key members of the Senate and House have been outspoken in challenging his views of Russia and its interference in the U.S. election, warning of potential conflicts of interest arising from Trump’s far-flung business interests if he does not fully divest from his company, and criticizing the tough approach that he has taken to some...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-01) released the following statement on his decision to vote against H.R. 4919, Kevin and Avonte's Law, which establishes a federal program to chip individuals with autism and developmental disabilities: “While this initiative may have noble intentions, ‘small and temporary’ programs in the name of safety and security often evolve into permanent and enlarged bureaucracies that infringe on the American people’s freedoms. That is exactly what we have here. A safety problem exists for people with Alzheimer’s, autism and other mental health issues, so the fix, we are told, is to have the Department...

It's time for congress to demonstrate just how serious they are about electoral integrity. Elections matter and no State should be allowed to undermine the public confidence in it's accuracy. We need to reject any state who fails to meet a shared common standard including Voter Identification and participation in a nationwide database crosscheck to verify if a voter has already cast a ballot. 1. Photo ID : if the party wants your support they should furnish you with a registration card with your photo on it. 2. National Voter Status Database : record includes 3 entries A) Registered :...

County leaders are hopeful that the $1 trillion infrastructure investment promised by Republican president-elect Donald Trump will have a big impact on the region. Trump has promised to prioritize infrastructure spending in his first 100 days in office. The move is one that Democrats, now in minority positions in both houses of Congress, have said they're willing to support. The plan, which is not yet fully fleshed out, looks to rely heavily on billions of dollars of infrastructure tax credits to private entities. And while Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen warned recently that weighing down the national debt with...