Free Republic

CINCINNATI -- In national news, there hasn't been much lately for those concerned about the environment to cheer about. The Trump administration appears determined to roll back regulations on coal-fired power plants, offshore oil drilling and coal mining. Locally, however, the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County government are treating global warming as a real thing -- a thing they can do something about. With input from Hamilton County government, Cincinnati is updating the Green Cincinnati Plan, a set of recommendations for addressing global climate change and for powering the city with 100 percent renewable energy. The city is paying...

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan accused key Clinton allies of helping craft a second anti-Trump dossier and accused them of “rigging the game,” Tuesday on “Fox & Friends.” Jordan was asked about a possible second dossier and said Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer had paid Christopher Steele to do opposition research, but then told Steele which specific details to include.

The Ohio Supreme Court upheld a 2014 state order shutting down Toledo’s last abortion center for violations of health laws, in a five-two decision released today. Abortion center Capital Care had been operating without a transfer agreement with a local hospital since 2013, in violation of a state law passed that same year, according to a press release from Created Equal, a pro-life group based in Columbus, Ohio. Ohio’s Department of Health ordered Capital Care closed in 2014, but the abortion facility appealed the decision, and the lower courts ruled in its favor. Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office took...

The Democratic Attorneys General Association (DAGA), a political fundraising group, touts the AGs as “the first line of defense” against Trump’s agenda. The “sheer volume” of Democratic lawsuits is “staggering,” said Scott Will, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Throughout 2017, Democratic attorneys generals filed 35 multi-state lawsuits against the Trump administration....By contrast, Republican attorneys general brought 46 multistate legal challenges during ALL of former President Barack Obama’s two terms. Attorney general races are playing out in 32 states in 2018, with 14 seats held by Democrats and 18 by Republicans. Rankin said DAGA is focused chiefly on...

If you’re planning to watch the Super Bowl but you can’t stand the NFL take-a-knee protests, you may want to root for the Philadelphia Eagles. Not a single Eagles player sat or knelt during the national anthem, one of just seven teams with perfect non-kneeling records, in a season that saw 684 such incidents, according to a study released Thursday by Sports Pundit. The other Super Bowl LII team, the New England Patriots, landed in the middle of the pack with 17 incidents of anthem sitting or kneeling, wedged between the Buffalo Bills with 16 and the Cleveland Browns with...

Congressional Republicans once bracing for the possibility of a Democratic “tsunami” in this year’s elections now appear on the offensive -- bolstered by new polls suggesting Americans like their recent tax cuts, and the opportunity to pounce on Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi remark about the bonuses and paycheck increases amounting to “crumbs.” “Nancy Pelosi has stayed in the spotlight. Her 'crumbs' comment is something I think we can use pretty effectively,” Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said at this week’s GOP policy retreat at the Greenbrier resort, in West Virginia. To be sure,...

Of four candidates seeking the republican nomination to run for Governor of Pennsylvania, Senator Scott Wagner of York has lead in all but one of the straw polls in party caucuses across the state. The northwest and southwest caucuses met on Saturday morning. They were the last two to weigh in. In a close vote 30 to 28, the southwest supported Senator Wagner over House Speaker Mike Turzai. Turzai who is from the Pittsburgh suburb of Sewickley, was edged out in his home region. The northwest caucus, meeting in Clarion, turned out to be the outlier for the state. Their...

GOP lawmakers from Ohio are pressing President Trump to uphold a promise to reverse former President Obama's decision and rename the Alaskan mountain Denali to its old name, Mt. McKinley. In a letter to Trump, the 11 lawmakers say it was "disrespectful" for Obama to change the name of the mountain, which had been named after William McKinley, a former president from Ohio. The mountain was named after the 25th president in 1896. "President William McKinley's legacy should not be compromised by a political stunt," the letter signed by Rep. Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) and other lawmakers stated.

One of the country's largest pro-life groups has launched a campaign targeting Red State Democratic senators who helped kill legislation that would have cut down late term abortions.The Susan B. Anthony List, a group that supports pro-life politicians, has launched a digital campaign tying Democratic senators facing re-election in states that President Donald Trump carried in 2016 to support for late term abortions. On Monday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.), Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D., N.D.), and Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mt.) voted to block a 20-week abortion ban, while Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) and...

A student group formed to address “white privilege” at Ohio’s Kenyon College bars white members from asking questions of a person of color as part of a process to combat racism. “Racism is a white people problem,” said the group’s student founder, Juniper Cruz—a self-described “Queer Afro-Latinx Muslim”—at the first meeting, which drew about 50 students. The Whiteness Group, run through the school’s multicultural center, “works to educate students on whiteness, what it means to be white, and ways to deconstruct whiteness to work towards anti-racist actions,” Cruz said in an interview with The Thrill. “The discussions explore what it...

House Republicans will lean heavily on Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her comment that the GOP tax cut amounts to just "crumbs" for people in their quest to retain the majority this year.In an interview with reporters on Thursday, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Steve Stivers, R-Ohio, who runs the House campaign arm, said the top Democrat is helping Republicans politically with her own well-publicized criticisms of the GOP. Most recently, she called the Republican tax reform plan “Armageddon,” and said the $1,000 bonuses some companies awarded as a result of corporate tax cuts are “crumbs.”“Her crumbs comment,” Stivers said....

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), former chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, argued during a conference call on Friday that members of the DOJ and FBI dressed up an opposition research document to “spy on an American citizen during a presidential campaign.”The White Hous and the House Intelligence Committee released the FISA memo that details how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) allegedly used the Steele dossier to spy on Trump campaign staffer Carter Page. Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong asked Rep. Jordan, “Do you agree with Comey’s assertion today that the memo has wrecked the House Intelligence...

White House advisors are already looking to the 2020 reelection campaign and expectations are high that President Trump will face a primary challenge. A top advisor told Secrets that the West Wing expects Ohio Gov. John Kasich to run again, offering his moderate credentials as an alternative to Trump, who criticized him at a fundraiser this week.

In its guidelines for the use of gender-inclusive language, the University of Dayton proposes the elimination of the gender-specific terms of “husband” and “wife,” substituting them with “spouse, partner, significant other.” Despite the fact that the Catholic Church views matrimony as a stable union between a man and a woman, the Catholic college informs its students that “gender neutral language does not assume a gender with the individual who is being discussed” and thus spouse, partner and significant other are preferable to the traditional terms of husband and wife. The watchful eyes at The College Fix, a conservative, student-staffed campus...

Drivers sent tickets by New Miami, Ohio speed cameras will be getting a refund. The state appeals court has upheld the ruling handed down by the lower court last spring. At stake is $3 million in fines, illegally obtained by the town. The Ohio Court of Appeals on Monday delivered a heavy blow to New Miami's attempt to block a court-ordered refund of $3,066,523 in speed camera citations. The village insisted that the lower court (view ruling) got it wrong and that the village should not be forced to pay back any amount on the grounds of sovereign immunity. Not...

John Kasich continues putting John Kasich above all other interests. While many politicians use their current positions as launching pads onto the next, John Kasich has spent a fair duration of his second term as Ohio’s Governor campaigning for President. He continued his sanctimonious tour this week on Late Night with Seth Meyers. Claiming he wants to give people hope, Kasich continued feeding his own ego and pontificating for applause from the New York audience.

In tragic Ohio fashion, the Republican candidate favored to replace term-limited governor John Kasich is also the least likely to break from Kasich’s legacy of expanding government while forgoing chances for reform. Counterintuitively, the candidate who most threatens Kasich’s legacy is Mary Taylor, his lieutenant governor. But Attorney General Mike DeWine is expected to easily defeat Taylor in the May primary, and the other two GOP contenders have left the race: Secretary of State Jon Husted dropped out in November to become DeWine’s running mate, and Congressman Jim Renacci decided to run for a Senate seat instead.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump wants immigration policies that stop giving preference to families of immigrants already in the United States. It's part of a presidential conversation on restricting immigrants from "sh*thole" countries such as Haiti and Africa (Trump denied using that word). It's about White House cries of a need to protect this country from terrorists who might follow their relatives here. It's also a debate with claims of bigotry, and with questions of whether the United States should try to attract more people like Norwegians. Blame or credit the late Michael Feighan for it all.

Synopsis: This morning, a former prosecutor from Ohio, Rep. Dave Joyce, went on Fox & Friends and blasted the notion that FBI text messages have been lost. He says as a prosecutor, he could subpoena them from the big phone companies and they would gather them up swiftly.

Though federal employees won’t get a paycheck during the governmment shutdown, members of Congress will — unless they specify otherwise. Ten Democratic senators on Friday introduced a bill that would withhold pay for members of Congress during the government shutdown. The legislation comes from Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), along with Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Ranking Member Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.). “It’s wrong that members of Congress would still get paid in...