Free Republic

I know exactly what the smart-set will say. “Let it go! Focus on the future of the country! Don’t re-litigate the past. Enough with ‘fake news,’ and ‘witch hunt,’ and ‘crooked Hillary.” Know what I say? Please, Mr. President. Do the exact opposite. President Trump’s reelection campaign kicked off this week at a raucous rally in Orlando that must have exhausted Joe Biden just watching. The familiar chants returned. “Build the wall! Lock her up! CNN sucks!” (My personal favorite.) Also returning were the familiar critics who decried them. The aforementioned “news” network we love to hate broke away...

According to news stories, the Trump campaign fired pollsters who allegedly leaked polling results that show President Trump performing poorly against Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in battleground states. Regardless of the accuracy of the story, what can polling really tell us now? At this time in 2015, polls were showing Hillary Clinton 17 points ahead of Donald Trump. According to Gallup, Ronald Reagan's approval rating was about the same as President Trump's at the same time into his presidency. In November 1984, a year and a half later, Reagan won a historic landslide victory, winning 49 of 50...

President Trump has proven himself to be a man of his word on a whole host of important issues, not least of which is his outstanding record on pro-life matters. He can now achieve a great pro-life milestone by putting additional substantial limits on federal funds intended for Planned Parenthood and other abortion-providers in a manner that would likely stand up to judicial scrutiny. President Trump's pro-life accomplishments include redirecting Title X family planning funds away from abortion-providers, effectively depriving Planned Parenthood of up to $60 million annually. He also reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy, effectively protecting over...

The stock market is rebounding on the news that the Federal Reserve is considering an interest rate decrease, but some commentators are spinning this as a sign of economic calamity.“We are closely monitoring the implications of these developments for the U.S. economic outlook and, as always, we will act as appropriate to sustain the expansion, with a strong labor market and inflation near our symmetric 2 percent objective,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday.Experts widely interpreted this as an indication that the Fed may soon implement a rate cut after raising rates steadily over the entire course of Donald...

I received wonderful news Monday. Talkers magazine -- the Bible of America's radio industry -- named me to their Heavy Hundred list of the top 100 talk radio hosts in the United States. I made my debut at No. 62. And of course, No. 1 in Las Vegas. Think of the numbers involved. I Googled "radio stations." There are about 5,000 AM stations alone (which generally means "news and talk"). Assume the typical station has at least three hosts in its lineup. That's 15,000 radio hosts in America. I just made the top 100 out of 15,000 hosts in...

On April 20, 2019, the space community was buzzing from its most recent frustrating setback: The Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s most advanced space launch capsule, suffered some catastrophic anomaly. A day later, leaked footage from the incident purportedly showed the vehicle erupting in a fireball as it self-destructed during testing. The critical failure of the Crew Dragon—a shuttle designed to transport astronauts into space—does little to build confidence in the ongoing partnership between SpaceX and NASA. As the Trump Administration begins its push to send Americans back to the moon, SpaceX’s recent misfortunes have left many questioning whether Musk’s company should be...

Aurelia Skipwith has a BS in biology from Howard University, a Master’s in molecular genetics from Purdue and a law degree from Kentucky. She has worked as a molecular analyst and sustainable agriculture partnership manager. She was also co-founder and general counsel for AVC Global, a Washington, D.C.-based agricultural supply chain development company that helps small farmers link up with multinational buyers and with agronomy, business, financial and other service providers. For two years, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Interior Department, where she performed her duties so well that last October President Trump nominated her to become...

The Trump administration doesn’t win much in lower federal courts when it comes to the president’s efforts to enforce all immigration laws. But thanks to the opportunities he has had to fill two vacancies on the nation’s highest court, his administration — and the American people, including those who don’t like or support him — are getting some assistance in that area. On Tuesday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the administration has the authority to detain and deport illegal aliens who have served their time in prison and have been released. The ruling reverses lower court decisions in...

As POTUS Donald Trump prepares to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss a deal to end the current trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, the American political commentariat has panned it as another opportunity for China to ‘pull one over’ on this ‘hapless, bumbling president.’ Citing Trump’s ‘inability’ to come to terms with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un over denuclearization, they have left Americans who still listen to them with the impression that now it’s China’s turn to embarrass him and the United States — and at the president’s own resort at Mar-a-Lago. But the reality...

In what would be one of the Trump administration’s most far-reaching moves regarding race relations, top White House officials are planning a sharp pullback from federal efforts to correct imbalances in outcomes for minorities in everything from housing to hiring. On the table: a ban on the use of a controversial numbers-focused racial-bias theory known as “disparate impact.” Federal regulators and lobbyists familiar with the change say the White House management and budget office is reviewing a proposed executive order, originally drafted by two conservative Washington think tanks, that would prohibit the use of “the disparate-impact approach in the enforcement...

Actual headline: POTUS Trump’s tariff strategy is working: China’s Communist Party increasingly worried about internal stability as economy slows As the Trump administration signals publicly that there is a ways to go before it reaches an equitable trade arrangement with Beijing, there are growing signs that China’s Communist Party is concerned that the ongoing trade war and decline in the country’s GDP could spark widespread unrest. On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. and China had “miles and miles” to go before reaching a deal, though a trade delegation from Beijing was headed to the United States in...

The former chief of the top Chinese lender to foreign countries pleaded with the government to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war with the United States, according to the transcript of a just-published speech from September. The speech by Li Ruogu, the one-time head of the Export and Import Bank of China (China EXIM), the massive state-owned lending institution that provides funding to foreign companies for the purchase of Chinese-made goods and services, provides new details regarding the Communist government’s internal struggle over how to react to and deal with the Trump administration’s aggressive tariff regime, the South China Morning Post...

The 2018 midterms were a disaster for House Republicans. Democrats gained 40 seats, retook the majority, and, to our horror, Nancy Pelosi is speaker again. They were elected to stop Trump, to block him at every turn, and lead the effort for his impeachment and removal from office. Any Democrat who says otherwise is lying. The base demands Trump go at all costs. The younger, feistier Democrats say that openly. The older crew tries to downplay it, but ultimately that’s their goal. They’re banking heavily that the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading the DOJ’s Russia probe,...

Democrats are quick to criticize the Trump administration for any and every aspect of the government shutdown. They've been taking jabs at the White House, claiming Trump administration officials will receive a pay raise while some federal workers aren't being paid at all. Trump put an end to the rumors on Friday night when he froze pay for Vice President Mike Trump, members of the cabinet and other high-ranking political appointees. The raises were supposed to go into effect on Saturday, with some officials seeing a raise of roughly $10,000 a year, the New York Times reported. The reason the pay raises are...

President Trump has indicated that he will withdraw the United States from a 1987 treaty signed with the former Soviet Union aimed at limiting intermediate-range ballistic missiles. Urged on by National Security Adviser John Bolton and others, the president believes that Russia has been cheating on the agreement, while the bulk of China’s strategic missile arsenal falls within the range specified by the treaty (500 to 5,500 kilometers/310 to 3,417 miles).

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley surprised virtually everybody this week when she announced she'd be resigning from her post at the end of the year. In doing so, Haley has managed something unique. She leaves the Trump administration with her reputation not merely undiminished but actually enhanced. She's popular with both pro- and anti-Trump factions on the right, and with shockingly high numbers of independents and Democrats. She has a long list of accomplishments under her belt and no embarrassments or scandals. She is almost certainly the most popular politician in America. OK, full disclosure: I'm biased and conflicted. I'm biased...

More tweets at link. White House senior political adviser Stephen Miller's third grade teacher is out with a new op-ed criticizing him for his adolescent behavior. While a student at Santa Monica's Franklin Elementary school, Miller was a loner and ate glue, his former teacher Nikki Fiske regretted. Do you remember that character in Peanuts, the one called Pig Pen, with the dust cloud and crumbs flying all around him? That was Stephen Miller at 8. I was always trying to get him to clean up his desk — he always had stuff mashed up in there. He was a...

Last Laugh: Now that Justice Brett Kavanaugh has taken his rightful place as the newest Supreme Court member, he’ll be involved in decided several cases involving the Trump administration’s many legal battles with deep blue states. Included in those cases are emissions standards and various environmental issues, illegal immigration, and the Internet. While ‘abortion’ isn’t on that list (yet), gun rights, religious rights, and other ‘thorny’ issues are bound to come up as well, and the court’s constitutionalist make-up means that the winner will be our small ‘r’ republican form of government bequeathed to us by our founders.

Following his return to South Korea after a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, President Moon Jae-in told reporters he would like to see all countries that participated in the Korean War sign a formal peace treaty by the end of this year. Technically, the two Koreas, the United States, and China all remain at war, which began on the peninsula in June 1950 when North Korea invaded the South. An armistice — a cease-fire agreement — was signed in July 1953. To officially end it, all four countries would need to sign a treaty. In speaking to...

A report on Monday claimed that U.S. intelligence has determined that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has already made a decision to use chemical weapons against enemy positions in Idlib as his forces, combined with Russian airpower, attack the last rebel stronghold following seven years of civil war. The Wall Street Journal [source], citing unnamed intelligence sources, even noted the type of gas Assad has allegedly chosen: Chlorine gas, which was first used in World War I and has the effect of an asphyxiation compound. In addition, according to sources who spoke to the WSJ, President Donald Trump has also reportedly...