Free Republic

To those of us who have followed the Obama Administration's machinations on Title IX, and much else, it does not come as much of a surprise that the last two Secretaries of Education skirted traditional practice, if not legal guidelines, in consulting no one when they undertook their transformation of Title IX. "The Department imposed these regulatory burdens without affording notice and the opportunity for public comment," the new letter reads. "Under these circumstances, the Department has decided to withdraw the above-referenced guidance documents in order to develop an approach to student sexual misconduct that responds to the concerns of...

In her latest hurled insult, Rep. Maxine Waters has called Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson "an educated fool." "Look at Ben Carson. My God. My grandmother would call him an educated fool," Waters stated. "Here's a man who has a reputation of being a highly competent surgeon, but when he talks about poor people, he says they're the cause of their poverty. "He doesn't understand why you didn't do what he did and why you didn't make it like he made it. And he doesn't know the difference between slavery and immigration," she went on. At...

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson threw his support behind former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore for U.S. Senate Friday, hours before President Donald Trump campaigns for Moore’s opponent, establishment-backed U.S. Senator Luther Strange.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended scaling back 10 of the 27 national monuments under a review directed by President Trump. The scale of the monument changes was disclosed in a draft memorandum obtained by several news services on Sunday night. The White House said in a statement that it does not comment on leaked documents. According to the memo, Zinke would shrink 4 of the monuments on the list, and significantly alter the rules of land use for the remaining six. The memo went to President Trump last month but the administration would not disclose which monuments would be...

TV star Steve Harvey is apparently pressing ahead with his commitment to help the Trump administration on its Housing and Urban Development initiatives despite the fierce backlash he received for meeting with then-President-elect Trump in January. In an extensive interview with the Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, the comedian and Family Feud host revealed that he has been meeting with HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson to discuss building what he called “vision centers” in New York City, to teach STEM subjects and computer programming to children.

In the middle of August, Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO union hierarchy, exercised expert -- and malicious -- timing to embarrass the President Donald Trump. But Trumka never would have had the opportunity without White House advisors’ assistance. Back in January, Trumka and his deputy chief of staff, Thea Lee, had happily accepted invitations from the Trump Administration to serve on the newly-established Presidential Manufacturing Council and Policy Forum. Apparently, at least some Trump advisors thought it was a good idea to solicit the advice of a man who had, just a few months before, publicly denounced the...

WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is raising speculation that Harriet Tubman's future on the $20 bill could be in jeopardy. Mnuchin is avoiding a direct answer when asked whether he supports the decision made by the Obama administration to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, the 19th century African-American abolitionist famous for the Underground Railroad. During last year's campaign, Donald Trump praised Jackson, the nation's seventh president, for his "history of tremendous success" and said the decision to replace him with Tubman was "pure political correctness."

Oregon's plan to evaluate schools' performance, help schools judged to be weak performers and otherwise carry out federal education mandates fully meets federal government standards, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told Gov. Kate Brown Wednesday. "I am pleased to approve Oregon's... plan," DeVos wrote to Brown and state schools chief Salam Noor. "I congratulate you on this significant accomplishment." All states are required to file plans showing how they will comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act. Unlike the widely despised No Child Left Behind law, the new federal K-12 law leaves a lot of discretion to states....

Most of the United States’ special envoys will be abolished and their responsibilities reassigned as part of the State Department overhaul, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress on Monday, including envoys for climate change and the Iran deal. Special envoys for Afghanistan-Pakistan, disability rights and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center will be eliminated under the plan. But President Donald Trump’s administration plans to keep envoys for religious freedom, fighting anti-Semitism and LGBT rights, despite speculation from critics that it would seek to downgrade those priorities. Lawmakers of both parties, think tanks and even the diplomats’ association have long...

This is pretty extraordinary, as the startled reaction from Chris Wallace demonstrates. In an interview aired Sunday morning on Fox, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson draws a sharp distinction between the values of the American people and the American government on one hand, and the values expressed by his boss, President Trump, on the other hand. *** “This administration can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning these groups and do everything we can to heal the deep divisions that exist in our communities,” Cohn said, acknowledging the difficulty it has caused for him and others at top...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will check out the nation’s gold stash when he pays a rare official visit to Fort Knox on Monday -- while keeping an open mind for future film projects. “I assume the gold is still there,” the former Hollywood producer joked to an audience in Louisville, Kentucky, 40 miles (64 km) north of the U.S. Bullion Depository. “It would really be quite a movie if we walked in and there was no gold.” Fort Knox has been seared into the public imagination since the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger,” in which the British spy, played...

White House and Republican officials are looking at Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., as a candidate to take the top spot at the Energy Department, as a plan is being looked at moving Secretary Rick Perry to lead the Homeland Security Department.

[snip] “It’s largely not a highly disciplined organization,,” he said in an interview last month while on a flight back from the Middle East, where he tried unsuccessfully to resolve a bitter feud between Qatar and four Arab nations. “Decision-making is fragmented, and sometimes people don’t want to take decisions. Coordination is difficult through the interagency — has been for every administration.” Almost from the time of his arrival, Mr. Tillerson has said the department needed to be reorganized, and he has embarked on a wholesale rethinking of its structure. He has hired two consulting companies, undertaken a departmentwide survey...

“Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night, so that you may observe faithfully all that is written in it. Only then will you prosper in your undertakings and only then will you be successful.” Joshua 1:8 (The Israel Bible™) The Trump Cabinet’s weekly Bible study meetings, composed of the most influential lawmakers in the country, may be the first such gathering in 100 years, Ralph Drollinger, founder of Capitol Ministries and leader of the study sessions, told Breaking Christian News (BCN), bringing the Bible back to the White House in...

National security adviser H.R. McMaster continues to purge conservatives from the ranks of the National Security Council.On Thursday, McMaster fired Col. Derek Harvey, a renowned Middle East expert who served under Gen. David Petraeus. Neither the White House nor the National Security Council gave a reason for Harvey’s firing.Harvey is recognized in national security circles as a brilliant Middle East strategist. The Weekly Standard (which first reported Harvey’s firing) describes him as an “out-of-the-box thinker who has shown a keen knack for identifying threats before they’ve matured.” The report then cites a passage from Bob Woodward’s 2008 book “The War...

A spiritual awakening is underway at the White House. Some of the most powerful people in America have been gathering weekly to learn more about God's Word, and this Trump Cabinet Bible study is making history. They've been called the most evangelical Cabinet in history – men and women who don't mince words when it comes to where they stand on God and the Bible. Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries told CBN News, "These are godly individuals that God has risen to a position of prominence in our culture." They're all hand-picked by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike...

As hot Beltway rumors go, this one is extra spicy, but doesn’t appear to have very much meat on the bone. It started with an anonymously sourced story from Politico which claimed “department staffers” were suggesting that Jeff Sessions might be moved over from the Attorney General slot to replace departing General John Kelly at Homeland Security. So, as I said, you can hear the wheels spinning inside the heads of various politicos who are looking at this. One of the biggest selling points for keeping Sessions in the administration is his hard line stance on illegal immigration. Both ICE...

Derek Harvey was the key figure when it came to the Middle East. He was against the Iran Deal and the funding of Palestinian Authority terror. He called out Islamic Jihad. He tried to force out the Obama holdovers running our foreign policy. And now he's gone. McMaster's purge at the NSC continues. Flynn's people get forced out and replaced with establishment zombies. The Obama holdovers continue to run foreign policy. The swamp is now in full control of the NSC. This one is a really big win for McMaster. And a great loss for America. It will set back...

Fox News co-host Dana Perino on Friday night suggested former Homeland Security head John Kelly was named new White House chief of staff to clear a path for President Trump to remove Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sessions has been in disfavor with President Trump for some time, with the president's criticism rapidly escalating over the past week. “I think that this was all set up for a few weeks because the president has been so upset about Jeff Sessions and his recusal in the Russia investigation,” Perino suggested on her show "The Five." Perino added that removing Sessions from his...

President Trump has done remarkably well so far, considering the hatred, contempt, and subversion he faces from members of his own party – much less the garbage he endures from the astonishingly inept and newly Russophobic Democrats. These nimrods’ bright idea for appealing to the deplorable people we call “normal Americans” is to take the New Deal and replace the adjective with “Better.” It has yet to occur to them to try not calling us “Jesus-loving gun freak racists who aren’t afraid enough of the weather and don’t believe women can have penises too.”But it’s bad strategy to rely...