Free Republic

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz(R) has no interest in becoming President Trump’s next Supreme Court nominee. “I revere the institution and what it has meant for our country, for the constitution, for the rule of law … the short answer is no,” the Republican told Hill.tv’s Buck Sexton. Cruz says he prefers to instead stay in politics. “I don’t want to stay out of political and policy fights. I want to be right in the middle of them. The Senate is the battleground for just about every big policy fight right now,” he said. The senator is running for reelection against...

HOUSTON - President Donald Trump will touch down in Houston Thursday, the White House confirmed to KPRC on Sunday. After visiting Houston, he will travel to Dallas, though no context to his visit was provided by White House officials. Beginning Monday, the president will participate in a Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony in Washington, D.C., and will travel to Nashville Tuesday after meetings....

On Friday, a gunman opened fire at Santa Fe High School in Texas, killing several people and injuring many more. Mere hours after the attack, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton responded to the Santa Fe shooting with a tweet, stating that politicians who refuse to take action to reduce gun violence are "failing our children." Clinton, 70, has been a staunch proponent of gun control reform for years, dating back to her time as a senator from New York. During the 2016 presidential campaign, she ran on reinstating the assault weapons ban, expanding background checks, and restricting people suffering...

Democratic Party members in Lubbock, Texas, have been getting blasted on Facebook for cropping First Lady Melania Trump out of a now-viral picture from Barbara Bush’s funeral. The original photo features former presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — posing alongside Melania and first ladies Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush and Michelle Obama. Someone at Lubbock Democratic Party Headquarters posted the edited version on Sunday and later claimed they did it by accident. But Facebook users weren’t buying it. ---snip--- While party officials told KCBD that they never intended to edit Melania out of the...

On the day after this year’s November general election, you’ll know almost everything about how Texas went by knowing how the election went in Dallas County. It’s a blue county in the most populated red state in the U.S. Hillary Clinton won 60.75 percent of the vote to Donald Trump’s 34.6 percent in 2016. Democrats Wendy Davis and Leticia Van de Putte beat Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick in the races for governor and lieutenant governor in 2014, even as the two Republicans were coasting to easy statewide victories. Democrats want to keep the Dallas County trend rolling. Republicans, of...

PHOENIX — Arizona's top elected officials, both Republicans, are not going to join the lawsuit filed by Democrat officials in some states challenging the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 census even though it could mean that Arizona won't get its fair share of federal dollars and political representation. Daniel Scarpinato, press aide to Gov. Doug Ducey, said his boss is opposed to more lawsuits. "And he supports having accurate statistical information,'' Scarpinato said. Attorney General Mark Brnovich also has no interest in Arizona becoming one of the 17 states, seven cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors...

Does anyone have a list of house members & how they voted on the 1.3 TRILLION Boondoggle?

Article II of the Constitution gives states broad authority to decide how their electoral votes are selected and divided among the candidates. In 48 states, the candidate who gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral votes. But the Constitution doesn’t require that rule. Maine and Nebraska have implemented district- by-district voting. One electoral vote goes to the winner in each congressional district, and the remaining two electoral votes are awarded to the winner of the statewide popular vote. Assume, however, that a state enacts a law giving all its electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins...

The Republican grousing began right away on Election Night once Florida began tilting towards Obama, with some on the right predictably blaming Romney as too middle-of-the-road, while the vast majority of GOP pundits zeroed in on what really lost them the White House: the party's horrendous performance among Hispanics, the fastest growing slice of the electorate. All of a sudden Fox News's Sean Hannity was in favor of "a pathway to citizenship" for illegal immigrants, and his peers were all gaga for rising Hispanic GOP stars like Florida Senator Marco Rubio, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, and Texas Senator Elect...

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, said Tuesday that he has decided not to seek re-election next year and will retire from Congress at the beginning of 2019. "Today I am announcing that I will not seek reelection to the US Congress in 2018. Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned," the Texas Republican said in a note to supporters. Hensarling, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said that he has an array of issues...

Failed Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis is keeping an eye on the "electoral climate in Texas" as she decides when she should make another political run, she wrote in Cosmopolitan. Davis, in a piece on how she "came back stronger after losing" by over 20 points in her 2014 run for governor, says she still has hopes to run again for office some day. "I'm trying to figure out when I should put myself back out there, and when will the electoral climate in Texas be right for me," Davis wrote. "I want to serve this state," she wrote. "I...

El Paso Rep. Beto O'Rourke isn't betting his bid for toppling Sen. Ted Cruz entirely on backlash against President Donald Trump, or probes of Russian ties to his campaign, or his efforts to ban Muslim visitors, or deport young immigrants, or wall off the southern border. But he isn't shy about raising those topics and using them to tar the polarizing senator for his coziness with an even more polarizing figure in the White House. This being Texas, where Democrats haven't won a statewide contest since 1994, stoking misgivings about Trump may be O'Rourke's best shot at stopping Cruz from...

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) kneeled on the House floor Monday night to show solidarity with NFL players defying President Trump to protest police brutality. Jackson Lee, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, blasted Trump for attacking NFL players who kneel during the national anthem at games to draw attention to the treatment of African Americans by law enforcement. Then she took a knee herself. "I kneel in honor of them. I kneel in front of the flag and on this floor," Jackson Lee declared. "I kneel in honor of the First Amendment. I kneel because the flag is...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An ideologically divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a win to Republicans in Texas by putting on hold rulings that said electoral districts drawn by state lawmakers discriminated against minority voters. On a 5-4 vote, with the court’s conservatives in the majority and the liberal justices dissenting, the court in a brief order blocked two different lower court decisions that found fault with both congressional districts and state legislative districts drawn by the Republican-controlled state legislature. In August, a federal court in Texas struck down two Republican-drawn congressional districts saying they were discriminatory and ordering new...

Chelsea Clinton took to Twitter Saturday to slam President Donald Trump's comments that the response to Hurricane Harvey has been "a wonderful thing," noting that "people lost their lives, loved ones, homes, beloved pets." Here's Clinton's post: (TWEET-AT-LINK) While visiting NRG Stadium in Houston, where nearly 2,000 people are still being sheltered, President Trump said Saturday that "I saw a lot of happiness" despite the tragedy. "As tough as this was, it's been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch it, for the world to watch," he said. Trump called the response he saw to the...

ADDISON — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday that cities should not get rid of Confederate statues and monuments in order to "sanitize history." "I don't think we should go through and simply try to erase from history prior chapters, even if they were wrong," Cruz said during a news conference. "But I think that's a decision each community has to make. ... I suspect different communities will approach this decision differently." President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was disappointed with the removal of Confederate monuments, saying on Twitter that the nation's cities were losing some of their beauty.....

Fort Worth Rep. Kay Granger on Wednesday lined up with President Donald Trump, condeming violence coming from “both sides” and raising concerns about a rush to remove Confederate monuments. Speaking with North Texas conservative radio host Mark Davis on Wednesday morning, Granger was asked whether in the wake of clashes between white nationalists and counter-protesters last weekend in Charlottesville, violence perpetrated by left-of-center activists was being ignored. “[W]e need to recognize it and talk about it because it’s on both sides,” said Granger, who said people on both the left and right are guilty of escalating their political activism to...

Ted Cruz’s Democratic challenger is working overtime to drive a wedge between the senator and his base on one of his central issues — criminal justice reform. Over the past six months, Rep. Beto O’Rourke has reached out to members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus to collaborate on the issue, hosted a Facebook Live event with them to talk marijuana policy, and sought support from the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks for a criminal justice bill he introduced in the House. While O’Rourke is no stranger to working with Republicans on issues relevant to his El Paso district, the lawmaker’s...

AUSTIN, Texas—Democrats haven't won a Texas governor's race in nearly three decades, but a booming Hispanic population and the party's dominance of the state's largest cities have made them willing to invest in the contest to keep hopes of an eventual resurgence alive. After high-profile candidates lost decisively in the last two elections, though, the party now finds itself in unprecedented territory for the 2018 ballot: with no major candidate to run. Democratic leaders haven't yet lined up a substantial name to represent the party and its message despite months of trying. Any continued faith in a Democratic turnaround in...

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz will be in East Texas on Friday, touring local businesses and taking part in a roundtable discussion at Tyler Junior College. “East Texas is home to many hardworking Texans and job creators that contribute significantly to the engine of Texas’ economy,” Phil Novack, a spokesman for the senator, said. “Sen. Cruz looks forward to visiting with folks in Kilgore and Tyler, listening to their concerns and discussing solutions that will help create jobs and spur economic growth for the region.” At 10 a.m., Cruz will tour the Skeeter Boats manufacturing facility in Kilgore. At 11:30 a.m.,...