Mike Pence emerges as one of the few Republicans willing to challenge Trump 2.0

The Associated Press ^ | February 17, 2025 | BY JILL COLVIN (D-AP)

[Oldeconomybuyer]

WASHINGTON (AP) — His group spent nearly $1 million on ads opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to lead the nation’s health agencies. He’s delivering speeches urging the president to stand with longstanding foreign allies and lobbying members of Congress while aides write letters and opinion columns.

This weekend, he posted an article he penned more than a decade ago on the limits of presidential power after Trump claimed that, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Mike Pence is emerging as one of the last Republicans in Washington willing to publicly criticize the new administration.

It’s an especially jarring role for the former vice president, whose refusal to break with Trump defined their time together in office until the two had a falling out over Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his efforts to remain in power.

Pence and those who work with him at Advancing American Freedom, his political advocacy group, stress they are not looking to take on the “Never Trump” mantle. They intend to praise the administration when they agree with it, while raising concerns when they don’t, advocating for longtime conservative principles that have fallen out of favor as Trump’s “Make America Great Again” brand of populism has taken hold.

[Worldtraveler once upon a time]

The article says: "His group spent nearly $1 million on ads opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump's pick to lead the nation's health agencies. He's delivering speeches urging the president to stand with longstanding foreign allies and lobbying members of Congress while aides write letters and opinion columns."

Media being often squishy, I imagine those "aides" are employees of not only "Advancing American Freedom" but other allied astro-turfing "charities."

It is rather ghastly to imagine how much "soft" money flows into political advocacy and outright lobbying, all those "charities" operating in and around DC.

But if the above from media is correct, "Advancing American Freedom: is all about NOT advancing President Trump's cabinet choices. Sounds very UNSUPPORTIVE of a Republican administration. And not, if "nearly $1 million on ads opposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr," then the 501(c)3 -- after salaries and expenses -- did not have enough to do this alone.

Count on there being MANY 501(C)3 entities operating "under the radar" yet overtly against President Trump, all the while saying they are "Republicans."