Free Republic

More cuts are coming soon at the White House National Security Council, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said, as part of an effort to make the council streamlined and efficient and to make sure the council staffers are dedicated to carrying out policies chosen by President Donald Trump. “It’s really a privilege to work in the White House. It’s not a right,” O’Brien added. “At the end of the day, the president is entitled to staffers that want to execute his policy, that he has confidence in, and I think every president’s entitled to that.” “When they come to the...

Now it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that President Donald Trump was going to win the New Hampshire primary. But just like with the Iowa caucuses people are looking at the voting and the turnout to see if the Republicans or the Democrats are more energized. That’s a little more interesting in New Hampshire because of the open rules of the primary. You only need $1000 to get on the ballot and write-in votes are encouraged, so there’s always more of a percentage that goes to “other” than perhaps in other places that don’t have such rules. So one way...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez famously took to the House floor last week to quibble over the origins of the old maxim about “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps.” “You know this idea, this metaphor of a bootstrap started off as a joke,” she said. “Because it’s physically impossible to lift yourself up by a bootstrap, by your shoelaces. It’s physically impossible!” She obviously believes this to be some sort of profound observation, but perhaps someone could have taken the time to explain to her that the difficulty of the physical act is kind of the point of the metaphor. According to Writing...

Thirty-five years ago, as a late teen, I came to New York to attend yeshiva. As an avid follower of news and politics, I recall cringing every time I heard then–New York governor Mario Cuomo on the radio, as he pontificated on the issues of the day, spewing forth liberal platitudes as if they were divine truths that no one dare question, while failing to say anything of substance, as the state was falling apart. It was a disgrace. Seventeen years later, Cuomo's son, Andrew, was sworn in as the 56th governor of New York. Although none of my friends...

A key House committee approved a bill to make the nation's capital the 51st state, sending it to the House floor for full approval. This is the first time since 1993 that a bill to make Washington, D.C., a state has been considered and approved in a committee. The House Oversight Committee passed the bill over the objections of the Republican minority, which introduced amendments to impose restrictions on abortion and gun control on the proposed state. The bill has 220 co-sponsors, giving it the momentum to pass the majority-Democratic House. "For such a historic achievement for the District of...

"A More or Less Perfect Union" is a three-part series, produced by Free to Choose Network, that will air on various PBS stations across the nation starting in February. The documentary is a personal exploration of the U.S. Constitution by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit and is now a senior justice on the court. Ginsburg explores the U.S. Constitution and features interviews with and gains the perspectives from constitutional experts of all political views -- liberal, conservative and libertarian. He examines the key issues of liberty in the U.S. both from a...

A Pennsylvania family is pleading with their school board to reconsider its policy on "threat assessments" for students, after their 6-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome was reported to police for pointing her finger like a gun. Margot Gaines, a kindergartener at the Valley Forge Elementary School in Tredyffrin, Pennsylvania, made the gesture in November and told her teacher, "I shoot you," according to her mother, Maggie. Maggie said her daughter made the comment when her teacher asked her to do something she didn't want to do, but had no idea what the words or the gesture meant.

The New Hampshire primary results are in: Bernie-slightly-right-of-Karl-Marx-Sanders won, Pete-son-of-avowed-Marxist-Buttigieg takes second and Joey-DNC-safe-choice-Biden places, way back in the pack. A brokered convention is beginning to look more and more like the only way the establishment can keep control. You would think they’d be thrilled that several candidates freely supporting their progressive party’s ultimate objective are doing so well. Unfortunately for all of them the powers-that-be know only too well that even in 21st century America, after decades of brainwashing the youth, you still can’t win elections by being that transparent. That’s why they’re panicking and that’s why they’re sending...

Subtitle: The former New York mayor's campaign has been reaching out to key party influencers, including some who support his rivals. WASHINGTON -- Michael Bloomberg may be absent from the early-state ballots, but behind the scenes, he has been using his wealth and influence to undermine the rest of the Democratic field. As the other candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination trudged through Iowa and New Hampshire in the early weeks of this year, Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, has doubled his planned spending on television ads, expanded his staff several times over and started aggressively courting key...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, store here.

President Trump didn't have a serious challenger in the New Hampshire primary, but he still turned out enough voters to more than double former President Barack Obama's 2012 vote total in the state, indicating that the Republican base is all-in on Trump as he prepares to face the eventual Democratic nominee in a reelection battle this November. With 87 percent of precincts reporting, Trump secured more than 120,000 votes in the Granite State. In 2012, Obama managed just 49,080 total votes in New Hampshire. The gap between the two presidents is likely to increase as more precincts report their totals...

Story Highlights 61% say they are better off than three years ago No more than 50% have said this in past election cycles Evaluations of U.S. world standing mostly similar to past elections

The Diamond Princess cruise ship has become a symbol of a global health nightmare. To date, 135 cases of the coronavirus — the infectious disease the World Health Organization is now calling COVID-19 — have been confirmed aboard the ship. David Abel is one of the remaining 3,600 people on board, quarantined in waters off the coast of Japan until at least Feb. 19. He's been documenting life in quarantine: Medical staff doing checkups through the night, small boats ferrying supplies of food and medicine. Abel told Britain's Channel 4 News: "24/7, we are not allowed to open the door...

Pope Francis has ruled against ordaining married men in the Amazon region as a means of addressing the shortage of Catholic priests. Bishops backed the measure last year, but the decision needed the Pope's approval to be implemented. Catholic priests are required to abide by the rule of celibacy upon ordination except in cases where married Anglican ministers have converted. Celibacy is seen as the devotion of one's life to God. A statement from the Vatican said: "The Amazon challenges us, the Pope writes, to overcome limited perspectives and not to content ourselves with solutions that address only part of...

House Democrats who know a thing or two about winning in the most competitive parts of the country are sounding the alarm about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) potentially becoming the party’s presidential nominee. Vulnerable House Democrats are not only pessimistic about the Vermont senator’s chances against President Trump, they worry he could also cost Democrats the House majority in November. “I will support Bernie Sanders if he is nominated against Donald Trump; I will do so enthusiastically,” Peters told The Hill on Tuesday, while adding “I don’t think … putting a socialist on the ballot is a good strategy to...

Snip- NICOLLE WALLACE: Bernie is going to tell us how he really feels about Donald Trump at a letter point in time. Katy Tur, even from Bernie Sanders a surprisingly harsh anti-Trump closer here for the New Hampshire voters? Katy. KATY TUR: Well, it depends. There are New Hampshire voters here who are really excited about Bernie Sanders. And they think that he's not divisive and that they think that he's got good ideas and they believe he’s somebody who can accomplish those ideas, they’re the die-hard Bernie supporters. He won this state in 2016. But then there are those...

President Donald Trump said he wouldn’t touch Medicare before pitching a budget plan that would do exactly that, along with steep cuts to Medicaid. Democrats are calling it “savage” and “heartless,” while administration officials are insisting they are only slowing explosive growth in future years and that current Medicare benefits would remain untouched. Here are three things to know about the election-year fight on health care spending: Trump proposed spending $1.6 trillion less on future health care spending, including $451 billion less for Medicare. On Twitter, two days before releasing his budget, the president said, “we will not be touching...

A majority of Americans in a new poll say they are better off now than they were three years ago. Just over six in ten Americans, 61 percent, told Gallup pollsters that they are decidedly in better shape than they were shortly after President Trump took office in 2017, a sign of a recovering U.S. economy. A little more than a third, 36 percent, said they are definitely not better off than they were in early 2017, while just 3 percent said their prospects remain the same. In early 2012, months before former President Obama won reelection over now-Sen. Mitt...

Behind Joe Biden's brave-faced campaign, advisers are 'scared' after the former vice president performed so poorly in the first caucus and primary of Iowa and New Hampshire, coming in fourth and fifth place respectively. 'This is horrendous. We're all scared,' a Biden adviser to Politico, speaking anonymously since the comments conflict with the face the campaign is broadcasting. 'I think we're going to make it to South Carolina. I know we're supposed to say we're going to and we're going to win. But I just don't know,' the adviser admitted. Biden fled New Hampshire before the polls even closed at...

Democrats’ dangerous game of impeaching President Trump despite lacking the votes to remove him from office has backfired on them.  Trump gained political strength from his acquittal in the Senate, just in time to boost his campaign for reelection. Trump’s first act was to remove the Deep State bureaucrats who started it all, including the subordinate Ukrainian-born Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whom Trump rightly called “very insubordinate” for going outside the chain of command on foreign policy.  Trump also removed Col. Vindman’s identical twin brother Yevgeny from his powerful position on the National Security Council, and he recalled Gordon Sondland, the...