Free Republic

In the run-up to the vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., knew her party had a problem — and its name was John Fetterman. Fetterman, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, was open to confirming President Donald Trump’s embattled pick, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Murray wanted to speak with her colleague one-on-one. So she reached out to set up a time. But Fetterman refused, as the two people familiar with the episode told NBC News. “He figured that she wanted to yell at him about it,” one person familiar with the...

President Donald Trump has long warned about an entrenched “deep state” of malevolent bureaucrats working to thwart his agenda. Many actual employees of the federal government have scoffed at this characterization, proud of the apolitical nature of the civil service and its ability to work across Republican and Democratic administrations. This time might have been no different — if Trump and Elon Musk hadn’t come in and declared war on them. While there were conflicts between Trump and civil servants in his first term, Trump may now be creating the broad resistance within the federal government he thought was there...

They're scientists. Veterans. Park rangers. Lawyers. Researchers. Administrative staff. They work on fire safety. Safe drinking water. Veterans' health. Combating bird flu. They're from all over the country, in red states and blue. They're young and old. Thousands of federal workers have been fired in the last month. They're victims of efforts by President Donald Trump and his senior adviser, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, to cut the size of the government. And they want people to understand what they did and why they loved being public servants. Anna Conn, 35, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Asheville, N.C.:...

Election officials in some of the most closely watched jurisdictions across the country say they are bracing for a new wave of conspiracy-fueled threats — even as they remain confident in their ability to do their jobs under heightened scrutiny. In interviews with a dozen local election officials in the swing states of Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, most expressed concern that the election denialism and conspiracy theories they have spent the last two years combating have already taken on new life, fueling isolated yet alarming incidents at drop box locations in Arizona and Pennsylvania, for example. Those...

Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters softened his tone and scrubbed his website's policy page of tough abortion restrictions Thursday as his party reels from the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In an ad posted to Twitter on Thursday, Masters sought to portray his opponent, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, as the extremist on the issue while describing his own views as "commonsense." "Look, I support a ban on very late-term and partial-birth abortion," he said. "And most Americans agree with that. That would just put us on par with other civilized nations." (Late-term abortions are extremely rare, according...

They are a distinct minority in their own party and, for that matter, their country: Republican holdouts amid an ever-widening consensus that Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine poses a mortal threat to American interests.A far right wing of the Republican Party tightly bound to former President Donald Trump is fighting to push the GOP toward the “America First” isolationism that underpinned his 2016 presidential bid.For the first time since Trump’s rise, his party is pushing back.That much was clear from the House vote Thursday on a bill ending normal trade relations with Russia as punishment for attacking Ukraine. A total...

The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol sought to dismiss a right-wing conspiracy theory by announcing Tuesday that Ray Epps, who was seen trying to egg on protesters ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, told committee members in an interview that he was not a federal agent. The panel also subpoenaed a trio of Trump allies as it continues its months long investigation into the origins of the attack.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have seized on inflation as a centerpiece of their campaign to take back Congress next fall, laying blame for rising prices on President Joe Biden and his congressional allies as voters express increased concern. But beyond blocking Biden’s wide-ranging social safety net and climate action plan — under consideration in the Senate through a process that would allow Democrats to pass it along party lines — how the GOP would tackle a notoriously difficult economic trend is less clear. Interviews with a half-dozen Republicans showed that while the party is not yet unified around a specific plan,...

It’s unusual for a former president to endorse in races so deep down the ballot, especially nearly nine months before the Republican primary. But Trump has backed seven candidates for state House or Senate seats in Michigan, an electoral battleground that he lost narrowly to Joe Biden last year — more than anywhere else. Most of the endorsements, including Rocha’s, were announced in recent weeks. All of the candidates have one thing in common: They’ve made election administration and investigating last year’s vote central to their platforms. Trump’s focus on the state illuminates just how driven he is to exact...

In a highly anticipated report released Wednesday, the Republican-led Michigan Senate Oversight Committee rebutted former President Donald Trump's voter fraud claims, debunking allegations of malfeasance in the state's election last fall and affirming that Joe Biden was victorious. The report is the product of an eight-month inquiry and concludes there was no basis or evidence to support the Trump campaign's repeated claims that the election results failed to reflect the will of the voters.

Republican-led efforts to re-examine last fall's vote are spreading as experts and election officials warn that the proliferation amounts to a grave threat to U.S. democracy. At the center of the push is Arizona, where the private company hired by the Republican-controlled state Senate continues its review of more than 2 million Maricopa County ballots, despite prior audits finding no evidence of fraud. With former President Donald Trump and others on the right following that count closely — despite it having no legal ability to overturn the result — GOP officials and voters have pushed for similar probes in at...

No, the Des Moines Register Poll did not kill itself. – The leaders in the Democrat Party are now in full-blown panic as The Commie closes in on a win in Iowa. So panicked, in fact, that they almost certainly spiked the final Des Moines Register poll – a tradition for 76 years running – that was to be released on Sunday. The narrative being pushed by the corrupt news media is that the Register, and its co-sponsor, CNN (because of course it’s CNN) decided to scrap the poll because one of the people conducting the poll consistently mispronounced the...

Chris Heinz and Hunter Biden were friends in business together, each cashing-in on the influence held by their fathers’ John Kerry and Joe Biden. Considering the likelihood Joe Biden was only running for President in order to: (1) shield himself from scrutiny, and (2) establish the cornerstone of the impeachment effort; it makes complete sense for John Kerry to be the participating campaign handler. With Biden’s impeachment usefulness now exhausted by DC engineers, there’s no reason to prop-up his candidacy. He’s dropping like a proverbial rock. However the risk to Biden and Kerry still exists (see Lindsey Graham interview today),...

Former Secretary of State John Kerry — one of Joe Biden's highest-profile endorsers — was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid "the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole." Sitting in the lobby restaurant of the Renaissance Savery hotel, Kerry was overheard by an NBC News analyst saying "maybe I'm f---ing deluding myself here" and explaining that in order to run, he'd have to step down from the board of Bank of America and give up his ability...

DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Secretary of State John Kerry — one of Joe Biden's highest-profile endorsers — was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid "the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole." Sitting in the lobby restaurant of the Renaissance Savery hotel, Kerry was overheard by an NBC News analyst saying "maybe I'm f---ing deluding myself here" and explaining that in order to run, he'd have to step down from the board of Bank of America and...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Monday that he is interested in subpoenaing John Bolton's manuscript for his upcoming book — in which the former national security adviser reportedly claims President Trump linked Ukrainian aid to the investigations of Democrats in an August 2019 discussion. "I want to know what's in the manuscript," Graham said. "Yeah, I think that’s important." Graham said Bolton's claims are "probably" not going to "change" his view of Trump's innocence, "but I’ll determine whether or not it’s relevant.' Asked if he trusts Bolton, Graham said, "I don’t know if I trust anybody right now." "He may...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday that she will send the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump to the Senate "when I'm ready," rebuffing calls from top Democrats to submit them. “No, I’m not holding them indefinitely," Pelosi told reporters during a press conference at the Capitol. "I will turn them over when I’m ready, and that will probably be soon.” Some Democrats in the House and Senate have joined Republicans in recent days in saying it's time for Pelosi to send the articles to the Senate. After initially saying in an interview Thursday morning that he thought...

President Donald Trump took in the solar eclipse from the Truman Balcony of the White House on Monday, even briefly glancing at the sun directly despite a shouted warning from an aide. Sporting eclipse glasses — for only part of the viewing — and standing alongside Melania Trump and their son, Barron, Trump viewed what was a partial eclipse in Washington, DC. It began at 1:17 p.m. ET, peaked at 2:42 p.m., and was set to end at 4:01 p.m., The Washington Post reported. The moon covered 81% of the sun at the eclipse's peak in Washington.

On February 8, 1984, a few of the most prominent businessmen in New York — members of the New York State Urban Development Corporation — were holding a news conference. Among them was a press darling — a man whose brash reputation and penchant for public tirades had made him one of the city's most recognizable figures. His rise to prominence a decade earlier sprung from his purchase of a major New York institution. He was tall, an imposing figure with his hair just long enough to be swept flat behind his ears. He often bellowed, "You're fired!," a connotation...

Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney plans to bash Donald Trump in a speech Thursday, according to excerpts of the speech being passed around social media. In quoted remarks released by Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin, Romney calls Trump "a phony, a fraud." "He's playing the American public for suckers: He gets a free ride to the White House and all we get is a lousy hat," Romney is expected to say. Romney, who recently has been publicly critical of Trump's campaign, announced Thursday's speech on Wednesday at the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah in Salt...