Free Republic

Since he became governor, Chris Sununu has rarely clashed with President Donald Trump, supporting the travel ban on citizens from several mostly Muslim nations and quick to play up visits he has made the White House. But when Trump’s immigration crackdown reached the state’s tiny Indonesian community this year, Sununu wrote a letter to his fellow Republican in October in which he said he was “respectfully requesting your administration reconsider its decision to deport these individuals” and urging it consider a “resolution that would allow them to remain in the United States.” Sununu insisted the case of the Indonesians was...

TITLE SHOULD BE: DEMS READY TO SHUT DOWN US GOVT UNLESS DREAMERS ARE LEGALIZED. The threat of a government shutdown has put Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) in a tricky political situation. Schumer has kept his caucus unified against President Trump’s major legislative drives on ObamaCare and tax reform, but he faces a more divided group of Democrats when it comes to protecting young immigrants who could face deportation next year. The internal debate has more to do with legislative strategy than the underlining issue. Democrats generally back a legislative fix that would allow so-called Dreamers brought to the...

Testing the resolve of Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared Sunday there won’t be a government shutdown this week over the question of protecting immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, describing it as a “non-emergency” to be addressed next year. “There’s not going to be a government shutdown. It’s just not going to happen,” said McConnell, R-Ky. House GOP leaders unveiled a short-term plan over the weekend to avert a shutdown and keep the government open through Dec. 22. The measure would buy time for bipartisan talks on a bigger budget agreement that would give the Pentagon...

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, the immigrant who entered the United States illegally and was charged with murdering California resident Kate Steinle in 2015, was found not guilty Thursday by a San Francisco jury. President Trump, who has used Steinle’s death to promote harsh immigration policies, quickly responded by calling for a border wall, adding that the “Steinle killer came back and back over the weakly protected Obama border, always committing crimes and being violent.” These claims are just not true. In reality, the case highlights how much border security has improved and how little a threat undocumented immigrants pose. From...

A short-term spending bill passed by Congress earlier this year runs out on Dec. 8, and keeping the money tap open is one of the main concerns as lawmakers return to town this week. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said Congress needs to pass a long-term spending bill, but “sometimes you need to do a short-term extension.” And Thune discouraged talk about a government shutdown: “There shouldn’t be any discussion about shutting down the government,” he told “Fox News Sunday.” “We can make this thing work,” Thune said. “We just need to get people at the table, negotiate it. I think...

The White House on Saturday disparaged the legacies of the only two living Republican presidents to precede Donald Trump, after reports that both men castigated Trump in interviews last year and refused to vote for him. Former president George H.W. Bush mocked then-candidate Trump as a “blowhard” and voted for a Democratic president, while the younger Bush worried aloud that Trump would destroy the idea of a Republican president in all but name, according to “The Last Republicans,” which is scheduled to go on sale later this month. The White House responded after quotes from the book were published on...

Former President George W. Bush and his father, former President George H.W. Bush, both criticize President Trump in a new book to be released this month, with George W. Bush admitting that, despite Trump’s political affiliation, he’s worried “that I will be the last Republican president.” George H.W. Bush also calls Trump a “blowhard” in the book, “The Last Republicans,” by Mark K. Updegrove, which was previewed by The New York Times and CNN on Friday. "I don't like him. I don't know much about him, but I know he's a blowhard. And I'm not too excited about him being a leader,” the...

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced his decision to retire from the Senate rather than seek re-election in 2018, citing the new tone and political values that President Donald Trump brought to Washington, DC, as the reason. “When the next generation asks us, ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up?’ What are we going to say?” Flake said sorrowfully as he stood up in the Senate for his announcement. “Mr. President, I rise today to say, enough.” Flake said that he no longer could serve as a conservative in a party that no longer valued free trade or...

Things got a little heated Monday when a group of young immigrants confronted House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at a pro-DACA press conference in San Francisco. Several dozen young immigrants shouted down the top House Democrat, following her recent conversations with President Donald Trump over the future of a program that grants many of them legal status. "We are immigrant youth, undocumented and unafraid," they chanted, taking over a scheduled press conference Pelosi, along with Reps. Barbara Lee and Jared Huffman, organized to call for the immediate passage of the Dream Act, a federal proposal that offered many of the...

The Sheriff’s Office in Greenville County, South Carolina, has confirmed that immigration services determined a man accused of shooting and killing a local high school girl was in the U.S. illegally. Officials arrested 19-year-old Daniel De Jesus Rangel Sherrer and charged him with the murder of 18-year-old Diana Martinez-Gonzalez, who was found shot to death last week in a patch of woods along the 400 block of Saluda Dam Road in Easley, South Carolina. Deputies said they received a call from a friend of the victim who was “frantic” over the crime, according to Fox Carolina. At a recent press...

Some House Democrats are raising the specter of withholding support for must-pass spending legislation later this year in response to President Trump’s hard-line immigration proposals — meaning the fate of roughly 690,000 younger undocumented immigrants could become a major factor in negotiations to keep the government open after December. Democrats on Monday dismissed Trump’s calls to construct a wall along the entire length of the U.S.-Mexico border, crack down on “sanctuary cities” and seek ways to curb Central American migrants from illegally crossing into the country. But conservative Republicans insisted that such issues must be addressed before Congress considers offering...

President Donald Trump, who pledged to work with Democrats to protect "Dreamers" — young people brought illegally to the United States as children — called on Sunday for money to fund a border wall and thousands more immigration officers to be part of any deal. Trump's list of immigration "principles," laid out in a document seen by Reuters, is likely to be a non-starter for Democrats, who are seeking a legislative fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that Trump ended last month. The proposal includes a crackdown on unaccompanied minors who enter the United States, many...

"If the party can't be fixed ... I'm not going to be able to support the party. Period. That's the end of it ... But have I given up? No," Ohio Gov. John Kasich said to CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday.

On Monday, three Republican senators unveiled a bill to deal with the DACA mess President Trump dumped in their laps earlier this month. Rather than merely keep his promise to rescind President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to grant legal status to children who were brought into the United States illegally, Trump gave Congress six months to pass a bill resolving the dilemma of the so-called DREAMers, so named because of the acronym of the original bill that promised them relief. But if they think liberals will accept anything short of the full amnesty for those kids and their families that...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that illegal immigrant parents who brought their children to the U.S. in defiance of the law “did a great thing,” giving the country an infusion of successful young people. Mrs. Pelosi’s comments strike a dissonant note from many analysts, who while saying the Dreamers are sympathetic since they had no say in the decision, say the parents do deserve blame for creating the problem. He comments came after she was shouted down by protesters earlier this week who interrupted her at an event, and demanded she do more to protect all illegal immigrants....

Less than a quarter of Republicans in Congress actually voice support funding for President Donald Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, a new survey by USA Today said Wednesday. The USA Today poll asked all members of Congress if they approved an initial $1.6 billion in funding to begin construction of a wall According to the survey, only 69 of 292 GOP legislators responded that they approve of the plan. Three — Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.; Rep. Steve Pearce, R-N.M.; and Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas — said they oppose it. The rest didn’t directly answer the question, or simply didn’t...

House Speaker Paul Ryan, at a private dinner earlier this year, said he thought only “one member” wanted to build a wall across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, Breitbart News has learned from multiple sources with direct knowledge of the comments, including former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO). The dinner, sources said, took place on the eve of the House’s passage of two relatively minor immigration bills at the end of June: Kate’s Law and sanctuary city reforms. The far wider reaching Davis-Oliver Act was tabled at the same time. “Ryan told a group of Republicans he met with … that only...

The tide of globalism, is, according to economists, a train that has already left the station. The neo-liberal consensus, shared by both Republicans and Democrats alike over the past few decades has been that so-called ‘free trade’ is the solution to economic growth in American. But globalism also has its discontents, none less acknowledged than the American farm worker.In 1870, at the height of the labor market in agriculture, fully half of all working Americans were employed in the agriculture industry. Today, that figure is less than one percent of all workers. There are several reasons for this. First, technological...

Long-time pro-mass immigration billionaires Charles and David Koch became the latest force to pressure congressional Republicans to nullify the end of DACA with a legislative amnesty Thursday. Koch spokespeople said the brothers will throw their weight behind the growing effort to force a two-house GOP majority that has refused to pass either funding for the southern border wall or the RAISE Act, a key nationalist immigration reform, to quickly pass an amnesty for those who were once exempted from federal immigration law under President Barack Obama’s DACA. The Koch amenability to open borders and amnesty is nothing new. In 2013,...

Does House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy think it’s funny to have to delay border wall funding? Apparently so. In a Tuesday appearance on Fox Business News with Maria Bartiromo, McCarthy giggled when revealing funding for President Trump’s top campaign promise was being pushed back months.