Free Republic

There's this misconception out there that the filibuster is designed to give some power to the Senate minority.

It's not.

The filibuster is designed to give the majority party a permanent excuse not to pass legislation that their voters support but their financial backers oppose. It's been that way for years.

And I can guarantee you that if the Republicans somehow ever managed to get 75 seats in the Senate, they'd suddenly come up with a reason "based on historical principle" to change the Senate rules so that 80 votes are required to end debate and vote on a bill.

One township in NJ that went +30 for Trump voted overwhelmingly for the Dem governor candidate.

That's worth a look. Did the results change so dramatically because Trump voters in 2024 voted for the Democrat in 2025, or did the 2024 Trump voters just not show up to vote at all?

Project 2025 is a broad initiative with many parts to it.

What's the ONE thing that would have the greatest impact for the next 2-3 years?

To be fair, presidents spend an inordinate amount of their time in foreign policy matters simply because it's one of the only areas of national governance where he can operate outside of Congressional bounds.

The signature "Big Beautiful Bill" was passed this year. Anything else is going to have to be driven by Congress, even if the President is involved in pushing them to do something.

Simple question for everyone on this thread:

If you could compel Congress to pass one piece of legislation that would have positive far-reaching implications to help bolster the GOP in 2026 and 2028, what would it be?

I've had a crazy idea that crossed my mind back when the real estate market was in chaos after 2008-09:

Allow first-time home buyers with sufficient income to convert some of their student loan debt to mortgage credits.

Basically, this would allow someone to take a portion of their debt up to a certain cap (say $50,000) and convert it to a "down payment credit" on a qualified home. The $50,000 would remain on the books as an unpaid student loan debt, but it would carry an interest rate of 0% and would only be repaid upon the sale or refinancing of the home.

This would let these (mostly young) home buyers overcome the two biggest hurdles they face when buying a home: (1) saving up enough money for a down payment, and (2) having a sufficient positive cash flow to qualify for a mortgage while paying off student loan debt.

Bananas are up 8.6%, mostly because of tariffs, as almost none are produced domestically.

I am a supporter of tariffs on principle, but this right here is retarded — and demonstrates a serious ignorance on the part of the people leading this administration’s tariff policy.

The whole thing has been a joke. None of these automakers would have started building these stupid EVs if the government hadn’t imposed all kinds of mandates and subsidies.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it, depending on your immediate area. I live in a deep Red area of a swing state, and I love it here. Just stay away from the liberal part of my rural township where Trump only won by an 84%-16% margin in 2024. :-O

I don’t know what you’re saying. The Republican candidate in that election got less than 8% of the vote. There were basically two Democrats running against each other.

And Cuomo was Independent.

He ran as an independent after losing the Democratic primary, but he's been a Democratic Party figure for years and got 36% of the vote in the primary.

50% in a three-way race with another Democrat on the ballot is an epic landslide.

The two biggest items of the ACA that have escalated insurance premiums out of control are: (1) the requirement for health insurance plans to cover pre-existing conditions, and (2) the elimination of lifetime caps on coverage.

One way to reduce premiums is to eliminate these ACA provisions as requirements for ALL plans, and allow insurers to offer plans with exceptions for pre-existing conditions and/or annual or lifetime caps on coverage.

Here’s a crazy idea that crossed my mind back when the real estate market was in chaos after 2008-09:

Allow first-time home buyers with sufficient income to convert some of their student loan debt to mortgage credits.

Basically, this would allow someone to take a portion of their debt up to a certain cap (say $50,000) and convert it to a “down payment credit” on a qualified home. The $50,000 would remain on the books as an unpaid student loan debt, but it would carry an interest rate of 0% and would only be repaid upon the sale or refinancing of the home.

This would let these (mostly young) home buyers overcome the two biggest hurdles they face when buying a home: (1) saving up enough money for a down payment, and (2) having a sufficient positive cash flow to qualify for a mortgage while paying off student loan debt.

Something like 90% of the registered voters in NYC are Democrats. Curtis Sliwa might have been the most viable candidate the GOP has left there. He brings a New York personality and a clownish visibility that makes for good TV.

Remember that legalized abortion was established in the U.S. as a strategy for controlling the black population. This is exactly why Democrats — and many white Republicans — are adamant about protecting it.

Those are political arguments, not legal ones.

Arguments like that would completely undermine the administration’s case in the U.S. Supreme Court. You can’t claim that the President has the authority to act unilaterally without Congressional authorization to address a “national emergency,” then turn around and say that it will take years — even a decade or more — for the results of these measures to play out.

The first problem there is that a President only serves for four years at a time, and can’t guarantee that any executive branch policy will remain unchanged after he leaves office.

And THIS administration has ended up undermining any long-term strategy by engaging in this silly charade of imposing, delaying, modifying and canceling tariffs in such a disjointed and haphazard manner. No CEO with half a brain is going to make major long-term investment decisions based on a U.S. tariff policy that can change by the month … or even by the day.

1. The first problem is that nobody in the Trump administration has done anything but engage in political grandstanding with statements that were often contradictory. The same clowns who said that manufacturing capacity would return to the U.S. en masse would then claim that “hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs would be collected.” These can’t both be true.

2. Please give a source for that “$15 trillion in reinvestment.” And I don’t mean PR-type statements or baseless political nonsense — I mean actual companies with real projects that would not be done without these tariffs.

Dick Cheney was one of the people I had in mind when I composed the first item on my profile page.

Any argument about the need for tariffs to address a “national emergency” went out the window when the Trump administration began changing, postponing, and canceling them on almost a daily basis through the summer.