Free Republic

WASHINGTON—President Biden moved to enshrine the Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution, declaring that the measure to prohibit sex-based discrimination had cleared the necessary hurdles to go into effect after a half-century of debate. The announcement came just days before Biden is set to surrender power to President-elect Donald Trump, and it was certain to face legal challenges and fierce objections from Republicans.

WASHINGTON—Kamala Harris is making abortion rights central to her candidacy for president as Republicans struggle to articulate a winning message on the issue. In contrast with President Biden, who was reluctant to say the word abortion, the vice president has campaigned aggressively on it since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that eliminated the constitutional right to the procedure. At the White House, she has met with abortion providers and women who have had abortions. Earlier this year, Harris was believed to be the first president or vice president to visit an abortion clinic. After locking up the support to be...

WASHINGTON—The White House once hoped the NATO summit that opens Tuesday would showcase President Biden’s leadership of the trans-Atlantic alliance and his differences with Donald Trump. Instead, it has become a pivotal test of his fitness for a second term. * * * Biden will open the summit with remarks Tuesday, followed by a day of meetings and a dinner at the White House for NATO leaders on Wednesday and a press conference with reporters on Thursday. He will also hold bilateral meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

WASHINGTON—An effort by some Democrats to seek an alternative to President Biden as the party’s nominee appeared to flag on Tuesday, with lawmakers signaling no clear path forward after the president made clear he was dead set against stepping aside. House and Senate Democrats held conference meetings for the first time since Biden flopped at the first presidential debate, a debacle for the party that heightened concerns that the 81-year-old incumbent couldn’t beat former President Donald Trump and may not be fit enough for another four years even if he did win. Lawmakers aired their frustrations with their predicament but...

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—For Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, his high-profile meeting with President Biden was an immediate victory, signaling that his isolation on the world stage is over. But the American president will have to wait weeks, perhaps months, before the world knows if his sojourn to the Middle East paid off for the U.S. On Saturday, Mr. Biden left Saudi Arabia, the second and final stop on a four-day Middle East tour that also took him to Israel. His aim was to reaffirm U.S. ties with an oil-rich region, following a rift with Saudi leaders after Mr. Biden...

WASHINGTON—When revelations about President Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine first started dribbling into the public in late September and early October, Republicans were caught off guard. Some members of the GOP criticized Mr. Trump’s request for Ukraine to open investigations that benefited him politically, while others sought to avoid the topic altogether. As many as 20 House Republicans initially were open to supporting Mr. Trump’s impeachment, according to Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.), a retiring member from a competitive district who quickly made up his mind that Mr. Trump’s conduct wasn’t impeachable.

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — The prognosis for President Donald Trump and his party was grim.</p> <p>In a post-Labor Day briefing at the White House, a top Republican pollster told senior staff that the determining factor in the election wouldn’t be the improving economy or the steady increase in job creation. It would be how voters feel about Trump. And the majority of the electorate, including a sizable percentage of Republican-leaning voters, doesn’t feel good about the president, according to a presentation from pollster Neil Newhouse that spanned dozens of pages.</p>

Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she does not need to apologize for using a private email account and server while at the State Department because "what I did was allowed." In an interview with The Associated Press during a Labor Day campaign swing through Iowa, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination also said the lingering questions about her email practices while serving as President Barack Obama's first secretary of state have not damaged her campaign. "Not at all. It's a distraction, certainly," Clinton said. "But it hasn't in any way affected the plan for our campaign, the efforts we're...

Des Moines, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz criticized former President Jimmy Carter's administration during a stump speech in Iowa, one day after Carter announced he was suffering from cancer that has spread to his brain. Speaking on a political soapbox at the Iowa State Fair Friday, Cruz said there were parallels between the Obama and Carter administrations. "I think the parallels between this administration and the Carter administration are uncanny. Same failed domestic policy, same misery, stagnation and malaise. Same feckless and naive foreign policy,"(continued)