Free Republic

Significant milestones over the next few weeks could shuffle the status quo. For now, both sides remain dug in as the closure heads into a fifth week.Senate Republicans were confident that the call on Monday from the largest federal employees union for an end to the government shutdown would finally nudge labor-allied Senate Democrats to move toward resolving the stalemate entering its fifth week.Democrats were instead mostly unmoved.Their bet was that news on Wednesday of soaring health care premiums because of expiring Obamacare tax credits might finally persuade Republicans to negotiate on extending the subsidies. That didn’t pan out either;...

A Republican measure that would pay essential government employees faltered in the Senate, and the G.O.P. blocked a pair of Democratic bills to pay a broader swath of workers.Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked legislation to pay federal employees who have been working without compensation during the government shutdown, thwarting Republicans’ latest effort to weaken their hand in the federal spending fight. The defeat was part of a series of failed partisan votes on the 23rd day of the government shutdown that underscored the depth of the prolonged impasse, with neither Republicans nor Democrats showing any indication that they planned to...

On matters of substance and style, there is little distance between former President Donald J. Trump and Kari Lake, the bombastic former news anchor running for Senate in Arizona. Both rose to fame on television. Both have refused to concede their last election. And both favor the incendiary rhetoric that delights supporters in the base of the Republican Party. But there is a vast distance between them in the polls in the Grand Canyon state. Mr. Trump has consistently put up competitive polling numbers, while Ms. Lake has routinely lagged behind her Democratic opponent, Representative Ruben Gallego.A similar phenomenon is...

… The attack on Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, on Friday, which left him with a fractured skull and appeared to be part of a planned attack on the speaker herself, came after a yearslong campaign by Republicans to demonize and dehumanize Nancy Pelosi in increasingly ugly ways. For the better part of two decades, Republicans have targeted Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American politics, as the most sinister Democratic villain of all, making her the evil star of their advertisements and fundraising appeals in hopes of animating their core supporters. The language and images have helped to fuel the...

WASHINGTON — The defeat on Tuesday of Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, the young conservative scion of a supermarket empire who voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump, was another sign that the party’s conservative core is bent on casting out those who have dared to break with Mr. Trump, who has embarked on a revenge tour aimed at punishing his adversaries. Mr. Meijer was defeated by a far-right challenger endorsed by Mr. Trump, becoming the second of 10 Republicans who broke with the party to back impeachment to be ousted in a G.O.P. primary. Republican voters in the Grand...