Free Republic

Whether or not they vote to shut down the government today, Democrats have proven one thing: They are really bad at messaging. Laying out their political narrative on funding the government should have begun on Jan. 3, when this session of Congress began. Instead, as of lunch time on Wednesday, the party was still trying to puzzle out what it’s going to say. That’s just not the way to do it. Democrats need to have a consistent, effective message that everyone can understand. This shouldn’t be that hard. In the Trump administration, they’ve been given the fattest, juiciest target in...

I always expected the first few weeks of President Trump’s second term to be bad. But I did not expect to watch Trump and Elon Musk take a flame-thrower to the American government while congressional Democrats engage in the political equivalent of ASMR videos. It’s truly baffling. Trump has ignored dozens of laws in his quest to purge the federal government of supposedly disloyal employees and create an all-powerful presidency. Musk, his multi-billionaire sidekick, has been allowed to turn literal teenagers loose on every aspect of the federal government, with a mandate to do … well, no one really knows...

The election is over. Anyone who has read anything I have written for the last eight years knows that I am appalled by the result. But the people have spoken and a majority of Americans have willingly returned Donald Trump to the presidency. If we go by the book, we’re all supposed to acknowledge the election results and cheerfully commit to fighting the good fight for the next four years while looking forward to better times in 2028. I’m not sure I can do that. It’s tempting to try to what-if this result. For example, what if a ticket featuring...

A national group called Republicans for the Rule of Law is running ads aimed at moving Sen. Lisa Murkowski off the sidelines. They want her to criticize President Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. But both of Alaska’s senators have said they see shades of grey in the Ukraine picture. This ad is showing up in Alaskans’ Facebook feeds. It’s focused, of course, on that call this summer, when Trump leaned on the Ukrainian president for an investigation of the Bidens. “We think she will be receptive to the message,” said Chris Truax, a San Diego attorney who...

A Republican group is urging GOP members of Congress to take seriously allegations of obstruction of justice made against President Trump in a new ad released Monday. Republicans for the Rule of Law is airing the ad on "Fox & Friends" on Monday, ahead of the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Watergate star witness and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean to discuss the evidence of potential obstruction uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller. “When Nixon was alleged to have obstructed justice, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee took these allegations seriously,” the ad begins. Footage of several GOP...