Free Republic

While tariffs make wars more likely, embargoes make wars difficult to avoid. Senator Lindsey Graham’s Sanctioning Russia Act calls for 500% tariffs on dozens of countries and essentially amounts to an embargo.If this bill were to pass, it would cause an economic calamity on a scale never before seen in our country.In its insistence that Moscow be a permanent enemy of the United States, the foreign policy establishment is pushing to impose more punitive measures on Russia should they refuse to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. The Sanctioning Russia Act seeks to inflict a series of additional sanctions and...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) immediately announced his opposition to the House-passed bill Thursday, vowing to vote against it unless Senate Republican leaders remove a provision to raise the federal debt limit by $4 trillion over the next two years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), an outspoken fiscal hawk, said Thursday that there are four Senate Republican conservatives who will vote against the House bill as currently drafted, which would be enough to sink the bill if there is full attendance. Johnson said: “I think I’ve got at least four right now that this is not going anywhere.”

Friday, in a clip that aired on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Big” was unacceptable in its current form, as passed by the House of Representatives. Johnson told a reporter on Capitol Hill, “I couldn’t care less if he’s upset. I’m concerned about my children, my grandchildren, and the fact that we are stealing from them. We are stealing from our children and grandchildren. $37 trillion in debt, and we’re going to add to it as Republicans? That is unacceptable.” He added, “And that’s why there’s no way I’m going to...

On December 2, 2023, in the modest gymnasium of a community college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, President Donald Trump addressed a raucous crowd of supporters. As he spoke about the enduring force of the movement he ignited in 2015, he paused to reflect on a man many had forgotten—but whose ideas are increasingly animating the rising generation of conservatives. “You know there was a man, Pat Buchanan, a good guy, a conservative guy,” Trump began. A sudden, collective cheer erupted from the left side of the stage—unmistakably youthful, unexpected in tone. “Wow! Young people, they know him,” Trump responded with...

The 1,116-page bill the House passed early Thursday morning to enact President Trump’s ambitious legislative agenda faces a swarm of objections from Senate Republicans. GOP senators are calling for a rewrite of the bill to address concerns ranging from Medicaid reforms and the phase-out of clean energy incentives to the sale of government owned spectrum bands and the bill’s projected impact on the federal debt. The deal that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) struck with Republicans from blue states to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions from $10,000 to $40,000 is also a sticking point with Republican...

Ok, sorry it has a paywall---this is only my review of it. Everyone needs to read this powerful book. It's DENSE, and took me about 4 hours to read, but the insight into how the big social tech companies are stealing our lives is important. Previously in my substacks I had written part 1, covering the first 1/3 of the book. This covers the last 2/3.

On Wednesday night, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Senator Tim Scott sent out a letter endorsing John Cornyn. Here is the statement released by Tim Scott: WASHINGTON, D.C. — National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott released the following statement endorsing John Cornyn in the Texas U.S. Senate race: "John Cornyn is a leader who delivers on President Trump's agenda and for the people of Texas in the U.S. Senate. He's a proven fighter, man of faith, and essential part of the Republican Senate Majority."

Sen. Rand Paul — a right-wing firebrand from a deep red state — is in some ways an unlikely figure to articulate a searing case against Donald Trump’s agenda. But the senator from Kentucky is issuing a stark warning to fellow Republicans that Trump’s tariff policies could lead to a generational political loss for the party. And he’s raking in surprising praise from his Democratic colleagues as he pushes back relentlessly on the airwaves and the Senate floor against what he describes as Trump’s executive overreach and infringement on Congress. In an impassioned floor speech ahead of his vote to...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski issued a joint statement with the Danish member of parliament who holds two seats representing Greenland, emphasizing that the United States should view the icy landmass as a “an ally” rather than “an asset.” “The appeal of Greenland is easy to understand. It is strategically located for defense, shipping, and more. It is also a storehouse for all sorts of minerals, the building blocks of society that will determine who leads—and controls—the industries of the future,” the statement began. “Of course, a businessman turned president would be interested. But Greenland is not for sale. The question has...

Brooke Shields considered former President George H.W. Bush such a close "confidant" that she would ask him just about anything. Shields, 59, admitted that she considered the late politician her substitute grandfather during an event to support the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy's New York Celebration of Reading event at the Lotos Club. The actress and author, who will soon publish her new book, "Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old," even had a nickname for the 41st president of the United States. "I call him Papa Bush. I was dating somebody [whose father] was an ambassador in...

The Kentucky Senator, who is known for advocating libertarian positions, said in an interview on Newsmax that it would be a “huge mistake” for Trump to use the military to help deport the tens of millions of illegal aliens currently residing in America. Trump has long insisted that he will use the military to help speed up the deportations, which will inevitably require a huge amount of manpower in order to send these individuals back to where they came from. Paul, meanwhile, does not agree. He explained:

She would be a Potomac Joan of ArcThe non-endorsement is the new endorsement! Hot on the heels of the Los Angeles Times’s decision not to endorse a candidate in the presidential race, a controversial call made by the paper’s owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong that has been met with multiple staff resignations, the Washington Post is following suit.A statement published Friday reads: “The Washington Post will not be making an endorsement of a presidential candidate in this election. Nor in any future presidential election. We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.”Public statements from leading Post personalities have...

A former adviser to George W Bush and John McCain believes Vice President Kamala Harris will nab the presidential election “maybe easily.” Writing in a Vanity Fair op-ed released on Friday, Mark McKinnon, a former chief media adviser to George W Bush and John McCain, said: “I’m going to make a bold prediction here because I just don’t give a s*** if I’m wrong, even if this lives on the internet forever. “Kamala Harris is going to win.” He attributed his theory to the level of enthusiasm among Harris’s supporters. Harris’s campaign got an eight-point lead in August when it...

According to the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office, on Wednesday at around 1:45 p.m., a man was reported to have walked up to a pregnant staff member at a Mariposa County restaurant and touched her stomach telling her “The spirits led me to you and your baby belongs to me, and what time is your break because I will be waiting for you.” ... At around 3 p.m., the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Office was told about a possible car chase, kidnapping, assault, vehicles stolen, and other incidents in the Fish Camp area – which is just outside the south entrance to...

Retired federal appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar put on the bench by President George H.W. Bush, is endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris over former President Donald Trump, whose candidacy he describes as an existential threat to American democracy. It will be the first time Luttig, a veteran of two Republican administrations, has voted for a Democrat. “In the presidential election of 2024 there is only one political party and one candidate for the presidency that can claim the mantle of defender and protector of America’s Democracy, the Constitution, and the Rule of Law,” Luttig...

[Tulsi Gabbard podcast where she discusses her evolving and current stand on the Second Amendment] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FKPBrLOMxg

Former President Donald Trump‘s visit with Republicans on Capitol Hill last week did nothing to win over outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney to his cause. Romney, 77, had initially planned to give the presumptive Republican nominee’s DC meeting with the Utahan’s Senate colleagues a miss — but changed his plans after his flight was canceled. “I didn’t go there to support former President Trump. I went there to listen to what he was planning on doing if he became president,” Romney told CNN Tuesday. “With President Trump, it’s a matter of personal character. I draw a line and say when someone...

For most of the past three decades my favourite American political speech has been Pat Buchanan's keynote speech at the RNC in Houston in 1992. Maybe this recent effort from Tulsi Gabbard is better: "Aloha. What a beautiful sight ........ I feel this sense of hope and inspiration and motivation because you know how serious the task at hand is ...... Our fundamental rights and freedoms, the principles of this great country are under attack ........ We are seeing the fundamental pillars of our democratic republic being undermined ........ It is not up to someone else to fight this battle...

Vance thinks that jobs lost because of incompetent central planning don't matter—but that jobs lost to immigrants do.In an interview published this week by The New York Times, Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) calls for a more muscular federal government to intervene even more aggressively in the economy than it already does, to create what Vance calls "incentives" for American workers. In doing so, Vance inadvertently reveals one of the major flaws in this line of analysis. Vance's opinions about these things carry significant weight, in no small part because he's on the shortlist to be Donald Trump's running mate. With...

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a member of the Fox Corporation Board of Directors, said Tuesday on FNC’s “Your World” that American voters have terrible choices for president in November. Host Neil Cavuto asked, “There is this historic, unprecedented situation that we’re going to have a former president who’s a convicted criminal and we’re going to have a son of a president who’s a convicted criminal. And I’m just wondering what you think of that?” Ryan said, “Yeah, I think in a country with 350 million people, this is the choice we have. I, like the majority of Americans, wish...