Free Republic

On Monday night, Scott Jennings asked a simple question to a CNN panel, and it got me thinking. And what I thought about was quite disturbing. The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down since Presidents' Day weekend. Democrats triggered it, and they've kept it going as a pressure campaign against the Trump administration's deportation agenda, specifically to hamstring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and use that as a cudgel to force policy changes in enforcement, most of which are absurd. The Senate voted three separate times on DHS funding bills, and each time, Democrats blocked them — every...

The bipartisan push to remove anonymity from the internet is ushering in an era of unprecedented mass surveillance and censorship.

Several current and former members of Congress are suing to secure retroactive pay raises, drawing scorn from at least one fiscal conservative in the institution. "Corrupt Washington politicians, including Democrat James E. Clyburn are suing for retroactive congressional pay raises that could cost taxpayers MILLIONS of dollars!!" Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who is running for S.C. governor, wrote on social media last week. "With $38 TRILLION in debt, Congress doesn’t deserve a raise! Enough is enough!" The National Taxpayers Union Foundation wrote a piece elaborating on the details of the effort for retroactive pay hikes. "Represented by former Virginia Attorney...

Republicans on Capitol Hill are asking the Justice Department to consider bringing criminal charges against Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in President Donald Trump’s first administration who became a star congressional witness about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to two sources familiar with recent developments.GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk made a criminal referral of Hutchinson to the Justice Department in recent days, the sources said. He accused Hutchinson of lying to Congress in her summer 2022 testimony when she alleged Trump was aware of the potential for violence on January 6, 2021, and forged ahead with his attempts to...

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, commonly referred to as the SAVE Act, has cleared a significant hurdle in the Senate after two Republican senators who had not yet endorsed a provision to bypass the “zombie” filibuster reversed course. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), who is currently locked in a. tight Senate primary with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, had not yet endorsed the idea of using the “talking filibuster” to advance the key election integrity bill. Under this procedure, the minority party, in this case Democrats, would be forced to physically stall the bill using the two-speech limit and physical...

Republican support for the war may not be as solid as it appears – and that could have implications for a U.S. intervention in Taiwan.In the days following the Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran, both chambers of the U.S. Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives – voted on a War Powers Resolution aimed at halting U.S. President Donald Trump’s military action, which was not given congressional authorization. Although the measure failed in both chambers – with nearly all Republicans voting against it and publicly supporting the administration – a closer look suggests that Republican support for the...

https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2029775841522229672 Wall Street Apes@WallStreetApes·40mRep Anna Paulina Luna comes out and says it. She says the American People hate Congress for how corrupt they areAfter both parties blocked disclosing slush funds using tax dollars to pay off their sexual assault charges, she loses it“That's why the American people hate us”“We know that members of Congress are using taxpayer dollars to pay off sexual harassment. We just had a member of Congress literally sexually harass a woman that then lit herself on fire and you guys all protected him.”

he Republican-led House on Thursday rejected a measure aimed at blocking President Donald Trump from carrying out further military strikes on Iran without congressional approval, delivering a victory for the White House even as lawmakers voice deep unease about the widening conflict. The War Powers Resolution, introduced by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, failed in a 212-219 vote after Republican leaders rallied enough support to defeat it, allowing the Administration to continue its military campaign against Iran for now without seeking new authorization from Congress. All House Democrats voted for the resolution except for Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas,...

Senate Republicans closed ranks Wednesday, handing President Donald Trump a win on his use of force in Iran, despite lingering questions about America’s involvement in the Middle East. The Senate shot down a resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., aimed at limiting Trump’s military actions in Iran on Wednesday, following days of speculation about whether Republicans would cross the aisle — as they have done before — to reprimand the president. The administration pushed hard to lobby support for Operation Epic Fury, holding several briefings with Congress to make its case. It appeared to work, at least for now, convincing...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that an increase in President Donald Trump's new temporary global import tariff to 15% from 10% was likely to be implemented sometime this week. The new tariff rate was announced by Trump in late February after the Supreme Court struck down his previous global tariffs under a national emergencies law. He initially imposed the 150-day tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 at a lower 10% rate. "That's likely sometime this week," Bessent said on CNBC of the 15% rate order from Trump. During the 150 days, we will see...

President Trump’s decision to launch a war against Iran without congressional signoff has splintered lawmakers, largely along party lines, and supercharged the debate over war powers authority. While most Republicans largely rallied around Trump’s decision to carry out the massive joint attack with Israel, Democrats quickly denounced the attack as an illegal “war of choice” and demanded Congress come back to Washington to take a vote on whether to authorize another Middle East invasion. Democratic leaders have vowed to forge ahead with their plans to force a vote on a war powers resolution next week in the House that would...

Our Founding Fathers were geniuses. They were far from perfect, but they were generally virtuous men, and they gifted us with a constitution far superior to anything that had ever been written. The document they wrote was imperfect, as all things that men create are, but it was extraordinary nonetheless – even with the 3/5 Compromise. They gave us a system with a separation of powers, both within the federal government and between the federal and state governments. The Bill of Rights, which was basically the quid pro quo agreed to for ratification, extended that distribution of powers by recognizing...

The House of Representatives passed a bill that would limit the Department of Energy’s authority to set energy conservation standards for household appliances, a measure Republicans argue would prevent the agency from imposing unrealistic standards that raise costs for families. The House voted 217-190 on Tuesday to pass a bill written by Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA) that would amend the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which requires the DOE to set minimum efficiency standards for consumer appliances and commercial equipment. The bill would “prevent future administrations from prioritizing a radical rush-to-green agenda over the affordability and availability of reliable household...

Mike Huckabee's analogies regarding land rights and defense, specifically his suggestion that if a people like the Irish can defend their land, they can keep it—have been viewed as a significant rhetorical own goal that complicates the very pro-Israel stance he intended to defend. Critics and media analysts have highlighted several major ramifications of this logic and analysts have noted the internal contradiction in Huckabee's argument. By shifting the justification from a divine mandate (the Promised Land) to a right of conquest/defense media commentators pointed out that the Irish analogy is particularly fraught. If land ownership is determined solely by...

WASHINGTON — Veterans and their advocates slammed a new rule by the Department of Veterans Affairs for determining disability compensation, predicting it will lower their payments for service-related illnesses and injuries. The rule, effective immediately, states that a disability level must be based on how well a veteran functions while on medication and not on the underlying impairment itself. Titled “Evaluative Rating: Impact of Medication,” the interim final rule was published in the Federal Register and affects how the VA rates a veteran’s disability for new claims and when reevaluating disabilities through clinical

Democratic “squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar needs to be investigated for filing “misleading disclosures” to Congress regarding her husband’s $30 million net worth, according to a government watchdog. The National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit based in Virginia, wants the Office of Congressional Conduct to “immediately” investigate Omar’s disclosures which showed her third husband Tim Mynett’s assets explode in worth from 2023 to 2024, according to the complaint. According to paperwork she filed to Congress, Mynett went from being worth just over $51,000 one year to nearly $30 million the next. “The information in Omar’s financial disclosures, and her...

The Epstein files coverup just blew up on live tv, but not in the way most people expected...

PAM BONDI JUST PLAYED THE GREATEST TRAP IN POLITICAL HISTORY. And Congress walked right into it. Yesterday, Attorney General Pam Bondi sat before the House Judiciary Committee. Standard oversight hearing. Routine questions. Then she pulled out a document. Labeled: "Jayapal Pramila — Search History." The room went SILENT. ⚠️ HERE'S WHAT HAPPENED The DOJ gave Congress access to the unredacted Epstein files this week. Every member got their own login. Their own computer. Their own session. What Congress didn't know? The DOJ was tracking EVERY SINGLE SEARCH. Every name they looked up. Every document they opened. Every file they downloaded....

President Trump on Thursday reacted to Pam Bondi’s House Judiciary Committee testimony on Wednesday, commending her for what he described as a “fantastic” performance during questioning over the Epstein Files. “Bondi, under intense fire from the Trump Deranged Radical Left Lunatics, was fantastic at yesterday’s Hearing on the never ending saga of Jeffrey Epstein, where the one thing that has been proven conclusively, much to their chagrin, was that President Donald J. Trump has been 100% exonerated of their ridiculous Russia, Russia, Russia type charges,” Trump said. He further slammed the “SLIMEBALL Democrats, many of them big Donors and Politicians,”...

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...