Free Republic

Concerning the recent House funding plan: Was it that Schumer bring the SAVE Act to the floor of the Senate to allow Senators to vote on it? Or, was the plan simply to allow Republicans to talk about the SAVE Act and how much Democrats don’t want to protect Americans from illegal immigration, whether it’s the fentanyl pouring across our border, terrorists and criminal gang members flooding the nation, or preventing illegal aliens from voting in our elections? Let’s analyze the recent failure of the Continuing Resolution + SAVE plan to see if we can tease out what the plan...

WASHINGTON — Five days after the second apparent assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, the House on Friday unanimously passed bipartisan legislation that would boost Secret Service protection for the two parties’ presidential nominees, Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as their vice presidential running mates. The vote was 405-0. It required two-thirds support of the House to pass because it came to the floor under an expedited process. In a separate action, lawmakers also passed a resolution expanding the scope of the bipartisan House task force investigating the July 13 Trump assassination attempt to include the second incident....

We’ve seen a lot of dishonest statements and allegations from the left about the events of Jan. 6 at the Capitol, with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the corrupt J6 Committee dropping the most disinformation. One of the longest-running allegations is that Donald Trump knew violence was coming but did nothing to stop it. He never requested the National Guard, the narrative goes. He didn’t care what happened.Chairman Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) of the Committee on House Administration's Subcommittee on Oversight has a different view, however, and he has newly released transcripts to back it up. In a press release...

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo personally altered a state review that lowballed the nursing home COVID-19 death count, emails detailed in a new report show – a revelation that directly contradicts his claims he had nothing to do with it. Emails and congressional documents undercut Cuomo’s defiant assertion during a summer congressional grilling that he never saw or even had any memory of the state Health Department report, the New York Times first reported. “Governor’s edits are attached for your review,” Cuomo’s assistant wrote to the then-governor’s senior staff in June 2020, the Times report states. Cuomo wasn’t sworn in under...

Minnesota Democrats have complained in past elections of dirty deeds in the race for the 2nd Congressional District. In both 2020 and 2022, candidates claiming to be with marijuana legalization parties filed to run in what Democrats feared was an attempt to draw votes from Democratic incumbent Angie Craig. One even left a voicemail message for a friend saying he had, in fact, been recruited as a spoiler candidate. It didn’t work. Craig won by more than enough votes to compensate for any skimming of votes. And in a bizarre coincidence, both legalization candidates died before Election Day. This year,...

A good idea is a good idea — maybe that's why Kamala Harris is stealing some of former President Trump's ideas on various issues, like his "no tax on tips" proposal. The vice president is making like it was her idea, and in an even more satisfying development, a Democrat Congressman — Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV — on Tuesday introduced a bill to make tips given to service workers tax-free.Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) officially introduced legislation on Tuesday seeking to eliminate federal taxes on tips, a proposal that both major presidential candidates have backed. The Tipped Income Protection and Support...

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A bill introduced after a mass shooting in Maine would require the Army to use state crisis intervention laws to remove the weapons of a service member who is deemed to be a serious threat to themselves or others, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, the bill’s sponsor, said Monday.... It requires the military to participate in state crisis actions, including so-called red flag or yellow flag laws aimed at removing weapons from someone who’s experiencing a psychiatric emergency.... The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office was asked to go to Card’s home and check on his well-being after he’d...

The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that a congressional candidate currently serving a 20-year prison sentence can remain on the ballot in the election, running for the state's U.S. Representative seat, according to Anchorage Daily News. Eric Hafner, a registered Democrat who has reportedly never resided in Alaska, is in prison in New York after he pleaded guilty to harassing election officials in New Jersey in 2022. In the primary elections in August, Hafner received 467 votes out of approximately 109,000 and had his name placed on the ballot soon after as the third and fourth-place candidates, Republicans, dropped out...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. House this week approved a sweeping package of bills to counter China’s influence, shoring up a largely bipartisan push to ensure America comes out ahead in the competition between the world’s superpowers. The efforts would ban Chinese-made drones, limit China-linked biotech companies from access to the U.S. market, strengthen sanctions and deepen ties with Asian countries. The campaign to target Beijing this week shows how curbing China’s power has emerged as a rare issue of political consensus.... One contentious measure seeks to revive a Trump-era program to root out Beijing’s spying in American universities and...

Speaker MIKE JOHNSON is yanking House Republicans’ six-month stopgap funding plan, forgoing a vote on the legislation, which was originally scheduled to hit the floor later this afternoon. Johnson said he’ll delay the vote until next week so that House Republicans can work over the weekend to tamp down GOP defections and “build consensus.” “The measure has crumbled amid mounting criticism from conservatives, defense hawks and other Republican factions, and it’s unclear that more time will help save the bill unless leaders make drastic changes,” Caitlin Emma writes. “House GOP leaders have already been whipping the bill, and nearly a...

Are greedy corporations to blame for inflation? Ariane Navarro thinks so. She recently pulled up her budgeting spreadsheets from 2021 and was shocked by how much her family's grocery bill has skyrocketed. She's not imagining it: From February 2020 to this July, grocery prices grew a cumulative 25.6%. That's higher than overall inflation, which was 21.6% during that same period. "We have no other choice — we have to buy groceries," says Navarro, who lives in Houston. "That's a basic need. And so [companies] use that to kind of take advantage and keep raising prices." It's a widespread sentiment —...

Like the temperature throughout August, the stock buying activity of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, has stayed hot over the past few weeks. According to a recently submitted regulatory filing, Greene, who sits on the Oversight and Reform Committee and the Homeland Security Committee, added shares of six stocks to her portfolio. In this round of stock purchasing, Greene increased her exposure to artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, picking up shares of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), and Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Greene also scooped up shares of logistics leader FedEx (NYSE: FDX)...

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a man to 13 months in prison on charges connected to a threat to kill a congressional staff member and more than 12,000 phone calls to dozens of congressional offices, both in Washington and home districts across the country. The defendant, Ade Salim Lilly, pleaded guilty in May to two federal counts — interstate communications with a threat to kidnap or injure, and repeated telephone calls — and plea documents said Lilly at times used vulgar and harassing language. In one incident, Lilly reportedly told a congressional staffer: “I will kill you, I am...

Multiple Democrat lawmakers are quietly telling allies worried about Vice President Kamala Harris’s controversial grocery price-control plan that the proposal will die in Congress, Politico revealed. After economists pushed back on Harris’s “Soviet-style” plan to centrally administer price controls on food in her first policy-focused speech on August 16, one anonymous Democrat told the outlet that it was a “lofty goal.” “I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” a second lawmaker said.

Then head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, he invented a new form of what 19th-early 20th centuries Tammany boss George Washington Plunkett famously called “Honest Graft.” It was simple. Until 1977, Congress had to approve any settlement of a civil suit against the Federal government over $100,000. This preserved the Constitutional requirement that Congress control the government’s purse. But in that year, seeking relief from the burgeoning volume of suits to review, Congress removed the cap, handing the Justice Department a permanent blank check to pay settlements unilaterally, in any amount, out of an account known as the Judgment...

In what may be a surprise blow to Democrats' chances of holding a key red state seat in the U.S. House, Alaska Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom announced Friday she is suspending her campaign for Congress. Dahlstrom was in what was essentially a three-way race with incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich III, who comes from a prominent political family in The Last Frontier. While Dahlstrom did not immediately endorse Begich, she suggested in comments announcing her withdrawal that her reason for running was to see Peltola defeated. "I entered this race because Alaskans deserve better representation than...

Congress Trading Dashboard The Stock Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act requires U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives to publicly file and disclose any financial transaction within 45 days of its occurrence. We download those disclosures, parse them for stock trades, fetch the stock's performance in the time following the transaction, and calculate each politician's cumulative return from their trades. Check Your Congress-Critters trades!...............

Fifty Republican military veterans serving in the U.S. Congress on Wednesday sent a letter to Democrat vice presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz (MN) harshly condemning his lies about his military service. They said in the letter, which was released as Walz readied to deliver remarks at the Democratic National Convention: The Office of the Vice President is a position that requires the trust of the American people and a solemn commitment to duty on behalf of the United States of America. As veterans who have served our nation, we feel compelled to address your egregious misrepresentations and urge you to...

Democratic congressman Bill Pascrell has died at the age of 87. The New Jersey lawmaker served 28 years for the state's 9th congressional district in the House of Representatives and was hospitalized after an incident last week. He recently spent 28 days in treatment and needed 'breathing assistance', but then suffered a setback which forced him back into a rehabilitation facility. 'It is with deep sadness that we announce that Bill Pascrell Jr., our beloved husband, father, and grandfather, passed away this morning,' his family said on X. 'As our United States Representative, Bill fought to his last breath to...

Socialist dictator of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro announced on Monday that his regime would host a world congress “against fascism, neo-fascism, and similar expressions.” Maduro said that the yet-to-be scheduled event will seek to “exchange strategies” to “fight fascism,” which he has often defined broadly to mean any opposition to hardline socialism. Maduro has for over a decade used “fascism” as a reason to violently repress political dissidents in the country. The dictator made the announcement during a Monday evening event with leaders of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its allied parties.