Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Foreign leaders have lined up to speak with him. He has rattled Mexico and Canada with threats of steep tariffs and warned there would be “hell to pay” for militants in Gaza unless they release the hostages by the time he’s sworn in.That won't happen for another 45 days, but Donald Trump, the president-in-waiting, isn't shying away from acting like the president-in-reality.Trump can't sign a bill or issue an executive order yet, but he is crowding out Joe Biden as the sitting president winds down his term and steadily recedes from public view. In two foreign trips since...

For more than four decades before Donald Trump assumed the presidency, the FBI director was a position above politics. A new president might choose a political ally as attorney general, but the FBI director was different. An FBI director appointed by Richard Nixon also served under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Carter’s choice remained on the job deep into Reagan’s second term, when Reagan moved him to head the CIA. Reagan’s FBI appointee served through the George H. W. Bush presidency and into the Bill Clinton administration. Clinton fired the inherited official—the first time a president ever fired an...

WASHINGTON — Democrats spent Thanksgiving eating crow — privately confessing that President Biden’s handling of the border crisis fueled voter outrage and the Republican sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Lawmakers, aides and sources close to powerful Dems finally admitted after President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding victory over Biden’s successor, Vice President Kamala Harris, that the party’s permissive lurch on the border helped doom them in 2024. “We destroyed ourselves on the immigration issue in ways that were entirely predictable and entirely manageable,” a Democratic senator confided to The Hill under the condition of anonymity. “We utterly...

Donald Trump loved to use tariffs on foreign goods during his first presidency. But their impact was barely noticeable in the overall economy, even if their aftershocks were clear in specific industries. The data show they never fully delivered on his promised factory jobs. Nor did they provoke the avalanche of inflation that critics feared. This time, though, his tariff threats might be different. The president-elect is talking about going much bigger — on a potential scale that creates more uncertainty about whether he'll do what he says and what the consequences could be. “There's going to be a lot...

Speculation has run rampant about whether Hillary Clinton may run for president in 2028 after a speaking event was announced in coming weeks. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are scheduled to speak in the coming weeks at the 20th anniversary of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas - which includes the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. The event, planned for the afternoon on December 7, will include remarks from the powerful couple regarding their past political and philanthropic work. 'The Clintons will share reflections on the noble and important work of public service – from securing...

In 2022, Kari Lake narrowly lost the race for Arizona governor to Katie Hobbs. Many pundits predicted a bright future for the outspoken former television news broadcaster in the MAGA Republican Party. But this month, Lake came up short again, this time by a larger margin, in her Senate race against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). She ran eight points behind Donald Trump and six points behind GOP candidates for the House of Representatives in Arizona.

President-elect Donald Trump is coming for the executive branch. Eight years ago, he thought he could shake up federal agencies and left after four years with little to show for it. This time, with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy leading the charge, he is talking about even more radical changes. Will he do any better the second time around? Trump isn’t the first president to try to shrink or reorganize the executive branch, or the first to claim to be leading an assault on waste, fraud and abuse that would deliver significant cost savings and more efficient government. Richard M....

ASHINGTON — When Matt Gaetz abruptly withdrew as President-elect Donald Trump’s candidate for attorney general on Thursday, many career attorneys in the Justice Department breathed a sigh of relief. Hours later, though, Trump nominated former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a longtime loyalist who backed the former president’s lies about the 2020 election and said “horrible” people in the department were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.” Justice Department attorneys now hope that Trump’s pick for the critical No. 2 position at the department — Todd Blanche, the president-elect’s defense...

On Election Night, with characteristic modesty, Donald Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” He certainly won the contest legitimately, if more narrowly than many observers initially thought. His popular-vote margin over Kamala Harris has dropped from around 3 percent on the evening of November 5 (or about two-thirds of Joe Biden’s margin in 2020) to 1.62 percent today. That’s about a half-percent smaller than Hillary Clinton’s national popular-vote margin over Trump in 2016. To make some other comparisons: Barack Obama won the popular vote by 3.9 percent in 2012 and 7.2 percent in 2016, and George W. Bush won...

The attorney for two women accusing former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz with paying them for sex told Newsweek that his clients do not want to testify during the Senate's confirmation process. Florida attorney Joel Leppard told Newsweek that his clients have already testified in front of the House Ethics Committee and that they are not looking to do so more publicly in front of the Senate during Gaetz's confirmation process. The former representative was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump to become Attorney General. Leppard said his clients will only testify "if they are required to do so." "They do not...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) sidestepped any specifics Tuesday when asked about Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who will be the first transgender member of the House, amid an effort by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to ban transgender women from single-sex facilities such as women’s restrooms in the Capitol. “We welcome all members with open arms who are newly elected representatives of the people. I believe it’s a — it’s a command. We treat all persons with dignity and respect,” Johnson said at a press conference Tuesday when asked about McBride. “And I’m not going to engage in silly debates about this,”...

TALLAHASSEE — A controversial 2021 state law making it harder for people to vote by mail could complicate holding special elections to fill two Florida congressional seats after President-elect Donald Trump tapped Republicans Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz to serve in his administration. The 2021 law included requiring voters to request mail-in ballots each election cycle, rather than every four years as was previously allowed. The Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the change after Democrats across the country relied heavily on mail-in ballots to help President Joe Biden defeat Trump in 2020. Trump this week set the stage...

Lower prices and social justice are not in conflict, and Democrats should do a better job of declaring that these goals do reinforce each other, to everyone’s benefit.In the wake of Democrats’ losses in this year’s election, questions have been raised about the party’s progressive wing, with some claiming that “woke is dying.” There are indeed lessons to learn, but Democrats should not abandon their core values. Obviously, elections are won by appealing to a broad base. Going too far left or right undermines that. Though President-elect Donald Trump is mostly on the extreme right, he apparently appealed to enough...

The early analyses of Trump’s victory have focused almost exclusively on the perceived abandonment of the working class by increasingly corporatist Democrats and the Trump-Vance ticket’s successful embrace of the plight of those who have been left behind by the global economy and the rising inequalities in our society. The culture wars have also been thrown into the mix. While these issues have certainly played a significant role in the decisive loss, Trump was able to claim another attribute traditionally reserved for the Democratic Party, that of being anti-war. We have no doubt that this association contributed to the election...

Multiple current and former senior Justice Department and FBI officials have begun reaching out to lawyers in anticipation of being criminally investigated by the Trump administration, according to three people with knowledge of their deliberations. Following Trump’s decisive election victory, many Justice Department officials and career staffers were already nervous about the possibility that they would be targeted by Trump loyalists, particularly members of Congress. But the selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a firebrand Trump ally who was the subject of a recent FBI investigation, to lead the department has sharply increased the sense of alarm, the sources said....

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, paid a woman who accused him of sexual assault as part of a nondisclosure agreement, though he maintained that their encounter was consensual, according to a statement from his lawyer Saturday and other documents obtained by The Washington Post. Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, said that Hegseth was “visibly intoxicated” at the time of the incident, and maintained that police who were contacted a few days after the encounter by the woman concluded “the Complainant had been the aggressor in the encounter.” Police have not confirmed that assertion.

"Merrick Garland's DOJ cleared Matt Gaetz and didn't charge him. Are you alleging Garland is part of a cover-up?" a spokesperson for Gaetz said Friday.

ATLANTA (AP) — After losing the White House and both houses of Congress, Democrats are grappling with how to handle transgender politics and policy following a campaign that featured withering and often misleading GOP attacks on the issue. There is plenty of second-guessing after President-elect Donald Trump anchored his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris with sweeping promises on the economy and immigration. But Democrats also will not soon forget the punchline in anti-transgender Trump ads that became ubiquitous by Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard, has been accused of amplifying Russian propaganda and would come to the job having never worked in the intelligence world or served on a congressional intelligence committee. ... In her public statements, Gabbard has often been at odds with the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments. If she is confirmed, her tenure would most likely be marked by clashes with government analysts who see Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government as the primary purveyor of disinformation designed to sow divisions in the U.S. Outraged lawmakers accused Gabbard two years...

Donald Trump has been president before. But all indications are that we should expect an even bolder Trump — or more extreme, depending on your point of view — in a second term. Gone will be the many establishment-oriented administration officials who served as checks on him and have since criticized him. Republicans will most likely control both chambers of Congress, with GOP contingents more Trump-y than before. The Supreme Court recently gave presidents a substantial degree of criminal immunity, which will insulate a president who has been convicted of felonies and charged with others. And Trump as a term-limited...