Free Republic

@RandPaul The establishment will tell you someone can only be re-elected if they bring home the bacon to their constituents. I'm proof-positive that you can promise to fight for liberty, freedom, and the free markets and still get re-elected

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Wednesday criticized the Trump administration’s decision to take a 10% stake in embattled chipmaker Intel , calling the investment “a step towards socialism.” Intel announced last month that the U.S. government made an $8.9 billion investment in Intel common stock, purchasing 433.3 million shares at a price of $20.47 per share, giving it a 10% stake in the company. Intel noted that the price the government paid was a discount to the current market price. Paul said government ownership is “a bad idea.” “It’s always a mistake to say, ’Well we have this one bad...

President Trump is increasingly directing his frustrations at specific Senate Republicans, including turning his fire on key allies in recent days. The president this week publicly excoriated Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) over upholding the “blue slip” tradition and pushing a congressional stock trading ban, respectively. While Trump has long had a tendency of airing his grievances out in public — especially toward those he views as disloyal — the latest barbs about staunch backers are raising eyebrows and drawing questions about whether the strategy will continue to be effective in advancing his agenda. “I don’t think...

Financial markets finished the week on a high note after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell stood his ground against President Trump in a rare joint appearance by the two men Thursday. The S&P 500 finished 0.4 percent up, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished up 208 points or 0.47 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite gained about a quarter of percent to close above 21,108. ... Friday’s gains followed a confrontation between Trump and Powell on Thursday in which Powell repelled an attack from Trump — this time not on social media but on television. The exchange took place at...

@RandPaul Let me be totally clear: I will not vote to send one American soldier to Iran. Not one.

@RandPaul We can cut the proposed border funding in half, from $150 billion to $75 billion, and still secure our border and protect the American people. Let me give you an example of how this is excessive. Let’s take the proposed border wall. Proposed fence cost: $46.5 billion Actual fence cost: $6.5 billion How did I come up with that number? Math based on costs, according to Border Patrol. $6.5 million per mile x 1,000 miles of border wall = $6.5 billion Where is that extra $40 billion going? I’m all for hiring new people to help secure our borders,...

White House deputy speaker Stephen Miller lit into Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) on Sunday, hammering the Kentucky libertarian for what he called a “dishonest and disgraceful” stance on border security and funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Miller blasted Paul after the senator appeared on Fox News with Maria Bartiromo, where he attempted to justify his opposition to a border funding bill. ..... Snip...... “The United States has spent trillions subsidizing open borders and mass migration,” Miller posted on X. “But when we talk about providing ICE even a modest sum to repel the invasion, the Rand libertarians are...

You can’t make this up.

WASHINGTON — Many Republican lawmakers lie low when they have differences with President Trump. Sen. Rand Paul has taken the opposite approach. “Congress needs to grow a spine, and Congress needs to stand up for its prerogatives,” the Kentucky Republican told reporters, complaining that Trump relied on a national-emergency law to impose tariffs that Paul believes should be controlled by lawmakers. His comments came just days after he was one of only two GOP senators to vote against the party’s budget framework that is key to Trump’s tax cuts, saying it didn’t do enough to reduce the deficit. The libertarian...

Billionaire Republican megadonor and Home Depot founder Ken Langone has ripped the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs as “bulls–t” — claiming the president has been ill-advised amid the raging trade war. “I don’t understand the Goddamn formula,” Langone, a veteran GOP campaign donor, told the Financial Times on Monday. “I believe he’s been poorly advised by his advisers about this trade situation — and the formula they’re applying.”

The former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich says that “all the anger about illegal immigration” pushed him to publicly make the case for the importance of legal immigration, he told The Daily Wire. Gingrich, along with his wife Callista Gingrich, is set to release a documentary on the value of legal immigration to the United States next month. He says the idea is to highlight immigrant stories that made the country a better place. “Callista and I wanted to make the case for legal immigration with all of the anger about illegal immigration. We wanted a diverse range...

President-elect Trump told The Post Saturday he supports immigration visas for highly skilled workers, appearing to side with Elon Musk in the roiling intra-MAGA debate on the issue. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said by phone, referring to the H-1B program, which permits companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program,” added Trump, who restricted access to foreign worker visas in...

Elon and Vivek accidentally chewed through a high power line yesterday, and social media has been on fire ever since. The battle lines of a fierce war between conservatives are shaping up. Today’s post focuses not on the debate’s issue, but on the character of the debate itself — and how this is MAGA’s first major challenge from the deep-state. Then we’ll discuss ways to fight back and hold recent gains rather than pop! like the Tea Party bubble. Corporate media was beside itself. Rolling Stone ran its giddy story late yesterday afternoon under the headline, “Musk, Ramaswamy Face MAGA...

If the Left takes up the H-1B issue (originally their position) to defend American workers they will undoubtedly eat into America First voting block in the midterms and 2028. Huge political liability here. ...

The deep state’s favorite tool is the color revolution. A ‘color revolution’ is the non-kinetic military overthrow of a foreign government. It begins with the deep state destabilizing an entire society, resulting in massive protests, riots, and factional violence. This produces anger at the undesired foreign government and makes it unstable. When the targeted government finally falls, U.S. security and military personnel are ready to move in and establish a new, U.S.-friendly regime in the ashes of the government the people who live there democratically elected. All the deep state needs is some sore issue, some disagreement that splits people...

Billionaire GOP mega-donor Charles Koch is urging elected Republicans and Democrats to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and increase legal immigration levels, even as 24.5 million Americans remain jobless or underemployed. Koch, in an op-ed with Brian Hooks of Stand Together, writes that Republicans and Democrats should “come together” to give amnesty to the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States and increase legal immigration levels beyond the 1.2 million green cards given to foreign nationals annually.

It seems obvious that President Donald Trump is going to need a blockbuster economic revival if he hopes to win reelection in November. Part of the equation to achieve that spring back is to resist trade protectionist temptations. But will he? While everyone likes the sentiment of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America, trade barriers have never been very effective. What has been effective for Trump, as more than 1 million blue-collar jobs have come back to these shores, has been a competitiveness brought on by cutting taxes, slashing regulations and so on. But protectionism against our friendly trading partners...

Senator Thom Tillis and other liberal Republicans are hell-bent on turning our rural communities into pipelines for cartel drug trafficking and criminal aliens. Rather than holding vote after vote on ridding our communities of sanctuary cities and dangerous criminal alien gangs and drug traffickers, liberal Republicans like Thom Tillis are working on, amazingly, more amnesty for illegal aliens. The North Carolina senator evidently doesn’t think that the Tar Heel State is turning blue like Virginia as quickly as he would like. He also believes that now that he lied about being tough on illegal immigration in order get Trump’s endorsement...

A former GOP county chairman and Ohio farmer said Monday he wouldn't vote for President Trump again even if the president walked on water. Chris Gibbs, the former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, told CNBC that he feels "dubious" about the Trump administration's announced agricultural buys from China amounting to $40 billion to $50 billion amid the heated trade war between Washington and Beijing that experts say has hit farmers particularly hard. "He could come up with this $50 billion, he could walk across my pond and not get wet, and I'm still not going to vote for...

[...] On Thursday, as Lee attempted to push through his and Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) S. 386 — legislation that would allow Indian nationals to effectively monopolize the U.S. green card system for at least ten years — Perdue blocked a vote because he is concerned about the impact the plan will have on rural healthcare industries. “I support this bill … we have some language that needs to be clarified,” Perdue said. “And I still have some concerns about the impact this legislation would have on some specific industries in my state and in the country.” Lee said he...