Free Republic

Donald Trump asked Ben Carson to consider serving as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, an advisor to the former Republican presidential candidate said Tuesday. They discussed the potential job at a meeting in the morning and Carson is "seriously considering" it, said the advisor, Armstrong Williams. "It’s a role that plays to Dr. Carson’s passions," he said. Asked what qualifications the retired neurosurgeon has for overseeing housing policy, Williams said: “Dr. Carson has experience with everything. You’d be shocked at the depth of his experience.”

A federal grand jury indicted former Gov. Cuomo aide Joseph Percoco Tuesday for allegedly hustling upstate companies that wanted profitable government contracts, prosecutors said. The feds charged Percoco — Cuomo's ex-executive secretary and campaign manager — with six corruption counts in September. Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara charged seven others in relation to the pay-to-play plot, whom a grand jury also indicted. They include the onetime honcho of State University of New York Polytchnic Institute, as well as six execs from prominent Upstate firms. Todd Howe, another Cuomo confidant-turned-lobbyist, secretly copped to corruption charges two days before cops collared Percoco...

With President-elect Trump promising to pay for his infrastructure and defense spending by defunding non-essential federal spending, one of the first programs on the block could be the almost $500 million spent on public broadcasting.Despite repeated efforts to kill federal funding of public broadcasting since Republicans won the House in 2010 and Presidential-nominee Mitt Romney made it a campaign promise in 2012, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education are spending $470.7 million in U.S. taxpayer cash to fund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) this year, which provides 15 percent of PBS television and 10 percent...

On November 18, the Pentagon issued a Defense Department directive that will “allow Department of Defense (D0D) personnel to carry firearms and employ deadly force while performing official duties.”

HOOVER, Ala.—Public Enemy No. 1 of Venezuela’s revolutionary government is Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot Inc. employee in central Alabama. On his lunch breaks from the hardware section, Mr. Díaz, 60 years old, does more than anyone else to set the price of everything from rice to aspirin to cars in his native Venezuela, influencing the inflation rate and swaying millions of dollars of daily currency transactions. How? He is president of one of Venezuela’s most popular and insurgent websites, DolarToday.com, which provides a benchmark exchange rate used by his compatriots to buy and sell black-market dollars. That allows them...

It’s been one week since Donald Trump pulled off the biggest upset in modern political history, and his headquarters at Trump Tower in New York City is a 58-story, onyx-glassed lightning rod. Barricades, TV trucks and protesters frame a fortified Fifth Avenue. Armies of journalists and selfie-seeking tourists stalk Trump Tower’s pink marble lobby, hoping to snap the next political power player who steps into view. Twenty-six floors up, in the same building where washed-up celebrities once battled for Trump’s blessing on The Apprentice, the president-elect is choosing his Cabinet, and this contest contains all the twists and turns of...

A number of Democratic Electoral College electors are planning to use their votes to undermine the election process in opposition to President-elect Donald Trump, Politico is reporting. Some electors are lobbying their Republican counterparts to vote for someone other than Trump in an attempt to deny him the 270 votes required to elect him, according to the news outlet. They are also contemplating whether to cast their votes for someone other than Hillary Clinton With at least six electors already vowing to become "faithless," the defection could be the most significant since 1808, when six Democratic-Republican electors refused to vote...

For the first time in its 120-year history, the Dow Jones industrial average has surpassed 19,000 in intraday trading on Tuesday. Considered one of the world’s best stock market gauges, the Dow shot up 56 points in early Tuesday trading to reach a peak of 19,013.12. Most of the gains are attributed to Boeing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average just traded to the highest level in history https://t.co/X2728kLLWM pic.twitter.com/5x7N8G0nM2— CNBC (@CNBC) November 22, 2016 The record breaking performance is just the latest in a streak of market indications that investors are bullish on the incoming Trump administration. The S&P also...

President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that on his first day in office, he will issue a notice that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Pacific trade deal negotiated by President Obama, calling it “a potential disaster for our country.” “Instead we will negotiate fair, bilateral trade deals,” he said in a brief video message posted to YouTube laying out his top priorities for the beginning of his administration.

President-elect Donald Trump has said UKIP leader Nigel Farage would make a good British ambassador to the US. Mr. Trump said 'many people' would like to see Mr. Farage as ambassador and he would do a 'great job". Mr. Farage, who helped Mr. Trump during his U.S. presidential election campaign, said the suggestion has come as a "bolt from the blue", adding: "If I could help the UK in any way I would." But No 10 rejected the suggestion, saying "there is no vacancy". Mr. Trump tweeted: "Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador...

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has already laid out his plan for overhauling of the nation's immigration system, and it includes many of president-elect Donald Trump's most prominent — and controversial — campaign priorities, including reinstating an immigrant tracking system and questioning "high risk" immigrants about their views on Sharia law and jihad. The plan was laid out in a document Kobach, who's considered a potential pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security in Trump's administration, brought to his meeting with the president-elect this meeting — which was photographed by the Associated Press.

(CNN)An "explosion" in hate crimes since Election Day has prompted the creation of a special police unit to fight the uptick in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday. The announcement coincided with an address at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, where Cuomo called for an end to the divisiveness that has gripped the country. . . . . .Calling this kind of prejudice a "social poison [in] the fabric of our nation," the governor cited a number of recent incidents, including a scourge of swastika graffiti and the case of black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania being sent pictures...

President-elect Donald Trump exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday, sources told The Post. “It was like a f—ing firing squad,” said one source. “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed…. “The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added. A second source confirmed the encounter. “The meeting took place...

In an interview with National Public Radio on Sunday, retired Army Gen. Jack Keane said that the U.S. military could defeat the Islamic State if the commander-in-chief asks for and implements its plan. Host Rachel Martin was interviewing Keane about his decision not to accept President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to serve as Defense secretary, but the report included questions about Trump’s remarks on the campaign trail that he knows more than the generals when it comes to defeating ISIS. “The military knows how to fight a war,” Keane said. “And I told [Trump] - if you're going to do what...

Steve Bannon, former Breitbart chief and Donald Trump‘s pick for White House chief strategist, rarely gives interviews. But The Hollywood Reporter managed to score one, and it dropped this afternoon. And just to give you some idea of the tone he sets, this is an actual quote Bannon gave Michael Wolff:

Even before her defeat for the presidency, Hillary Clinton’s departure from the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation crippled its fundraising for that “good work” we have repeatedly been assured the foundation does.  Like hiring members of the Clinton machine to plot...Chelsea’s rise as a candidate for Congress. Khaleda Raman reports for the U.K. Daily Mail: Donations to the Clinton Foundation plummeted amid Hillary Clinton's failed presidential run, it has been revealed. The non-profit organization's latest tax filings show contributions fell 37 per cent to $108million - down from $172million in 2014, according to the New York Post. Donations fell...

Senator Charles Schumer received praise from President-Elect Donald Trump in a tweet Sunday. In the tweet posted just after 9:00 a.m. Trump said Schumer, "has the ability to get things done." Schumer was recently selected to be the Minority Leader in the Senate, replacing U.S. Senator for Nevada Harry Reid. Trump also added that he and Schumer have always had a good relationship.

President Barack Obama said on Sunday that he doesn't intend to become his successor's constant critic - but reserved the right to speak out if President-elect Donald Trump or his policies breach certain "values or ideals."....... He heaped praise on former President George W Bush, saying he "could not have been more gracious to me when I came in" and said he wanted to give Mr Trump the same chance to pursue his agenda "without somebody popping off" at every turn. But Mr Obama suggested there may be limits to his silence.

It’s been nearly two weeks since the election and Donald Trump has already become more popular. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll of registered voters, Trump’s favorability has climbed 9 points since the same poll was taken right before the election, from 37 percent to 46 percent, while his unfavorability rating dropped by double digits, from 61 percent to 46 percent—a 15-point difference. Trump is also getting high marks for his transition effort. Nineteen percent of those polled believe it is more organized than past efforts and another 34 percent believe the transition is about the same, according to...

Jimmie Johnson has a new nickname: Seven-Time. The 41-year-old driver captured his seventh Sprint Cup championship -- and his first in three years -- by winning the Ford EcoBoost 400 on Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway. Johnson joins Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt as a seven-time premier series champion, the most by any driver. It is Johnson's first title since 2013, and his first with this current Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup format that began in 2014.