Free Republic

Calling Governor Tom Wolf an ‘illustrious dictator,’ Lebanon County Republicans lashed out on Facebook over the county’s reopening status. Lebanon County will be the only county still in the yellow phase of reopening on June 26, according to Pa. Health Secretary Dr. Levine. The state said that was because of an increase in cases of COVID-19 in the county. Levine put the blame on the politics of the county. “Lebanon County’s partisan, politically driven decision to ignore public health experts and reopen prematurely is having severe consequences for the health and safety of county residents,” she said in a press...

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Thursday blocked the Senate from passing a bill to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) tried to pass the bill by unanimous consent, which allows legislation to pass without a vote but also enables any one senator to block it. The measure would remove statues of individuals who voluntarily served in the Confederacy from the Capitol. Booker called keeping statues of Confederate figures in the Capitol a "painful, insulting, difficult injury." "The continued presence of these statues in the halls is an affront to...

Longtime readers will remember the story I’ve told here several times. It was the fall of 2015, several months after the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage. I met privately with some key GOP House and Senate staffers, and asked them what the Republicans were planning legislatively to protect religious liberty in the post-Obergefell environment. The answer: nothing. No plans at all. Not on their agenda.

Jacksonville's mayor scored a major political coup this week: President Trump will deliver his Aug. 27 convention speech in the Florida city after a dispute over coronavirus-related crowd restrictions led him to mostly abandon North Carolina, where the Republican convention was originally planned. "We plan on having a full arena," Mayor Lenny Curry, a Republican, told FOX Business' Stuart Varney on Friday. Republican officials on Thursday evening announced that they were shifting key events away from Charlotte, N.C., after a public rift with the state's Democratic governor over social distancing guidelines.

Washington — The Senate Armed Services Committee approved an amendment to the annual military spending bill that would require the Defense Department to change the names of military bases and assets named for Confederate leaders. A source familiar with the proceedings confirmed to CBS News that the GOP-led panel on Wednesday approved the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) offered by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts via voice vote. According to a summary of the NDAA released by the committee Thursday, the measure requires the Defense Department to rename posts and assets — streets, aircraft, ships, and...

Seeking a city willing to allow a large-scale event amid the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans have tentatively settled on Jacksonville, Fla., as the new destination for the premier festivities of the Republican National Convention in August, according to three Republican officials briefed on the plans. The details of the arrangement are still in flux and RNC aides are scrambling to determine whether the northern Florida city has enough hotel rooms to accommodate the quadrennial event, which typically kicks off the final stretch of the presidential campaign. Republican officials were in Jacksonville on Monday looking at the city and the surrounding areas....

A United Nations human rights expert is recommending changes in the way protests are handled in the United States, saying the process of issuing permits for demonstrations is “arbitrary” and could easily lead to discrimination against certain groups. Maina Kiai of Kenya, U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, offered preliminary findings Wednesday from his visits this month to seven U.S. cities — including the sites of this year’s Democratic and Republican political conventions — to investigate how the U.S. upholds its citizens’ rights of assembly and association. Kiai’s full report to the United Nations will...

Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the quiet part out loud. Asked her thoughts Thursday about former Defense Secretary James Mattis' excoriation of President Donald Trump's behavior in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd, the Alaska Republican said this: "When I saw General Mattis' comments yesterday I felt like perhaps we are getting to a point where we can be more honest with the concerns that we might hold internally and have the courage of our own convictions to speak up." Which, whoa!

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) asserted Thursday that former Secretary of Defense James Mattis calling President Donald Trump a threat to the U.S. Constitution was “true, honest, necessary, and overdue.” Murkowski, one of the Senate’s most left-leaning Republicans, made the comment while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill. Asked whether she supports President Trump, the lawmaker replied,” “I am struggling with it [ and] I have struggled with it for a long time.” On Wednesday, Mattis attacked President Trump in a statement to The Atlantic by accusing the president of violating the Constitution over the clearing of Lafayette Park on Monday...

Gotta say, I’d have had more sympathy for Roy Cooper in this situation two weeks ago. That would have been before the same people who scolded Republicans and conservatives who wanted to reopen the public square and demonstrate for those policies suddenly thought squeezing several thousand people into streets for demonstrations for a week on end was no problem at all. Political speech takes precedence over commerce, they have argued — so why does that not apply to a full political convention in August?North Carolina’s Democratic governor apparently thinks some political speech requires more planning than others: Governor Roy...

Organizers of the Republican National Convention said Tuesday they will begin visiting potential alternative sites after North Carolina's governor told them the COVID-19 pandemic requires them to prepare for a scaled-back event if they want to hold it in Charlotte. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, said in a letter to the top convention organizer and the national GOP chairwoman that 'planning for a scaled-down convention with fewer people, social distancing and face coverings is a necessity.' The letter came on the eve of a deadline from the GOP for assurances that Cooper would allow a full-scale event in August. Later,...

State Sen. Randy Feenstra defeated incumbent Rep. Steve King in Tuesday's Republican primary for Iowa's 4th congressional district, according to the Cook Political Report. Why it matters: King's history of racist remarks has made him one of the most controversial politicians in the country and a pariah within the Republican Party. House Republican leadership stripped the nine-term congressman of his committee assignments in 2019 after he questioned in an interview with the New York Times how the terms "white nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization" became offensive. The big picture: The Republican establishment coalesced around Feenstra beginning in January, when the...

BREAKING NEWS: Randy Feenstra defeats Congressman Steve King (-Inc) in GOP Primary

In an alarming May 24, 2020 article titled “Scoop: Inside the Secret Talks to Overhaul the GOP Platform,” published by Axios, political reporter Jonathan Swan exposed the behind-the-scenes efforts of the socially liberal son-in-law of President Trump, Jared Kushner, to change the GOP platform so that it reflects Democrat views. While the radical overhaul of the GOP platform—and, therefore, the GOP—is the brainless-child of Kushner, the nitty gritty of the subversive project has been assigned to Bill Stepien, second in command for Trump’s re-election campaign, just under Brad Pascale. According to Swan, Kushner has been working on this secret “radical...

President Trump on Tuesday evening urged House Republicans to vote against a surveillance bill that will be brought to the floor this week after lawmakers reached an agreement to vote on a key provision. “I hope all Republican House Members vote NO on FISA until such time as our Country is able to determine how and why the greatest political, criminal, and subversive scandal in USA history took place!” Trump tweeted, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Trump's tweet comes after months of speculation about whether he would support the bill and less than a day before it is...

While everyone is focusing on the Presidential race and the electoral college this year, some GOP strategists are getting a bit nervous about the Senate. Of the upper chamber seats up for grabs, the GOP is defending more of them that look potentially vulnerable if Democrats get some momentum going. This is probably even more important than the question of who wins the White House. If Donald Trump manages to lose his bid for a second term, a GOP Senate majority is the only thing that would act as a check on the new Democratic president’s agenda, whether that...

One of the most durable political assets that Republicans have enjoyed throughout the 21st century is their edge among Americans 65 and older, who tend to turn out at the polls more reliably any other group. But with President Trump’s inept and erratic handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, he is rapidly losing support among the age group most vulnerable to its ravages - which is a big warning sign to Republicans as they look to the fall. Trump has also been showing slippage in support among the next-oldest cohort, those 55 and older. The shift has been showing up...

“Dear Mitch McConnell,” wrote Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr., last week. “Why don’t you just go ahead and call Barack Obama the n-word? You know you want to.”What led to this over-the-top racial attack from Pitts? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had the audacity to disagree with an approach taken by former President Barack Obama, who leaked audio of himself critiquing the Trump administration after new revelations about his involvement spying on the incoming Trump administration. McConnell thought it an unwise deviation from norms.The political media used to agree about the importance of this norm. In 2007, former...

Six months before a presidential election in which turnout could matter more than persuasion, the Republican Party, the Trump campaign and conservative activists are mounting an aggressive national effort to shape who gets to vote in November — and whose ballots are counted... ...The Republican program, which has gained steam in recent weeks, envisions recruiting up to 50,000 volunteers in 15 key states to monitor polling places and challenge ballots and voters deemed suspicious. That is part of a $20 million plan that also allots millions to challenge lawsuits by Democrats and voting-rights advocates seeking to loosen state restrictions on...

Hart Senate Office Building U.S. Capitol Washington, D.C. 2:03 P.M. EDTTHE PRESIDENT:  We had a great meeting.  All of the Republican senators were there.  I think we made tremendous progress on a lot of different issues.  Mitch and John, that was terrific.  Discussed about everything.  I think everything you can discuss.  We have a lot of very positive things happening, both in terms of the country, in terms of the election that’s coming up.  We’re doing very well in every way.Do you have any questions?Q    Yes, President Trump, last night Nancy — Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called...