Free Republic

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said President Donald Trump’s tariffs caused the world to see the United States as an “unreliable partner.” Host George Stephanopoulos said, “I think you identified the tariffs as the number one issue. Liberation Day is probably the most consequential day of the first 100 days. Is there an exit strategy for Donald Trump on this? He asked, “Can he make this sort of series of deals that limit the damage?”

House Republicans are planning to include several of President Trump’s campaign promises in the first draft of the bill, which they hope to release soon.It was easy to miss, but last weekend President Trump floated a fundamental rewrite of the American tax code. In a social media post, and again in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump suggested the United States could stop taxing income under $200,000 and instead rely on revenue from his extensive tariffs. “It’ll take a little while before we do that, but we’re going to be cutting taxes, and it’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut,”...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing his push against President Donald Trump's tariffs, with legislation he is co-sponsoring against them to come before the Senate next week. Paul says lawmakers should be in control of tariffs, rather than Trump, through the use of a national-emergency law. The discussion will come less than a month after Paul was one of the only two chamber Republicans to vote against his party's budget, which is seen as a key part of the president's tax cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "I don't have any bad feelings towards the president, but this is...

Sen. Ron Johnson is actively investigating 9/11. A day after the Wisconsin Republican went on a far-right podcast promoting conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, a spokesperson for Johnson said the lawmaker is currently seeking information and documentation in order to hold hearings on the event nearly 25 years later. He would do so in his capacity as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Congress’s most storied and powerful panels with far-reaching jurisdiction that gives its chair wide latitude to probe a diverse array of matters. It has...

The Senate, once again, was working into the early morning hours Friday with its new majority leader, Republican John Thune, setting the pace. It wasn’t until just after 2 a.m. that the last of the senators had straggled into the chamber to cast their vote on the confirmation of retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The vote capped a grinding start to the year for the Senate that included several all-night floor sessions and — importantly for Thune — the quickest top-level Cabinet confirmation process in the past 20 years....

Republican lawmakers say there’s a good chance that President Trump’s trade war will boomerang on Republicans politically in 2026, as rising prices and shrinking growth could offset other accomplishments by the GOP. Republican senators are pointing to the 1932 and 1982 elections as historical examples of when trade wars and resulting price inflation hurt their party at the ballot box, and they are worried that history could repeat itself. Many Republican lawmakers view tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers, and some note that the last two times Congress enacted tax hikes on the scale of Trump’s recent tariffs,...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on Sunday said he’s questioning President Trump’s “endgame” in his approach to tariffs, saying the ongoing “volatility” isn’t good for businesses. “One thing I learned in the private sector is unpredictability can work pretty well in the negotiation, but the private sector — businesses want certainty. They want stability. They don’t like to see volatility,” Johnson said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.” “And, so, I’ve just been questioning exactly what’s the endgame here? What’s the strategy?” he continued. Johnson called himself an “unabashed free trader” and touted what he sees as the...

Barack Hussein Obama has prevailed in the 2008 presidential election. Obama not only carried all the ‘blue’ states that John Kerry won in 2004, he also flipped several ‘red’ states, such as Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, delivering a crushing electoral defeat to John McCain. And the blame falls squarely on the GOP for allowing this Marxist to become president of the United States. It has been interesting and amusing to read the numerous ‘post mortems’ from conservative and liberal pundits alike. Yet not one of the post mortems has identified the real reason McCain got clobbered. It was not...

If Republicans like Tillis actually care about lowering Americans’ cost of living, they should slash the federal budget they’ve spent years ballooning.It’s been less than a week since President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff blitz against foreign nations, and Republicans on Capitol Hill are already in full-on freakout mode. Throughout the past several days, GOP members of Congress have run to their favorite legacy media talking heads to express their supposed concerns that the president’s tariff policies could result in higher costs of living for everyday Americans. The latest example of this came on Tuesday, when Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., while...

The formula used by the Trump administration to levy reciprocal tariffs contains a serious math error that over-inflates the impact by about a factor of four, economists at the American Enterprise Institute said. Why it matters: The conservative think tank says the error led to tariff rates massively higher than they should have been to achieve the goals the administration sought.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claimed Friday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that Republicans seemed willing to “buck” President Donald Trump by passing the Trade Review Act of 2025. It would require a joint resolution of approval for the new tariffs and allow Congress to end tariffs with a resolution of disapproval. Host Dana Bash said, “The veteran Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, they have introduced a bill, a bipartisan bill to require congressional approval for any new tariffs. And I’m sure you saw that Grassley said it’s necessary to reassert Congress’s constitutional role and ensure...

A single Republican senator — Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — voted against the nomination of Harmeet Dhillon to serve as assistant attorney general, veering away from the rest of her GOP colleagues who voted in favor. After her nomination in December, lawmakers finally held a formal vote Thursday and Dhillon was approved in a 52-45 vote. However, Murkowski opposed the nomination and sided with Democrats. President Donald Trump announced in December the nomination of Dhillon to work as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our...

Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security, and the Department of Government Efficiency to leave it alone. Musk’s statement that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” and his plans to cut up to 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s workforce, are giving GOP lawmakers heartburn. They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day. And Republicans fear that reductions in staff and field offices will boomerang on them, predicting constituents will grow frustrated if...

Republican strategist Karl Rove said President Trump’s claims that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has discovered “hundreds of billions” in government “fraud” will backfire when Democrats spotlight a lack of prosecutions of those involved. During an appearance on Fox News’s “Sunday Night in America with Trey Gowdy,” Rove echoed Democratic strategist James Carville’s sentiment that Democrats should “allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight.” In his joint address to Congress last week, Trump criticized the “appalling waste” in government spending, while praising DOGE head and tech billionaire Elon Musk for discovering “hundreds of billions of dollars of...

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) said Sunday that President Trump “looks and sounds like an ally” of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The comments from Christie came during a panel discussion on ABC News’s “This Week,” in which the group talked about the heated Oval Office meeting with Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President Vance. “I think one of the strangest things of watching the meeting, Chris, is seeing how personal this was for President Trump. He clearly is upset with [Zelensky],” host George Stephanopoulos said. “It probably goes back to what started his first impeachment. And...

Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday and called on lawmakers not to give President Donald Trump their authority.Co-host Jonathan Lemire said, “Certainly there’s a lot of debate among Democrats right now as to who is that face, who is the leader for the party right now? Who’s going to play the role that Nancy Pelosi did during those first couple of years of Trump’s initial term in office? So now let’s take a look at more from Ryan Noble’s interview with Senator Murkowski, who warned her Republican colleagues not to cede their authority to President...

Senate Republicans on Monday criticized Elon Musk’s directive for federal government employees to lose their jobs if they did not send in a bullet-pointed summary of what they did last week at work, describing it as a rash decision that was not handled well. The email asking what they accomplished over the past week had set a deadline of Monday at midnight for responses. However, that was walked back by the Office of Personnel Management when it told departments and agencies that they could ignore that email. Nevertheless, some Senate GOP members took issue with Musk’s request as he continues...

What is taking so long to get the Trump tax cut cemented into law? Why are Republicans dithering? We have a president who is surfing on a wave of popularity and a voter mandate to make the tax cuts permanent. We have a Democratic party that is rolled up into a ball of confusion. We have an economy that needs a steroid injection. We have all the evidence needed to show that the tax cut was an unequivocal success. By the CBO’s own scoring, there has been virtually no revenue loss from the lower tax rates. With each passing day,...

A Maine Republican says that her state’s transgender athlete policy is so “extreme” that it will cost the state millions in federal funding. Maine Republican state Rep. Laurel Libby is blasting Democrat Governor Janet Mills for refusing to obey President Donald Trump’s Title IX rules banning transgender athletes in girl’s sports or risk a loss of federal education funding. Maine’s Principals’ Association maintains that its state rules take precedence over the new rules written by Donald Trump’s administration, and the state’s schools will continue to allow transgender athletes to compete in girl’s and women’s sports, Fox News reported.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) broke with President Trump over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday and advised against a public spat between the two leaders. “Are you disturbed at all by the rhetoric coming from the Trump administration about Zelensky?” ABC News’s Martha Raddatz asked Lawler on “This Week.” “I did not agree with the president’s rhetoric about … Zelensky. What I would say is this, it is not — it does not behoove either side to have this public back-and-forth,” Lawler responded.