Free Republic

President Donald Trump is making his first visit to Illinois since becoming president, making a stop in Granite City on Thursday where he is expected to tout the reopening of a U.S. Steel Corp. mill. The White House announced Sunday night Trump will swing through Granite City, in southern Illinois near St. Louis and Dubuque, Iowa, on Thursday. The Trump administration has been highlighting U.S. Steel’s Granite City mill as a trade war success story even as the tariffs have sparked concerns in other sectors, with alarms sounded by Illinois farmers whose main crop is soybeans. The visit will have...

Republican Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner rejected Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s call for a bill of rights for immigrants Wednesday, claiming that only Congress could pass such a law. Emmanuel called for the bill of rights after declaring Chicago a “Trump-free zone” Tuesday in response to President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Chicago Tribune reported. While Rauner denied Emmanuel’s request, the governor was not opposed to further protections for illegal immigrants. Instead, he called on Congress to take action. “I do not believe this challenge for these children can be...

Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) is stepping up his call for an investigation into President Trump's former special assistant Sebastian Gorka's alleged ties to a neo-Nazis. "Sebastian Gorka should never have been an advisor to POTUS. He should still be investigated for concealing neo-nazi ties," Durbin said in a tweet on Saturday, just one day after Gorka left his White House post....

In recognition of the 70th anniversary of India's Independence, an official letter from President Donald Trump will be presented Sunday at Naperville's India Day Grand Celebration. The letter reads, in part, "Thanks to the irreplaceable contributions of Hindu and Indian Americans, the future of our valued partnership has never looked brighter, and we continue to foster even greater cooperation for future generations," according to a news release. The celebration, hosted by the Indian Community Outreach Organization and sponsored by the Republican Hindu Coalition, is one of the largest in Indian-American festivals in the United States. The day is aimed at...

Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker Monday pledged if elected to lead Illinois as a resistance state to President Donald Trump's policies and said Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner's silence on federal issues demonstrated he was "complicit" with the president. "I'm proud to be part of the resistance," Pritzker told a group of supporters, using downtown's Trump Tower as a backdrop. "When I'm governor, we're not going to be silent like Bruce Rauner. Illinois will be a firewall against Donald Trump's destructive and bigoted agenda." On Monday, Pritzker unveiled plans such as expanded availability of health care and protections for gay rights...

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi today wrote to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn, calling on him to publicly disclose all pardons issued by President Trump. Rep. Krishnamoorthi's letter comes in response to the Washington Post’s report that President Trump and his legal team have explored his power to pardon as a means of disrupting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The signed letter is available here and the text follows: July 21, 2017 The Honorable Donald F. McGahn, II Counsel to the President The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC 20006...

Illinois Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger shared on Tuesday a few of the "hateful, vitriolic" messages he received following the June 14 congressional baseball practice shooting at a Virginia park, that left his GOP colleague Rep. Steve Scalise in critical condition. The House Majority Whip's condition has since been upgraded to serious. Kinzinger, who serves Illinois' 16th Congressional District, posted on Facebook some messages he said he received from the public, writing, "We must rise above the angry rhetoric coming from all sides. Below are just a few of the hateful, vitriolic messages I received AFTER the #AlexandriaShooting. I know this...

The man suspected of opening fire on Republican members of the congressional baseball team early Wednesday morning was distraught over the election of President Trump and traveled to Washington in recent weeks to protest, his brother said on Wednesday. The suspect, James Thomas Hodgkinson, 66, of Belleville, Ill., died in a Washington hospital after a shootout with the police. “I know he wasn’t happy with the way things were going, the election results and stuff,” his brother, Michael Hodgkinson, said in a telephone interview shortly after he received the news on Wednesday. He added that he was not close to...

Former President Barack Obama, on a two-day visit to Chicago that began Sunday, met privately with at-risk young men on the South Side to talk about gang violence, jobs skills and employment, a spokesman said. The meeting was with participants in a program created by Obama's longtime friend and former education secretary, Arne Duncan — and signified a return to Obama's roots as a community organizer 30 years ago on the South Side. "He said he grew up during that time because of the work he was doing," Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said. Now the former president wants to solicit...

Prospective Democratic gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker slammed President Donald Trump Thursday for stripping federal protections that allowed transgender students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms matching their gender identities, but his idea for a protest raised some eyebrows. “As a protest against Trump’s rescinding protections for trans kids, everyone should use the other gender’s bathroom today,” Pritzker tweeted alongside the hashtag #protecttranskids....

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has warned Democrats they need to "take a chill pill" and realize that they are not going to take back national power anytime soon. "It ain't gonna happen in 2018," Emanuel said Monday at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in California. "Take a chill pill, man. You gotta be in this for the long haul." As he did last month at an event in Washington, D.C., the mayor expanded on what he believes is the road map back to power for his party — putting moderate candidates such as veterans, football players, sheriffs and business people up...

The evening before his inauguration, President Trump took time to meet with a 24-year-old FedEx courier from rural Illinois. In a tent behind the Lincoln Memorial in D.C., the soon-to-be president praised Shane Bouvet for his work as a volunteer on his campaign, hugged him and then promised him an extraordinary thank you: a $10,000 check. The unusual meeting was arranged after Trump said he read a profile about Bouvet in The Washington Post. The struggling single father had spent nights working and days volunteering for Trump, who Bouvet hoped could bring renewal to his home town of Stonington, Ill.,...

Congressman Danny Davis is a Democrat representing Illinois's 7th District, which includes some Chicago neighborhoods hardest hit by gun violence. His own grandson was shot and killed last November. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We hear now from Congressman Danny Davis. He's represented the 7th Congressional District since 1996, but gun violence is not just an abstract concept to him. His 15-year-old grandson Javon was killed in a dispute over borrowed clothing last November, and Congressman Davis delivered the eulogy. He was kind enough to host us in his offices on Capitol Hill. Congressman, thank you so much for speaking with us...

Ohio congressman Tim Ryan is campaigning to replace Nancy Pelosi as the House minority leader. In an interview with the Washington Post, he argued that Democrats need a strategy for appealing to voters that doesn't rely on President Obama's personal popularity. “If we don’t have Barack Obama at the top of the ticket, we can’t win elections. That is an unsustainable model. He can’t run again, so it’s not even like we can say, well, every four years we’ll win.” Indeed, Barack Obama can't run again ... OR CAN HE??? Such is the question posed by this Change.org petition, which...

Survey also shows written-off GOP senator trailing by just 2 points Republican Donald Trump is within 6 points of Democrat Hillary Clinton in President Obama’s home state, a poll released Wednesday suggests. The survey by Emerson College, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points, shows Clinton leading Trump 45 percent to 39 percent in Illinois. The state’s Democratic challenger for the Senate, Rep. Tammy Duckworth, leads incumbent Republican Mark Kirk by 2 points. That is closer than other polls; most observers consider Kirk the most endangered incumbent senator running for re-election this year. The...

Via the Daily Rushbo, right on both counts. It wasn’t so much an anti-Trump riot, Limbaugh notes, as an anti-Trump-supporter riot “since they are really violently protesting … American citizens exercising their constitutional right to express their political opinion.” Indeed. Anti-American, straight up. And the more violence there is aimed at Trump and his fans, especially by people waving Mexican flags, the more swing voters will conclude that an authoritarian whose centerpiece proposal involves a border wall might be just what the doctor ordered after all. He’s also right that some well-known lefties were quick to denounce the riot last...

If you’re Donald Trump, you can’t buy publicity like this from his enemies in San Diego yesterday: As hundreds of protesters outside his rally here Friday afternoon chanted obscenities, waved Mexican flags and clashed with police, Donald Trump reveled on stage in the drama his candidacy has created. More: One poster referenced Trump’s wife, who immigrated to the United States from Slovenia: “The Art of the Deal. Deport Melania. Legalize 11 million.” Another: “Trump, Shame of America.” Another: “Jesus would not vote for Trump.” And: “Racist, go home.” As the rally progressed inside, a few protesters — including two women...

To his credit, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas admits he is not a warm and fuzzy guy. In the town hall before Wisconsin's primary, he acknowledged, “What I will say is I'm a pretty driven guy. That has pros and cons. I have always been a very driven guy.” In a GOP debate in October, he offered, “If you want someone to grab a beer with, I may not be that guy. But if you want someone to drive you home, I will get the job done and I will get you home.” Now it is true that the most...

I believe that there are a lot of things we do in life not because they will be fun, but just because we want to say we did them. For me, one of those things ended up being attending a local Ted Cruz rally last week (March 14, 2016) with a few of my friends. Before this, my friends and I had never been to any sort of political rally. This was certainly an interesting choice to be our first. Supporters in the crowd wore election-themed shirts and fervently waved posters in the air. Among the messages portrayed through this...

Delegates discuss contacting other campaigns for advice, lack of organisation and the disappearance of state chair Kent Gray during anxious conference call Illinois delegates elected to represent Donald Trump have voiced fears about chaotic organisation and a lack of leadership in their state as Republicans prepare for what could be the first contested convention in decades. During a torturous two-hour conference call on Thursday night, the delegates struggled to figure out how to help the frontrunner at the Republican National Convention in July, wondering how best to contact the campaign in Wisconsin for tips. Anxiety was mounting throughout the conference...