Free Republic

A new tracking poll from Reuters/ Ipsos Tuesday showed that rank-and-file Republicans not only continue to support President Trump, but refuse to believe he’s doing anything wrong. The most galling number from the survey is: 71 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of Russia. That support runs counter to much of the leadership of their own party, at minimum during the Helsinki summit. The poll was put into the field following the summit, so it should pick up any quiver of movement, but there still has not been a dip in GOP support for Trump’s Putin-loving approach. Overall, more...

Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) said on Tuesday that President Trump's performance at a controversial news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin warrants impeachment – and that he would vote to do so. "Standing on stage in another country with the leader of another country who wants to and has sought to undermine this country, and to side with him over the United States - if I were asked to vote on this I would vote to impeach the president," O'Rourke said, according to The Dallas Morning-News. "Impeachment, much like an indictment, shows that there is enough there for the case...

During the ascendancy of Donald Trump to the top of the Republican Party and the presidency, the media has devoted plenty of attention to the in-fighting in the GOP. Trump overthrew the establishment by defeating 16 Republican challengers and winning the nomination. Ever since then, a dedicated band of GOP “Never Trumpers” has criticized the President’s every move and given plenty of support to the media and Democrat opponents of his agenda. Fortunately, President Trump has marginalized this group and solidified his support among Republicans. Recent polls have shown the President maintaining an astounding 90% approval rating among Republican voters....

Hillary Clinton has a lot of thoughts about Donald Trump’s presidency so far. In an appearance this weekend in Pittsburgh, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate described the current administration as pushing a system of “organized cruelty” and warned Americans of the “grim” future that lay ahead if they don’t vote Republicans out of Congress in November. Clinton’s remarks at the annual convention of the American Federation of Teachers, a national labor union, were among her harshest words yet about the Trump administration. Clinton has given few speeches since losing the presidential election in 2016, and she didn’t...

Breaking with many Republican colleagues, the Kentucky senator Rand Paul has revealed his concern over Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy on the supreme court. Paul told Fox and Friends on Sunday he was worried Kavanaugh, a judge on the DC circuit court of appeals, could cancel out supreme court justice Neil Gorsuch’s vote on fourth-amendment cases and allow the federal government to collect the phone records of millions of Americans. Kavanaugh’s confirmation rests on a knife edge. Republicans hold a 51-49 advantage in the Senate. They need a simple majority or a tie broken by...

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News on Tuesday that Democratic hopefuls for 2020 feel the need to be "the most insane person" when commenting on President Donald Trump's federal court nominations. "It seems to be that if you are running for president on the Democratic side in 2020 or thinking about it, you have to prove you are the most insane person when it comes to Trump nominees," Graham said in the interview with Fox host Martha MacCallum. The senator added that "President Trump could nominate George Washington and they would all be up in arms." Graham was referring...

Sen. John McCain praised the Department of Justice's announcement of the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 presidential election, adding President Donald Trump shouldn't meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin unless he holds him accountable. "President Trump must be willing to confront Putin from a position of strength and demonstrate that there will be a serious price to pay for his ongoing aggression towards the United States and democracies around the world," the Arizona senator said in a statement Friday. "If President Trump is not prepared to hold Putin accountable, the summit in Helsinki should...

President Donald Trump, more than any modern president, freely expresses his racist views — whether it is calling Mexican immigrants rapists, asserting that immigrants “infest” America, saying neo-Nazis include some “very fine people,” preferring Norwegian immigrants to those from “sh--hole” countries or associating immigrants with crime in public and in private. (In May, The Post reported on an episode in April 2017: “Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such...

When it comes to supporting families, paid parental leave is a solution to a number of problems. Studies show that paid leave can reduce infant mortality, increase breastfeeding rates, can improve maternal mental health and strengthen the connection between fathers and babies. There are a ton of benefits to parental leave, ones that American families should be seeing, but aren't. While some employers have been modernizing parental leave policies, federal policy lags behind. The last major policy change came in 1993, when the Family and Medical Leave Act passed with bipartisan support, guarantees more than half of American workers 12...

Democratic pollster Carly Cooperman on Wednesday pointed to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential bid to argue that opposing President Trump alone is not enough to win an election. "With Hillary Clinton, we saw that just being against Trump isn't enough," Cooperman, who is a partner at Schoen Consulting, told Hill.TV's Joe Concha on "What America's Thinking." “There is so much anger and passion in the Democratic Party right now to come out against Trump, but I do not think that will be enough," she continued. “The Democrats need more than just that, and they need to have ideas that they're articulating...

The summer of 2018 is witnessing the eurosocialist Democrats’ coming of age, reminiscent of Hermie’s experience in “The Summer of ‘42,” where the late-adolescent teenager falls for a young war bride. The summer ends, of course, and Hermie moves on. And that’s how the Democrats and left will roll as well. The recent election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described Democratic socialist, to Congress prompted the DNC chairman to proclaim that socialism is “the future of our party.” The pretense is off: the Democrats’ love affair with socialism is consummated. As the Democrats and other eurosocialists grew to attain this new...

For many on the American Jewish left, President Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is the last straw. Like his "zero tolerance” immigration policy, the prospect of ensuring a solidly conservative majority on the high court is viewed with horror by many who see this as the beginning of the end of liberal democracy. Indeed, Trump’s presidency is so abhorrent to those who deplore his policies that they have ceased to view politics as something on which decent people can agree to disagree. That’s the only explanation for why even normally sensible people like...

Critics of President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, connected Kavanaugh’s selection to the ongoing Russia investigation, citing an article Kavanaugh wrote that claimed presidents should not be tied up in lawsuits and probes and warning that the commander in chief might be looking for a way to protect himself in a legal challenge. In a 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, Kavanaugh claimed that presidents should not be caught up in “time-consuming and distracting” lawsuits and investigations. He argued that they “would ill serve the public interest, especially in times of financial or national security crisis.” “In choosing Brett...

Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a frequent critic of President Donald Trump, said he is concerned about what Trump might promise Russian President Vladimir Putin when the two meet this month. "It does concern me," the Arizona senator told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" Sunday. "I'm glad that the President is talking to Vladimir Putin. I'm glad that he's talking to North Korea as well. But I am concerned, and I know there is concern across Europe, about what might be promised." The two leaders are due to meet on July 16 in Finland, and CNN previously reported...

Is this something? Scott Adams talked about this on his Periscope video today. He made this point: This might be something important ("something that could dent the universe," as he put it) because people aren't citing policy reasons for their #WalkAway from the Democrat Party. He believes (as I do) that logic is a slave of the emotions, and what we call "logical analysis" is really just the part of the brain that thinks it's in charge making up a post-facto justification to explain what has already been decided by the emotional, primal part of the brain. Anyway, he thinks...

Michael Moore appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and urged fellow liberals not to give up hope on the inevitable confirmation of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. Bill Maher began by asking Moore about the “Hail Mary” plan he supposedly had to prevent the replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. “Listen, the Senate right now is 50-49. Sadly, McCain will not be able to vote, so it’s a 50-49 vote,” Moore declared. “C’mon! We’ve got to push it off til after November.” “And I don’t trust every Democrat,” Maher told Moore. “We’ve got to hold the Democratic seats we...

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, suggested that President Trump's pick to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court should recuse themselves from any potential court decisions that relate to the special prosecutor's ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. "The president should not be permitted to appoint a justice who will decide whether or not he complies with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury or pardons himself," Blumenthal said on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "I believe that whoever is appointed ought to recuse himself and commit to recusing himself from those kinds of decisions that affect...

As battle lines are drawn for the coming fight over Donald Trump’s second supreme court nominee, a senator who could help to decide the fate of the nomination warned on Sunday that a justice who would seek to reverse federal abortion rights protections “would not be acceptable”. “A candidate for this important position who would overturn Roe v Wade would not be acceptable to me because that would indicate an activist agenda that I don’t want to see a judge have,” Republican senator Susan Collins told ABC’s This Week, referring to the 1973 court decision protecting abortion rights. Trump, however,...

President Donald Trump was in the East Room of the White House on Friday to trumpet the six-month anniversary of his tax cuts, the singular legislative achievement of his presidency so far. But as his teleprompter instructed him to rattle off statistics about the tax law, Trump determined it was the time and place for a bigger celebration. "Our country is doing so well, possibly as well as it's ever done," the President declared. "I don't think it's ever done like this." As a statement about the country, Trump's remark is debatable. Thousands of immigrant children remain separated from their...

Despite mounting pressure from Granite State political leaders, Sen. Maggie Hassan is defending her decision to keep intern Caitlin Marriott on the job and instead used the intern’s profane attack on the president as an opportunity to attack Donald Trump. Calls for Marriott’s firing began as soon as news broke that the person who shouted “Mr. President, F— you!” at the Commander-in-Chief as he walked through the Capitol building was an intern in Hassan’s DC office. Instead, Hassan has suspended the intern for a week and had her ID badge revoked, and she defended her decision by pointing to the...