Free Republic

Former Vice President Joe Biden, mulling a possible 2020 presidential run, ripped into the Trump administration’s immigration policies on Friday -- calling them “one of the darkest moments in our history” at a rally held by a Latino civil rights organization. Biden made his fiery remarks in Phoenix, Arizona, at an event for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). He specifically targeted the Justice Department’s “zero tolerance” policy on prosecuting all illegal border crossers. “Grotesque lies, lies about immigrants, about crime, about costs to the community,” said Biden. “This administration’s policies that literally rip babies from the arms...

Rep. Maxine Waters warned supporters on Wednesday of potential "armed protests" against her after an extremist group called for ongoing demonstrations outside her office in Los Angeles. In a lengthy statement issued late Wednesday, Waters, D-Calif., said she’d been notified about forthcoming protests by the Oath Keepers, which she described as "an anti-government militia" that's staged armed protests in cities across the country. She warned her supporters against being "baited" into counter-demonstrations or confrontations with the organization, which she said has a track record of "violent and provocative behavior." "I am requesting those individuals and groups planning a counter-protest to...

New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez caused a stir for criticizing Israel’s "occupation” of Palestine in a recent interview. Ocasio-Cortez, who surprisingly won a New York Democratic primary on a socialist platform, made the remark during an interview on PBS’s "Firing Line" on Friday. The 28-year-old political newcomer was roundly criticized for making the statement then admitting that she is "not the expert at geopolitics on this issue." It wasn't the only controversial thing Ocasio-Cortez said during the "Firing Line" interview...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting to get a different result, which is one of the many reasons President Donald Trump’s news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed so insane. Trump is trying to do something that both of his immediate predecessors tried to do: turn over a new leaf with Russia. They both failed, and so will he. Recall that George W. Bush entered the White House promising to end the “dead ideological rivalry” of the Cold War. At a 2001 summit with Putin in Slovenia, Bush declared, “I looked...

Instead of simply trading in one bad party for a slightly less bad one, frustrated voters need to use this moment to push for credible alternatives. Last weekend’s Politico Magazine featured an historical retrospective of the rise and fall of major American political parties during the mid-1850s. Written by professor Joshua Zeitz, a historian and one-time Democratic candidate for Congress, the piece urges “Never Trump” Republicans to give up on the GOP, cast aside ideas of independence and join the Democratic Party. While deeply steeped in historical examples and context, Zeitz presents a false dichotomy to erstwhile Republicans. “Today’s Never...

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...