Free Republic

Though betting odds had a 20 percent chance that Donald Trump would use his brief prime-time Oval Office address to declare a national emergency at the Mexican-U.S. border, he did not. Instead, he dedicated his time to a hodge-podge of lurid descriptions of violence juxtaposed to a plea for humanitarian aid. In no way does that mean the issue is settled, and a national emergency declaration remains very much in the mix as one way to break the logjam, appeal to the Republican base, reopen the government, and, oh, trigger a legal crisis. Just Wednesday, Trump claimed an “absolute right”...

Former New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez defended President Donald Trump's call for a border wall as part of a deal to end the government shutdown and said Thursday "it's disgusting" not to call the situation on the U.S. Mexico-border a crisis. The Republican, who was the nation's first Latina governor, told Fox News that Democrats should come to the table and agree to Trump's wall in exchange to fund the federal government. "I think the president's plan is smart, and it's multi-faceted," Martinez said. "It includes a fence, but not for 2,000 miles."

Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used her appearance on MSNBC — following President Donald Trump’s Oval Office address on Tuesday night — to demand the president explain why ICE shouldn’t be abolished. Ocasio-Cortez began, “No one should feel unsafe in the United States of America. And that includes our amazing and beautiful and productive immigrant community and moreover, the one thing the president has not talked about is the fact he has systematically engaged in the violation of international human rights borders — human rights on our border.” During the president’s speech, he explained why he felt the border wall was...

We’re into Day 13 of the partial government shutdown, and there’s no end in sight. Common wisdom says the longer this lasts, the worse the politics will get for President Trump. I disagree. Trump isn’t likely to suffer politically because he’s not doing anything his supporters find objectionable. A Quinnipiac poll last month found that 43 percent of Americans, including 86 percent of Republicans and 45 percent of independents, support building the wall. Support for the wall is so high among Trump supporters that even Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said this week that he supports it while blasting the president’s...

Elizabeth Warren would have made an excellent president. Warren, who announced her intention to run for the presidency this week, spent much of her career before entering politics in law, which she taught at universities around the country, including UT-Austin, Harvard, and Penn. Particularly expert in bankruptcy, middle-class personal finance, and consumer protection, since entering Congress in 2013, Warren has spent much of her time pushing for better regulation of financial institutions. She was, for example, essential to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP), a federal agency designed to protect Americans from unfair, deceptive, or predatory financial...

The meeting would be the first time the president has sat down with Democrats since the shutdown started. President Donald Trump has invited congressional leaders to a Wednesday afternoon briefing on the border wall at the White House, according to three congressional sources familiar with the invitation. White House officials on New Year’s Eve asked House and Senate leaders in both parties to attend the meeting. The session, which will include a briefing by top Homeland Security Department officials, comes as a partial government shutdown over Trump’s border wall reaches its eleventh day. The meeting would mark the first time...

Nancy Pelosi often quotes Abraham Lincoln saying public sentiment is everything. It's a theory that will be put to the test when the new House Democratic majority gavels in this week and votes to end the government shutdown without money for President Donald Trump's border wall with Mexico. The high-stakes move to reopen the government will be the first big battle between Trump and Pelosi as Democrats come into control ready to reassert the power of the legislative branch and confront the White House. Trump is counting on public support as he holds out for $5 billion to build the...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Democratic attempts at oversight in the coming Congress could amount to "presidential harassment." Speaking from the Oval Office, Trump again denied any collusion between his team and Russia when he was questioned about the investigative powers Democrats will assume come January. "It's probably presidential harassment and we know how to handle that. I know how to handle that better than anybody," Trump said. "There's been no collusion, after two years," he added. Trump has used the term "presidential harassment" multiple times in the past to refer to the investigation into Russian interference in the...

A truism of the midterm elections is that women in the suburbs revolted against Donald Trump—or were revolted by Mr. Trump—and took it out on Republican candidates. Surveying the carnage among incumbent Republicans, there is little reason to challenge this conventional wisdom. Still, some of us on principle don’t feel at home with the conventional wisdom, even as we admit its undeniable reality. So this week we are going to spend some time with what may be America’s most determined political outliers—the women who love Trump....

"All he had time for was celebrities, and now suddenly he's acting like he's a populist out there," former President Obama once said. "'Man, I'm going to fight for working people.' ... Come on, man!" And former Vice President Joe Biden said the following at the Democartic National Convention in 2016: "He’s trying to tell us he cares about the middle class. Give me a break! That’s a bunch of malarkey!” "Malarkey?" I want Joe Biden run in 2020 just so we can hear more of that word. Look, America's poverty rate was lower in President Trump’s first year than...

Democratic leaders are urging President Trump to drop his proposal to spend $5 billion on a border wall and avoid a partial government shutdown, saying the proposal does not have enough votes to pass Congress “This holiday season, the president knows full well that his wall proposal does not have the votes to pass the House and Senate, and should not be an obstacle to a bipartisan agreement,” Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in a joint statement issued before their meeting with the president scheduled for 11:30 am Tuesday. The leaders...

President Donald Trump’s economic officials are reassuring investors about recent white-knuckle stock market volatility, while Trump’s political advisers are increasingly alarmed that the economy could present a stiff 2020 campaign headwind. Many of Trump’s political allies acknowledge that his reelection prospects hinge in large part on how Americans judge their economic prospects at the time of the next election. And many independent analysts say that recent market turbulence is a warning sign that the U.S. economy will likely slow and maybe even tip into recession by 2020. At the moment, that scenario could be the biggest threat to Trump’s chances...

Together the two have generated some of the most vital moments of democratic change in the modern era Religion and populism have become dirty words in progressive circles, but despite common assumptions, their combination could serve as a resource for the sort of democratic renewal many societies need. There is plenty of evidence to support the view that religion and populism are bad enough in themselves and even worse when combined. The so-called “Christian-Democracy” of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, widespread support of Donald Trump by white evangelicals in the United States, the Hindu nationalism of Modi, and the Islamo-Kemalism of Erdoğan...

Thanks to a rare unscripted moment for Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ big secret is out: It’s not only President Donald Trump and his supporters who loath immigrants knocking at our doors. Too many Democrats also reject “migration,” she reminds us. How could I forget? Before Bill Clinton was president, we were called Cuban refugees. Even during the unruly Mariel boatlift of 1980 that brought 125,000 people to South Florida during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, it remained so. But as Clinton faced the challenge of thousands of Cubans taking to the seas in rickety homemade rafts — 35,000 by the exodus’ end...

Hillary Clinton popped back into the news cycle on Thanksgiving in the worst possible way, after the Guardian quoted her as saying, basically, that Europe needs to get harsher on migrants and refugees or else people like Donald Trump will keep winning elections. Just to reiterate this is a bad and terrible stance that only some kind of ultra-warped center-think could come up with. The interview took place before the midterms, according to the Guardian, and was published as part of the paper’s new “The New Populism” series, which might explain why they decided to drop the quotes on Thanksgiving...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Standing in an airplane hangar in the mid-autumn chill awaiting the arrival of President Trump, Joan Philpott said she was angry and scared. Only Mr. Trump, she said, can solve the problems she worries most about. “He wants to protect this country, and he wants to keep it safe, and he wants to keep it free of invaders and the caravan and everything else that’s going on,” said Ms. Philpott, 69, a retired respiratory therapist. Ms. Philpott was one of thousands of women who braved a drizzle for hours to have the chance to cheer Mr. Trump...

With Democrats set to reclaim control of the House in January and President Trump already infuriating them with the forced resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speculation is rampant over whether they will use that power to pursue impeachment against the president -- or even Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who wants to be speaker, has pushed back on pressure from the base to pursue impeachment, saying earlier this week "that's not what our caucus is about" even as Democratic lawmakers make clear they will pursue other investigations of the administration. But that pressure from...

'The Jimmy Dore Show' talks about the likely possibility that the final report from the Mueller investigation will never be made public, in light of a "public service announcement" from Politico. "Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointment," warns Politico's Darren Samuelson. "And be forewarned that the special counsel’s findings may never be made public." "President Donald Trump's critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference. They may be in for a disappointment," Samuelson warned.

Corey Lewandowski managed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for a year, co-wrote a book about it and keeps in close touch with Trump, as we were reminded last month, when The Times reported on a physical altercation between him and John Kelly, the White House chief of staff, just outside the Oval Office. So I figured that his thoughts about the best Democrat to take on Trump in 2020 were as germane as anybody’s. He told me that Mike Bloomberg worried him, because Bloomberg’s personal wealth would spare him the distraction of fund-raising, and that Joe Biden had the right instinct...