Free Republic

The next election belongs to Trump. Donald Trump will win the 2020 presidential election. That’s not a prediction. That is a projection based upon history. Beginning with the presidential contest of 1900, the party holding the White House has stood for its second term a total of 12 times. In 11 of those 12 campaigns, the incumbent party has triumphed. That’s about a 92 percent success rate. Those odds must look pretty good to a swashbuckling politician of the Trump stripe. There is a single exception to the two-term incumbent party lock: President Jimmy Carter. The Georgian lost his re-election...

Democrats are planning a vote that aims to override President Trump's veto of legislation blocking his emergency declaration, an effort that’s all but certain to fail...

Emergency Resolution Disapproval PASSES 59-41 with Romney & Rubio voting against the emergency funding for the Wall. Republican "YES" votes: Alexander Blunt Collins Lee Murkowski Paul Portman Romney Rubio Toomey Wicker

Call me a skeptic, but I’m quite certain that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent claim to The Washington Post that “I’m not for impeachment” of President Trump doesn’t match her actual position on the issue. The California congresswoman is a crafty career politician who specializes in telling the American people one thing and doing the exact opposite. In fact, she’s risen to the top of the liberal pyramid because she is an extremely gifted manipulator. In January, Pelosi’s own daughter Alexandra described her mother as a political leader who could “cut your head off and you won’t even know you’re...

The White House and Republican senators sought compromise Tuesday on limiting presidents' powers to unilaterally declare national emergencies, as chances improved that President Donald Trump might avoid a long-expected rejection by Congress of his effort to divert billions more for building barriers along the Mexican border. As a Thursday showdown vote in the Senate neared, GOP Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and others were talking with the White House about related legislation that would curb the ability of presidents to declare future emergencies. If Trump would commit to signing a bill handcuffing future emergency declarations,...

After contested recounts in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, DeSantis, 40, prevailed over Gillum, 39, by a margin more svelte than Palm Beach — 49.6 percent to 49.2 percent. Among 8.1 million ballots cast, just 32,463 votes divided victor from vanquished. Most significantly, DeSantis replaced three Florida supreme court justices who were required to retire at age 75. His appointees — Barbara Lagoa, Robert J. Luck, and Carlos Muñiz — have shifted the court’s composition from four liberals and three conservatives to one liberal and six conservatives. This jump to the right should keep the Sunshine State’s top tribunal safe...

A winning 2020 candidate needs three things: authenticity, credibility, and viability. Few could have predicted that President Donald Trump would be this good at surrendering the political advantage of a strong economy. Not only is he now underwater in the three states that pushed him to victory in 2016—he’s now unexpectedly vulnerable in places such as Texas, Florida, and Ohio as well. His popularity rises to 50 percent or higher in states that total a mere 102 electoral votes. Probably of more concern to his campaign: He’s fallen below 40 percent approval in states encompassing a 201-electoral-vote bloc. But Democrats...

Americans are as proud of the cities and towns we live in as we are of being American itself. We expect degrading attitudes toward our native lands to come from hostile countries, not from people within our own nation. Yet that was exactly what happened last week when Bill Maher, host of the HBO show “Real Time,” went on a disparaging rant that picked at the scab that is the cultural and political divide of red state and blue state America. Maher began by blaming Jeff Bezos for courting wealthy cities like New York for his next Amazon headquarters while...

The first two years of Donald Trump's presidency haven't exactly been filled with stellar ratings from the public. Trump's approval rating in Gallup has never -- not one time -- been above 50% since he was sworn into office. His overall job approval number in the Real Clear Politics' average is below 44%. Almost six in 10 people disapproved of how Trump has handled the Russia investigation in a CNN-SSRS poll last month. On and on it goes -- bad numbers following bad numbers, leaving the poll-obsessed Trump to cherry-pick a piece of data here and there that suggests he...

During CPAC on Feb. 28, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) thanked President Trump for nominating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and having his "back."

House Democrats on Wednesday hammered Pentagon officials over President Trump's plan to move Defense Department military construction (MILCON) dollars to build his proposed southern border wall after declaring a national emergency. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment Robert McMahon offered few new details on Trump’s plans to take $3.6 billion in MILCON funds for his project, effectively sidestepping Congress. The lack of more information angered Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who heads the Appropriations Committee's sub-panel on military construction. “I’m not sure what kind of chumps you think my colleagues and I are,” she told McMahon during a particularly testy...

•Bernie Sanders is entering the 2020 presidential race. •Sanders has supported policies such as Medicare for all, breaking up big banks, a $15 per hour minimum wage and free public college, all of which have gained more traction in the Democratic Party in recent years. •Out of all the 2020 candidates, Sanders would have perhaps the biggest effect on businesses and wealthy Americans.

President Trump has declared a national emergency in order to pay for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, but will Congress block it? That’s a long shot — but we can’t rule it out either. Here’s the basic process, as the New York Times explained in an article after Trump’s declaration. Congress can take up a resolution to end a presidential national emergency declaration. If such a resolution passes in one chamber, the other must bring it up for a vote within 18 days. If the resolution passes both chambers and the president vetoes it, a two-thirds majority in Congress...

Please contact White House RIGHT NOW - tell POTUS "do NOT sign the spending bill!" ********************* If You Don't Stand Up, You Will Be Stood On. ****** If you support building the wall, ending chain migration and instituting merit-based immigration, please contact the President RIGHT NOW and tell him do NOT sign the omnibus spending bill that went on his desk earlier today. Just declare a Border Emergency and FINISH THE WALL. Moreover, this [omnibus] bill will likely override Trump’s executive powers because of the sneaky limitations on wall construction. This is the sort of omnibus bill that ensnared Reagan...

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren took her battle with President Trump on the road to the Hawkeye State, as the newly minted Democratic hopeful mused before a crowd of Iowans that the president “may not even be a free person” by the time the presidential election rolls around. The Bay State’s senior senator visited Iowa, an important early primary state, on Sunday, a day after making her 2020 bid official. “By the time we get to 2020, Donald Trump may not even be president. In fact, he may not even be a free person,” Warren told a crowd in Cedar Rapids....

Some are grudgingly conceding that Trump’s bulldozer mentality has pushed leaders to have difficult conversations — even if the byproduct is chaos. The authoritarian rule of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela is in peril. Afghanistan could finally see a peace deal with the Taliban and a drawdown of American troops. North Korea has stopped its nuclear tests — for now. President Donald Trump is expected to tout these developments as major foreign policy wins during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, rebutting critics who say Trump’s main role on the international stage has been to bully American allies and...

President Donald Trump met with a key Republican negotiator Thursday, Feb. 7, to lay out his demands for a border deal, as lawmakers sought an agreement to stave off another government shutdown. Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., told reporters after meeting with Trump that he believes the president will support a deal bipartisan congressional negotiators produce - as long as it meets his parameters. Lawmakers face a Feb. 15 deadline when large portions of the government will shut back down absent a deal. Shelby declined to detail Trump's requirements, and he did not say whether the president had agreed...

Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who blocked former President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland from ever having a hearing in 2016, told the New York Times Magazine that his "decision not to fill the [Justice Antonin] Scalia vacancy" was the "most consequential thing I've ever done." The big picture: McConnell cited "a longstanding tradition of not filling vacancies on the Supreme Court in the middle of a presidential election year" in his refusal to even meet with Garland after the death of Scalia — a tradition deemed "false" and "entirely a matter of circumstance" by Politifact. Since Trump's...

I've been a U.S. senator for three weeks now, and I can tell you that reports of hate and incompetence in Washington are severely understated. Things are actually much worse than they appear.

Ever since one leading 2020 presidential candidate, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., called for eliminating private health insurance to implement "Medicare for All," there has been pushback by some moderate Democrats, including a Washington Post columnist who cautioned the party against embracing such a platform, especially while campaigning against President Trump. Harris is one of the biggest champions for "Medicare for All," especially on Capitol Hill, where she co-sponsored a bill with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. However, after reiterating her support for the program at a CNN town hall earlier this week, Harris was asked about those who currently have health...