Free Republic

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday he would back impeaching President Donald Trump if the White House refuses to comply with congressional demands for information about his interactions with Ukraine’s president and other Democratic probes. “Congress should demand the information it has a legal right to receive,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware. If he doesn’t, Biden said, “Donald Trump will leave Congress no choice but to initiate impeachment. It would be a tragedy, but a tragedy of his own making.” Biden’s remarks were his first extended comments about Trump’s interactions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump...

President Donald Trump said that India has never invested in the U.S. like it is doing today and said he wants to strengthen the two nation's "cherished bonds" during a rally with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday. Organizers expected roughly 50,000 people to attend the "Howdy Modi" rally at Houston's NRG Stadium. "We welcome India's growing investments right here in the Lone Star state. Nations around the world are investing in the United States because they know we have the best economy and best workers in world.We want to thank everybody and India has never invested in the...

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Friday’s LGBTQ Presidential Forum had the feeling of a home game for Pete Buttigieg, who was introduced as “a member of our community” to a rousing standing ovation. But that enthusiasm for Buttigieg has not guaranteed him a lock on this voting bloc in Iowa. Buttigieg covered topics including learning “the hard way” about “discrimination” when he came out — like the first time he saw his mayoral office’s annual blood drive on his schedule, Buttigieg said, and soon realized, “I can’t be part of it.” Yet some activists in Iowa said that Buttigieg had not...

President Donald Trump is expected to headline his largest rally yet on Sunday when he appears in Houston in an effort to appeal to a growing political force in the United States: Indian Americans. Trump will speak to an expected crowd of 50,000, mostly Indian Americans, who are flocking to the most diverse city in the nation to catch a glimpse of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at what is being touted as the largest event in the U.S. for a leader of foreign country. He hopes to peel off some Indian American voters who could be attracted to his...

Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called her own party's failure to impeach President Donald Trump a 'national scandal.' The freshman Congresswoman from New York made the remarks in a tweet late on Saturday, ratcheting up pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow impeachment to move forward. 'At this point, the bigger national scandal isn't the president's lawbreaking behavior - it is the Democratic Party's refusal to impeach him for it,' she wrote. Ocasio-Cortez's forceful remarks join the growing clamor from some Democrats demanding that party leaders impeach the president, with the intelligence community whistleblower controversy fueling fresh outrage. In...

An extended discussion about his son’s business dealings isn’t helpful to Biden’s electability argument. Joe Biden had a chance to excoriate Donald Trump on Friday after a blockbuster report detailed how the president pushed Ukrainian investigators to investigate Biden’s son. Instead, Biden was circumspect and measured in a comment to reporters. Only hours later, after Biden and his advisors weighed more facts and after Democrats renewed calls for impeaching Trump, did the former vice president’s campaign issue a broader and stronger statement. The time it took Biden to unleash his tougher comments – which stopped just short of urging impeachment...

Pete Buttigieg, the first major openly gay candidate for president, is campaigning heavily in Iowa, a state that was among the first to sanction gay marriage. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The question posed to Pete Buttigieg — gay, married and running for president — came from a supporter at an Iowa campaign stop: What should he tell friends who say America isn't ready to elect a gay man as president? That prompted a woman in the crowd to object with an expletive, igniting cheers from hundreds in the audience. Of the many intriguing things about Buttigieg and his candidacy...

Democrats are having a wonkish but important debate right now as they pick their next standard-bearer: Should they try to persuade voters who supported President Barack Obama for two terms and then left them in 2016? Or should they mobilize the tens of millions of Americans who stayed home in 2016 and would seem to have a natural home in the Democratic Party in 2020, including people of color and single women? The debate tends to track along ideological lines. Progressives pushing socialized medical insurance are ready to forgo any attempt to win back Trump voters. Doing so allows them...

White House hopeful Julián Castro called on House Democrats to impeach President Trump after reports surfaced that he urged the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his chief political rival in the 2020 race. “You cannot sit by as the highest officeholder in the land flagrantly violates the law and violates every norm of a healthy democracy that we have, because it’s setting a terrible standard for people in the future. We can never normalize this,” Castro said on the campaign trail. “He needs to be impeached. I love these House Democrats—my brother is one of them,...

The last time presidential candidates gathered to address LGBTQ issues specifically was 2007. Since then, there’s been a sea change in rights and acceptance. When 10 of the Democratic candidates for president gather in Iowa on Friday evening, it will be at a forum to address issues that are top of mind for one of their party’s most reliable constituencies: the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. The candidates — Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julián Castro, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Joe Sestak, Elizabeth Warren and Marianne Williamson — will take the stage at Coe College...

President Donald Trump reacted to Robert “Beto” O’Rourke’s gun confiscation talk by suggesting “Dummy Beto” sank any chances for gun control legislation. Breitbart News reported that O’Rourke used the September 12, 2019, Democrat debate to say, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15.” The next day he elaborated on the statement, making clear that turning over AR-15s would be “mandatory” if his plan were in place. On September 18, 2019, Trump tweeted: “Dummy Beto made it much harder to make a deal.” He added that Beto’s comments “Convinced many that Dems just want to take your guns away.” A...

We wanted to find out what appeals to Donald Trump’s supporters and why they believe he deserves another term. The economy, the judges and a get-the-job-done attitude is just part of it. Here are their stories. BOSTON — His critics call him dangerous, unhinged and unstable, and 10 leading Democrat contenders and three Republican challengers would like to replace him. But less than five months from the Iowa caucuses, President Donald Trump enjoys the support of a solid majority of Republicans, and they have sound reasons to stick with their man despite the furor that continually surrounds him. According to...

Former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton blamed voter suppression for her 2016 loss, and threw her support behind claims made by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams regarding the 2018 Georgia governor race. "You can run the best campaign, you can have the best plans, you can get the nomination, you can win the popular vote. And you can lose the Electoral College and therefore the election for these four reasons. Number one, voter suppression," Clinton said Tuesday an "In Defense of Democracy" event at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "We saw what happened in Georgia where Stacey Abrams should...

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) says it’s simply a matter of time before President Donald Trump is impeached. Appearing Monday night on CNN, the Minnesota congresswoman said she was confident the president would be impeached despite recent polling that indicated 6 in 10 Americans were not on board. House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said earlier Monday that, although he personally believed the president should be impeached, “we cannot impeach the president against the will of the American people.” Omar interpreted Nadler’s statement in a different way. She highlighted the change in public opinion during former President Richard Nixon’s impeachment proceedings,...

President Donald Trump will not consider the House-passed universal background checks bill as part of his proposed gun package, according to a source familiar with the conversation on guns. Trump’s position on the House-passed bill is not exactly a surprise. The White House issued a veto threat against the bill in February. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called on Trump repeatedly to bring up the House-passed universal background checks bill. Over the weekend, Pelosi and Schumer issued a statement following a phone call with Trump that anything other than the House-passed bill...

US President Donald Trump will be joining PM Narendra Modi at a mega event in Houston named "Howdy, Modi!". The September 22 event will be the first time a US president and Indian Prime Minister will be addressing a joint rally. Amid speculation if Trump would join PM Modi at the Houston event, White House issued a statement to confirm that he would attend the rally. This is the third successive meeting between Trump and PM Modi within the span of a few weeks after the G20 and G7 summits. More than 50,000 Indian-Americans from across the US have registered...

PLANO — Beto O'Rourke on Sunday said Democrats should be bolder in their approach to issues related to gun control, immigration, criminal justice and climate change. "I'm a lifelong Democrat," O'Rourke told about 300 people outside of Artcentre of Plano. "For too long Democrats have played defense ... but just like Lucy with the football, every single time that we put our best foot forward and move forward in the spirit of consensus and comprise and start in that middle position, we lose it." O'Rourke called for a different, less compromising approach, noting that attempts at consensus building have led...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s free child-care plan would be offered to families making less than twice the poverty-line income (less than $51,000 for a family of four), while wealthier families would have child-care costs capped. The program could cost $700 billion over a decade, while a tax on the ultra-wealthy to pay for it could raise near-$3 trillion over the next decade. Corporations have been increasing their child-care benefits and services in recent years as a way to meet today’s labor market needs, help the early education of the next generation of workers and be less reliant on government.

President Trump is a horrendous racist. And it’s time for Democrats to stop calling him one. Counterintuitive? Yes. But substantial evidence shows that labeling Trump “racist” backfires against Democrats. It energizes his supporters without providing any additional motivation to Democrats, and it drives soft partisans — voters who could be up for grabs in 2020 — into Trump’s arms. This doesn’t mean letting Trump off the hook for being the racist he obviously is; I’ve been using the term for four years because it objectively describes him. But this means talking about his racism in a different way: Say that...

And the winner is … Donald Trump. The Democrats’ third presidential debate was a long-winded, platitude-filled disaster where no single candidate could claim a clear victory. Instead, the seven men and three women took turns displaying why they are all probably unelectable. Start with Joe Biden’s incoherence. The nominal front-runner, the former vice president had a 40-year reputation for never shutting up. Now he can’t manage to finish a sentence without interrupting himself. Nearly all his efforts to make a point were swamped by a sudden change of direction mid-sentence, and then another change a few words later as a...