Free Republic

A former Republican strategist has hit out at party leaders who have “enabled” Donald Trump’s behavior, stating they “deserve the reckoning that will eventually come for the GOP.” Sally Bradshaw, strategist and one of the authors of the Republican National Committee’s Growth and Opportunity Project, slammed Trump’s leadership as divisive and spoke about her disappointment with the party as rumors circulated that the president was preparing to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. “Donald Trump is anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-black, anti-anything that would bring the country together,” Bradshaw told Buzzfeed in an interview....

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona disparaged President Donald Trump’s promise to erect a physical border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing “nobody ought to support” the idea. “Obviously all of us believe in border security. It depends what he means by the wall and we still really haven’t seen what he means by the wall,” Flake said on CNN’s State of the Union. “If that’s a metaphor for border security we can support that but if he’s talking about a solitary, brick and mortar two thousand mile edifice on the border, then no, nobody ought to support that.” Immigration has...

Chelsea Clinton took to Twitter Saturday to slam President Donald Trump's comments that the response to Hurricane Harvey has been "a wonderful thing," noting that "people lost their lives, loved ones, homes, beloved pets." Here's Clinton's post: (TWEET-AT-LINK) While visiting NRG Stadium in Houston, where nearly 2,000 people are still being sheltered, President Trump said Saturday that "I saw a lot of happiness" despite the tragedy. "As tough as this was, it's been a wonderful thing, I think, even for the country to watch it, for the world to watch," he said. Trump called the response he saw to the...

Saturday in Durham, NC at the 82nd founders’ anniversary celebration of the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said after President Donald Trump was they impeached, they would “go after” Vice President Mike Pence next. Waters said, “Who is Donald Trump? Who does he think he is? Why does he think he is going to get away with what he is doing? There are those who may be afraid of him but as the young folks say, I ain’t scared, not one bit, not one bit and neither should you be.” She continued, “Then...

In June, Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery III signed a letter demanding that President Donald Trump end DACA, a program that allows undocumented individuals brought to the United States as children to live and work here legally. Nine other Republican attorneys general, as well as one GOP governor, joined the ultimatum, which informed Trump that if he did not kill DACA by Sept. 5, the coalition would sue to block it in court. Trump says he will announce his decision on Tuesday. On Friday, however, Slatery publicly withdrew his demand and instead urged Trump to keep DACA—and to...

Sen. John McCain issued a plea for bipartisan cooperation as Congress returns from its extended summer recess, saying pragmatism, compromise and mutual respect are more critical than ever given what he considers the lack of experience emanating from the White House. "That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct," McCain wrote Thursday in a Washington Post op-ed. "We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities," the Arizona Republican said of President Donald Trump. "We...

The White House has reportedly told Republican lawmakers that it won’t shut down the government if the wall on the southern border is not funded in the upcoming short-term budget deal — a position seemingly at odds with the promise President Trump made last month to supporters in Arizona. Congress is set to run out of money at the end of September, setting up a now not-uncommon scenario where the lawmakers must come up with a short-term deal or shut down the government. At an August 22 rally in Phoenix, Arizona, Trump pushed a hard line on funding for the...

“My Trace colleague Jennifer Mascia pulled some numbers from the Small Arms Survey, which gauges gun stockpiles in the hands of civilians, law enforcement, and militaries around the world,” The Trace’s email blaster writes. “She found that with an estimated 270 million firearms owned by everyday Americans, civilians own 70 times more weapons than all police and military services combined.” Boldly played sir!

“If I pack up my toys and go home, there are people in red MAGA hats who would be saying, ‘Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.’” Kristen Soltis Anderson is losing faith in her party. And that should trigger alarms for Republican leaders concerned about the GOP’s long-term health. Anderson is a smart and telegenic young Republican pollster. She has specialized in studying how the party can improve its anemic performance among the Millennial generation, which will pass the right-leaning baby boomers to become the largest generation of eligible voters in 2018. Now she is wondering...

A new Fox News poll released Wednesday finds that an overwhelming 69 percent of Republican voters believe the news media poses a greater threat to the United States than white supremacists. In comparison, just 18 percent of Republicans in the poll said that white supremacy was a greater problem. In the same poll, 70 percent of all respondents said that President Trump hates the news media more than he hates white supremacists. That number includes 83 percent of Democrats and 53 percent of Republicans. Participants were also polled on their view of Trump's response to violence in Charlottesville, Va., earlier...

The conservative House Freedom Caucus will not push for border wall funding as part of the expected stopgap funding bill next month, according to the group's chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).

SAN FRANCISCO — U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein was booed by some constituents Tuesday night when she said President Donald Trump could be a good president if he changed his approach to the job and brought the nation together. “I just hope he has the ability to learn and change — and if he can he can be a good president,” she said at a Commonwealth Club forum at the historic Herbst Theater, surprising San Franciscans used to hearing their politicians decry Trump. “Oh, come on!” a few people shouted. “No, no!” screamed others. While Feinstein was welcomed with a standing...

Never one to shy away from speaking his mind, Republican Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.) came out swinging Wednesday, publicly criticizing two members of his own party: President Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. During Christie’s rounds on cable news early Wednesday morning, MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski asked the governor whether he agreed with Trump’s decision last week to pardon former Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of federal criminal contempt after disobeying a court order to stop targeting Latinos in his illegal alien sweeps. “My understanding has always been that one of the prerequisites you look...

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) is signaling that members of the House Freedom Caucus, which he chairs, are willing to pass a Continuing Resolution to temporarily fund the federal government and avoid a government shutdown, even if it does not include funding for a wall on the U.S. southern border. “In talking to a number of my members, if there was a vote for a continuing resolution next week that did not include border wall funding, the majority of those members would be supportive of that,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told ABC News‘ Jonathan Karl and Rick Klein on the “Powerhouse...

Note: This article contains coarse language and graphic content. President Donald Trump triggered an avalanche of criticism for his handling of the deadly violence by far-right white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier in August. Demonstrator Heather Heyer was killed when a car plowed through a march in protest of the “Unite the Right” nationalist gathering in Charlottesville. The vehicle was allegedly driven by James Alex Fields Jr., who is now being charged with second-degree murder and is the subject of an FBI civil rights investigation. Trump received political blowback for not calling out white supremacy by name immediately after the...

Ardent supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) lashed out at the Democratic Party establishment and threatened to bail on the party after a federal judge in Florida dismissed a class-action suit Friday alleging that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) illegally favored Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Sanders. The DNC’s treatment of Sanders, who switched his party affiliation to run in the 2016 Democratic primaries, came under scrutiny after the 2016 hack into the DNC’s servers revealed that key party officials favored the more traditional Clinton over the progressive Sanders. But on Friday, Ronald Reagan appointee Judge William Zloch dismissed...

John Danforth can comfort himself over that if he likes by asserting that Trump doesn’t represent Republicans, but Republicans themselves have been pretty clear over the past 26 months what their view of that is.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) is warning President Trump's allies that they shouldn't expect a pardon in the ongoing Russia investigation should there be any convictions. The Democratic lawmaker on Saturday tweeted that targets of the investigation should still feel compelled to testify. "Any witness counting on a Russia investigation pardon should think again," Blumenthal tweeted, linking to an earlier report from The Hill quoting Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who said that Trump's pardon of former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was a signal to those targeted by the Justice Department.....

Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) is stepping up his call for an investigation into President Trump's former special assistant Sebastian Gorka's alleged ties to a neo-Nazis. "Sebastian Gorka should never have been an advisor to POTUS. He should still be investigated for concealing neo-nazi ties," Durbin said in a tweet on Saturday, just one day after Gorka left his White House post....

Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain decried President Trump's Friday order for the Pentagon to ban transgender people from entering the military. "It would be a step in the wrong direction to force currently serving transgender individuals to leave the military solely on the basis of their gender identity rather than medical and readiness standards that should always be at the heart of Department of Defense personnel policy," McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement late Friday. "The Pentagon's ongoing study on this issue should be completed before any decisions are made with regard to accession. The Senate Armed Services Committee...