Free Republic

We have been frequent critics of Donald Trump’s tariffs, but we understand that there is a case to be made for reconsidering some of our trade policies. The place to make that case is Congress — not by unilateral presidential declaration of open-ended worldwide “emergencies.” The Founders rebelled against taxation without representation; they did not mean for the executive to control the duties on all imports by daily whim. It is Congress that was granted power by the Constitution to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” and for good reason. It...

Last Wednesday, standing at a podium in the White House Rose Garden, the president of the United States threw the world’s economy into turmoil. Having declared that America’s trade deficit represented a bona fide “emergency,” President Trump revealed a completely rewritten federal tariff regime. The result of these alterations was an increase in protectionist barriers that exceeded even the infamous Smoot-Hawley law in its scope. For two days, the stock market responded to this move by diving sharply downward. Monday morning, after a false report that the president was planning to endorse a 90-day pause in implementation, there was a...

President Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone. The timing, late on Friday, suggests internal embarrassment over the move, and we wish there were more. The commutation is a move fully within the president’s powers and in keeping with the long-established pattern of presidents’ pardoning or commuting the sentences of associates caught up in special-counsel probes, although usually the associates aren’t as sleazy as Stone. We’re a long way from George H. W. Bush’s pardoning Cap Weinberger, the great Reagan-era defense official, who had been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Lawrence Walsh investigation. [cut] It...

On substance, I believe President Trump is right on birthright citizenship — the 14th Amendment does not require it. I do not believe, however, that the president may change the interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which has been in effect for decades, by executive order, as he is reportedly contemplating. My friend John Eastman explained why the 14th Amendment does not mandate birthright citizenship in this 2015 New York Times op-ed. In a nutshell, the Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of...

January 23, 2016An Actuarial Look At The Closing Pace of GOP Presidential Politics - Glenn Beck Endorses Ted Cruz, and Prefers Bernie Sanders? by sundance Most of you knew this was going to be a wild ride. Heck, many knew back in June 2015 when candidate Donald Trump entered the race this was going to be unlike anything we’d ever seen. Boy howdy, was that ever an understatementGoing all the way back to the spring of 2014 those who didn’t fall into the emotional chasm, which surrounds candidate advocacy, saw the makings of a really strange situation possible. Today many...

Beck's speech continued by urging Iowans to support someone like Cruz, who he argued would take risks to bring as many Marxist atheists—like Cruz's father was when he came in from Cuba- as possible into America from foreign lands on the off chance they might end up seeing the light and becoming conservative Christians. "So when we look at immigration, let's remember that people-if they want to come here and want to be Americans—they renew us," Beck said. "And you never know what somebody might do. There was a Marxist, a Marxist who didn't really realize how Marxist he was...

Beck said he had never endorsed a presidential candidate in his 40 years of broadcasting, but he made an exception because of the urgency of the moment. He said he even prefers Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-proclaimed "democratic socialist" running in the Democratic presidential primary, to Trump. "Honesty, faith and truth are basic requirements. And quite honestly, I have to tell you, this probably isn't going to go over very well, that's why I like Bernie Sanders," he said. "Bernie Sanders is like, 'Yep, I'm a socialist.' "I can actually sit at a table with a man who says,...

National Review's publication of the collective anti-Donald Trump missives from 22 self-appointed conservative potentates has caused quite a stir in Republican circles. The nationwide responses range from, "Wait, I thought National Review went out of business years ago," to "Ed Meese? Seriously?" The Gang of 22 have officially become parodies of themselves. One would have to reach back to the days of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew to lift an adequate quote to describe them. "Nattering nabobs of negativism," "vicars of vacillation," "pusillanimous pussyfooters," "the decadent few," "ideological eunuchs," "the effete corps of impudent snobs," or "the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs...

A little over three months ago, National Review endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) for Speaker of the House. In doing so, National Review helped place a man with a two-decade history of pushing open borders immigration policies in charge of the Republican Party’s entire legislative agenda. Ten weeks after that endorsement helped Paul Ryan secure the Speakership, Ryan proceeded to swiftly pass an omnibus spending bill that funded and expanded President Obama’s immigration agenda.

The more analysts try to figure out Donald Trump's appeal, the more they sound baffled. Pundits cite Trump's verbal sloppiness and ridiculousness as proof that he must soon implode. But Trump sees his daily bombast as an injection of outrage for a constituency now hooked on someone who finally voices their pent-up anger. The more reckless Trump's doses of scattergun outrageousness, the better the fix for his supporters. Trump's vague "make America great again” was the natural bookend to Barack Obama's even more vacuous “hope and change.” The popularity of such empty slogans reflects a culture in which no one...

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich would be to blow the opportunity to win the White House next year. —The Editors

As the early primaries draw near, Newt Gingrich’s Achilles’ heel could be the millions he was paid by Freddie Mac. Yesterday morning, top rival Mitt Romney called on Gingrich to return the money during a Fox News appearance. For Gingrich, Romney’s request was merely the latest in series of blows since Bloomberg first reported the payments, estimated at $1.6–$1.8 million, in mid-November. “It’s a perfect argument against Gingrich because it ties him to the sleazy practices of the beltway when he is trying to run as an outsider,” observes Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University...