Free Republic

President Trump has now energized voters in both parties to levels not seen in decades as the midterm elections approach. On the GOP side, voter enthusiasm even exceeds the levels reported before the red wave of 2010, and one of the main reasons Republican voters cite is the progress being made on judicial appointments. When it was announced that Congress would need to hang around for most of the August recess and continue working, processing nominations was a key factor in that decision.But now somebody might be putting the brakes on the nominee confirmation process and it’s not even...

Hoo boy. I figured the polling on Trump’s policy would be bad in Texas, being both a border state with a large Latino minority and a red state where his job approval hasn’t traditionally been sky high.I didn’t think it’d be this bad.Note that the Texas Tribune’s poll of the state was conducted from June 8-15. The national media uproar didn’t really get rolling until this week, *after* the poll was finished. If you re-polled today, after days of brutal coverage, the numbers might be worse — considerably worse? — than this. Cruz’s private pollsters must have been setting...

When will Latinos outnumber whites in Texas? Experts have a new predictionJill Cowan, 06/21/2018Texas got a little older and a little more diverse last year, data released Thursday from the U.S. Census Bureau shows....Migration into the state, coupled with generally higher fertility among Latinos than in the non-Hispanic white population, has also driven an increase in the state’s Latino population, he said. Texas added 234,000 Hispanic residents over the year, the most of any state, bringing the overall Hispanic population to roughly 11.2 million. “We had projected that the Latino population would exceed the ... white population by 2020 and...

A federal appeals court rejected a Texas abortion chain's demand for all private communications from the state's 23 bishops. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency appeal from the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops after a lower court gave the church 24 hours to hand over decades of private records to Whole Women's Health. "IT IS ORDERED that the emergency motion for stay filed by the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops is GRANTED pending further order of this court," the court said in a preliminary ruling [emphasis in original]. The case stems from the clinic's successful lawsuit to...

Hello, you are receiving this message because you submitted your ideas for reorganizing the Executive Branch, along with your email address, to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the spring of 2017. We thank you for your civic engagement and are pleased to announce the release of the Administration’s Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century: Reform Plan and Reorganization Recommendations report. This report, along with the President’s Management Agenda, serves as a cornerstone for productive, bipartisan dialogue on realigning the Federal Government to more effectively operate in the 21st Century. It is designed to deliver...

Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens, according to officials there. The expected announcement Thursday at Orlando International Airport alarms some privacy advocates who say there are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding. Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington already use face scans for some departing international flights,

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — A civil rights group attorney says federal prosecutors unexpectedly dropped misdemeanor charges against 17 adult immigrants who crossed the border with children. Efren Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said outside of the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, that the 17 immigrants were supposed to have been sentenced Thursday morning for improperly entering the U.S.

Heritage Action is opposed to the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act (H.R. 6136) and will include it as a key vote on our legislative scorecard. Separately from amnesty, Congress should provide a legislative fix to the family separation crisis at the southern border. Below is chart comparing the two proposals the House of Representatives may consider this week. H.R. 6136 contains language that helps solve the family separation crisis, but does so in the context of amnesty. Stand-alone legislative fixes similar to what is offered by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and others can help reunite...

President Donald Trump, like everyone alive today, never met Prussian military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz, but the author of “Vom Kriege” (“On War”) would have found pleasant company with the man who inspired “The Art of the Deal.” For Clausewitz, war involved politics in addition to “other means” to arrive at a “deal”; in other words to obtain the objectives of a nation at war.For Mr. Trump, it’s about maximizing one’s leverage in obtaining the “deal,” one of his 11 tenets in the art of deal-making. And in that regard, Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he understands both the Clausewitzian...

Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) revealed Tuesday during the House Judiciary and Oversight committee’s hearing regarding the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation that the FBI may have altered or manipulated the witness interviews compiled by investigators during both the Clinton and Russia investigations. The information, if proven true, could have significant implications in the case brought against against former National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, where conflicting testimony and statements made by Former FBI Director James Comey, would call into question whether the agents who interviewed Flynn believed he...

President Donald Trump revealed on Thursday that First Lady Melania Trump was at the Southern border, visiting facilities detaining children who entered the country illegally. The president revealed the nature of her trip during a cabinet meeting at the White House. “It really bothered her … as it bothered me, as it bothered everybody at this table,” Trump said. “We’re all bothered by it.” The First Lady’s Communications Director Stephanie Grisham spoke about the trip during the flight to Texas with reporters. “She wanted to see everything for herself. … She supports family reunification. She thinks that it’s important that...

An international agreement Mayor Steve Adler and Judge Sarah Eckhardt signed Wednesday is giving renewed hope to people living with HIV and AIDS. Austin is now the second Texas city, after San Antonio, to get on board the Fast Track Cities initiative, which is committing to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030. "Zero new AIDS cases. Zero new HIV infections. Zero HIV related deaths by 2030," explained Dr. Phil Huang, medical director and health authority at the Austin Public Health Department. According to the city, in 2016 there were 4,716 Austin/Travis County residents living with HIV infection. An additional 987...

Koko, the thoughtful gorilla who captivated the world through her ability to use sign language and revealed an empathetic side to great apes, has died. She was 46. The western lowland gorilla passed away in her sleep Tuesday morning at the Gorilla Foundation’s preserve in California’s Santa Cruz mountains, the foundation said. “Koko touched the lives of millions as an ambassador for all gorillas and an icon for interspecies communication and empathy,” the foundation said on its website. “She was beloved and will be deeply missed.” Koko was believed to have had an IQ of between 75 and 95 and...

There is of course a slant to this report however, we need to look at how truth is presented to understand progressives. A long-running battle has now escalated to the point where House Republicans are threatening top federal law enforcement officials with contempt of Congress if the Justice Department and FBI do not comply by the end of the week with document requests related to the Hillary Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations. [snip] Republican leaders gave DOJ and FBI until this Friday to comply, a source familiar with the meeting told ABC News. Lawmakers had not received all of the...

On 16 November 2016, an off-duty security guard, Melvin Stephens, shot and killed a man who charged at him up stairs at his apartment complex. The incident occurred in Austin, Texas. The two had been in a confrontation earlier. The man killed, Dedric Earl, had scissors that were discovered at the scene. Stephens called 911 to report the shooting. Stephens was arrested and jailed because of statements he made to police. Bail was set at $125,000. It was more than Stephens could raise or afford. He spent over one and a half years in jail, from November 2016, to...

The United States maintains a policy of separating children from their parents in the case of illegal border crossings in the same sense that the United States has a policy of separating parents from their children when those parents are sent to prison for murder or tax evasion or are jailed for unpaid speeding tickets --SNIP-- The more illegals there were in the United States, the easier it was for more to come. It’s the public-policy version of what the tort lawyers call an “attractive nuisance.”

I believe there is overwhelming evidence that I was set-up by an FBI informant who was a Russian national. This happened in May of 2016 when I met the informant for 20 minutes in a South Florida cafe. It is important to note that this is prior to Hillary Clinton playing the “Russia Card” in June. It does however, meet the time frame for the formulation of the phony dossier by a British operative working with Russian intelligence and the FBI mole Stefan Halper’s mating dance with George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. I have publicly admitted that I forgot this...

As people around the world don rainbow swag in celebration of International Pride, the World Health Organization (WHO) has come out with an announcement of its own. For the first time since 1992, the organization issued a major revision to its international manual of diagnoses and, among other things, a major shift in the way transgender people are treated. The 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) reframes “gender identity disorder” as “gender incongruence”, moving it from a mental health disorder to an issue of sexual health. Codes issued by the ICD are used by countries to determine...

TheDC’s Amber Athey and Justin Caruso regularly take to the streets of Washington, D.C., to ask the most important questions in America. This week, we showed people a number of photos taken of detention centers for migrant children. Clearly, President Trump is keeping these kids in such horrible conditions … just kidding, that was President Obama in 2014. That’s right, we showed people around D.C. photos from detention centers that were run in 2014 under President Obama. Some of the reactions may surprise you.

The White House on Thursday unveiled a sweeping plan to reorganize how the federal government is structured, including controversial proposals to impose work requirements on assistance programs.“Businesses change all the time,” said White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. “Government doesn't, and one of the things you get when you hire a businessman to become president is you bring this attitude from the private sector.”The plan touches a wide range of agencies, but one of its main proposals is to move the food stamp program, officially known as SNAP, out of the Department of Agriculture and into...