Free Republic

House Oversight and Government Reform Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) plans to meet next week with Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-confirmed pick to run the FBI, to discuss how he can be an ally in the new administration’s efforts to root out the so-called Deep State. “I want [Patel] to know that our committee will assist in any way possible to help him disrupt the ‘Deep State,’” Comer said in an interview on Thursday, referring to the conspiracy of illicit power-players running the government. Patel, who if confirmed would replace Christopher Wray as head of the FBI, has come under...

She’s a politician who cringes at having her picture taken and is content to let others grab headlines. She repeatedly had to be dragged into taking risks to elevate her political career. In many ways, Karen Bass is the anti-Kamala Harris. And yet, the Californians have ended up in a similar spot: On Joe Biden’s vice presidential shortlist. While the congresswoman from Los Angeles remains a long shot, her unassuming approach, muted ambitions and decades of advocating on health care and race issues while far outside the national spotlight have captured the interest of the Biden campaign. A former physician...

California farmers could soon enjoy bumper crops thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to lift water restrictions. But who will pick them if he follows through on his deportation threats? The country’s largest agricultural constituency backed Trump in November, bucking California’s deep-blue electorate over his campaign promises to “open the faucet” and deliver more water to the state’s parched, conservative-leaning Central Valley. But now it’s reckoning with an uncomfortable contradiction: Trump also campaigned on mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, who make up at least half of the state’s agricultural workforce. That’s left California’s agricultural barons, who employ the most farm...

Senate Republicans are expected to meet with incoming President Donald Trump on Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the plans who were granted anonymity to discuss private matters. Republicans are expected to use the meeting to talk with Trump about the party’s reconciliation strategy, as they look for clarity about if he wants to fold a massive energy, tax and border package into one bill or split it into two. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) is expected to host the meeting, according to one of the people familiar. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) told reporters earlier Monday that...

What does the media decide to do when the world’s richest man draws attention to a government coverup of one of the biggest child rape scandals in years? Simp for the politicos accused of being tied to the coverup. The New York Times, CNN, CBS News, Politico, TIME magazine, Deadline, The Independent, BBC and The Guardian all came out in full force like angry bees on behalf of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer after X owner Elon Musk dared to call him and his woke mind virus-addled Labour Party out. “Starmer was complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN when he...

<p>The embattled speaker enlisted the president-elect to neutralize his rivals. It worked — this time.</p><p>Speaker Mike Johnson was sitting inside Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Day, talking legislative strategy with President-elect Donald Trump, when the conversation turned to the troublesome conservative hardliners who might trip up the Republican agenda — and one in particular, Rep. Chip Roy.</p>

"Democracy Dies in Darkness" according to the Washington Post, but when democracy is annulled in broad daylight Politico thinks it is no big deal as long as it is the election of a candidate they oppose that is being cancelled.Such is the attitude of the European edition of Politico towards the Romanian presidential election that was cancelled by that country's Constitutional Court due to what they claimed was interference by Russia on social media. On Wednesday, Politico's Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing gleefully reported in a six-paragraph brief that "Romanian appeals court upholds scrubbing fishy presidential election."

<p>The story of one of the most effective and brutal spymasters in U.S. history & beginning of an infamous love affair with napalm.</p><p>It was long past time for Donald Nichols to go home. He had been spying in Korea for five years, rarely taking a day off, never returning stateside to see his family. His bosses in the U.S. Air Force had not seen an agent work so hard for so long. They called him a “one man war” & the “best intelligence operator” in the Far East. He “performed the impossible,” his commanding general said. Still, air force rules were clear: He must rotate back to United States.</p>

DEM AGENDA ARRIVES ON ... NOV 6 CHICAGO — Congressional Democrats are basking in the new aura of enthusiasm of their base: Lines of selfies, hugs with strangers, Nancy Pelosi “Godmother” pins. And in the midst of all the lighter celebrating, both Senate and House Democratic leaders are talking seriously about dual majorities come November. The “Kamala effect” has spawned real conversations in recent weeks about what Democrats should do if they manage to get the Washington “trifecta” — both chambers of Congress and the White House — and can muscle through another big policy bill next year without GOP...

.... Fearful of Trump’s agenda on everything from abortion rights to electric vehicles and immigration, Newsom called a special session of the legislature to bolster the state’s legal defenses, saying California “won’t sit idle.” But he also promised to approach the administration with an “open hand, not a closed fist.” .... \/

“The rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, 2021, is incredibly disturbing,” Judge Beryl Howell said U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan says she has often reassured police officers traumatized by the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, that “the rule of law still applies.” But as President-elect Donald Trump — once a defendant in Chutkan’s very court — prepares to retake the White House and pardon many Jan. 6 perpetrators, Chutkan now says, “I’m not sure I can do that very convincingly these days.” Chutkan’s comments, delivered this week as she sentenced another member of the Jan. 6 mob to eight...

<p>House Democrats were skeptical of an emerging Republican-led funding deal as they walked into a closed-door caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, meaning it's almost certainly doomed on the House floor, with less than 36 hours to go until a shutdown deadline.</p>

<p>KYIV — Ukraine currently doesn’t have the military strength to retake all the territory Russia has occupied since 2014, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told French daily Le Parisien on Wednesday.</p><p>But that doesn’t mean Kyiv is about to recognize its Moscow-controlled lands as belonging to Russia, he added. “Legally, we cannot give up our territories. This is prohibited by the constitution. But let’s not use such big words. Russia actually controls part of our territory today,” Zelenskyy said in response to a question as to how far Kyiv is prepared to compromise to end the war following Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion.</p>

Russia will launch the serial production of its new powerful Oreshnik missiles in the "near future," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday. "In the near future, serial production of such systems should be ensured to protect the security of Russia and our allies," said Putin in a speech at the Russian Defense Ministry's final board meeting of the year on Monday, which was publicly broadcast. -snip- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said last week that he had asked Putin to provide him with the new missiles, and Russia agreed to supply Oreshniks "for free."

Having antipathy towards Donald Trump seems to be almost a job requirement at Politico. However, even among the TDS crowd their senior staff writer Ankush Khardori seems to be an extreme standout. As has already been revealed at NewsBusters, Khardori absolutely despises Trump to the extent that last July, he urged that the J6 trial be dramatically sped up in order to convict him before election day. Therefore you have to wonder what is going on in the eyes of Politico management that Khardori was allowed to make the case against choosing Patel as the next FBI director? They have...

"Nothing would do more" to bolster Americans’ health, he wrote in a post on X.Elon Musk, who is spearheading President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, is touting GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity. “Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors [sic] super low cost to the public,” Musk wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “Nothing else is even close.” [Snip] It’s not clear how Musk would make GLP-1s “super low cost.” The drugs are expected to be eligible for Medicare price negotiation down the line, which could...

Someone should tell Politico's senior foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi that Team America: World Police was meant to be a comedy, not an instructional film. Yet on Sunday Toosi was strategizing how to get President-elect Trump deep into the Syria mess that he wants to avoid.Her story in which she ditches any hint of attempting to be an objective reporter in favor of a flat out advocate for foreign interference by Trump is made crystal clear in the title of her more than obvious pitch piece, "How to Convince a Reluctant Trump to Get Involved in a Liberated Syria."

Sen. Bernie Sanders, former presidential candidate and leader of the progressive movement in the United States for decades, said his term starting in January would likely be his last in an interview with POLITICO. Sanders (I-Vt.) won reelection in November and has six more years in the Senate ahead of him. When asked whether his fourth Senate term would be his last, Sanders said: “I’m 83 now. I’ll be 89 when I get out of here. You can do the figuring. I don’t know, but I would assume, probably, yes.” Sanders has been in Congress since 1991. He served eight...

Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions. Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated since Trump last weekend announced the appointment of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics. The White...

A Florida GOP congressional candidate was recently secretly recorded threatening Republican rival Anna Paulina Luna with “a Russian and Ukrainian hit squad” that would make her “disappear.” That’s according to a recording obtained by Politico that comes from a conservative activist who says she taped her conversation with William Braddock over concerns about his “unhinged” dislike of his competitor. During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because...