Free Republic

The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is planning a two-day getaway at a five-star resort in the heart of California’s wine country in early October — at the same time the country may be in the midst of a government shutdown — according to an invitation obtained by Politico’s “Playbook.” The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) is hosting its Napa Retreat from Oct. 13-14 at Hotel Yountville in Napa County, Politico reported Saturday. Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who has chaired the DSCC since January, circulated an invitation to the event which lists her, Democratic Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and...

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will use tariff revenue to offer cash bailouts for farmers who are struggling with trade uncertainty and other economic headwinds. “We’re going to take some of that tariff money that we made, we’re going to give it to our farmers, who are, for a little while, going to be hurt until the tariffs kick into their benefit,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “So we’re going to make sure that our farmers are in great shape, because we’re taking in a lot of money.” Trump officials expect that Congress will need to...

It turns out that the services benefiting the well-to-do are most impacted by DC’s ICE crackdown.According to Yesim Sayin, who studies the city economy at the D.C. Policy Center think tank, this is all terrible news for the municipal economy, coming at a moment when federal job cuts have made the tax base ever more reliant on hospitality and real estate. “All these actions with ICE are like putting additional weight on something that’s about to break,” she said.But the identity of the most prolific consumers of the impacted industries is also likely to shape the politics around the immigration...

<p>OK. This might be hard. You know how the FCC can fine someone on radio or TV for obscenity or for a wardrobe malfunction? This applies to the public airways—broadcast radio and TV. Here’s the idea: Extend this to cable and internet (that alone would require some heavy lifting), but instead of obscenity, the rule covers lying. Not opinion, of course. Actual lying.</p>

The man who attempted to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh identifies as a transgender woman and was deeply mentally ill and suicidal, according to court documents first obtained by The Daily Wire. The Department of Justice is recommending that the defendant, 29-year-old Nicholas Roske, be sentenced to 30 years in prison for attempting to kill the Supreme Court justice in 2022, according to a Friday filing outlining the case against Roske. Roske pled guilty to the attempt to kill a United States Supreme Court Justice in April 2025, three years after authorities arrested him in Kavanaugh’s neighborhood, carrying a...

Politico’s knee-jerk reaction to trust but not verify leftist magazine The Nation’s retort to Vice President J.D. Vance’s connection of the latter to billionaire George Soros is the epitome of what happens when journalists let Trump Derangement rot their brains so much they throw ethics to the wind. During his guest-host appearance for the Charlie Kirk Show September 15, Vance argued that Soros “funds” The Nation, which drew the ire of the magazine’s president Bhaskar Sunkara, who falsely accused him of “lying” in an X post. “[W]e're not funded, not one dime, by Soros or Open Society Foundation,” Sunkara railed....

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy pressed FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday to continue the release of files in the Jeffrey Epstein case, specifically information about who other than Epstein, if anyone, was on the receiving end of girls and women being sex trafficked. “The issue’s not gonna go away,” said Kennedy during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s FBI oversight hearing, where Patel was testifying. “I think you’re gonna have to do more to satisfy the American people’s understandable curiosity in that regard.” Kennedy’s comments were notable as the Trump administration battles complaints about the Justice Department’s slow, piecemeal approach to...

BRUSSELS — U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has called on the EU’s remaining buyers of Russian fossil fuels to drop their campaign against the bloc’s efforts to end dependency on Moscow and buy from America instead. Speaking on Friday at an event in Brussels, where he has held meetings this week with officials on how to increase imports of American liquefied natural gas and cut off the flow of funds for Russia’s war on Ukraine, Wright said it would be preferable for Europe to get its supplies from “its friends.” Asked by POLITICO whether countries like Hungary and Slovakia,...

A group of GOP senators are working on legislation to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies with policy changes designed to win over conservatives, according to four people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. This group has gotten “technical assistance” from the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the subsidies, according to two of the sources. The Obamacare subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, an Alabama Republican running for governor, said in an interview Monday he was “part of that group that’s working on the wording to make sure we do it...

The AI argument kicked off in late July, just a day after Trump announced his AI plan — a 28-page strategy to accelerate the technology and build new power infrastructure to supply it. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) fired off a tirade on X, complaining that AI could create mass poverty by replacing human jobs, and giant AI data centers could have potentially devastating effects on the environment and water supply. In the days that followed, GOP strategist Steven Bannon chimed in, comparing the pursuit of AI superintelligence to “summoning the demon.” And since then, think-tankers and populist conservative outlets...

President Donald Trump and his team are crowing about the downsizing of the federal bureaucracy, which is set to shrink by tens of thousands more on Sept. 30 when workers who took a DOGE buyout hang it up. But if Trump’s goal was to dismantle the workforce he calls the “deep state” — and blames for the failings of his first term — he’s got a long way to go. Although he’s disrupted swaths of the government, the vast majority of career federal employees who avoided the firings of the past seven months are sticking it out, according to Labor...

The majority of California Democrats do not want former Vice President Kamala Harris to make another White House run in 2028, according to a UC Berkeley/Los Angeles Times poll released Tuesday. Almost two-thirds of registered voters in California and 51% of Democrats said Harris should not seek the presidency again following her two failed White House bids in 2020 and 2024, according to the survey. Meanwhile, roughly 45% of California’s registered voters said they were “very” or “somewhat” enthusiastic about the prospect of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom running for president, while 36% said the same about Harris. “She [Harris]...

A Texas-based wealth management firm has apologised for a clerical error that gave the appearance it took a massive short position on shares in Donald Trump’s social media company just before Saturday’s assassination attempt. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by Austin Private Wealth dated July 12 showed the firm had shorted 12 million shares in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (DJT) via a put option, sparking frenzied conspiracy theories after the unusual trade was highlighted by a number of social media users.

The president in recent days is leaning even further into using the National Guard as a glorified police force, visiting the troops and allowing them to be armed. He’s suggested he’s eyeing Chicago and New York next for their next deployment. On Sunday, he needled Maryland Gov. Wes Moore for Baltimore’s notorious crime statistics, hinting he could send troops there as well. It's a sign that despite polling showing how unpopular Trump’s moves are in Washington, the president is playing to a national audience — and betting this is a battle he and the GOP can win. If his recent...

Katie Porter was the biggest beneficiary of Kamala Harris passing on a run for California governor, according to a new poll from POLITICO and its partners, with the former representative now holding a commanding lead in the race. Thirty percent of registered voters who said they’d vote for Harris if she ran for governor now plan to support Porter, the latest POLITICO-Citrin Center-Possibility Lab survey found. Sixteen percent of Harris supporters said former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was their second choice, while 11 percent said their new favored candidate was former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Porter’s...

The Trump-despising Politico senior writer, Ankush Khardori, has found four, count 'em, FOUR, foreign diplomats who are remarkably all worried about the rule of law under President Donald Trump. Also very conveniently, all these diplomats happen to be unnamed. And Khardori milked them to warn about Trump on Monday in "‘We Still Don’t Know How Far They’ll Go’."Was that quote by the unnamed diplomats given to Khardori in unison or separately? The subtitle warns "Foreign diplomats are growing nervous about the rule of law in Trump’s America — and it could complicate law enforcement across the globe." So are those...

Meetings between NATO and U.S. defense officials left allies concerned that President Donald Trump would leave Europe to ensure a lasting peace in the war-scarred country.“There’s the dawning reality that this will be Europe making this happen on the ground,” said a NATO diplomat who was briefed on the talks. “The U.S. is not fully committed to anything.” The meetings — which occurred days after Trump and European leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House in a sign of unity — underscore the massive task ahead for allies as they weigh plans to send a peacekeeping...

Texas Democrat James Talarico has built a national profile railing against GOP billionaires in politics — but has quietly accepted funds from a PAC backed by one of the wealthiest donors in the Republican Party.The single biggest donor to Talarico’s state House reelection bid last year was a group funded by casino mogul Miriam Adelson, according to state campaign finance data.Adelson, the widow of the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, is one of President Donald Trump’s largest financial supporters and seen as a boogeyman by much of the left. Talarico is now considering a run for Senate, which would test...

Politico shouldn't be surprised that many question its credibility when its senior foreign affairs correspondent, Nahal Toosi, suffers from extreme loathing of Trump. She made no effort to hide it on Tuesday as you can see in her story about Trump negotiating an end to the bloody Ukraine War in "The Existential Meets the Absurd in Latest Ukraine Talks."Absurd? You don't even have to start reading the story itself to get a strong whiff of hate from the subtitle sneering at Trump: "Ukraine knows exactly how empty a pledge from Trump can be, and that it will have to adapt."

Politico senior editor Michael Schaffer seems quite irked over Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser not publicly lambasting President Donald Trump after he ordered the federal takeover of the district's police department to combat the city's crime problem.Schaffer oddly suggests something is wrong with Bowser for not acting more confrontational. You can get a hint of that attitude from the title of his Wednesday article, "Donald Trump Took Over DC’s Police. Why Is the City’s Mayor So Zen?"Cooperation, in the mind of Schaffer, appears to be something that should be replaced by confrontation. Never mind that the goal should be to...