Free Republic

Trump haters always think they haven't been aggressive enough in taking Trump down. Politico senior writer Ankush Khardori posted an article on Election Day headlined "Avoiding Merrick Garland’s Mistakes the Next Time Democrats Hold Power." The "mistakes" Khardori sees are that Garland did not push hard enough nor fast enough in his politically motivated lawfare against Trump, even though it resulted in two federal indictments as well as two federally influenced state indictments.Khardori's thirst for lawfare vengeance in the next future Democrat DOJ was inspired by a newly published book. Leftist journalists scold Garland as a spineless jellyfish.

Senator Rand Paul is tired of being the only Republican senator willing to stand up to President Trump. The libertarian spoke with Politico’s Dasha Burns just days after being deliberately left out of Trump’s gathering of GOP senators in the Rose Garden. “We have everybody but one person here,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re just missing one person. You’ll never guess who that is. Let me give you—he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it’s good politics. It’s really not good politics.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday defended the White House’s decision to strike Venezuelan boats, hinting that President Donald Trump may even “expand” military operations in the region. In an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” the South Carolina Republican said Trump is “doing the right thing.” “President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,” Graham said. “So there will be a congressional briefing about a potential expanding from the sea to the land. I support that idea.

Social and religious conservatives spent more than a year lobbying first the Trump campaign and then the administration against mandating or subsidizing insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization, which they consider akin to abortion.Last week, their work paid off.President Donald Trump unveiled policies to lower the cost of fertility drugs and to create a new pathway for optional employer-based coverage of IVF, arguing the moves would make it easier for couples to have children. But Trump, who promised on the campaign trail to make fertility treatments free for all patients, will not have the government pay for it or require...

Senate Republicans are discussing voting on a bill that would prevent millions of low-income Americans from losing access to food aid on Nov. 1.The bill from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) would fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for the duration of the shutdown, which on Wednesday entered its 22nd day. The Department of Agriculture warned earlier this month that if the government shutdown dragged on “there will be insufficient funds to pay full November SNAP benefits for approximately 42 million individuals across the Nation.”Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a brief interview that senators were discussing “some options,” though...

Was it only weeks ago in mid-September that I wrote a column about Democrats embracing the assassination culture that took the life of young Christian evangelist Charlie Kirk? And now in Virginia they’re doubling down. Virginia Democrats are endorsing the murderous candidacy of Jay Jones, who comes from a prominent black Virginia Democrat family. You see Jones in the photograph above, applauding the Democrat candidate for governor, former U.S. Rep Abigail Spanberger. You’ve heard of Jones and his dark fantasies over texts to a colleague, seeking the murders of his Republican opponents. And their children. Yes, their kids who he...

The president's one-man-show approach to policy has sidelined Congress, agencies — and a whole K Street culture.Intel Corp. looked like a winner in the Washington lobbying game at the start of 2025.The federal government was set to funnel more than $10 billion to the American microchip giant, thanks to a long influence campaign by the company’s executives and hired Washington hands, who spent three painstaking years lobbying Congress, federal agencies and White House advisers.Just a few months later, when a political controversy over the CEO’s links to Chinese companies put Intel’s deal with Washington in jeopardy, the whole drama was...

President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court, for the first time, to clear the way for him to use National Guard troops to support the president’s immigration enforcement and mass deportation drive.Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal with the high court Friday, seeking to lift lower-court rulings that are currently preventing Trump from deploying National Guard troops he pressed into federal service to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel in Illinois.Sauer argued that a temporary restraining order issued by a federal district judge in Illinois “improperly impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel...

Democrats improved in the third quarter, but Republicans still have more money. After just one vulnerable House Democrat raised $1 million in the second quarter, four members targeted by the NRCC raised at least that total in the third quarter. That group includes Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who represents a district President Donald Trump won by 10 points and also faces a primary challenge. Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), Derek Tran (D-Calif.) and Eugene Vindman (D-Va.) each also each raised more than $1 million.“Americans are tired of the disastrous GOP agenda of higher costs, broken promises, and tax breaks for billionaires....

National Guard troops are typically under the control of state governors, but federal law empowers the president to call them into federal service if there is a danger of foreign invasion or “rebellion against the authority of the government.”Trump has pointed to immigration-related protests in Chicago and other cities to justify his attempts to use the guard. But the 7th Circuit judges rejected that rationale.A protest does not transform into a “rebellion” just because protesters are well-organized, advocate to overhaul the structure of government or use civil disobedience, Judges Ilana Rovner, David Hamilton and Amy St. Eve wrote. Nor do...

NEW YORK — Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway. They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the...

Another round in the generational fight within the Democratic Party is coming to Massachusetts.Rep. Seth Moulton will challenge Sen. Ed Markey for his Senate seat in 2026, setting up one of the biggest tests of Democratic voters’ appetite for generational change following the 2024 presidential election.Moulton, who turns 47 this month, is putting age at the center of his announcement, saying in a campaign video to be released Wednesday that Markey is “a good man” but he should nevertheless move on after decades in Congress.“We’re in crisis, and with everything we learned last election, I just don’t believe Senator Markey...

Knives are coming out for former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in the California gubernatorial race after several videos released this week generated widespread criticism over her behavior. Porter’s opponents and other Democrats rebuked the former congresswoman this week after she sought to end an interview early over a question that was visibly frustrating her.Shortly after, Politico obtained a video of Porter berating a staffer in 2021 for entering her live shot while she was recording a video with then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (D), fueling further backlash. Though the California primary is months away, the incidents are threatening to hinder her...

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he spoke with Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) last week to tell her Republicans are “working around the clock” to bring healthcare prices down, after she vocally criticized Republicans throughout the week for the government shutdown and split from her party in deploring rising costs. “I had a thoughtful conversation with her on the phone the other night,” Johnson told host Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.” Johnson said Republicans on the committees of jurisdiction were the ones leading discussions on the shutdown and healthcare subsidies — committees he said Greene isn’t a part of but...

On September 1862, weeks before he issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln wrestled with the enormous dilemma of whether to change the stakes of the Civil War…In a private document found after his death, the president struggled to understand what God expected of him and of the nation. “The will of God prevails,” Lincoln began. “In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is...

In a stunning rebuke of the rising anti-Semitism spreading across Europe and the West, the CEO of one of the most liberal media companies in the U.S. is coming out in defense of the Jewish State. Mathias Döpfner — CEO of Politico and Business Insider's parent company Axel Springer SE — penned an October 7 op-ed dissecting his discussions with Nova Music Festival co-founder Ofir Amir, a survivor of the wanton slaughter terrorist organization Hamas unleashed upon the Jewish people two years earlier. Döpfner speculated on how survivors like Amir are able to deal with European leaders and others grotesquely...

Katie Porter’s “unhappy experience” in a viral interview has become the news cycle from hell. The bipartisan pile-on following the widely-circulated clip of her contentious sit-down with a local CBS news reporter was only hours old when a new video surfaced from POLITICO of the former House member berating a staffer in 2021 — the two clips fueling long-simmering concerns about her temperament and judgment. Together, they suddenly boiled over into the broader political zeitgeist, raising questions about just how durable Porter’s lead in California’s gubernatorial race really is. “Is this a disaster? Yes,” said Gale Kaufman, a veteran Democratic...

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...