Free Republic

A few weeks ago, I gave the Republican Party some unsolicited advice about what they should do if they want to get back into the saddle and start winning elections again after this year’s string of off-season/special election losses. Essentially it boiled down to using power to fight the Democrats while giving your own client base the things that it wants. In other words, what people throughout history, in every era, in every type of political system from the most despotic to the most egalitarian, would recognise as basic political acumen. The Democrats, despite their complete disconnection from several basic...

The House voted 231-195 on Thursday to pass legislation that would nullify President Trump’s efforts to strip more than 1 million federal workers of their collective bargaining rights, sending the measure over to the Senate, where its prospects are less rosy. Twenty Republican lawmakers broke ranks to support the Protect America’s Workforce Act (H.R. 2550) on the floor. Introduced by Reps. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., the measure effectively nullifies Trump’s March executive order barring unions at more than 40 federal agencies under the guise of national security and bars federal agencies from terminating any union contracts that...

Donald Trump is the only President in history that has had recess appointments blocked by his own party.Think about that.Traitors.They held 2 minute pro forma sessions every few days during vacation to block recess his appointments.Sickening.Video at link.

The nearly two dozen Indiana Republicans who voted against the president’s redistricting plan Thursday are in political jeopardy as Trump allies rally together to take them out. Republicans’ bid to redraw district lines ahead of the 2026 midterms failed after 21 state senators broke with their party and voted with the Democrats to strike the effort down 19-31. Trump claimed on Thursday that he “wasn’t working on it very hard” on the plan, though some have reported the president was making last minute calls to whip votes in favor of the new map. Major GOP organizations like Turning Point USA...

The Indiana Senate on Thursday voted down a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts to produce two more GOP-friendly seats, rejecting President Donald Trump’s months-long campaign to pressure the Republican supermajority in the deep-red state to bend to his will. The 31-19 vote saw 21 Republicans join 10 Democrats in voting down the proposed map that would have positioned the GOP, which currently holds seven of Indiana’s nine US House seats, for a sweep of all nine seats in next year’s midterm elections. The vote comes with significant ramifications for the 2026 midterm elections as some Democratic- and Republican-led...

Democrats just flipped the Miami mayorship from 🟥🔜🟦. The last time democrats won Miami was 1998. Republicans are completely squandering all of the work we did to win the 2024 elections. It’s especially frustrating as democrats are raising taxes in New Jersey & Pennsylvania.

A Utah judge just turned a safe Republican congressional seat into a near-guaranteed Democrat seat — and she did it in a state controlled top to bottom by Republicans. How does that happen? A generation of weak Republicans in the elected branches handed liberals control of the judicial branch and gave them the ballot initiative system they needed to take over the state piece by piece. Democrats can’t win statewide office in half the country, so they’ve turned ballot initiatives into their weapon of choice. Pollsters craft soothing messaging, activists gather signatures, and voters — thinking they’re supporting neutrality —...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is dangling another carrot for Democrats. They still aren’t ready to bite. In his latest pressure tactic, the South Dakota Republican is teeing up yet another vote to reopen the government Friday, the 38th day of the record-setting shutdown. But this time, he is pledging to swap out the House-passed stopgap bill for a new funding patch, likely into January, along with full-year funding for veterans programs, food aid and more. “It’s what they asked for,” Thune said Thursday night. But Democrats, stiffened by their party’s big election wins Tuesday that have papered over rising...

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...

The House on Wednesday voted to table a resolution brought forward by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) to formally reprimand Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and remove her from her committee assignments after Mace alleged she “smeared Charlie Kirk and implied he was to blame for his own murder” in re-posting a video on social media. Mace had forced action on the matter through a privileged resolution to censure Omar and strip her committee assignments, but Democrats moved to table the matter, thereby rejecting it. The House voted 214-213 to table the resolution, with four Republicans voting with Democrats to defeat Mace’s...

The debate comes days after Gov. Greg Abbott added “legislation to impose penalties or punishments for legislators who willfully absent themselves during a session” to the special session agenda.

Andy Hopper @AndyHopperTX The Texas House Republican caucus just voted against holding the Dems who fled accountable in any real way. This motion did NOT pass by the required majority.

Riverside County Sheriff and California gubernatorial hopeful Chad Bianco warned Republican infighting could sabotage the party’s best shot in decades to retake the state, blasting GOP rivals as “too stupid” to see what’s at stake.California’s open “jungle primary” system — where candidates compete on the same ballot and only the top two advance — makes GOP unity even more critical. With Democrats outnumbering Republicans roughly two to one, a split conservative vote could easily shut Republicans out of the 2026 general election entirely, Bianco said in an interview with the Daily Caller. ...***Under the system, every candidate from every party...

Important newsflash for the Senate GOP: the recommendations of the woke Senate parliamentarian, who is trying to ensure that absolutely no financial reform is enacted, are not binding. ... John Thune .. not going to challenge the outrageous decisions of the Senate Parliamentarian, and no doubt he’d like you to believe there’s no option otherwise. That is simply untrue. There are multiple ways of overruling the unelected Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough’s decisions. As voters, it’s very important we understand the legal realities of our system and not give our elected representatives a pass just because they claimed helplessness. ... “The...

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday the Senate would not move to overrule its parliamentarian after she advised that including key provisions in the GOP’s domestic-policy megabill would expose it to a fatal Democratic filibuster. After the decisions were publicized Thursday, multiple conservative Republicans called on the Senate to sideline Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. But when asked by POLITICO about overruling her, Thune said, “No, that would not be a good option for getting a bill done.” The rulings from MacDonough affected several major pieces of the GOP plan, including a provision that would crack down on provider taxes that...

Earlier this year, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered $4.7 trillion in untraceable Treasury Department payments. Prior to the discovery, Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) identification codes were optional for $4.7 trillion in Treasury Department payments, so they were often left blank and were untraceable. The field is now required to increase "insight into where the money is actually going," the Treasury Department and DOGE announced in February. "Of the 1.5 billion payments that we send out every year, they are required to have a TAS, a Treasury Account Symbol. We discovered that more than one third of those...

There is no more important place for senators to be than the Senate floor, doing the work they were elected to do so Trump can do the same.. The first American-born pope, Leo XIV, celebrated his inaugural Mass on Sunday in St. Peter’s Square before a large crowd that included Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, two prominent Catholics in the Trump administration. Missing, however, was our country’s official envoy. When the new pope met with the Vatican’s diplomatic corps on Friday, America’s ambassador wasn’t there. We don’t have one right now. Brian Burch has been...

Congressional Republicans are the absolute worst, for many reasons, but this time, it has to do with the “big” and “beautiful” tax bill that’s working its way toward Donald Trump’s desk—Republicans, despite holding both houses, as well as the Oval Office, are set to retain hundreds of billions of dollars in Green New Deal provisions, if they get their way.##According to Michel and Loucks, “conservative estimates” of the costs of the Green New Deal subsidies, provided by “government scorekeepers,” come with an $852 billion price tag for taxpayers—but that’s just between 2026 and 2035. As they note, “That’s up dramatically...

President Trump has returned from the Middle East to mounting questions about whether it’s appropriate for him to accept a luxury Qatari jet to serve as the next Air Force One, including from Republicans increasingly dubious that the move is a smart and worthwhile idea. Republicans have given the president a wide berth on a multitude of issues throughout his first four months in office as they push to enact his agenda. However, very few are rushing to his defense after he made clear he plans to accept the $400 million gift. “It’s an unnecessary distraction,” one Senate Republican told...

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) said Wednesday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that he will not support the House spending bill because it has “real Medicaid benefit cuts.” Hawley said, “It ought to be just a basic foundational principle, it is wrong to cut health care for the working poor, and that’s what we’re talking about here with Medicaid. My state is a Medicaid expansion state, over 20% of Missourians, including hundreds of thousands of children, are on Medicaid.” He added, “I don’t like the idea of decreasing funding for rural hospitals. I’m worried that the House bill goes way too far...