Free Republic

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he “saw no evidence” to back the claims of senior Trump administration officials that Alex Pretti was attempting to assault law enforcement officers and instead “saw a man that was retreating” when he was shot and killed by federal officers in Minneapolis. “I saw no evidence — I saw a man that was retreating. He went to the middle of the street, he didn’t even obstruct traffic, he let a car go through. As the agents advanced on him, he retreated to the side of the street. A woman is violently...

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) compared Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to fictional villains on Friday, calling them both a “sycophant” as tensions rise over the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. “A sycophant is more than just a ‘yes-man,’” Tillis wrote in a lengthy post on social platform X. “It refers to someone who acts excessively servile toward someone important in order to gain an advantage.” He added, “They aren’t just being nice, they are using excessive flattery, often insincerely, to get what they want, whether that’s a promotion, social status or favor.”...

Thom Tillis has always said that he hates the camera. Then he announced his retirement last year. Now, the moderate Republican from North Carolina cannot stop making headlines. In a fiery floor speech earlier this year, Tillis said he was leaving the Senate to remove himself from any “boundaries I should have in expressing my concern and creating complications for my campaign” and Senate Republicans maintaining the majority. His retirement, which he announced last June, allows him to “speak truth” to President Donald Trump about White House policies and advice from Trump’s staff, he said earlier this month. But, the...

A growing number of Republican senators are calling for an investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as many Trump administration officials defend federal officers’ actions. Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Curtis of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina have all said there needs to be a thorough probe into Saturday's fatal shooting of Pretti, a U.S. citizen, by Border Patrol. Administration officials overseeing immigration enforcement may soon face public scrutiny from Republicans and Democrats alike. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.,...

U.S. Sen Ted Cruz is urging the Trump administration to rethink its handling of the recent shooting of protestors by Immigration and Customers Enforcement officers in Minnesota. While Cruz praised the administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, he is taking issue with labelling victims Renee Good and Alex Pretti as domestic terrorists. "What I think the administration could do better is, is the tone with which they're describing this," he said on his podcast Verdict Monday. "We took out a violent terrorist, hurray. And the problem is, particularly for someone not paying attention, if you're being told this is a mom...

A House Republican is warning that if President Donald Trump were to order a military invasion of Greenland, it “would be the end of his presidency.” In an interview with the Omaha World-Herald, Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said he personally would “lean toward” voting to impeach the president if he were to follow through on threats to take over Greenland. “I’ll be candid with you. There’s so many Republicans mad about this,” Bacon told the paper. “If he went through with the threats, I think it would be the end of his presidency.” Bacon — who often breaks from MAGA...

Tensions between a president and a Federal Reserve chairman are nothing new. Up until now, they may have reached a peak when Lyndon Johnson shoved William McChesney Martin at the LBJ ranch. Martin gave in a while later, another step into the inflationary quagmire from which the U.S. emerged only after Paul Volcker reasserted the Fed’s independence. However bad that Texas moment, it falls far short of the Department of Justice’s serving the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas on Friday. They relate to testimony given to the Senate Banking Committee concerning an over-budget renovation project and come with the...

I was wondering if we might see a push from the Stephen Miller faction in the Trump administration to take the Minneapolis ICE shooting one step further and criminally charge Renee Nicole Good’s wife for inciting the shooting. That would be the classic Miller move, and one that goes a step further than the typical Trump DOJ pattern of lawfare against personal and policy enemies of the president. There’s more than a fig leaf of justification for such charges, as the wife seems to have gotten Good involved in ICE Watch as well as yelling “Drive, baby, drive” just before...

U.S. Senate and House negotiators on Sunday night jointly released the overdue text for the fiscal 2026 foreign aid and diplomacy spending bill. And, somewhat surprisingly, it largely rejects the draconian cuts sought by U.S. President Donald Trump and even provides funding for several journalism organizations and democracy-promotion efforts that billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency tried to shutter. House Republicans highlighted the $9.3 billion (or 16 percent) in spending cuts that the compromise legislation would make to top-line funding levels compared to fiscal 2025 enacted levels. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, touted that the spending measure is still $3.8 billion...

President Donald Trump will face an important obstacle — from within his own party — as he seeks to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Sunday he will block any Trump appointees to the central bank, including for the new chair, in light of revelations over the weekend that the Justice Department is investigating Powell for potential perjury charges. “If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of...

In what could prove to be a pivotal election year for the Republicans, with the midterms holding much influence, President Donald Trump arguably needs the support of his own party now more than ever. Especially as he is facing loud calls for impeachment from the Democratic Party on account of his Venezuela operation... Yet there is currently a split forming, as some prominent Republican lawmakers are publicly disagreeing with Trump regarding his renewed annexation threats against Greenland in the wake of the Venezuela intervention. In a series of inflammatory remarks labeled as “utterly unacceptable” by Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen,...

Wednesday on CNN’s “The Lead,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s comments that Greenland should be a U.S. territory were “unacceptable.” Host Jake Tapper said, “So do you want Stephen Miller to lose his job?’ Tillis said, “Either Stephen Miller needs to get into a lane where he knows what he’s talking about or get out of his job. The reason why I thought it was important for me to make a comment on the floor is I’ve been the Republican leader of the Senate NATO observer Group since 2018. There is no...

Forgive me, but I've had two recent breaks and left wondering why and how to avoid them in future! I think they want less posts about Rand which is fine. He's only been in the news recently because of disagreement with Trump on a few issues. If you disagree with Trump and are a prominent politician i.e a U.S senator the media take a natural and close interest and yes, I know it's not helpful but that's not my fault. This explains why. Prior to this Rand struggle(d) to get coverage in the last 15 years he is after all...

Several beauty trends for conservative women have emerged this year, some with a certain underlying level of humor—from the so-called Mar-a-Lago face to the "conservative girl" makeup. What all these trends have in common under the umbrella of MAGA beauty is an emphasis on hyperfeminine attire—sky-high stilettos, fitting skirts, bouncy hair, full-coverage makeup, and conspicuous plastic surgery. Greene said that while she had not previously spoken up against these trends, she disliked them. “I believe how women in leadership present themselves sends a message to younger women,” she told The New York Times. In an interview with The New York...

Friday on “MS NOW Reports,” former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) said Republicans are in trouble in the upcoming midterm election because they went too far right after President Donald Trump’s 2024 win. […] … “Democrats have to be careful; they could lose this midterm if they go left, if they go fringe, if they start promoting ideas that are really out there. America is a center-right, center-left country; that’s what it is. And if you start going far left or far right, and that’s part of the reason why Republicans are in trouble, too much far right, too much meanness.”...

Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., struck back at President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening after he vetoed a bill that would have lowered payments for a water project in her district — an act Boebert believes could be political retribution. "President Trump decided to veto a completely non-controversial, bipartisan bill that passed both the House and Senate unanimously. Why? Because nothing says ‘America First’ like denying clean drinking water to 50,000 people in Southeast Colorado many of whom enthusiastically voted for him all three elections," Boebert said in a statement posted by journalist Kyle Clarke.

When the people vote against democracy.The social media hashtag #NeverTrump first appeared in June 2015, days after Donald Trump announced his presidential candidacy. For the balance of that year, social media derision attracted less attention than Trump himself, mostly due to the widespread belief that Trump’s campaign was self-extinguishing, which argued against pointless efforts to bring about an already inevitable defeat. In election cycles since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide victory, unlikely protest candidates for the GOP presidential nomination—Pat Robertson, Ron Paul, Herman Cain—had briefly surged in the polls, only to give way to a conventional politician who ended up as...

Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, said in an interview on CNN that he and Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, are also considering whether Bondi should be held in contempt of Congress. "What we found out is the most important documents are missing," Khanna said. "They've had excessive redactions." The documents released Friday make only limited references to President Donald Trump, even though the administration has acknowledged that his name appears in the files. Former President Bill Clinton, by contrast, appears numerous times in the documents. The release included photos of Clinton swimming, as well as images showing him...

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) slammed President Trump on Monday over the president’s remarks about the killings of Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele. Reiner, a well-known Democratic donor and activist who had criticized Trump, and his wife were found dead in their home on Sunday in a suspected homicide. “Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid,” Massie wrote on the social platform X. “I...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday that partisan gerrymandering will “lead to more civil tension and possibly more violence in our country,” urging restraint in the ongoing redistricting wars playing out in more than a dozen states. “I think there is the potential that when people have no representation, that they feel disenfranchised, that it can lead, it might lead to violence in our country,” Paul said in an interview with Kristen Welker on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Paul’s warning comes as state lawmakers across the country consider redrawing congressional lines at the insistence of President Donald Trump, with Democratic-led...