Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump is assembling his policy team with familiar faces from his first term and signaling they would have roles in his potential 2025 Republican presidential administration. Trump and his allies have been meeting and talking by phone for months, sculpting the policies that will define his second term should he win the presidency in 2024. The names of the inner circle were revealed Friday in the latest effort by the Trump campaign to counter outside conservative organizations' efforts to vet and staff a future 2025 administration. Among these aides are former trade representative Robert Lighthizer, former White...

More than 150 business and nonprofit groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, are asking President Trump to withdraw his executive order that puts a limit on some diversity training. In a letter sent to the White House Thursday, the groups said that the order creates confusion, leads to unnecessary investigations and hinders employers from combating workplace discrimination. The group said the order “is already having a broadly chilling effect on legitimate” diversity training and its ambiguity could lead to unwarranted complaints and investigations. The executive order, issued on Sept. 22, prohibits federal agencies, companies with federal contracts and recipients...

The White House has told government agencies to start preparing for the transition should Donald Trump lose to Joe Biden in November as Democrats worry the president won't cooperate with a handover should one become necessary. Russell Vought, acting director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, issued a memo on Monday ordering 20 different agencies to appoint a transition director by Friday, in accordance with the Presidential Transition Act. Each agency's director will make up the Agency Transition Directors Council, which will meet on May 27, Vought wrote.

President Trump's proposed budget released Monday appeared to call on Congress to cut $818 billion from Medicare over 10 years, despite a long-standing promise from the president that he wouldn't touch the popular program. The budget does not outline specific cuts to Medicare, nor does it propose a cost-saving plan along the lines of an idea from former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to give beneficiaries subsidies to buy private coverage. Instead, the budget envisions spending reductions through Congress passing prescription-drug legislation and through efforts to reduce improper payments to healthcare providers. "He's not cutting Medicare in this budget," Russell...

Vice President Pence’s wife Karen has come under withering attack in recent days from many in the media. From this “reporting,” one might think she has transgressed some obvious social boundary of a civilized society. In reality, the big “scoop” is that this Christian wife and mother, whose Christian beliefs are important to her, is teaching at a Christian school, which being Christian, holds to Christian beliefs about marriage. Yet you wouldn’t know that from reading the headlines about her, which lead the reader to believe that the driving force of Karen’s actions is the targeting of those who identify...

Services typically suspended during government shutdowns have continued to operate under the Trump administration, with insiders pointing to acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought as the reason why. Agencies impacted by government shutdowns are forced to severely cut back on operations, suspend services and often send workers home without pay. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been using creative solutions to blunt the burden, according to a senior administration official and several prominent Republicans. Vought joined the OMB in early 2018 and assumed the role of acting director Jan. 3 after Director Mick Mulvaney became...

Vice President Mike Pence cast his ninth tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Wednesday to save the confirmation of Russell Vought to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. ..... The Senate, by 50-49, Pence casting the tie-breaking vote, confirmed Vought to the position Wednesday. Republicans control 51 seats in the chamber but two GOP senators were not present to vote: Sen. John McCain, who's battling cancer in Arizona, and Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

We all have our own views on separation of church and state. Some people think that the Constitution simply forbids the establishment of a Church of America. Others hold that any hint of religious principle must be excluded from the public arena. Where does Senator Bernie Sanders stand, and how does it affect his official actions? Although I am by no means an expert in matters of religion, based on a recent Senate hearing, I think I know enough to assert that Senator Sanders knows just enough about Christian doctrine (and in my opinion, about any religion, including his own)...

The U.S. Constitution prohibits the use of a “religious test” for any office or public trust. But Bernie Sanders got very close to doing just on Wednesday. It was during the confirmation hearing for President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. During Russell Vought’s confirmation hearing, Sanders took issue with an article Vought wrote for conservative website The Resurgent in January 2016, reported The Atlantic. In his article, Vought defended a Christian school that had fired a professor for expressing solidarity with Muslims. Sanders objected to Vought’s statement in the article: “Muslims do not...