Free Republic

Remember the movie (or the novel) “Sophie’s Choice"? Meryl Streep won an Oscar for playing a woman whom the Nazis posed with a dilemma: choose one of her two children to send to the gas chamber, or else the Nazis would execute both of them. The choice haunted her after the war ended. It’s a heartrending thought, and, sure, it’s a bit extreme for a metaphor, but in the fight over this continuing resolution, the Democrats are faced with what I’ll call Schumer’s Choice. The fate of the government is in the hands of Democrat senators now, and neither choice...

An Illinois Christian college deleted a post congratulating Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, a graduate of the school, after facing backlash and later claimed it didn’t mean to be “political.”

‘Elon Musk and your muskrats, Elon Musk, I mean Donald Trump, same thing at this point, right? Who really is the president?’ Pressley asked. She brought up the skyrocketing price of eggs and expensive housing during her passionate speech. 'Tell me how letting Elon put his paws in the cookie jar is helping a single person who calls this country home?’ she demanded. Pressley credited the CFPB with taking on scammers, capping bank overdraft fees, stopping medical debt from hurting Americans’ credit reports and going after banks for lending discrimination. ‘This is what we’re going to dismantle? What in the...

Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were instructed to cease “all supervision and examination activity” and “all stakeholder engagement,” effectively stopping the agency’s operations, in an email from the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, on Saturday evening. Mr. Vought, who was confirmed this week to lead the Office of Management and Budget, was on Friday named acting director of the consumer protection bureau, the federal government’s financial industry watchdog. In his email to staff on Saturday, he reaffirmed earlier instructions from the previous acting director, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who ordered last week that...

Despite Democratic tactics to delay the confirmation vote, the Senate confirmed Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Republicans backed Vought’s nomination, arguing he proved a qualified candidate for the role since he previously held the position during President Donald Trump’s first term. Democrats, however, raised multiple concerns about his nomination and said his views on the Impoundment Control Act, which reinforces that Congress holds the power of the purse, disqualified him from the role. Democrats held a 30-hour-long protest against Vought's nomination, delivering speeches in the middle of the night on Wednesday in an attempt...

Powerless to stop President Trump or Russell T. Vought, the nominee to lead the White House budget office, Democrats pulled an all-nighter to show their opposition. There was no nursery rhyme reciting nor phone book reading. No cots wheeled out for senators to catch naps in between speechifying. But one by one on Wednesday night and into Thursday, Senate Democrats flocked to the floor for an all-night talkathon to protest the confirmation of Russell T. Vought, President Trump’s nominee to lead the White House budget office and an architect of his ultraconservative Project 2025 policy agenda. Several senators swigged caffeinated...

The Democrats had a showy tantrum on Thursday, but Republicans got their business done regardless. The Senate Budget Committee voted 11-0 to send the nomination of Russell Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget to the full Senate, according to The Hill. Democrats, who found time to hold a media event denouncing Vought, boycotted the committee meeting. The Democratic boycott was linked in part to their objections to the nominee and also to anger over an OMB memo earlier this week that proposed to freeze grant funding, pending a review of hundreds of federal grant programs. Republican Sen....

9:30 a.m.: Pam Bondi, Justice DepartmentThe former Florida attorney general makes the first of two scheduled appearances before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She was Trump’s pick for attorney general hours after his first choice, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew from consideration. Gaetz was facing questions about a federal sex trafficking investigation and a House Ethics Committee inquiry into allegations that he paid for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl. Bondi is a longtime fixture in Trump’s orbit. The attorney general will be one of the most closely watched Cabinet members, given the concern among Democrats that Trump will look...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) questioned former President Trump's commitment to slashing government spending in a heated exchange with top Trump ally Russell Vought during a recent closed-door meeting, Axios has learned. Why it matters: Paul is among a dwindling number of Republicans who've refused to publicly back the former president as the party's 2024 nominee. And those in Trump's orbit are getting antsy. "There's a growing sentiment in Trumpworld that Rand can't be trusted, and it's a great disappointment," Trump ally and consultant Alex Bruesewitz told Axios. Driving the news: Paul grilled Vought on May 22 over the Trump administration's...

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...