Free Republic

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he asked President Trump during their meeting Tuesday to stop calling his neighbors to the north the 51st state, insisting the president will not get his “wish.” In a press conference at the Canadian Embassy following his meeting at the White House, a reporter asked Carney if he pushed Trump to stop calling Canada the 51st state because it offends Canadians, and the new prime minister responded “yes.” “Today,” he said of when he pushed back on Trump’s 51st state remark, and added “exactly what you just said” when pressed for specifics on the...

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will jab at President Trump in the keynote address at the Emerge gala on Wednesday, making her first public remarks since leaving office in January, a source told The Hill. In her remarks, the former vice president, who lost to Trump in November, is expected to offer pointed criticism of the administration, the source said. Harris is also expected to honor the organization for its role empowering women in politics and issue a call to action to combat Trump’s economic policies and his push to overhaul the federal government. Emerge, which is celebrating its 20th...

House Democrats are diving back into GOP districts to conduct town halls during the long spring recess, escalating an unusual tactic they’re hoping will help them win over battleground voters. The gambit — aimed at districts held by Republicans facing tough reelection contests — was initiated after House GOP leaders advised Republican lawmakers not to meet face-to-face with voters in large, public forums amid the outcry over President Trump’s efforts to remake Washington. In March, a handful of Democrats ventured into GOP districts to stage town halls put on by grassroots activists and local party affiliates. They’ve expanded the effort...

Sen. John Cornyn has long been a reliable conservative in Congress. But that may not be enough to get the Texas Republican reelected... The Cornyn-Paxton primary fight is a "proxy war" in the GOP, said Axios. "Top MAGA luminaries" are skeptical of Cornyn because of his pro-Ukraine stance and work on a bipartisan gun bill after the 2022 Uvalde school massacre. The senator is the "epitome of the establishment," said Steve Bannon, an ally of President Donald Trump, to Axios. Paxton, meanwhile, carries a reputation as a "pro-Donald Trump knife fighter," said Axios. His candidacy is a "warning shot," said...

President Trump on Friday was adamant he was not being “played” in talks to end the war in Ukraine and sounded a confident note he would be able to close the deal after Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated the clock was ticking on negotiations. “We’re going to get it stopped, ideally. Now, if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say ‘you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people and we’re just going to take a pass.’ But hopefully we won’t have to do that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval...

Former President Biden said the Trump administration has “done so much damage and so much destruction” since taking office, accusing the White House of having “taken a hatchet” to the Social Security Administration (SSA) and “breaking things” as he delivered his first remarks since leaving the Oval Office earlier this year. “Fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so much — done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden said at the national conference of Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD) in Chicago. “They’ve taken a...

Republican lawmakers say there’s a good chance that President Trump’s trade war will boomerang on Republicans politically in 2026, as rising prices and shrinking growth could offset other accomplishments by the GOP. Republican senators are pointing to the 1932 and 1982 elections as historical examples of when trade wars and resulting price inflation hurt their party at the ballot box, and they are worried that history could repeat itself. Many Republican lawmakers view tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers, and some note that the last two times Congress enacted tax hikes on the scale of Trump’s recent tariffs,...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on Sunday said he’s questioning President Trump’s “endgame” in his approach to tariffs, saying the ongoing “volatility” isn’t good for businesses. “One thing I learned in the private sector is unpredictability can work pretty well in the negotiation, but the private sector — businesses want certainty. They want stability. They don’t like to see volatility,” Johnson said in an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.” “And, so, I’ve just been questioning exactly what’s the endgame here? What’s the strategy?” he continued. Johnson called himself an “unabashed free trader” and touted what he sees as the...

A group of four Senate Republicans warned against a “full-scale” repeal of energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022. “While we support fiscal responsibility and prudent efforts to streamline the tax code, we caution against the full-scale repeal of current credits, which could lead to significant disruptions for the American people and weaken our position as a global energy leader,” wrote Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Curtis (Utah), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and Jerry Moran (Kan.). Their letter, addressed to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), is notable since a bloc of four senators could be enough to block...

Former President Barack Obama sought to distance himself from the Democratic Party after leaving it in shambles following his departure from the White House, according to a new book. The book, “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” published by William Morrow and Company, claims that Obama was never a Democratic Party loyalist. Instead, the authors allege, Obama curried favor from a group of “black professionals” for his campaigns, unlike former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and former President Joe Biden. Additionally, Obama’s creation of Organizing for Action — a...

Move over, Smoot and Hawley. President Trump has anointed himself America’s greatest protectionist, and he’s launching a global trade war to prove it. On Wednesday, Trump slapped a minimum 10 percent tariff on all imports, plus additional “reciprocal” tariffs on 60 other countries that have the temerity to sell us things we want to buy. He dubbed it “Liberation Day” to mark the freeing of Americans from the supposedly oppressive burden of trading with others.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday that it is a “fallacy” to think tariffs will help the country’s economy as President Trump gears up to impose massive reciprocal tariffs on U.S. trading partners. Paul, who has spoken out against tariffs previously, joined The Hill’s “Rising” on Wednesday, where he discussed his disagreement with tariffs, calling them “a tax.” “On tariffs, I think it’s just economically — it’s a fallacy to think that it’ll help the country,” the Kentucky senator said. “Tariffs are a tax, and if you tax trade or if you tax anything, you’ll get less of it.”

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said on Sunday that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe “lied repeatedly” about messages in a Signal group chat in which top members of the Trump administration discussed an attack on Yemen.“Intelligence officials told your committee this week that no classified information was shared. Do you believe that directors Ratcliffe and Gabbard were truthful when they testified before your committee?” NBC News’s Kristen Welker asked Bennet on “Meet the Press.”“No, I think they lied repeatedly to our committee and to the House committee. Kristen, let me try to make this as...

Republicans are pulling out all the stops ahead of the special election in Florida’s 6th Congressional District as worries of a narrower-than-expected margin grow in the district President Trump won by more than 30 points in November. Trump called into two tele-town halls for state Sen. Randy Fine (R) in an effort to drive out the Republican base ahead of Tuesday. Meanwhile, Elon Musk’s America PAC spent roughly $10,200 in the race earlier this week and dropped another $66,000 into the race on Thursday. The efforts come as Democratic candidate Josh Weil has outraised Fine, while an internal poll from...

The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) said Thursday that President Trump signed an executive order limiting numerous agency employees from unionizing and instructing the government to stop engaging in any collective bargaining. The OPM memo references an order from Trump that has yet to be publicly posted, but a fact sheet from the White House claims that the Civil Service Reform Act that allows government workers to unionize “enables hostile Federal unions to obstruct agency management.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters Monday that “nobody was texting war plans” following news breaking that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, gained access to a Signal group chat featuring Trump administration officials talking about plans for an attack against Houthi rebels in Yemen. “Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth said outside a plane in Hawaii after being asked about Goldberg’s access to the chat.Hegseth also called Goldberg “a deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”Goldberg gained access to...

Everyone is talking about Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts, but hardly anyone is calling this what it really is: the strategy by Elon Musk, President Trump, and the Republican Party to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, one piece at a time. The ACA, a historic piece of legislation that extended health coverage to millions of Americans, celebrated its 15th anniversary on March 23. Signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, the ACA expanded Medicaid and provided subsidies so that more working and middle-class Americans could have access to our expensive and complicated health care system. The law also made it illegal...

An Evangelical mission doctor has warned that millions of lives are at stake surrounding the potential dismantling of the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), as country music artists led by Amy Grant have called for the program's reauthorization. PEPFAR, launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, is the largest global health initiative focused on a single disease, HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR has sent over $100 billion to more than 50 countries in the last two decades, providing antiretroviral therapy (ARVs) life-saving treatment and infrastructure support to regions most affected by the epidemic, particularly in Africa. However, recent aid...

According to Jason Lemon, senior politics editor at Newsweek, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is increasingly being discussed as a leading star within the Democrat Party. He writes, “with some suggesting she could be a 2028 contender for the party’s presidential nomination. Lemon suggests this is their response to their defeat in the 2024 election. Ocasio-Cortez “has emerged as one of the Democrats many see to be pushing back in a way that resonates with the party’s base,” the editor writes. He notes she has held massive rallies with [fellow communist] Bernie Sanders. He doesn’t mention that the same thousands appear at every...

Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security, and the Department of Government Efficiency to leave it alone. Musk’s statement that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” and his plans to cut up to 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s workforce, are giving GOP lawmakers heartburn. They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day. And Republicans fear that reductions in staff and field offices will boomerang on them, predicting constituents will grow frustrated if...