Free Republic

Republican lawmakers are breathing a sigh of relief that the courts are putting the brakes on President Trump’s trade war, which has pummeled markets, created economic uncertainty and taken a bite out of Trump’s approval ratings. It’s unclear who will win the final legal battle, which could end up in the Supreme Court. But Republicans for now are mostly hoping Trump takes a political win in the form of judicial decisions that could hold back his trade war or even put the tariffs on ice. “I’m sure that Republican senators are secretly rooting for the Supreme Court to uphold the...

CV NEWS FEED // A day after CatholicVote reported that The Hill had published a column identifying a flag of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as “a symbol associated with the Christian right wing, specifically used to protest Pride,” the publication erased that claim from the column without noting the change. The practice of editing out controversial passages without acknowledging the correction in an editorial note is commonly known as “stealth-editing.”Nick Robertson originally wrote in his column: “The Sacred Heart of Jesus flag is a symbol associated with the Christian right wing, specifically used to protest Pride.”As of mid-afternoon the...

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...

The stock market kicked off the week with steep losses Monday after President Trump declined Sunday to rule out the U.S. economy slowing into recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed with a loss of 890 points Monday, falling 2.1 percent. The Nasdaq composite closed with a loss of 4 percent, and the S&P 500 index closed down 2.7 percent. Stocks have fallen steadily since the start of March in response to a string of underwhelming economic data and whipsaw tariff announcements from the Trump administration. But the selloff intensified Monday after Trump demurred on his outlook for the U.S....

As President Trump and Congressional Republicans use their slim majorities to try to foist a radical regime change on America, Democrats need to reckon with why they’re watching helplessly from the sidelines. Having lost control of both the White House and Congress, and with Republicans marching in lockstep, there is little they can do to stop Trump’s drive to monopolize political power and rule by diktat. Only the courts are putting speed bumps in his way. Democrats, yoked to the status quo, are extraordinarily unpopular. Less than a third of Americans view the party favorably, while 57 percent disapprove. Independents...

Senate Republicans are steamrolling ahead on Pete Hegseth’s nomination to lead the Pentagon, and a new report detailing allegations of abusive behavior by the nominee have seemingly not dissuaded them. The Senate is set to hold an initial procedural vote on the nomination Thursday, even as Democrats attempt to delay final passage.

"Republican National Committee (RNC) co-Chair Lara Trump said Wednesday evening, without evidence, that debates are always “rigged so heavily” in President Biden’s favor."

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R), who has been under the microscope this week for an anecdote about killing her dog, defended her actions Wednesday, saying she shot the “dangerous” pup in order to protect her children. “It was a dog that was extremely dangerous,” Noem said Wednesday on Fox News’s “Hannity.” “It had come to us from a family who had found her way too aggressive.” “We were her second chance. And she was — the day she was put down was a day that she massacred livestock that were part of our neighbors,” she continued. “She attacked me....

The New York judge overseeing former President Trump’s hush money trial said Monday that Trump cannot attend arguments on presidential immunity at the Supreme Court next week. ... The decision to not allow Trump to be in Washington, D.C., on April 25, when the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a presidential immunity claim Trump is making in his federal criminal case, came just before the New York trial adjourned Monday. “Arguing before the Supreme Court is a big deal, and I can certainly appreciate why your client would want to be there, but a trial in...

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) threatened possible contempt proceedings against Georgia’s Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) over a subpoena requesting information about her use of federal funds. Willis’s office has already sent information in response to the February subpoena, but the GOP leader complains she failed to turn over documents related to allegations from a now-terminated employee who flagged another former employee’s desire to misuse federal grant money. “We appreciate that you have produced a narrow set of documents in response to the subpoena, but your compliance with the subpoena to date is deficient,” Jordan wrote...

Former President Trump said in an interview that aired Monday that he predicts the U.S. economy will crash and that he hopes it does so within the next year. In the interview with Lou Dobbs, Trump, the current front-runner in the GOP presidential primary race, explained that, if he were elected again, he would not want to serve a term similar to President Hoover’s — who took office when the economy was stable but later oversaw the start of the Great Depression.

Nikki Haley is on the rise, looking for an upset that could derail former President Trump’s path to the Republican presidential nomination. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the New Hampshire primary is her best— and perhaps only — chance.Haley’s advance in the Granite State has been striking.A new American Research Group (ARG) poll released Thursday put Haley within 4 points of Trump in New Hampshire — a jaw-dropping result given that Trump has a lead of about 50 points in national polls. The ARG poll showed Trump with 33 percent support in New Hampshire and Haley at 29 percent, with...

The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), offered an apology in court on Tuesday, claiming the former Speaker’s husband was “never” his target, according to the Associated Press. In an emotional testimony on Tuesday, David DePape, 43, described to the court how his political views shifted from leftist to right wing after reading a comment on a YouTube video about former President Trump.

President Biden tops former President Trump by 5 points among registered voters in a 2024 hypothetical matchup, new polling shows.Asked who they’d back if Trump and Biden were their respective party’s nominees, 45 percent of registered voters said they’d cast their ballots for Biden, while 40 said the same for Trump, according to the survey from The Economist-YouGov. Seven percent said “other,” 4 percent weren’t sure and another 3 percent said they would not vote. The new results show Biden’s lead widened since last month, when the pollsters found him and Trump at 43 and 40 percent, respectively.

Sidney Powell, a one-time attorney for former President Trump’s 2020 campaign who helped promulgate false claims of election fraud, has pleaded not guilty in the Georgia election interference case. Powell and 18 others including Trump are accused of joining a criminal conspiracy to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 presidential race by overturning the state’s election results. She faces seven charges, among them violating Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act — a charge designed to target organized crime of which all the defendants are accused. The Trump lawyer’s other charges stem from a Coffee County...

The multiplying charges brought against allies of former President Trump and their mounting legal fees are creating consternation in Trump world — while presenting a real risk to the former president. Trump has burned through millions of dollars in donor money to pay for legal fees as he defends himself against charges in New York City, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C. But the former president, who has built a reputation for stiffing workers, has shown no interest in providing financial aid to former aides charged over their efforts to keep him in power. Former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has listed...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that “uncertainty” over whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance will offer admission to Ukraine motivates Russia to continue “terror” in its war on Kyiv. “It seems there is no readiness neither to invite Ukraine to NATO nor to make it a member of the Alliance,” Zelensky said. “This means that a window of opportunity is being left to bargain Ukraine’s membership in NATO in negotiations with Russia. And for Russia, this means motivation to continue its terror.”

A second firm hired by the Trump campaign to investigate fraud in the 2020 election said all of Trump’s fraud claims were false, the firm’s founder told The Washington Post The Trump campaign hired Simpatico Software Systems and its founder Ken Block to investigate fraud claims all over the country after the 2020 election. “No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at,” he told the Post. “Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was...

She can break a tie in the Senate but, apparently, Vice President Harris has no such voting power during Netflix viewing debates at home. “Right now, it’s definitely Netflix and chilling,” Doug Emhoff, the Georgetown University Law Center instructor and Harris’s husband, told Cosmopolitan of the couple’s favorite date night activity in an interview published Monday. “It’s hard to go out, so we’ll sit there and try to find something to watch,” Emhoff said, “and it takes so long to find something to watch, so it’s like, ‘Eh, let’s just go to bed.’ ” Fifty-eight-year-old Emhoff, who opened up to...

President Biden and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva marked the survival of their democracies in a bilateral White House meeting Friday, a common ground that led to the leaders to taking jabs at their predecessors. “Both of our democracies have been tested of late,” Biden said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the riots that broke out in Brazil last month.