Free Republic

President Donald Trump shared on Wednesday that he wants the debt limit “scrapped,” which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has also called for. Trump issued a statement on Truth Social Wednesday afternoon. “I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING. The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe,” he wrote. “It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect it could have on our Country and, indirectly, even the World,” he...

A federal court has determined that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally impose tariffs, dealing a sweeping blow to the president's main weapon in his ongoing global trade war. A panel of judges on the U.S. Court of International Trade found the tariffs were unlawful and permanently vacated them.

The promise of allowing China to enter “most favored nation status” in 1980 and entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 was predicated on the notion that insurgent free markets would revolutionize and liberate the largest communist nation in the world. The economic reality of 2025 is that this project has largely failed. Dictator Xi of China embodies one of the most hardline manifestations of Communist Party power in a generation. Previous reforms are now repealed and a pattern of internal and global human rights abuses are better funded than ever and rationalized in a growing technological network of...

They burned Elon’s businesses to the ground. They vandalized Teslas across the country. They assaulted Tesla employees and Tesla drivers… …all because Elon found waste and fraud in government …and the GOP won’t even vote on the cuts I can’t wrap my head around this.

As President Donald Trump attempts to muscle his GOP agenda through a narrow House majority, Rep. Chip Roy is perhaps the most important holdout to win over. He may also be the toughest. Speaker Mike Johnson and his team have been confident they can pass Trump’s massive reconciliation bill, because they don’t believe any Republican will want to stand in the way and face Trump’s wrath. But Roy, the unapologetic fiscal hawk, is the rare GOP lawmaker willing to publicly challenge the president. He has already survived multiple calls by his own party to oust him — including from Trump...

Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said President Donald Trump’s tariffs caused the world to see the United States as an “unreliable partner.” Host George Stephanopoulos said, “I think you identified the tariffs as the number one issue. Liberation Day is probably the most consequential day of the first 100 days. Is there an exit strategy for Donald Trump on this? He asked, “Can he make this sort of series of deals that limit the damage?”

House Republicans are planning to include several of President Trump’s campaign promises in the first draft of the bill, which they hope to release soon.It was easy to miss, but last weekend President Trump floated a fundamental rewrite of the American tax code. In a social media post, and again in remarks to reporters, Mr. Trump suggested the United States could stop taxing income under $200,000 and instead rely on revenue from his extensive tariffs. “It’ll take a little while before we do that, but we’re going to be cutting taxes, and it’s possible we’ll do a complete tax cut,”...

The Republican-led Texas House has officially caved to the radical Left’s war on free speech—and shockingly, it’s being spearheaded by none other than the state’s own scandal-plagued former House Speaker Dade Phelan. On Tuesday, House Bill 366 passed with bipartisan support, making it a potential crime in the state of Texas to share or distribute AI-generated and “altered media”—including political memes—without a government-approved disclaimer on political ads. According to the bill: “A person may not, with the intent to influence an election, knowingly cause to be published, distributed, or broadcast political advertising that includes an image, audio recording, or video...

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is continuing his push against President Donald Trump's tariffs, with legislation he is co-sponsoring against them to come before the Senate next week. Paul says lawmakers should be in control of tariffs, rather than Trump, through the use of a national-emergency law. The discussion will come less than a month after Paul was one of the only two chamber Republicans to vote against his party's budget, which is seen as a key part of the president's tax cuts, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. "I don't have any bad feelings towards the president, but this is...

Sen. Ron Johnson is actively investigating 9/11. A day after the Wisconsin Republican went on a far-right podcast promoting conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, a spokesperson for Johnson said the lawmaker is currently seeking information and documentation in order to hold hearings on the event nearly 25 years later. He would do so in his capacity as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, one of Congress’s most storied and powerful panels with far-reaching jurisdiction that gives its chair wide latitude to probe a diverse array of matters. It has...

The Senate, once again, was working into the early morning hours Friday with its new majority leader, Republican John Thune, setting the pace. It wasn’t until just after 2 a.m. that the last of the senators had straggled into the chamber to cast their vote on the confirmation of retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The vote capped a grinding start to the year for the Senate that included several all-night floor sessions and — importantly for Thune — the quickest top-level Cabinet confirmation process in the past 20 years....

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...

Barack Hussein Obama has prevailed in the 2008 presidential election. Obama not only carried all the ‘blue’ states that John Kerry won in 2004, he also flipped several ‘red’ states, such as Colorado, Nevada, Florida and Virginia, delivering a crushing electoral defeat to John McCain. And the blame falls squarely on the GOP for allowing this Marxist to become president of the United States. It has been interesting and amusing to read the numerous ‘post mortems’ from conservative and liberal pundits alike. Yet not one of the post mortems has identified the real reason McCain got clobbered. It was not...

If Republicans like Tillis actually care about lowering Americans’ cost of living, they should slash the federal budget they’ve spent years ballooning.It’s been less than a week since President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff blitz against foreign nations, and Republicans on Capitol Hill are already in full-on freakout mode. Throughout the past several days, GOP members of Congress have run to their favorite legacy media talking heads to express their supposed concerns that the president’s tariff policies could result in higher costs of living for everyday Americans. The latest example of this came on Tuesday, when Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., while...

The formula used by the Trump administration to levy reciprocal tariffs contains a serious math error that over-inflates the impact by about a factor of four, economists at the American Enterprise Institute said. Why it matters: The conservative think tank says the error led to tariff rates massively higher than they should have been to achieve the goals the administration sought.

Classical theory may not care where the steel mills, chip foundries, shipyards, research labs, aircraft plants, oil fields, and supply chains are, but the real world of power politics does. I spent most of my time during 20 years in Washington, D.C. working in a bipartisan manner on trade policy with the aim of keeping here, then bringing back, strategic industries. There was then a coalition of national security Republicans (on my side of the aisle) and labor union Democrats. Democrats did not want to lose the middle-class blue-collar jobs when factories closed. Republicans did not want to lose the...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) claimed Friday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that Republicans seemed willing to “buck” President Donald Trump by passing the Trade Review Act of 2025. It would require a joint resolution of approval for the new tariffs and allow Congress to end tariffs with a resolution of disapproval. Host Dana Bash said, “The veteran Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, they have introduced a bill, a bipartisan bill to require congressional approval for any new tariffs. And I’m sure you saw that Grassley said it’s necessary to reassert Congress’s constitutional role and ensure...

A single Republican senator — Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) — voted against the nomination of Harmeet Dhillon to serve as assistant attorney general, veering away from the rest of her GOP colleagues who voted in favor. After her nomination in December, lawmakers finally held a formal vote Thursday and Dhillon was approved in a 52-45 vote. However, Murkowski opposed the nomination and sided with Democrats. President Donald Trump announced in December the nomination of Dhillon to work as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our...

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced a bill with far-left Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), which would almost certainly put Trump’s new tariffs entirely on ice. The legislation’s stated purpose is to ‘reassert’ the legislative branch’s power over tariff policy. “The Trade Review Act of 2025” requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing new tariffs. The president must also present a detailed rationale and analysis of the potential consequences for American businesses and consumers. Moreover, the legislation will require ALL tariffs to be approved by Congress within 60 days, or they will automatically expire.