Free Republic

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations. In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his...

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said he supports open House hearings regarding President Trump’s order last week for a strike that killed top Iranian commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Schiff, who is among lawmakers who were briefed a day after last week’s attack, told The Washington Post there should be open hearings on the administration's decision to strike. “The president has put us on a path where we may be at war with Iran. That requires the Congress to fully engage,” Schiff told the Post in an interview published Monday. Schiff said there’s “absolutely no way” Trump’s threat to...

. . . That possibility is underscored by the Times report, a chronology of Trump’s decision to withhold aid to a vulnerable ally under assault while he and his henchmen extorted Ukraine into carrying out his corrupt designs. The report demonstrates in striking detail that inside the administration, the consternation over the legality and propriety of the aid freeze — and confusion over Trump’s true motives — ran much deeper than previously known, implicating top Cabinet officials more deeply than we thought. Among the story’s key points: As early as June, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked...

Game over The consolation for Democrats is that not many people watch vice presidential debates and even fewer are influenced by what happens in them. They hope. Then again, this is an unusual election year in which more than the usual number of people are thinking the vice-presidential nominees might offer a more appealing choice than those at the top of the ticket, so maybe some people tuned in last night to see the choice they wish they were making next month. Regardless, if you’re a Trump-Pence supporter who watched, you know what you’re thinking: Boy, Pence sure seemed like...

The title of the Washington Post op-ed wastes no time on subtlety: "Larry Summers: Donald Trump is a serious threat to American democracy." The March 1 opinion piece by Lawrence H. Summers accuses the Republican presidential front-runner of, among other things, being a "thug," a "demagogue," and a threat to "the rule of law" and "democracy," but feigns graciousness by opining that Trump is slightly better than Hitler and Mussolini on the thuggery scale."While comparisons between Donald Trump and Mussolini or Hitler are overwrought," says Summers, "Trump's rise does illustrate how democratic processes can lose their way and turn dangerously...