Free Republic

President Trump is barreling toward a showdown with Congress over his decision to pull back U.S. troops in northern Syria despite widespread opposition. The announcement, which caught leadership and traditional GOP allies flatfooted, sparked a wave of condemnation, with Republicans calling it a “disaster in the making,” a “catastrophic mistake” and a “terrible decision.” Lawmakers are already weighing how to respond to Trump’s decision, setting the stage for a high-profile clash with Trump as soon as Congress returns from a two-week break on Monday. “Congress must and will act to limit the catastrophic impact of this decision,” said Rep. Liz...

Thousands of pro-lifers stood outside in all kinds of weather Sunday to pray for unborn babies and their mothers. People gathered in about 1,600 communities in the United States and Canada for the annual Life Chain, according to organizers. The event brings pro-lifers together in their local communities to pray for an end to abortion and peacefully witness to the truth about life in the womb. In West Reading, Pennsylvania, about 75 people stood on the sidewalks in the rain, holding signs encouraging mothers to choose life, the Reading Eagle reports. “We got rained on quite well but people stayed...

A few years ago, I held the widespread belief that in the wild, humans were far more dangerous than bears. Humans are the top predator on the planet. They routinely prey on their own. Far more humans are killed by humans than by bears. The reality is more complex. As I researched bear attacks and the effectiveness of using handguns to stop those attacks, I found I was mistaken about the comparative danger of humans. Comparing how many people are killed by humans against how many are killed by bears is a misleading metric. There are hundreds of millions...

DURANGO, Colo. — Every summer night throughout the American West, hundreds of tourists and western music fans sit down to a meal and a show at a modern-day chuck wagon. At these venues, a throwback to the covered wagon kitchens that were part of cattle drives, audiences polish off plates loaded with meat, baked beans, a potato, applesauce, a biscuit and cake, and then watch a house band tell corny jokes and play cowboy songs popularized by people like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry in the 1930s and ’40s. The bands are not just the entertainment; they are the main...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Mike Enzi and John Barrasso and Congresswoman Liz Cheney, all R-Wyo., applauded the Environmental Protection Agency for announcing final plans to repeal and replace the Obama-era Waters of the United States (WOTUS) regulation. "I am glad the administration is repealing the excessively burdensome Waters of the United States rule, which was a massive regulatory overreach that should have never been allowed in the first place," Enzi said. "This rule gave the federal government power to regulate nearly every creek or pond. States know best how to manage our resources. This announcement is good news for...

At least 10 Republican members of Congress are supporting Israel's decision to block Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) from entering the country after Trump specifically requested it. On Thursday, Trump tweeted that it would be a sign of "great weakness" if Israel allowed the two congresswomen, who have been outspoken critics of Trump, to enter the country. Later that day, Israel officially blocked their entrance. "Israel’s denial of entry to Congresswomen Tlaib and Omar is a sign of weakness, and beneath the dignity of the great State of Israel," Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. Most...

First, take a deep breath. Now take a look at the Wall Street Journal. The otherwise fine newspaper editorially on Saturday blasted President Trump. For what? For not killing Iranians and blowing up Iranian targets to show how super our American power is. The president acted humanely and rationally, weighing proportionality in response to Iran’s downing of our spy drone over international waters (we say) or Iranian waters (they say). The WSJ, of course, is an authority on the subject of territoriality and sovereignty and the respect thereof. The newspaper for years insisted that the United States should have no...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed it was Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) — not herself — who appropriated vernacular associated with the Holocaust in her criticism of the self-avowed Democratic socialist’s comparison of U.S. border facilities to concentration camps. “Reminder: the member who directly + explicitly compared concentration camps on our border to the Holocaust was *Liz Cheney.* The horrors of the Holocaust went beyond the use of concentration camps, yet camps were part of the process,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter. “They have also been used before and after,” she added. Ocasio-Cortez has garnered a flurry of criticism since referring to...

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) compared President Donald Trump to his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for calling off a military retaliation against Iran’s regime. “So I’ll wait to see additional information on it, but I think it’s important that people recognize that the United States is going to keep its word and not go down the path that President Obama went down,” Cheney told a CNN reporter on Friday.

June 7 (UPI) -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday will launch what he calls the largest ever coordinated campaign to beat climate change, which will close all U.S. coal plants by 2030. Bloomberg said the $500 million program, Beyond Carbon, will put the United States on track toward a 100 percent clean energy economy by working with advocates to "build on leadership and climate progress already underway." Bloomberg and his foundation joined with the Sierra Club in 2011 to launch Beyond Coal with the goal of closing at least a third of U.S. coal plants. "With...

The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney says the nation has to unite behind Donald Trump and make him the next commander in chief. Liz Cheney, who is running for Wyoming's at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, told Rush Limbaugh's syndicated radio show on Friday: "In Wyoming there's no question for us that Hillary Clinton would be devastating — and far, far worse than Donald Trump. We've gotta unify behind him and make sure Hillary Clinton's not elected. "She is a felon. She … clearly violated the law with respect to her personal server and her...

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo, said in an interview that aired Sunday that text messages between former FBI investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page “sound an awful lot like a coup” and could even be treason. “I think what is really crucially important to remember here is that you had Strzok and Page who were in charge of launching this investigation and they were saying things like, 'We must stop this president, we need an insurance policy against this president,'” she said on ABC News' “This Week.”"In my view when you have people that are in the highest echelons of the...

Rep. Liz Cheney said Sunday anti-Trump text messages exchanged between then-FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reminded her of a coup and suggested it could be treason. “I think what is really crucially important to remember here is that you had Strzok and Page who were in charge of launching this investigation and they were saying things like, 'We must stop this president, we need an insurance policy against this president,'” the Wyoming Republican said during an interview with ABC News' “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” "That in my view when you have people that are in the highest...

Here’s what happened. A suit was filed by WildEarth Guardians, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and the Western Environmental Law Center prior to the 2016 election. It alleged the Bureau of Land Management, which oversees oil and gas exploration of federal lands, failed to calculate and limit the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from future oil and gas projects. Judge Rudolph Contreras agreed, ruling that BLM “did not adequately quantify the climate change impacts of oil and gas leasing” and “must consider the cumulative impact of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions” generated by past, present and future BLM leases across the country.

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch broke with conservatives and joined four other liberal justices in a 5-4 tribal rights decision Monday. The Supreme Court upheld a Native American man’s hunting rights under a 150-year-old treaty. Crow tribe member Clayvin Herrera was charged in 2014 for off-season hunting in the Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming but argued that a treaty signed in 1868 between the tribe and Wyoming allowed him to hunt any time of the year. The state argued the treaty was nullified in 1890 when Wyoming achieved statehood, lower courts agreed, and the case made its way to the...

On Monday, after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) (who is fearless in calling out anti-Semitism) had properly called out Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for her latest display of it, Tlaib’s good friend Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) attacked Cheney with a tweet that was both vicious and self-pitying, ranting, “Give it up, we all know you never met a Muslim you didn’t want to vilify! Your deep seeded hate and Islamophobia might be a tool to rally your base, but won’t get rid your colleagues. You just have to deal.” In response to Tlaib’s anti-Semitic remarks about the Holocaust, Cheney had tweeted,...

Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) announced Saturday that he will retire from the Senate at the end of his current term, capping off a 22-year career in Washington. Enzi, 75, who currently serves as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, made the announcement while speaking at city hall in Gillette, Wyo., where he once served as mayor. "I have much to get done in the next year and a half," he said in prepared remarks released by his office. "I want to be able to focus on budget reform to get control of our national debt," he said. "I don’t want...

When John Barrasso, a Republican from oil and uranium-rich Wyoming who has spent years blocking climate change legislation, introduced a bill this year to promote nuclear energy, he added a twist: a desire to tackle global warming. Mr. Barrasso’s remarks — “If we are serious about climate change, we must be serious about expanding our use of nuclear energy” — were hardly a clarion call to action. Still they were highly unusual for the lawmaker who, despite decades of support for nuclear power and other policies that would reduce planet-warming emissions, has until recently avoided talking about them in the...

BOISE, Idaho — Four conservation groups have asked a judge to block a Trump administration plan allowing drilling, mining and other activities in seven Western states they say will harm sage grouse. Western Watersheds Project and other groups asked for the injunction in U.S. District Court in Idaho late last week for Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, California and Oregon.

Acting Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt ordered Thursday that federal land managers consider public access when selling or trading public land. “This order will help ensure that the Bureau of Land Management considers public access to public lands,” Bernhardt said in a statement. “It requires that before the BLM exchanges or disposes of any land, they must first consider what impact the disposal or exchange of land will have on public access. The Trump Administration will continue to prioritize access so that people can hunt, fish, camp, and recreate on our public lands," he said. This order will address...