Free Republic

Well, there was this little thing called a VOTER REBELLION that occurred last November. Neither party wants to take responsibility (yet) for their own shortcomings, and neither party wants to admit (yet) that it's really happening. It'll take another election or two where the voters throw the bums out before they start getting the message. It's way too early to send the success or failure of Trump's presidency to the jury, but I'm still happy. He already saved the nation from complete collapse under either Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, the two uni-party favorites. The establishment elites from both parties...

Within four hours of becoming president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to limit immediately the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) in ways that are revolutionary. With the stroke of a pen, the president assaulted the heart of the law that was the domestic centerpiece of his predecessor’s administration. How did this happen? How can a U.S. president, who took an oath to enforce the laws faithfully, gut one of them merely because he disagrees with it? Here is the back story. When ObamaCare went through Congress in 2010, all...

Donald Trump is ready to take an ax to government spending. Staffers for the Trump transition team have been meeting with career staff at the White House ahead of Friday’s presidential inauguration to outline their plans for shrinking the federal bureaucracy, The Hill has learned. The changes they propose are dramatic. The departments of Commerce and Energy would see major reductions in funding, with programs under their jurisdiction either being eliminated or transferred to other agencies. The departments of Transportation, Justice and State would see significant cuts and program eliminations. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized, while the...

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform, according to people familiar with the decision.

Is there reason to doubt climate change because some of the nation’s hottest days happened in 1898, as President-elect Donald Trump told the New York Times in an interview Tuesday? In an exchange with Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and staff about climate change on Tuesday (Nov. 22), Trump said, “I have an open mind to it,” but later added, “You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views.” However, it’s misleading to single out a weather event — such as a particularly hot day in 1898 — as evidence...

A very nice liberal broadcaster asked me earlier this week whether I am worried about the future of the Republican party. Funny question. There are 25 states in which the state legislatures and governorships are controlled by Republicans, and two states with executive/legislative divides in which there are Republican legislative majorities large enough to override a veto from the Democratic governor. Sixty-eight of the country’s 98 partisan state legislative chambers are Republican-run. There are only four states with Democratic governors and legislatures; it is true that these include one of our most populous states (California), but the majority of Americans...

And instead of feeling gloomy about the future, many Americans are feeling really good about what is ahead for the first time in a very long time. The following are 12 signs of extreme optimism in America now that Donald Trump has been elected… #1 The U.S. dollar is once again the strongest currency in the world. It has soared in value since Trump’s stunning election victory and on Wednesday the U.S. dollar index hit the highest level that we have seen since March 2003. #2 Stocks continue to skyrocket in the aftermath of Trump’s win. On Wednesday, the Dow...

Less than a week after Election Day, Donald Trump is already trying to figure out how he can pull the United States out of the historic Paris climate deal as quickly as possible.Trump considers global warming a hoax, despite an overwhelming consensus from climate scientists who say that climate change is both real and man-made. Throughout his campaign, he promised to cancel the Paris climate agreement, which was signed by more than 180 countries last year and hopes to keep the world below 2° C of warming.

"Drill, baby, drill!” During her bid for vice president in 2008, that was Sarah Palin's crowd-pleasing chant promoting her energy policy. Now the pithy catchphrase – and the former Alaska governor herself – could make a comeback. News reports say Palin is on President-elect Donald Trump's short list to head the Interior Department. As secretary of the interior, she'd be in charge of overseeing oil drilling, uranium mining and other energy extraction on 500 million acres of public land, including iconic national parks like the Grand Canyon. The pro-mining policies Trump and Palin could be expected to bring to Interior...

President-elect Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin have vowed to tackle ISIS together after holding breakthrough talks on the telephone. Less than a week after the billionaire’s election, the Kremlin said Putin called Trump yesterday to begin negotiations over how best to tackle to terrorism. The Russian is reported to have said he ready for dialogue with the US “on the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention into each other’s internal affairs”. According to the news agency Kremlin, Putin and Trump have agreed to “work to channel bilateral relationships into constructive cooperation, to combine efforts to tackle international terrorism and...

Chris Wallace continues the David Brock (Media Matters) talking points via his Fox News Sunday interview with victorious Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway...

(videos at link) Full Title : Donald Trump looking for fast way to QUIT climate agreement: President-elect who said global warming is a 'hoax' wants to 'leave Paris deal as soon as possible' Subtitle : Since Trump was elected, governments ranging from China to small island states have reaffirmed support for the 2015 Paris Agreement Trump has called global warming a hoax and has promised to quit the Paris Agreement He was considering ways to bypass a theoretical four-year procedure for leaving the accord, according to the source 'It was reckless for the Paris agreement to enter into force before...

Even before Donald Trump chooses a Supreme Court nominee, the new president can take steps to make several contentious court cases go away. Legal challenges involving immigration, climate change, cost-free contraceptive care and transgender rights all could be affected, without any help from Congress... The cases turn on Obama administration policies that rely on the president's pen, regulations or decisions made by federal agencies. And what one administration can do, the next can undo.

NEW YORK (AP) -- For the combatants in America's long-running culture wars, the triumph of Donald Trump and congressional Republicans was stunning - sparking elation on one side, deep dismay on the other. Advocates of LGBT rights and abortion rights now fear setbacks instead of further gains. But the outcome emboldened the anti-abortion movement and breathed new life into the religious right's campaign for broad exemptions from same-sex marriage and other laws. Kelly Shackelford, head of First Liberty Institute, a legal group that specializes in religious freedom cases, said that, for his cause, the environment will transform from "brutal" under...

‘I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone” was President Obama’s favored path to a foreign-policy legacy. Oops. President-elect Donald Trump may now use his own pen and phone to erase it. But it won’t be that easy. At first glance, the Paris agreement on climate change, the Cuba détente and the Iran nuclear deal seem easy to undo. Like many of Obama’s stabs at history-making, they were done unilaterally, without congressional advise and consent. But Obama’s pen didn’t quite write his ticket to immortality in disappearing ink. Take Iran. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that...

Donald Trump's transition team is preparing for the billionaire businessman to take over as commander in chief, they're ruffling a few feathers along the way. Scientific American reports Trump has selected climate change critic, Myron Ebell, to lead his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team. Ebell, who's the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, has been described by Newsweek as a fierce opponent of climate change, which the publisher calls “entirely at odds with scientific consensus.” David Goldston, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund, explained that...

https://youtu.be/kwJZukmWpM0

A few weeks ago we pointed out that Obama enjoyed massive, unprecedented spikes in black voter turnout in both the 2008 and 2012 elections.  After hovering around 50-55% for decades, black voter participation soared to over 60% in 2008 and 2012.  That said, in the past we've raised serious doubts over whether Hillary should expect the same level of enthusiasm from black voters in this election cycle or whether overall turnout of black voters would revert back to pre-Obama levels. Unprecedented black voter turnout was a huge component of Obama's victories in 2008 and 2012.  Per the chart below...

(KUTV) “Utah's six electoral college votes matter and Republicans are finally ready to unite.” Congressman Rob Bishop worked today to unite his party. After weeks of on again, off again support for Trump -- many of Utah’s elected officials say their nominee is not as bad as they thought “Donald Trump is no choir boy,” said Utah Senior Senator Orrin Hatch, but he knows Hillary Clinton and believes she cannot be President. “We are not voting for the pope,” reminded another at a rally at Utah’s State Capitol. “We are voting for a President.” Utah republicans who were bashing Trump...