Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Against the backdrop of crumbling negotiations over the GOP bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, President Donald Trump said last week he wanted to oust incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in 2018. The South Carolina Republican told The Post and Courier that Trump chose to convey this message through an intermediary: White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, a former member of the S.C. congressional delegation, co-founder of the House Freedom Caucus and a friend. "'The president asked me to look you square in the eyes and to say that he hoped that you voted ‘no’...

A British man pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. federal court to trying to grab a police officer’s gun and open fire at a June campaign rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump in Las Vegas. Standing before a judge in orange jail clothes with the word “detainee” across his back, Michael Steven Sandford acknowledged that he has been treated in the past for mental illness. Court documents say Sandford previously told a federal agent that he drove from California to Las Vegas with a plan to kill Trump. …

Best-selling mystery author John Sandford has a new assignment: reporting from Iraq. Sandford -- real name John Camp -- leaves Saturday for two weeks as an embedded reporter with the Minnesota National Guard's 2-147 Assault Helicopter Battalion in Iraq. He'll spend time at the air base in Balad, 25 miles north of Baghdad. Sandford, 63, who won a Pulitzer Prize with the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1986 for a series about a southwestern Minnesota farm family, told the newspaper he's "more excited than scared." He and photographer Eric Bowen, who was in Iraq last February, plan to file daily...