Free Republic

President Donald Trump said on Thursday he was close to a deal with Democratic congressional leaders on protections for illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children, a development that alarmed some of his conservative supporters. Trump, who met with the top Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, at the White House on Wednesday evening, said any final agreement must include significant measures to protect border security. The Republican president added that funding for his planned wall along the U.S.-Mexican border - a centerpiece of his 2016 presidential campaign - would "come...

Given the recent history between Hungary, Germany and the European Union on matters of immigration policy and refugee resettlement, one can only imagine how well this is going to go over.Angela Merkel is up for reelection this year so she’s making a point of bolstering her open border policies and her support for the EU. That’s apparently why she felt she had to weigh in on Hungary’s recent positions on the subject. Those positions are, basically, that the EU can commit cultural suicide if they want, but Hungary won’t be having any part of it. Still, Merkel clearly wants...

Recipients of DACA are encouraging lawmakers to reject the main demand the president has made in exchange for their legal protections. President Donald Trump’s decision Tuesday to phase out the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy opened the door for legislative deal making. And no proposed trade has been more widely discussed than one in which Trump gets funding for his beloved border wall in exchange for permanent legal protections for the so-called DREAMers. There are just two major hitches: Democrats aren’t biting and, more significantly, neither are DACA recipients. Those recipients, along with immigration reform advocates, have been...

DACA, the “mini-DREAM Act” enacted by executive order under President Obama, is about to be killed by President Trump. Politico reports: President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants who arrived in the country as children, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. Senior White House aides huddled Sunday afternoon to discuss the rollout of a decision likely to ignite a political firestorm — and fulfill one of the president’s core campaign promises. The administration’s deliberations on the issue have been fluid and fast moving, and the president has faced...

Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona disparaged President Donald Trump’s promise to erect a physical border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, arguing “nobody ought to support” the idea. “Obviously all of us believe in border security. It depends what he means by the wall and we still really haven’t seen what he means by the wall,” Flake said on CNN’s State of the Union. “If that’s a metaphor for border security we can support that but if he’s talking about a solitary, brick and mortar two thousand mile edifice on the border, then no, nobody ought to support that.” Immigration has...

The Trump administration on Thursday announced it has chosen four companies to build concrete prototypes of the president’s much-touted border wall. Construction of the prototypes, to take place in San Diego, is the first step in fulfilling Trump’s campaign promise of building a “big, beautiful” wall stretching along the 2,000-mile Mexico border. “Today we mark a significant milestone,” said Ronald Vitiello, acting deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But there appears to be a lack of political will to fund a continuous barrier. Congress has set aside $20 million in the current budget to build the prototypes but...

In further evidence that tensions are rising between President Trump and Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), Flake just criticized Trump's signature proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. "This notion of a 2,000-mile wall has always been just — for anybody who spends time on the border — just a bit, you know, out there," Flake said in an interview Thursday with ABC15 in Arizona. He offered to show Trump the landscape of the Arizona-Mexico border to prove a wall isn't necessary. Flake's criticism came two days after Trump worked hard to avoid calling the Republican senator out...

As a candidate, US president Donald Trump insisted he’d make Mexico pay for a wall on its border. As president, he’s trying to strong-arm lawmakers into funding it. “If we have to close down our government, we’re building that wall,” he said (paywall) at a rally in Phoenix on Aug. 22. Even in normal circumstances passing a spending package is steeped in complexity, and when Congress returns from summer recess on Sept. 5 it will have less than a month to do it. Simultaneously, it must agree to lift the federal debt ceiling by Sept 29 to stop the country...

Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday rejected a threat by President Donald Trump to shut down the government to force Congress to approve funding for a border wall with Mexico. "I don't think a government shutdown is necessary and I don't think most people want to see a government shutdown, ourselves included," the leader of the Republican-controlled House said at a news conference in Oregon where he was promoting tax reform. Ryan argued the House had already passed funding for border security but that the narrowly divided Senate -- where Democrats have considerably more sway over what gets into funding bills --...

The Democratic National Committee came under fire from many online Tuesday after sending out a release on its press list that called out President Donald Trump's "empty promises on border wall." "Trump has failed to deliver on his signature promise to build a border wall and have Mexico pay for it," the DNC release read. "Trump even admitted in a private conversation with Mexico that his border wall promise was 'the least important thing.'" The email, which contained a number of links to stories that backed up the DNC's assessment, was met with near-instant ridicule from those on the left....

In a fiery speech on Saturday, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren went after President Trump and the wall he has pledged to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. “Mr. President, we are never, ever going to build your stupid wall!” Warren shouted during her speech at the 17th annual Netroots Nation conference. The progressive lawmaker, who many believe has plans to run for president in 2020, rattled off a litany of grievances she has with the Trump administration and Republicans. At one point, Warren went after her former Senate colleague, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, calling him “a man too racist to become...

llegals living in Los Angeles County were handed almost $1.3 billion in welfare payouts between the months of 2015 and 2016, Fox News reported, citing data. That’s billion with a capital “B.” That’s a quarter of what the county distributed to its entire needy population in those same months. Liberals and government elitists always like to make the case that citizens ought to support some cheap-sounding fee- or tax-paying cause by grandly pronouncing, “It’s just the cost of a cup of coffee,” or “If everyone just gave up their Starbucks lattes, it’d pay for itself.” Well, guess what $1.3 billion...

People will “resort to mob violence” when they “are finally aware of the fact that they’ve been tricked by their society, and that no matter how hard they work as middle class people” they are denied.“That is what’s going to happen in this country,” Savage said. “You have not yet seen mob violence in this country. You’ve seen some mob violence instigated by George Soros’ mobs. … But you haven’t seen the thing I’m telling you is coming in this country. You haven’t seen the ‘Day of the Locust’ yet.”

[snip] Bottom line: The wall is no metaphor to Trump. He will accept no substitutes to a huge, long, physical wall, which he believes his voters viscerally want. He told GOP Hill leaders in June he wants it to be 40 to 50 feet high and covered with solar panels. Hill Republicans privately mocked that idea, but some of those same people now recognize that Trump's big, beautiful — and in their minds, ridiculous — wall could be the thing that brings the U.S. government to its knees.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the House's $788 billion spending measure (all times local): 2:30 p.m. The Republican-led House has voted to make a $1.6 billion down payment for President Donald Trump's long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The vote was 230-196. Republican leaders avoided voting directly on the divisive issue Thursday. Instead, they tucked the wall provision into a broader procedural vote.....

President Donald Trump plans to use anti-terror law to avoid undergoing a years-long environmental impact study for a large section of a border wall that is expected to travel through a wildlife refuge, Reuters reported Friday night. Trump will use a 2005 anti-terror law created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack to sidestep an environmental impact study for a 32-mile portion of the border wall, sources told Reuters. The proposed section will pass through the 2,000-acre Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge near the southern tip of Texas. The area is home to 400 species of birds as well...

White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci reaffirmed President Donald Trump’s commitment to stand for “the people that need the most help in the United States,” during an interview on SiriusXM’s “Breitbart News Saturday.” The new communications director told Breitbart’s Matt Boyle that the shake-up within the White House in the aftermath of Scaramucci’s hiring and White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s unexpected resignation will serve to “refine” the message the president wishes to deliver to the American people. He said Trump is focused on fulfilling his campaign promises and corralling Congress into passing his legislative agenda. “We’ve got to get...

House Democratic leaders on Wednesday offered a stern warning to Republicans hoping to put hundreds of millions of dollars toward President Trump’s border wall next year: You’re on your own. “They know that the majority of the Democrats don’t support funding for that wall,” Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, told reporters in the Capitol. “If they choose to include it, then they are basically saying, ‘We have the votes among the Republican Party to pass this without a single Democratic vote.’ And if they’re not successful, the blame lies squarely at their feet, because they...

In today’s issue: Savage is fed up with the media’s fixation, including the talk-radio world, on the ongoing Twitter war between the president and liberal cable channels MSNBC and CNN. “Everyone’s either on vacation or doing the same garbage about CNN. How can you listen to that?” Savage asked. (From the Savage Newsletter)

Ruling applies nationwide and means grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles and cousins are no longer subject to the ban WASHINGTON—A Hawaii judge late Thursday ordered a nationwide loosening of President Donald Trump’s temporary ban on U.S. entry for some travelers from six Muslim-majority countries, ruling the administration’s strict approach contradicted a recent Supreme Court ruling.