Free Republic

Sen. Paul’s bill failed 45-55, seven moderate Republican senators voted against the clean repeal bill. The Senate continues to try to coalesce around an Obamacare repeal compromise bill. Paul called the bill the “Obamacare Repeal Reconciliation Act of 2017.” Sen. Paul consistently opposed the leadership’s healthcare bill, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA); the BCRA failed to pass through a procedural vote Tuesday night in the Senate. Paul offered his clean Obamacare repeal bill that would repeal large sections of Obamacare.

Fritsch, who served as the Journal’s bureau chief in Mexico City and has lectured at the liberal Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, married into a family with Mexican business interests. His wife, Beatriz Garcia, formerly worked as an executive at Grupo Dina, a manufacturer of trucks and buses in Mexico City that benefits from NAFTA, which Trump opposes. Fritsch’s Fusion GPS partner Thomas Catan, who grew up in Britain, once edited a business magazine in Mexico, moreover. A third founding partner, Glenn Simpson, is reported to have shared dark views of both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump. Before joining Fusion...

The Washington Post editors refuse to publicly release the smoking gun “anonymous letter” that serves as the foundation of their sensational charge that White House advisor Jared Kushner sought a secret, back-channel to Russian officials. The “anonymous letter” was part of a front-page article claiming the president’s son-in-law sought to set up a private communications channel to Russian officials during a discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The piece was published Sunday and received high profile coverage throughout the long Memorial Day weekend. “The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among...

Russia and the United States Should Cooperate “It’s very hard to solve the problem of ISIS. It’s like cancer. It can be treated at one stage, but not at another. “ISIS understands the Europeans and America, and Russia, and China, the civilized world we might say, is in a state of fierce internal competition. They chose this historical moment.” Fight ISIS, Not Assad “Not one change of government in this situation will solve anything. In the process of change, the internal conflicts will intensify. Regarding the Western approach of trying to defeat both President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and the...

Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis on Saturday described some of Europe's refugee centres as "concentration camps" as he paid tribute to an unknown Christian woman slain for her faith in front of her Muslim husband. "These refugee camps -- so many are concentration camps, crowded with people... because international accords seem more important than human rights," Francis said in impromptu remarks at a ceremony in memory of modern day Christian martyrs. Departing from his prepared script and appearing unusually emotional as he spoke, the 80-year-old pontiff said he wanted the woman to be remembered along with all the other martyrs...

<p>Donald J. Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in November came as a shock to the world. Polls, news reports and everything the Clinton campaign was hearing in the final days pointed to her becoming the first female president in American history.</p>

Candace Marie Claiborne, a 60-year-old employee of the U.S. Department of State, was charged Wednesday with obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI -- both felony offenses -- for allegedly concealing numerous contacts that she had over a period of years with Chinese intelligence agents, the Justice Department said Wednesday. The veteran State Department employee, who appeared before a judge Wednesday, is also accused of failing to report gifts she received from Chinese contacts. Claiborne allegedly failed to report repeated contacts with two intelligence agents of the People’s Republic of China, and the agents provided tens...

You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, but wringing water from the desert sky is now possible, thanks to a new spongelike device that uses sunlight to suck water vapor from air, even in low humidity. The device can produce nearly 3 liters of water per day, and researchers say future versions will be even better. That means homes in the driest parts of the world could soon have a solar-powered appliance capable of delivering all the water they need, offering relief to billions of people. To find an all-purpose solution, researchers led by Omar Yaghi, a chemist at the...

EXCERPTS: Rice’s influence flows from her close relationship with Obama. Their ties go back to 2006, when she signed onto his first presidential campaign as a foreign policy advisor. “There is a reason why Obama has an intense loyalty to Susan,” a former NSC staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House politics. “In 2006, she could have easily gone to the Hillary camp. She took a significant career risk by signing on with his campaign. He views her like a sister.”

The BBC has learned that US officials "verified" a key claim in a report about Kremlin involvement in Donald Trump's election - that a Russian diplomat in Washington was in fact a spy. So far, no single piece of evidence has been made public proving that the Trump campaign joined with Russia to steal the US presidency - nothing. But the FBI Director, James Comey, told a hushed committee room in Congress last week that this is precisely what his agents are investigating. Stop to let that thought reverberate for a moment. "Investigation is not proof," said the president's spokesman....

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico says Mexican companies that express interest in working on a border wall in the United States are betraying their country. The archdiocese says in a Sunday editorial that Mexican companies have expressed willingness to supply materials or work on the wall proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The editorial titled "Treason against the Homeland" says that "what is most surprising is the timidity of the Mexican government's economic authorities, who have not moved firmly against these companies."

Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show. The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan....

"Full Frontal" host Samantha Bee apologized for a segment on her TBS show Wednesday night that made fun of a man's haircut. In the segment about this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Bee mocked an attendee saying his haircut resembled a Nazi. "This year, the bow ties were gone, replaced by Nazi hair, Nazi hair, Nazi hair," the video narrates while focusing in on 20-year-old student Kyle Coddington. It turns out, Coddington has a partially-shaved head because he is battling brain cancer. "When @iamsambee makes fun of your brother for having 'Nazi hair,'" Coddington's sister tweeted at the comedian....

President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has turned over its most valuable asset — a massive computer database containing personal data on millions of American voters — to a new advocacy group created to advance the White House agenda on issues ranging from gun control to immigration reform. Organizing For Action (OFA), the advocacy group set up in recent weeks by the president’s top political aides, has already acquired access to the database under a leasing agreement with the Obama campaign, Katie Hogan, a former Obama campaign aide who is now serving as spokeswoman for the lobbying group, told NBC News....

Nearly two months into the Trump administration, the IRS commissioner House Republicans once threatened with impeachment remains on the job. John Koskinen's continued tenure may be surprising, considering how aggressively Republicans went after him under the Obama administration. But despite a sustained push by congressional Republicans to oust the IRS chief before his five-year term expires this November, President Trump so far has made no move to do so. A White House official, asked about the commissioner's future, also told Fox News on Wednesday they had no personnel announcements “at this time.” House Republicans aren't giving up their quest to...

Louis J. Marinelli is a man on a quixotic mission: to help California secede from the United States and become an independent country. Surprisingly, this quest has been going relatively well of late. Marinelli's group, Yes California, is attempting to collect 585,000 signatures necessary to place a secessionist question on the 2018 ballot. Buoyed by California's already tense relationship with President Donald Trump, the campaign has received a large amount of press coverage and support over the past few months. But for the 30-year-old Yes California president, there remains one annoying problem: People keep asking him why he lives in...

As the state contemplates an income tax hike, Oregon's elites line their pockets with taxpayer money. In 2016, as politicians across America were fleeing voter wrath, Oregon’s governor and attorney general were blazing an unlikely trail – accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from businesses with state contracts. Since 1940, at the federal level, individuals and entities negotiating or working under federal contracts are prohibited from giving political cash to candidates, parties or committees. In Oregon, however, this political patronage is perfectly legal, at least for now. Our analysis at American Transparency (OpenTheBooks.com) found 207 state contractors...

Authorities lifted mandatory evacuation orders Tuesday for communities below the Oroville Dam. At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea announced the order had been changed to an evacuation warning after he said the risk of flooding had been reduced. "We have concluded it is safe to reduce the emergency evacuation order to an evacuation warning"said Honea, who had made the initial call Sunday to evacuate a large swath of three counties below the imperiled dam. At the time, residents were told the spillway to the dam could collapse within an hour. Roadblocks on the two main...

You do know that Ted Kennedy conspired with the Soviets in 1984 to oust Ronald Reagan from the White House, right? You didn’t know that? Well, don’t feel so bad. That news has always been given a good leaving alone by the alt-left media now promoting this nonsense about “Russian hacking.” in 1991 a British reporter going through the just-released Kremlin archives found a 1983 memo from the top guy at the KGB to Yuri Andropov, the dictator of what was then the Soviet Union. On Kennedy’s orders, old buddy John Tunney briefed the Kremlin murderers on what Teddy was...

On Friday, California Governor Jerry Brown sought federal help from President Trump by asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to declare “a major disaster” in California in light of the damage done by recent storms. The East Bay Times reports: “Brown formally requested the declaration for the series of storms striking the state between Jan. 3 and Jan. 12.” He noted that “heavy rains, winds and snow, particularly in Northern California, left eight people dead and knocked out power to an estimated 1 million Californian homes and businesses.” Brown’s request comes as Gov. Brown has challenged the Trump administration...