Free Republic

Republicans nearly doubled their counteroffer to $1 trillion in negotiations with President Joe Biden over his infrastructure package. “We’re not going to disturb the 2017 tax bill, which was the best economy of my lifetime,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said. “We’re going to make it eight years, as the President said he would accept. We’re going to hit a figure, very close to what the President said he would accept.”

Meghan McCain told her co-hosts Wednesday on ABC’s “The View” that Republican lawmakers were being a “MAGA sausage-fest” for planning to remove Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from her leadership role for “refusing to debase herself to Cheeto Jesus,” referring to former President Donald Trump. McCain said, “What’s going on is Liz Cheney, by the way, was already, by the way, voted in January to stay in her position and overwhelmingly had support to stay when they tried to oust her before. What’s happening is it’s clear. I’m going to be a little crass. They’re shivving her for her going on...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) on Tuesday defended House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) as the Wyoming Republican faces intense blowback over her sharp criticisms of former President Donald Trump. Romney wrote of Cheney on social media: “Every person of conscience draws a line beyond which they will not go: Liz Cheney refuses to lie. As one of my Republican Senate colleagues said to me following my impeachment vote: ‘I wouldn’t want to be a member of a group that punished someone for following their conscience.'” On Monday, Cheney said anyone alleging that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is...

Former President George W. Bush on Friday made a call for what he described as a "gradual" path to legal residency and eventually citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants -- while at the same time claiming that "amnesty" would be "fundamentally unfair." [cut] "The help and respect historically accorded to new arrivals is one reason so many people still aspire and wait to become Americans. So how is it that in a country more generous to new arrivals than any other, immigration policy is the source of so much rancor and ill will?" he asks. Bush lists a number of...

South Carolina Republican threatens to shut down Senate if denied access to border facilities ----- A fuming Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., railed against President Joe Biden and his administration's role in the crisis at the southern border Tuesday, suggesting the White House is gaslighting the public into believing the U.S.-Mexico frontier is secure. Graham joined "Hannity" to praise Fox News contributor Sara Carter's exclusive report about conditions in migrant holding facilities. "If this is proven to be true and I have no doubt it is," Graham said, "all I can say -- let me tell you this, [migrant holding] POD...

When the old guard goes out of its way to crush a new endeavor, you have to wonder what’s at stake. Nick Solheim and Saurabh Sharma of American Moment are young, devoted, and driven to “forge a cadre of aligned and dedicated young people to serve in government and public-policy organizations to support strong families, a sovereign nation, and prosperity for all.” Why should an editor of National Review—a publication whose very reason for being is ostensibly to energize and guide the conservative movement—want to undermine and discredit this exciting new endeavor in the eyes of his movement conservative audience?...

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Sunday declared Democrats are "out of control" in Congress, and warned their progressive legislation is "reshaping America." "...They are changing every policy of [former President Donald] Trump that worked. We are going to be dealing with this out of control immigration." "The asylum claims are going to go through the roof..."

SO I went there for the first time in a while and it's like a Biden campaign site. Every link is pro-Biden or anti-Trump. There is even a main headline story claming Biden beats Trump on Twitter! LOL! Biden isn't even in control of that account its some moronic interns. I thought Drudge was meant to be a conservative? Well, he was for about 20 years and all of a sudden he is Democrat. I don't get it...

Something doesn’t add up. With all that we know about how extreme and radical Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are, please help me understand the rationale behind those who claim to be Christian, conservative or pro-life and can vote for the Democrat Party anymore. It’s one thing to say Donald Trump is personally offensive and you’re not going to vote in this election. But to say Trump is so offensive that you’re willing to abandon your convictions and faith, and endorse a candidate whose policies are diametrically opposed to all you claim to believe in and value seems to be...

The #RedforEd teachers’ movement appears to be moving towards Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as their choice for the 2020 Democrat nominee. The Sanders campaign highlighted that connection in its recent statement announcing its $34 million 4th quarter fundraising haul, noting, “‘Teacher’ was the most common occupation of Sanders’ fourth quarter donors, the five most common employers were Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, the United States Postal Service and Target.”

The “Never Trump” movement has a new ally: hedge fund boss Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in 2017 after serving 11 days as communications director in President Donald Trump’s White House. Anti-Trump pundit and veteran Republican operative Bill Kristol confirmed to CNBC in a few brief text messages that he has spoken to Scaramucci since the SkyBridge Capital founder had a public falling out with Trump this summer. Asked whether he has spoken to Scaramucci about trying to find another presidential candidate to replace Trump on the top of the GOP ticket next year, Kristol said: “Yup.”

Is there a shy Trump voter factor the way there used to be “shy Tory factor” in polls? Probably. *** Let’s say the shy Trump voters are worth a five-point swing in favor of Trump compared to the most recent numbers in key states. In a matchup against Joe Biden, Trump would still lose Michigan, lose Pennsylvania, and lose Wisconsin, as well as losing the national popular vote by a slightly larger margin than in 2016. If Biden won those three states, and kept Hillary Clinton’s states, he’s at 278 electoral votes and Trump would be a one-term president. If...

I often wonder who didn’t love Donald Trump. I often wonder who left an affection void that he has tried to fill by winning attention, which is not the same thing. He’s turned his life into a marketing strategy. As Michael Cohen said in his testimony on Wednesday, even the presidential campaign was a marketing campaign to build the Trump brand. In turning himself into a brand he’s turned himself into a human shell, so brittle and gilded that there is no place for people close to him to attach. His desperate attempts to be loved have made him unable...

Jonah Goldberg is leaving National Review in the coming months to start a new conservative media company with Steve Hayes, who was editor-in-chief of The Weekly Standard when its owner shut it down in December. Details: Goldberg and Hayes tell me they plan a reporting-driven, Trump-skeptical company that will begin with newsletters as soon as this summer, then add a website in September, and perhaps ultimately a print magazine. •Hayes, the likely CEO, and Goldberg, likely the editor-in-chief, are the founders. •Hayes tells me about the startup, which doesn’t have a name now: "We believe there’s a great appetite on...

Trumpism (if not Trump himself) has given oxygen to some of the ugliest impulses among us. Near the end of his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump laid out his theory of a vast globalist conspiracy. “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors,” Trump said. “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a...

House Republicans who have spent the last two years arguing that there was bias in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department are preparing to subpoena two key witnesses in the final weeks of their majority — former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va., has notified colleagues that he will subpoena Comey for a closed-door deposition Nov. 29 and Lynch for Dec. 5, according to a person familiar with the subpoenas. The person declined to be identified because the person was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. The subpoenas...

Alex Jones — conspiracy peddler, provocateur, Texan — lost easy access to millions upon millions of followers this week when Facebook, YouTube, Apple and Spotify banned much, if not all, of his content. Thinking of Jones’ empire — built on provably false theories and predictably wrong predictions — I wondered about those followers. Who are they? What brings them to his pages? Why do they seem willing to accept fantasy and conjecture over fact? Do they, as Jones’ lawyers have suggested, think the whole thing is a bit for entertainment? Would they tell me — a longtime member of the...

Israel hopes Jonathan Pollard, an American spy who served 30 years in prison for selling secrets to the Jewish state, will be allowed to emigrate there as the US moves its embassy to Jerusalem, a minister said on Monday. "I hope that President Donald Trump will offer another gift to Israelis by allowing Jonathan Pollard to come and celebrate the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem," Israel's Transport and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told army radio. "I hope that President Trump will agree to that request with Jonathan Pollard having spent so many years in prison." The United States...

(CNN)New documents obtained by CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" on Wednesday suggest a deeper link than previously known between the Trump Organization and the company that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, established in 2016 to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels in exchange for silence about her alleged affair with Trump. The documents also offer the first evidence of an individual employed by the Trump Organization -- other than Cohen -- being involved in an ongoing legal battle regarding Daniels' alleged affair with Trump

With sales of recreational cannabis becoming legal in a few weeks, many Californians have been asking questions about where they’ll be able to buy it, where they’ll be able to smoke it and why on God’s green, weed-filled Earth they still have to use cash to get it. Meanwhile, all I want to know is whether the black and brown people who sold cannabis during the dark years of the war on drugs, and went to prison for it in disproportionate numbers, will benefit from the newly legal, multibillion-dollar industry.