Free Republic

President Trump on Tuesday endorsed Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) for his reelection bid in 2020, sending a message of support for one of his more outspoken Republican critics on Capitol Hill. “Senator Ben Sasse has done a wonderful job representing the people of Nebraska. He is great with our Vets, the Military, and your very important Second Amendment. Strong on Crime and the Border, Ben has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Trump tweeted. Sasse, who officially announced his reelection bid in August, has been one of the few GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to criticize the White House and had...

The controversial way America elects presidents is barreling toward a crisis point. A federal court ruling has spotlighted the confounding nature of the system, which twice in the last five elections put presidents into office against the wishes of the majority of American voters. Under the Constitution, the voters who select a president every four years are, in fact, picking a party-chosen slate of electors pledged to that candidate. The presidential candidate who wins a state’s popular vote gets all its electors — except in Nebraska and Maine, which split the electors by Congressional districts. These electors formally select the...

U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska will surround himself with many of the state’s top Republicans on Monday for a likely announcement that he’ll seek a second term, despite angering some party activists with his repeated criticism of President Donald Trump ... The event follows news last week that Sasse could face a primary challenge from Matt Innis, a Lincoln-based GOP activist and former chairman of the Lancaster County Republican Party. Innis, a Trump supporter, announced his candidacy last week and blasted Sasse for making statements critical of the president.

The Nebraska Republican Party on Monday called for GOP state Sen. John McCollister to re-register as a Democrat after he accused the party of enabling white supremacy in the United States. ... McCollister gained national attention on Sunday after sharing a series of tweets condemning the Republican Party for what he described as its complicity in "obvious racist and immoral activity inside our party." "The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country," McCollister said on Twitter. "As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it’s the truth."

A Republican state representative is speaking out against what he believes is his own party's complicity in "enabling white supremacy," and says history won't judge his fellow Republicans kindly. Nebraska state legislator Rep. John McCollister tweeted Sunday night, "The Republican Party is enabling white supremacy in our country. As a lifelong Republican, it pains me to say this, but it's the truth." The Twitter thread came one day after a white supremacist killed at least 20 people in El Paso, Texas. The criticism came as some politicians began pointing to the rhetoric from the Republican Party and the current administration...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and organizations funded by left-wing billionaire George Soros are bankrolling a plan to provide temporary amnesty to Venezuela’s population. Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a measure to create a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program for Venezuela’s population — allowing nationals who are already in the U.S. to remain and incentivizing more to migrate. Thirty-nine House Republicans joined every Democrat to support the legislation, including: Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) Rep. Michael Bost (R-IL) Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) Rep. Brian...

The Senate today confirmed Brian Buescher, President Trump’s nominee to the U.S. District Court in Nebraska. Readers may recall that Senate Democrats attacked Buescher for his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic service organization. I wrote about this here. Sen. Kamala Harris was one of the Senators who led the charge against Buescher during his Committee hearing. His other main adversary was Sen. Mazie Hirono, one of the Senate’s dimmest members. Harris isn’t dim, but she’s a hard core leftist and an incorrigible opportunist. Thus, her suggestion that Buescher’s membership in the Knights of Columbus makes him unfit...

"...Brian Buescher, who took an anti-abortion stance during an unsuccessful 2014 bid for Nebraska attorney general, was approved 51 to 40 on a party-line vote to the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska..." "...The Senate on Wednesday also confirmed Wendy Williams Berger 54 to 37 to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Three Democrats—Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—voted in her favor..."

Drywall is going up on new homes in Gothenburg, Nebraska, and it can’t happen fast enough. The small community (pop. 3,448) doesn’t have enough housing to offer workers who are considering moving in. It sounds paradoxical for a region with abundant land, but parts of rural America are facing a housing shortage. It spans the spectrum from low-income families to midlevel professionals. The good news: Washington as well as state governments are focused on the problem. “We were seeing our local businesses lose out on all of the candidates that wanted to come to work in our community but just...

It's time for Congress to step up, reclaim its constitutional authority and exercise its duty to place country over party or president or political gain, former Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Monday. "I think the Congress has forfeited its powers in many ways, allowing the president to be the dominant branch of government," Nebraska's former two-term Republican senator said in a telephone interview from suburban Washington. And that's even more dangerous when "this president, probably more than any we've ever had, is less informed, more arrogant, bullying people, really ignorant about our government and the consequences of his actions,"...

Muslims in the U.S. Marine Corps…what could possibly go wrong? A heavily armed off-duty Muslim Marine was recently arrested for trying to enter Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. Pfc. Ali Al-Kazahg, 22, of Milford, was arrested on May 31 after he tried to enter the base with two semi-automatic rifles, a pistol, a silencer, a bump stock, a vest with body armor and a case of ammunition. Omaha World-Herald (h/t Mike F) According to reports, Al-Kazahg was on a watch list after he made “suspicious statements” and had previously been reported for “suspicious activity.” He told a fellow Marine...

Former Obama administration Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Thursday that economic warfare is one of his biggest worries as the global economy becomes more interconnected... Hagel said President Trump Opens a New Window. is advancing the trade war Opens a New Window. with higher tariffs on China and Mexico that will result in the reduction of economic efficiency and living standards. “When you start down the path of tariffs and trade wars, there will be consequences, definitely, but there’ll also be unintended consequences that will have a devastating effect on our economy, on the economies of the world,” he...

For some reason, Democrats love to ask President Trump's judicial nominees about their religious backgrounds. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) was worried that U.S. district judge Peter Phipps, nominated to serve on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be no exception. So, he launched a preemptive strike at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and asked Phipps about his membership in the Knights of Columbus (KoC), a Catholic fraternal organization, and whether it has anything to do with his nomination. After all, Democrats have obsessed over the group in recent years. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE) admitted to being puzzled such line...

NEW YORK - Every hour that one of The Advance Group’s trucks is stuck in highway or bridge traffic, it costs the moving company around $200. And with 40 trucks trying to get into Manhattan daily and contending with the New York metro area’s deteriorating infrastructure, the price of lost time runs up quickly. “Getting to and from a job site is not really billable to a client,” says Anthony Parziale, president of The Advance Group, based in the suburb of Farmingdale.

What's it like to be inside a tornado as it's forming? Few people, if any, have experienced such a sensation, but Reed Timmer is now one who has -- and lived to talk about it after an extraordinary up-close encounter with a tornado on Friday evening.

These Senate offices include Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is up for re-election in Texas in 2020; Tom Cotton (R-AR), Susan Collins (R-ME), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Jim Risch (R-ID). Not one of those senators would publicly stand by Burr on Wednesday evening, when asked where they stand both on the subpoena and on whether Burr should remain chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Not only has the entire Senate Intelligence Committee GOP membership basically abandoned defending Burr publicly, it appears no Republicans anywhere have his back on this. What’s more, while Burr himself...

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said in a recent appearance that he does not think religious beliefs interfere with a judge’s job, and criticized attempts by Democrats to impose “religious tests” on judicial nominees. Thomas, in remarks last week that were first reported by The Daily Caller, was asked about the 2017 confirmation hearing of Amy Coney Barrett where Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the Catholic: “The dogma lives loudly within you and that’s a concern.” He was asked if religious convictions should be taken into consideration when lawmakers were considering a judicial pick. “I thought we got away from...

(WASHINGTON, D.C. – April 8, 2019) Tomorrow the House Oversight Committee, led by Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), will conduct hearings on the interconnected challenges of solving climate change and protecting national security. With the Trump administration ignoring longstanding warnings from the military about the impact of a changing climate on defense infrastructure and the dangers of increased instability, it is a critically important area for investigation for the Congress. The hearing follows a letter by fifty-eight senior national security officials warning about the dangers of climate change. "For more than a decade, the Department of Defense has warned presidents from...

PLEASANTON, Neb. (KHGI) - Battered by life’s storms, ranchers find relief. Ohioans bring hay to Nebraska shows that in rural America, even those 800 miles away can be neighbors. It’s been a rough season for young cattle producers. “It's just, it's hard. It's hard to come back from this,” said Bailey Dittmar, a high school senior from Amherst who raises cattle with her family. Experienced ranchers like Ken Huryta of Ravenna have never seen flooding like this, that required him to wade out and save calves, while using a horse to coax cattle to jump a ditch to get to...

Kathy Gonzalez knows that many people across the cornfields and cattle ranches of eastern Nebraska believe she is a murderer. It doesn’t change the fact that they owe her millions of dollars. Ms. Gonzalez was one of six innocent people who collectively spent 77 years in prison for the murder of a 68-year-old woman named Helen Wilson, whose death haunted this rural county for decades. Now, years after DNA evidence exonerated the defendants, they are about to collect a $28 million civil rights judgment against Gage County, which prosecuted them based on false confessions. But because the county has limited...