Free Republic

The White House is poised to put forward a two-year extension for the Obamacare subsidies set to expire at the end of the month. Trump’s plan will attempt to take the healthcare issue off the table ahead of the midterm elections. Healthcare was a key part of Democrats’ successful campaign in the 2018 midterm elections. Trump’s proposal for ACA subsidies will include potential caps on income, limiting the recipients of the program, while also requiring that all enrollees pay some premium. According to the healthcare non-profit KFF, should the subsidies lapse, premiums will double for Americans and an additional 2...

Very sad news for those of you who have become connoisseurs of the hilarious inadvertent comedy provided by Politico's over-the-top obsession with the Jeffrey Epstein files the past few months. Those good times might soon be gone.No more laughs provided by a panicked Politico publishing FIVE stories last July 18 solely on the topic of the Wall Street Journal possibly tossing President Donald Trump a "lifeline" in the form of a probable fake news story about a birthday letter supposedly sent by Trump to Epstein. Yes, the fun has continued for months culminating with Wednesday's Politico announcement of a possible...

Politico's Playbook on Wednesday announced what could be the biggest world news story of the year. An end to the bloody Ukraine-Russia war via a peace deal negotiated by the Trump administration. So guess where the immediate focus of the story was? If you have been following the absurd obsessions of Politico recently you would know the answer despite not quite believing it: Jeffrey Epstein. In fact their obsession in the Playbook story by Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns, "A peace deal ‘as soon as this week’," came immediately after their joyous announcement:

A lower court order on Texas’ new congressional map has made its way to the high court. It could be the first of several mid-decade redistricting pushes. Texas’ emergency appeal is sure to challenge that conclusion. Indeed, Abbott already declared Tuesday that the redistricting effort had nothing to do with race. But another consideration could be even more consequential for the justices: whether they conclude that the lower court’s action contravenes a longstanding principle that federal courts shouldn’t disturb election rules as the process gets underway.A test for the Purcell PrincipleBrown’s ruling contains a long section addressing the so-called...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the once steadfast ally of Donald Trump who has since fallen out with the president, said the saga around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has “ripped MAGA apart.” Greene made her comments while flanked by some of Epstein’s victims outside the Capitol on Tuesday, just hours before the House is set to vote on a bill that would force the Justice Department to release Epstein case files.

Emails revealed that Summers sought advice from Epstein on romantically pursuing a woman he referred to as his mentee.Summers’ comment comes after a senior Trump administration official and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) each called on institutions to sever ties with Summers.The statement leaves question marks hanging over the fate of several positions Summers occupies, which include a board seat at OpenAI, a tenured position at Harvard, an unpaid nonresident fellow position at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank and a paid contributor role at Bloomberg News. A Summers spokesperson declined to answer a direct question about those roles.Earlier...

A federal magistrate judge says “government misconduct” may have tainted the criminal case against former FBI Director James Comey, describing a cascade of apparent errors by lead prosecutor Lindsey Halligan. The magistrate judge, William Fitzpatrick, ordered prosecutors Monday to quickly turn over records of secret grand jury proceedings to defense attorneys as they seek to dismiss the false-statement and obstruction-of-Congress charges pending against Comey in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. Judge says possible errors by Lindsey Halligan could imperil Comey case In a rare move, the judge ordered prosecutors to hand over records of the grand jury proceeding to the...

President Donald Trump’s call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote. It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. “He got tired of me winning,” Massie said of Trump’s U-turn in an interview Monday morning. Insisting “I DON’T CARE!” in a late-night Truth Social post, Trump was bowing to the inevitable — a broad House Republican mutiny on a vote that was only scheduled because Massie forced it. It was the result of...

Although the Friday Politico "Playbook" story about freshman Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin was ostensibly focused on her not very convincing engagement with Democrats "looking for clues about which path it should chart out of the electoral wilderness," it was more than obvious that it was in reality not very subtle hype for her as a presidential contender in 2028. And speaking of "clues" it shows that Politico reporter Adam Wren, who produced this Slotkin 2028 campaign promo laughably dressed up in Slotkin's existential political "search," seems to have little awareness of the sad state of the current Democrat party as...

Administration allies say they are fed up with the Defense Department’s third-most senior leader and his foreign policy surprises. More than a half dozen diplomats interviewed in Washington and Europe also complain that the Pentagon’s once steady consultations have slowed as Colby’s office crafts that strategy, along with a review of troop locations worldwide.That uncertainty deepened after the Pentagon quietly decided not to replace a rotational Army brigade in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia — a move the Romanian government learned of only two days before it was announced, according to a U.S. defense official and a Romanian official.One NATO diplomat...

The world wants an American climate leader, and Gavin Newsom is happy to play the part — even if the country he represents isn’t quite ready to follow.BELÉM, Brazil — Gavin Newsom can’t get out of a meeting or a talk at the international climate talks here without being swarmed by reporters and diplomats eager for a quote, a handshake, a photo.On a tour Tuesday of a cultural center with Gov. Helder Barbalho, the leader of the Brazilian state hosting the talks, a passerby recognized them both. “There’s the governor,” he exclaimed. “And there’s the California governor.” Later in the...

Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva was sworn in to the House Wednesday after a record 50-day wait, vowing to immediately join an effort to disclose files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Grijalva had expressed no special interest in the Epstein case prior to her Sept. 23 election. But she became intertwined in the fate of a bipartisan effort to disclose Justice Department files related to the disgraced financier after it became clear she could provide the final necessary signature on a discharge petition forcing a House vote on the matter.

Jorge Bonilla wrote a story here on Sunday about the BBC bosses, Director General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness, being forced to resign due to their organization doctoring a clip of President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.So how did Politico cover this scandal? By treading lightly on the details while emphasizing that "the latest crisis marks a significant escalation in attacks on the BBC from the right."In addition, strongly implied that the Trump administration's reaction to the BBC scandal displayed unseemly hubris as you can see in the title of their Sunday story by Matt Honeycombe-Foster, "Trump...

Senator Rand Paul is tired of being the only Republican senator willing to stand up to President Trump. The libertarian spoke with Politico’s Dasha Burns just days after being deliberately left out of Trump’s gathering of GOP senators in the Rose Garden. “We have everybody but one person here,” Trump said Wednesday. “We’re just missing one person. You’ll never guess who that is. Let me give you—he automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it’s good politics. It’s really not good politics.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday defended the White House’s decision to strike Venezuelan boats, hinting that President Donald Trump may even “expand” military operations in the region. In an interview with CBS’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” the South Carolina Republican said Trump is “doing the right thing.” “President Trump told me yesterday that he plans to brief members of Congress when he gets back from Asia about future potential military operations against Venezuela and Colombia,” Graham said. “So there will be a congressional briefing about a potential expanding from the sea to the land. I support that idea.

SNIPIn August 2025, a federal jury convicted Jinchao Wei, an active-duty U.S. Navy sailor stationed at San Diego's naval base, on multiple counts of espionage and illegal export of defense-related technical data to the Chinese government. Wei "agreed to sell Navy secrets to a Chinese intelligence officer for $12,000," according to the Department of Justice.Weeks earlier, the DOJ charged two Chinese citizens with acting as agents of China's Ministry of State Security for recruiting U.S. military personnel and gathering intelligence. In March, the DOJ also announced a series of charges against 12 Chinese nationals for conducting a sweeping cyber-espionage...

Senate Republicans are discussing voting on a bill that would prevent millions of low-income Americans from losing access to food aid on Nov. 1.The bill from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) would fund Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for the duration of the shutdown, which on Wednesday entered its 22nd day. The Department of Agriculture warned earlier this month that if the government shutdown dragged on “there will be insufficient funds to pay full November SNAP benefits for approximately 42 million individuals across the Nation.”Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a brief interview that senators were discussing “some options,” though...

Was it only weeks ago in mid-September that I wrote a column about Democrats embracing the assassination culture that took the life of young Christian evangelist Charlie Kirk? And now in Virginia they’re doubling down. Virginia Democrats are endorsing the murderous candidacy of Jay Jones, who comes from a prominent black Virginia Democrat family. You see Jones in the photograph above, applauding the Democrat candidate for governor, former U.S. Rep Abigail Spanberger. You’ve heard of Jones and his dark fantasies over texts to a colleague, seeking the murders of his Republican opponents. And their children. Yes, their kids who he...

Now that the heavily hyped Maine "oyster farmer," Graham Platner, who is running as a Democrat to defeat incumbent Senator Susan Collins has been exposed as deeply flawed, Politico's senior political columnist Jonathan Martin has lashed out at who he considers responsible for foisting Platner upon us with minimal/no vetting. And according to Martin that culprit is primarily the Democrat party as you can see in his Wednesday column, "Democrats Keep Falling for Political Fantasies. When Will They Learn?."However, what is notable is that although he mentions "journalists" in passing, he conveniently overlooks Politico's own role in promoting the flawed...

The president's one-man-show approach to policy has sidelined Congress, agencies — and a whole K Street culture.Intel Corp. looked like a winner in the Washington lobbying game at the start of 2025.The federal government was set to funnel more than $10 billion to the American microchip giant, thanks to a long influence campaign by the company’s executives and hired Washington hands, who spent three painstaking years lobbying Congress, federal agencies and White House advisers.Just a few months later, when a political controversy over the CEO’s links to Chinese companies put Intel’s deal with Washington in jeopardy, the whole drama was...