Free Republic

Trump campaign officials have been discussing a digital campaign to boost President Trump’s 2020 support among three key demographic groups: African Americans, Hispanics and suburban women, two sources familiar with the plan tell Axios. Why it matters: These are the groups the president must make inroads with the most. Trump won in 2016 with less support from black and Hispanic voters than any president in at least 40 years, per Reuters. And in 2018, suburban women revolted against Republicans in the midterms, a shift that was widely seen as a direct rebuke of Trump. "We have high confidence that we’ll...

Amidst the no-shampoo revolution, a look at global hygiene habits Cleanliness, it turns out, has been one dirty trick. One reason early-20th-century Americans ramped up their weekly baths to daily showers is that marketing companies capitalized on the insecurities of a new class of office drones working in close quarters. As Gizmodo wrote last week, to sell products like "toilet soap" and Listerine to Americans, "the advertising industry had to create pseudoscientific maladies like 'bad breath' and 'body odor.'" Take, for instance, Gizmodo's description of the philosophy of the Cleanliness Institute, which was founded by the Association of American Soap...

Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries has accused the GOP of blindly following President Donald Trump 'like a cult,' while Democrats the presdient for the border crisis. “We are urging our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to show some decency, show some strength and stop acting like you are part of a cult,” Jeffries said.House Democrats want the GOP to support a $4.5 billion emergency spending bill that will implement restrictions on how border officials treat illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border.

The simmering trade war between the U.S. and China has led both sides to raise tariffs, but the lopsided trade relationship between the two countries means the impact will fall heaviest on Chinese producers and American consumers and farmers. The U.S. imported a record $539.5 billion in goods from China in 2018. The U.S. is a net importer from China in most market segments such as consumer electronics, apparel, furniture and industrial supplies. The one major exception: agriculture. By contrast, the U.S. shipped a much smaller $120.3 billion in goods to China last year, Census trade figures showed. Exports to...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

Sharia-adherent nations have long “sought a determination from the United Nations that any criticism of Islam or Muslims is ‘Islamophobia’ and banned globally.’” But somehow Westerners still generally refuse to acknowledge the real meaning and intent of the concept of “Islamophobia.” In short, it’s intended to promote the supremacy of the Sharia by discrediting and silencing critics of Islam. The UN declared its intention to become closer with the OIC years ago, and it has happened. Now: Nations belonging to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other governments adhering to Shariah law across the world are ramping up their...

President Donald Trump is considering a visit to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea during his scheduled trip to Seoul, South Korea, after the G-20 summit, according to a South Korean government official. A South Korean Blue House official told CNN that there are no plans for Trump to hold a trilateral meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his visit to the Korean Peninsula, which will be Saturday and Sunday. Trump is scheduled to meet with Moon Sunday, South Korean presidential spokesman Ko Min-jung said Monday. A White House...

A lot has happened. We’re still dealing with the border crisis, the Democratic debates are about to begin, and Iran is rattling the war sabers. The city of Los Angeles should be thankful there are so many distractions. The Democrat-run urban center has become a total disgrace. And that’s very common among the Left coast. Tucker Carlson had historian Victor Davis Hanson on last week, where the latter said that California is on the verge of becoming the nation’s first Third World state. From trash being illegally dumped to city hall becoming a rat-infested den in the city of LA,...

Here’s a surprise twist we didn’t see coming in the Venezuelan implosion saga. There’s a new visitor freshly arrived in Washington with some tales to tell and he probably knows plenty. His name is General Manuel Ricardo Cristopher Figuera and he was about as far into Venezuelan tyrant Nicolas Maduro’s inner circle as you could get. Until recently he ran the country’s highly feared secret police, the SEBIN. Before Maduro took power, Figuera spent a decade as the chief of security for his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. He reportedly studied his craft under communist spymasters in Castro’s Cuba. So this guy...

You’ve got a historically unpopular opponent in the White House, but there are nearly a dozen ways you could still blow this. To: All Democratic candidates As you prepare for your first debates later this week, some unsolicited thoughts on what you could do to blow this election. With 20 of you clamoring for attention over two nights, the opportunities are abundant for you to kick off the primary season with an easy win for the president. This might seem impossible. Donald Trump remains historically unpopular because the past three years have cemented the public’s image of the president as...

RUSH: From Axios: “’Trump Slump’ Hits Big Media.” And what this is about is that the excesses that the Democrats and the media think are Donald Trump are not shocking anybody anymore. And, therefore, the media going ape over what Trump says or does has gotten so old that people no longer need to tune in to Drive-By Media to hear about it because it isn’t news anymore. The story revolves around the fact that some media got a huge ratings bump by covering all this Trump stuff from Russia collusion to the Mueller investigation to all of that. And...

The Trump administration was very close to launching major military strikes on the nation of Iran last week. At the very last minute though, the president pulled back, and thank goodness he did. Instead of being praised for the best decisions he has made so far as president, Trump has come under attack for that. On the right, radio show host, Hugh Hewitt accused the president of being a weakling for not launching a trillion-dollar war over a broken robot. Hugh Hewitt, radio show host: Let's go to what the president did yesterday. I've been very critical of it this...

This is eaxctly why we need border security! Watch as over 1,000 migrants illegally cross the border into El Paso, Texas. ...

In 71 days, American Airlines will retire its remaining MD-80 aircraft. At one point, the MD-80s, also known as the Super 80 and nicknamed the "Mad Dog," made up more than half of AA's fleet. American Airlines called the aircraft the "workhorse of the airline's fleet throughout the 1980s and beyond." But decades since they first took flight, the planes tend to burn more fuel and require more maintenance than the Airbus aircraft and Boeing 737s that have replaced them. Monday, American Airlines released the schedule for their last passenger flights, which will take place on Sept. 3 and Sept....

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court in the coming days will have a last chance before its three-month summer break to decide whether to take up President Donald Trump’s long-stalled bid to end a program that shields from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. The Trump administration on Nov. 5 asked the conservative-majority court to throw out three lower court rulings that blocked the Republican president’s 2017 plan to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program implemented in 2012 by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. I

President Donald Trump is awarding the nation's highest military honor to an Iraq veteran who cleared an insurgent strongpoint and allowed members of his platoon to move to safety. The president is presenting the Medal of Honor to former Army Staff Sgt. David G. Bellavia of Lyndonville, New York. Bellavia was leading a squad in support of Operation Phantom Fury in Fallujah in November 2004. The White House says that after Bellavia helped his platoon escape fire, he entered a house and killed at least four insurgents who were firing rocket-propelled grenades...

A Minnesota state representative and leading critic of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is on the attack again, calling for an ethics investigation into Omar. Omar has found herself in controversy over her personal life as well as state campaign finance violations. She has admitted to the campaign finance violations and has agreed to pay back over $3,000. The investigation also revealed she had filed joint tax returns with her partner and father of her children when she was still legally married to another man. Rep. Steve Drazkowski (R-Mazeppa), a persistent critic of Omar, held a press conference Tuesday alleging that...

E Jean Carrol made headlines recently with her rather bizarre and sketchy claims of a forced sexual encounter with Donald Trump in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room two decades ago. President Trump denies even knowing who she is…. but the media, well, you know…. OrangeManBad; so anything goes. In addition to personifying an abject lack of credibility Ms. Carrol just imploded on CNN with Anderson Cooper, explaining her definition of rape is not sexual, nor doe it include sex. However, before getting to that recent development, a historic reference to Ms. Carrol is, well, weird. (h/t BAXT3R) In 1995 E....

Our constitutional system assumes that federal courts serve to remedy an injustice created by officials in the legislative and executive branches. Unfortunately, federal courts, even the Supreme Court, sometimes are responsible for creating an injustice. Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court did that for property owners in Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank of Johnson City. On Friday, in Knick v. Township of Scott, the court ended that injustice by overruling Williamson County by a 5-4 vote. For more than 30 years, people with claims under the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause have been told, “Get in the back of the...

The 2015 Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to under two degrees Celsius is in serious doubt following the collapse of European Union talks to set a target of completely decarbonizing Europe by 2050. Today’s summit of the 28 national EU leaders in Brussels was the last chance for the bloc to up its ambition before a U.N. climate summit of all the parties to the Paris Agreement in New York in September. The hope was that setting a long-term target for the EU to meet the Paris Agreement goals would spur other countries to up their commitments at...