Free Republic

It's hard to read the anonymous posting on the Daily Caller from a "senior Trump official" without coming to the conclusion that the current partial government shutdown should remain shut essentially forever. (It won't.  I know. But hear me out.)  Putting aside whatever pro-administration bias the author might have, the article confirms everything one suspects or knows about bureaucracies, especially government ones. They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil...

Here is a U.S.-Mexican border snapshot. The Coronado National Forest, in New Mexico and Arizona, shares a 53-mile border with Mexico. In 2010, the average number of illegals crossing through that 53-mile stretch were 35,000 per year, of which Customs and Border Protection (CBP) estimated catching about half. There was no effective barrier. Most of those they would catch would be ten miles north of the border on or near Interstate 10, which effectively created a 500-square-mile-plus no man's land of public space, unsafe for entry by the general public. The ranchers who had private land within the area had...

As an attorney experienced working with public policy litigation, here is a practical plan for how Trump can keep the legal dispute entirely within the Fifth Circuit and out of the Ninth Circuit. First, President Trump should get on Air Force One and fly to Texas to meet with Republicans opposed to illegal immigration Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and leaders of the Texas legislature. Second, Governor Abbott should formally request the Texas legislature to issue an application for the federal government to defend the Texas border with Mexico. Section 4, Article 4 of the United States Constitution commands...

The good news: Americans agree that there is a national-security and humanitarian crisis at the southern border, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac. The bad news: pretty much everything else in the poll. Not only do respondents approve of a Democratic plan to re-open most of the shuttered agencies in the government, a solid majority puts the blame for the standoff on Donald Trump, not Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer: American voters support 63 – 30 percent a Democratic proposal to reopen parts of the government that do not involve border security while negotiating funding for the Wall,...

While a physical border barrier is important, it is even more important to eliminate the incentives to draw illegal aliens even to try to cross the border. Democrats will have a harder time explaining why we shouldn't increase taxes on corporations that hire illegal aliens than why a border barrier is "immoral." While waiting out the Democrats over the partial government shutdown, President Trump could deliver a digital wall to stem illegal immigration by using a tool already at his disposal: the U.S. Tax Code. Trump could simply direct the IRS to favor American businesses that hire persons legally permitted...

Democrats and others on the left offer three reasons for their opposition to building a wall on America's southern border. 1. A wall is ineffective. 2. A wall is too expensive. 3. A wall is immoral. Each one is false, so false as to constitute lies. So, the only question is: Do Democrats and others on the left believe these lies? This question has plagued me all my life. Leftism is built on lies -- and has been since Lenin. That's why he named the Communist Party's lying newspaper "Pravda" ("truth"). Did my left-wing professors at Columbia University really believe...

The US military will be extending its security support mission at the southern border with Mexico through the end of September, according to officials. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan authorized the extension on Monday after receiving a request from the Department of Homeland Security. The border deployment was first ordered back in October by President Trump and initially slated to end...

Does everybody understand Trump is trying to make Congress work like it is supposed to?? That includes citizens calling their representatives and telling them what you want them to do. SO, Have you called or written your Representatives and told them to Fund the wall once and for all and quit kicking this can down the road? They keep making the deal the Democrats want now, open the government first then we will deal with the rest... That is the proverbial football Lucy has been pulling at the last second for my entire voting lifetime now, 35 years. I say...

Steve Guest Twitter Video at link. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) faced some tougher talk from media hosts, for once, regarding the government shutdown that has lasted 20+ days now. President Trump promised border security during the 2016 campaign. He promised to build a wall. He has to follow through on it. It was one of his signature issues. He’s only asking $5 billion for part of his wall. The Democrats are not willing to play ball after reclaiming the House. Last week, Trump offered to re-open the government in exchange for some of the funding. Democrats rejected...

One month before the 2014 election, I was talking with a liberal couple. Working-class parents with a developmentally disabled son, they believed in government-run programs, but also prided themselves on working for a living. Our sharpest disagreements revolved around the proper role of domestic spending. They were committed Democrats, except on one issue, they told me: “We will vote for a Republican if he promises to secure the border.” In 2016, Democratic voters may have re-elected liberal US Senators and House Reps back to Washington, but they crossed party lines to put the businessman, celebrity mogul in the White House....

In February 1992, less than three months into his first stint as the federal government’s top lawyer, Attorney General William Barr told a gathering of more than 100 law enforcement officials in San Diego that under his leadership, the U.S. Department of Justice would finally solve the looming immigration crisis at the border. Barr’s proposed solution was, in its way, decades ahead of its time: the construction of a heavily armored steel fence along the U.S.-Mexico border immediately south of San Diego, complete with lighting, motion sensors, and the addition of hundreds of Border Patrol agents. So convinced was Barr...

The federal government partial shutdown drags on as politicians can’t agree on what to do with illegal aliens.   Trump wants a wall to keep out “illegal immigrants … bringing with them crime, tremendous amounts of crime,” but Democrats say that a wall is immoral and unnecessary. The media usually describe illegal aliens in glowing terms.  Many are undoubtedly good people, but new data I have obtained show that illegal aliens as a group are not very law-abiding.  The existing research is fatally flawed.  Most studies just examine all immigrants as a monolithic group, rather than separately studying legal and illegal...

Would a declaration of an emergency to build a border wall create a bad precedent? At the end of the last week, much of the political discussion here in Washington, D.C. in talk shows, statements from Congressmen and in conservative publications focused on warnings of how a future Democrat President might abuse a similar process to push left-wing policies. If Trump can declare an emergency to build the border wall, could a future Democrat President Chelsea Clinton declare an emergency and take people’s guns or force or enact legislation to fight the myth of man-made climate change. No, “that’s not...

I’ve lost track: what day of the ‘Trump Shutdown’ are we in now? Everyone losses track after the record has been broken. Yes, people are being inconvenienced. Yes, people have been furloughed and are not getting their paychecks (yet). My brother-in-law is among them. Yes, it’s tough. Things are tough all over. The Guardian writes a sympathetic article titled ‘It's ruining people's lives”: federal workers count cost of shutdown. White-collar workers face blue-collar blues.  Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said, “This shutdown isn’t funny anymore. Right now, it’s ruining people’s lives.” Do you know what else is...

Let’s accentuate the positive and start with the good. According to WaPo, support for the wall is up since last year. It’s still a minority proposition but as you refine the question to focus on registered voters instead of American adults generally, it’s practically a coin flip:Support for a border barrier is building. Not only that, wall supporters are more dug in on the current standoff than wall opponents are. Overall, Democrats appear somewhat more conciliatory than Republicans. The poll finds that 42 percent of Democrats who oppose the wall say congressional Democrats should refuse to budge even if...

President Trump should reopen the federal government for three weeks before declaring a national emergency, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham. "Before he pulls the plug on the legislative option, and I think we're almost there, I would urge him to open up the government for a short period of time, like three weeks, before he pulls the plug, see if we can get a deal," the South Carolina Republican said during an interview with "Fox News Sunday." "If we can't at the end of three weeks, all bets are off, see if you can do it by himself through the...

California welcomed a new governor this week – Gavin Newsom. Newsom has set as priorities that anyone in the state would be provided health care at no cost and that the state will remain a sanctuary state. Is there any wonder that the caravans from Central America that were supposedly coming here for humanitarian reasons diverted the path of the caravan from going to Texas and added over 500 miles to their trek to arrive at the border of California? Another year has gone by and yet there has been zero progress on confronting our dysfunctional immigration policies. Our government...

It’s not a joke to say Republicans have an uncanny knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Of all the things the GOP excels at, this tops the charts. So as the longest partial shutdown of the government in history rolls on, it’s important to take a moment to check the status of things and game out how things could go. And, believe it or not, Republicans could actually end up with money for a border wall (or barrier, whatever) if only they ignore all their natural instincts and stand strong.The sad profiles of federal employees claiming to...

The political world has been dominated this week by speculation about whether President Donald Trump will declare a national emergency in order to reprogram approximately $5.7 billion of federal funds from other purposes to the construction of some part of a border wall or barrier along the country’s international border with Mexico. So we will end up with Trump declaring a national emergency and reprogramming funds to build a border wall, this author predicts. How could this unfold, in practical details? What and how could Trump actually do to make this happen? SECOND: It is important to be specific. Different...

President Trump took to Twitter Saturday to criticize media reports on the partial government shutdown that said there was chaos in the White House over the impasse between Trump and House Democrats on his $5 billion funding demand for a border wall. I just watched a Fake reporter from the Amazon Washington Post say the White House is “chaotic, there does not seem to be a strategy for this Shutdown. There is no plan.” The Fakes always like talking Chaos, there is NONE. In fact, there’s almost nobody in the W.H. but me, and...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January...