Free Republic

Twice-elected Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner today announced her campaign to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, hoping to use her strong ties to the national GOP and former President Donald Trump to take out the scandal-tarred lawmaker. In a statement to Secrets, the mayor of Mendham Borough, which sits 40 miles from Manhattan, blasted Menendez’s “career of cronyism” and unbending support of President Joe Biden. “We need a fighter -- someone who believes hard working Americans matter, and who will stop Joe Biden’s failed economic policies,” she said. “Bob Menendez has failed New Jersey -- because he’s more interested in...

This week’s Liberal Media Scream shows exactly the difference between small-government conservatives and big-government liberals.Imagine wanting 87,000 more Internal Revenue Service agents. Well, that’s not only what NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd said, but he sneered at those who don’t want them as likely tax cheats.On his Sunday show, he took on the GOP plan to roll back the Biden administration’s request and said, “I have never understood the resistance of extra IRA agents — unless you knowingly cheat on your taxes.” His guest, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), replied, “That’s salacious and you know that.”Donalds said that “when...

Former President Donald Trump revealed today that Richard Nixon’s “biggest regret” was giving in to GOP pressure to resign during the Watergate impeachment crisis, a move the 45th president said he wouldn’t have made. “His daughter actually told me that his biggest regret was that he didn't fight, he should have fought,” Trump said, without identifying which daughter. But, he added, Nixon lacked the public support needed to carry on. “I'm not sure that that had an impact one way or the other,” he said, had Nixon resisted. In a media roundtable to discuss the April 25 release of the...

The Biden administration this week opened the path to citizenship for immigrants with mental disabilities so great that they can’t learn basic English or pass a U.S. civics test. The changes are raising new questions that enemies of the nation may claim mental disabilities to skirt requirements to swear loyalty to the United States or demonstrate they have good moral character. “It’s one thing to promote policies that encourage naturalization and make it accessible, but these new rules cross the line, diluting the requirements in a way that potentially will lead to abuse of the system,” said Jessica Vaughan, director...

Republican pollster Rick Shaftan is like a lot of political junkies: He looks to his mother for hints on what real America is thinking. Lately, their talks have been about former President Donald Trump and whether he should run again. SNIP Of course, Trump does make some news, but it's mostly complaining about the 2020 election results and cheering on some 140 GOP candidates he has endorsed for 2022 who have won so far. SNIP “It’s actually even worse than it appears for Trump,” said Shaftan, whose new poll shows a dramatic drop in support for Trump in Iowa and...

Abortion, the No. 1 concern in today’s media and politics, ranks nearly dead last among areas voters care about as they struggle with paying daily bills, soaring inflation, and interest rate hikes, according to a just-released survey. While the Supreme Court’s decision overruling the 1973 Roe v. Wade right to abortion has dominated today’s network and cable coverage, the latest McLaughlin & Associates poll said just 5% of voters call it a top concern. Just below abortion, at 1%, is reviewing the 2020 election, over which the media are also obsessing. ... By comparison, 54% cited the economy. “Only 5%...

Yup. President Joe Biden has finally gone there. Battered by horrible approval ratings and just today whacked in a Gallup survey showing that voter satisfaction has hit a “gloomy” new low, Biden in just a year is being kicked to the side of the road by voters. Or, as Rasmussen Reports said in its latest analysis, “Most voters think President Joe Biden is one of the worst ever to hold the office, and rank him below his two immediate predecessors in the White House.” In three questions, Rasmussen asked voters about Biden, former President Donald Trump, and former President Barack...

First-term Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the GOP rebel Washington’s establishment loves to hate, has an enormous lead in her 2022 midterm election primary and is considered "badass" and “incredibly effective” despite being booted off all House committees by Democrats. In a new campaign survey provided to Secrets, likely Republican primary voters in her northwest Georgia district chose Greene overwhelmingly over her potential opponents, and 53% would back her regardless of who challenges. And a recent redistricting that added Democratic sections of Cobb County hasn’t watered down her support in the ruby-red 14th Congressional District. “Anyone who thinks Marjorie Taylor...

For anyone questioning former President Donald Trump’s lock on the Republican Party after his 2020 loss, look no further than the impact his endorsement packs. In new polling of several House Republican primary races, a Trump endorsement pushes 2022 candidates past 50%, even against long-established incumbents such as Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. “The Trump endorsement is a true dagger,” said Zachary Moyle of SoCo Strategies. “Trump is the king of kingmakers.” In last month’s elections, for example, Trump-endorsed candidates went four for four. And according to Brian Jack, the former White House political director, Trump’s 2020 record was 120-2, and...

The former editor of the Drudge Report, Joseph Curl, announced Tuesday the launch of Off The Press, a conservative-oriented aggregator that he says will have a "fearless attitude" toward covering "everything for those who devour news all day." Curl says the marketplace is ripe for a premier, 24/7 news aggregator that consumers can trust, with the Drudge Report having become just another echo chamber for the mainstream media. "Now more than ever, keeping up with the most important stories is a battle," Curl says. "With social media deluging everyone with endless posts on their news feeds, the internet needs an...

Legal experts are picking up “signals” that the Trump team is bracing for subpoenas or indictments in the New York City and Georgia investigations into the former president. Washington, D.C.-based public interest lawyer John Banzhaf, who prompted the election interference investigation in Georgia, said the case is heating up. He noted that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is struggling for documents from Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is said to be “lawyering up.” Meanwhile, Willis has hired a special prosecutor who had a role in the Whitewater case against former President Bill Clinton. Banzhaf also noted that...

"His many personal and professional flaws, including his bankruptcies, sexual scandals, crude and cruel language, repelled me. I saw him as a populist, even a demagogue, who had not prepared for the heavy responsibilities of the presidency," he said in a new book, which was profiled by Paul Bedard in his Washington Secrets column. Yoo worried, at the time, that Trump would "test, evade, or even violate the Constitution." Bedard explains, "Over the course of 300 pages comparing Trump moves to the wishes of the Founding Fathers, Yoo discovered that despite constant criticism that Trump was destroying the Constitution, he...

It’s never good for a sitting president heading into reelection to be compared to Jimmy Carter. In 1980, with the country in an economic and diplomatic crisis, the beleaguered former president took on Ronald Reagan, then considered a weak challenger, and won only six states. Now as 2020 nears, President Trump is finding himself constantly behind Democrats in reelection polls and the latest has compared the Republican to Carter. “Perhaps the closest analogy to Trump in terms of approval ratings is Jimmy Carter, whose average approval rating for his term was 45 percent,” said a survey from the Wason Center...

A majority of voters continue to approve of President Trump despite a media onslaught driven by the rise in deaths from the coronavirus, according to a new national survey provided to Secrets. In the latest Zogby Analytics survey, 51% approve of Trump’s job, while 47% do not. A 51% approval rating is considered the level needed for reelection. And while the survey found that the public isn’t ready to blame the president for the mounting virus crisis, his handling of the issue is under water slightly: 48% approve, and 52% disapprove. “There is no doubt there have been major mishaps...

The illegal immigrant population is as high as 29.5 million, far more than the 11 million accepted by experts and the government, according to an explosive new report from three Yale University experts. “Our results lead us to the conclusion that the widely accepted estimate of 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the United States is too small. Our model estimates indicate that the true number is likely to be larger, with an estimated 95 percent probability interval ranging from 16.2 to 29.5 million undocumented immigrants,” said their report published by PLOS One, an academic journal. The authors from Yale School...

Women who live in America’s suburbs are supporting President Donald Trump’s re-election bid, says a new report at OpenSecrets.org, that shows Trump is benefiting from a surge in large-dollar donations from women in suburbs – more than any Democrat candidate. While mainstream media are reporting some polls that suggest Trump is losing the support of women, the report by Open Secrets, part of the Center for Responsive Politics, shows the president has over 10,500 large-dollar contributions from women in suburbs, and has received $8,293,135 from them – the largest amount than any of the Democrat 2020 candidates. “Suburban women, who...

Hillary Rodham Clinton made listening tours famous, using them to build buzz for her New York Senate and presidential campaigns. Now, she’s on another. In an email to supporters, the 2008 and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate said, “I’d like to hear what you’re thinking.” While she isn’t talking about running for president a third time, Clinton said that she has been talking to people about key issues, including immigration reform and electing Democrats “at all levels” in 2020.

The backlash has begun on top Democrats who pushed the claims of Russian collusion with the 2016 Trump campaign. Sen. Rand Paul today called on Justice to investigate the Obama aides who forced the false claims into public. “Time to investigate the Obama officials who concocted and spread the Russian conspiracy hoax!” he tweeted. And Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin demanded a probe into the efforts by the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton campaign to spy on the Trump campaign. “I’m very concerned that it’s becoming more clear that the Obama administration was able to obtain a FISA warrant to...

Voters in congressional districts that President Trump won in 2016 but flipped Democratic last November support his border wall and believe Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have accepted his immigration deal to end the partial government shutdown. A poll of 10 representative districts, some of which Trump won by a big margin but then voted a Democrat into office in 2018, also found that a plurality approve of the president’s job performance, 49 percent to 48 percent. The Public Opinion Strategies survey done for the Republican National Committee provided some hope for the president and GOP messaging on the border...

President Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Speaker Paul Ryan have teamed up this summer to do something that hasn’t happened in two decades — write and pass department spending bills instead of lumping everything into a massive package. The House and Senate are moving at a brisk pace to pass the appropriations bills, with the Senate leading, approving nine of 12. What’s more, the Trump administration has pushed through key priorities on wall and Pentagon spending, as well as curbing wasteful programs, though still ending up with a more expensive budget than they wanted by over $50...