Free Republic

The shutdown became one of the three longest in U.S. history on Friday, with lawmakers indicating they believe it will drag on and few signs emerging of progress toward reopening the government. That isn’t stopping questions about what could force lawmakers toward the negotiating table to figure out a resolution, especially with a number of potential pressure points front and center for lawmakers in the coming weeks. Here are some key dates to keep an eye on in the coming weeks that could force action. Oct. 24: Next paycheck for federal employees Government employees — whether they are furloughed or...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) dared Democrats on Tuesday to challenge President Trump’s administration move to repurpose previously appropriated funds to pay service members during the government shutdown. “If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid, bring it. OK,” Johnson said during a press conference at the Capitol.The Speaker said his understanding was that the administration had “every right” to move funds that had been appropriated by Congress to the Department of Defense, including research and development accounts that had not been spent and that could be used for military pay.Trump over the weekend directed...

Knives are coming out for former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) in the California gubernatorial race after several videos released this week generated widespread criticism over her behavior. Porter’s opponents and other Democrats rebuked the former congresswoman this week after she sought to end an interview early over a question that was visibly frustrating her.Shortly after, Politico obtained a video of Porter berating a staffer in 2021 for entering her live shot while she was recording a video with then-Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (D), fueling further backlash. Though the California primary is months away, the incidents are threatening to hinder her...

Demonstrators will once again take to the streets for “No Kings Day,” a nationwide series of protests against the Trump administration, on Oct. 18. While protests against President Trump have not been uncommon since his first term, “No Kings Day” kicked off on June 14. These gatherings were organized in response to the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary military parade in Washington, D.C., which coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday. Across the country, 2,000 “No Kings” protests are scheduled for next Saturday, according to a post from the Indivisible project. There are plans in major cities like Los Angeles; Boston; Washington; Chicago;...

Robert De Niro on Thursday called on people to take to the streets to protest President Trump in an upcoming “No Kings Day” on Oct. 18. “The original No Kings protest was 250 years ago,” De Niro said in a video shared on the Indivisible Project’s Instagram page. “Americans decided they didn’t want to live under the rule of King George III. They declared their independence and fought a bloody war for democracy.” “We’ve had two and a half centuries of democracy since then, often challenging, sometimes messy, always essential,” the actor continued. “And we fought in two world wars...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday the U.S. will host a new Qatari air force facility in Idaho, where pilots will train to fly F-15s. Hegseth said the Trump administration has signed the letter greenlighting the building of a Qatar Emiri air force contingent at the Mountain Home Air Force Base located in southwestern Idaho. Qatar Emiri air force is the air arm of Qatar’s armed forces. “Location will be host to a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability,” Hegeseth said Friday. “It’s just another example of our partnership.”Mountain Home Air Force...

“Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid,” Hawley wrote. “But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party’s Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.” Hawley has consistently spoken up about his opposition to the House plan to use Medicaid cuts to pay for the party-line megabill. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been charged with finding at least $880 billion in federal spending...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said Tuesday that she has faced more pressure over a petition to trigger a House vote compelling the release of files linked to Jeffrey Epstein than any other issue. “My signature is on that discharge petition, and there has not been another issue where I have ever received more pressure than that one, and I’m pretty much shocked by it. I can’t imagine — I’ve never understood how this is an issue,” Greene told NewsNation’s Blake Burman on “The Hill.” “I think when it comes to women being raped, especially when they were 14 years...

Republican senators are increasingly uneasy about President Trump’s standoff with Democratic governors over deploying National Guard troops from other states to Portland, Ore., and Chicago. The conflict between federal and state authorities escalated dramatically over the weekend when Trump moved to send National Guard soldiers to Oregon and Illinois despite opposition from their respective governors, Tina Kotek and JB Pritzker. Trump’s use of military forces was all the more controversial because a Trump-appointed federal judge for the District of Oregon ruled Saturday that the administration could not federalize Oregon’s National Guard to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) touted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) call to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, as he doubled down on his opposition to funding the government without addressing the expiring tax credits. In remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, the Democratic leader read aloud from part of a social media post in which Greene said she’s “absolutely disgusted” that health insurance premiums could double if the ACA subsidies expire at the end of the year, breaking with her party on an issue at the center of the government shutdown standoff.“I’m going to go against everyone...

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “my way or the highway” message to hundreds of generals and admirals at a summit in Virginia last week has sparked fears that some top leaders may choose to bow out of the U.S. military entirely. The departure of two senior leaders last week stoked those worries, though the Pentagon says they were unrelated to Hegseth’s ultimatum.“His speech directly attacked the values of many of the senior officers and enlisted members in the audience, and I would expect many of them to demonstrate their disgust by retiring,” Don Christensen, a retired Air Force colonel and former...

Some estimates suggest that half of all white-collar jobs will disappear as artificial intelligence advances. How will older white-collar workers displaced in the AI revolution fare? Our recent book, “American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era,” summarizes interviews we conducted with 62 baby boomers who lost their white-collar jobs during another unemployment crisis: the 2008 Great Recession and its sluggish recovery. Statistics show that workers over age 50 experienced the highest rates of long-term joblessness. Their layoffs also coincided with a precarious stage of the life course: “too young to retire but too old to start all over,”...

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said on social media this weekend that she is “not suicidal,” raising the prospect of “heinous actions” in response to her support for a measure that would force the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. “I am not suicidal and one of the happiest healthiest people you will meet,” Greene said Saturday on social platform X, also noting her faith in God. “With that said, if something happens to me, I ask you all to find out which foreign government or powerful people would take heinous actions to stop the information from coming out.”...

New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani holds a 20-point lead over his closest opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a Suffolk University CityView poll released this week. The survey, which includes likely voters in November’s general election, shows Mamdani in the lead with 45 percent support, followed by Cuomo with 25 percent, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa with 9 percent and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams with 8 percent. Cuomo and Adams are running as independents. Three other candidates — Conservative Party nominee Irene Estrada, independent Joseph Hernandez and independent Jim Walden — earn a combined 1 percent...

It was June 2015. Online, there were countless videos of smug Democrats, self-proclaimed “experts” and know-nothing pundits literally laughing out loud at the prospect of New York City businessman Donald Trump declaring his run for president. That fools’ parade found it hilarious that Trump truly thought he could beat “seasoned” Republican politicians in the primary. They guaranteed that the “delusional” Trump could never beat Hillary Clinton in the general election. In the process, they only proved themselves irrelevant and totally out of touch with the issues plaguing the nation.Back in 2016, Trump was propelled by a very powerful message —...

Lawmakers in both parties fighting to force the Trump administration to release all the federal files on Jeffrey Epstein took a big step closer to their goal this week. Adelita Grijalva’s victory on Tuesday in a special House election in southern Arizona sends another Democrat to Capitol Hill — and secures the deciding endorsement of the procedural tool forcing a House vote on legislation to compel the Justice Department to disclose the still-concealed documents related to the late child sex offender. That procedural tool, known as a discharge petition, currently has 217 signatures. Grijalva is set to make it 218,...

Stephen A. Smith on Sunday dismissed news about former Vice President Kamala Harris’s upcoming book, saying, “Who cares what she has to say?” Harris’s book on her 2024 presidential campaign, “107 Days,” will be released on Tuesday. “Well, there’s nothing to elaborate about,” the ESPN commentator said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Who cares what she has to say at this particular moment in time? I hope the book is successful.” Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after former President Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July 2024, called her boss’s decision to run for reelection “reckless” in an...

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, in a Tuesday opinion piece for The Guardian, called out President Trump for boosting “divisive, far-right politics” worldwide in recent years. “We must unite to take on the reactionary populists and nativists who are exploiting economic concerns, the atomisation of modern life and a growing distrust of political and media institutions – something we have seen in countries across Europe and, of course, in the US,” Khan said in his Guardian piece. “President Donald Trump and his coterie have perhaps done the most to fan the flames of divisive, far-right politics around the world in recent...

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly exasperated over President Trump’s refusal to give them permission to move tough bipartisan sanctions legislation against Russia and countries that buy its oil. Trump pressed European allies over the weekend to levy harsher sanctions against Russia, but he has dragged his feet on the bipartisan sanctions bill, which Republican senators were hoping to get done in July. The failure to act is fueling growing disillusionment among some Senate Republicans that Trump is not serious about helping Ukraine. One Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment candidly on the stalemate over the sanctions legislation questioned whether...

The Senate and House are on a collision course over whether to repeal comprehensive sanctions on Syria, a rare area where there are bipartisan coalitions on both sides of the debate. Discussion centers on whether to completely repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, a severe sanctions mechanism that blocked nearly all U.S. and international cooperation or engagement with the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Legislation to repeal Caesar is included in the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2026. But an amendment to the House version of the NDAA to repeal Caesar...