Free Republic

The Education Department has told BuzzFeed News it won't investigate or take action on any complaints filed by transgender students who are banned from restrooms that match their gender identity, charting new ground in the Trump administration's year-long broadside against LGBT rights. It’s the first time officials have asserted this position publicly as an interpretation of law. No formal announcement has been made. For nearly a year, the Trump administration took a less clear stance, with officials saying they were studying the issue ...

President Trump on Monday rolled out a White House budget that includes deep cuts to some federal agencies, an increase in funding for the Pentagon and $18 billion for a wall on the Mexican border. It includes proposals to cut deficits by more than $3 trillion over a decade and lower debt levels as a percentage of the gross domestic product, but does not balance by doing away with annual deficits.

Conservatives in Congress and in the hinterlands are bitterly complaining about the massive insult to fiscal sanity the budget deal passed on Thursday morning represents. Even worse, some Republicans are offended by the pushback. Their target is Senator Rand Paul who, almost alone, tried to stand in the way of the budget deal in the Senate. GOP political analyst Susan Del Percio said on MSNBC that it was the day "the tea party died." DEL PERCIO: And it’s amazing we’re not even coming close to talking about entitlement reform, so I kind of look at today as the day the...

Ohio Representative and Freedom Caucus Co-founder, Jim Jordan, blasted the recently passed budget deal on Fox News Sunday for failing limit federal spending. Rep. Jordan told host Chris Wallace that “the swamp won and the American taxpayer lost” after Congress passed a bill that increased federal spending by $300 billion. These comments echo similar statements by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). On CNN this past week, Paul blasted the hypocrisy of Republicans in Congress. “The other thing is, there's a huge hypocrisy factor. Republicans lambasted President Obama to no end for trillion-dollar deficits and now they have put forward a trillion-dollar...

<p>Trump tweeted, “Just signed Bill. Our Military will now be stronger than ever before. We love and need our Military and gave them everything — and more. First time this has happened in a long time. Also means JOBS, JOBS, JOBS!”</p>

Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 -- our gross domestic product -- totaled about $19 trillion. If the Congress spent $4 trillion of the $19 trillion that we produced, unless you believe in Santa Claus, you know that Congress must force us to spend $4 trillion less privately. Taxing us is...

President Trump told Republican lawmakers Tuesday that he would "love to see a shutdown" of the federal government if Democrats do not support his proposed changes to immigration law. [Snip] The White House has proposed steep cuts in legal immigration and increased border security, including a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, in exchange for continuing protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Democrats have balked at the proposals and forced a three-day government shutdown over the issue last month. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters that Trump's latest comment...

In the Mulvaney presser, the strategy is to keep Gov’t open. Military, Park Rangers, etc, will work without pay - reserve funds will keep the lights on.So Gov’t workers WON’T get free holiday.I’m assuming the RATs will have to vote against their getting paychecks in two weeks ... is that the Vote the GOP is going to make them take ???

BREAKING: AP source: Trump phones Senate Dem leader Schumer, invites him to White House to try to reach deal to avert shutdown.

60 votes is necessary to pass with a FILIBUSTER-PROOF margin. 51 is all that is required to PASS THE BUDGET. So, McConnell, GET IT PASSED. If the Democrats want to shut down government, then MAKE THEM FILIBUSTER ON THE FLOOR LIKE WE USED TO. I, for one, will tune in to hear about why they decided to shut it down, 24/7 until they run out of Senators.

Chances of a government shutdown grew Monday as Republicans concluded that they would be unable to pass a long-term spending bill by the Friday deadline. GOP leaders are now turning to a short-term funding measure in hopes of keeping agencies open while talks continue, but Democratic leaders say they are unlikely to support any deal that does not protect young illegal immigrants.

Donald Trump is entering the second year of his presidency, but he and Republicans in Congress will need to govern as though it's his last. After months of inaction on the top items in their shared legislative agenda, they closed out 2017 with a bang. A tax reform bill that also repealed Obamacare’s individual mandate and allowed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge became law in December, capping a busy year of deregulation, military gains against the Islamic State, and successful conservative judicial nominees. Trump and congressional Republicans won’t have the luxury of a late legislative windfall in 2018....

President Donald J. Trump’s wall along the southern border will cost at least $18 billion, per a Congressional source first reported by The Wall Street Journal. But, President Trump insists that Mexico will pay for the wall and that Democrats will agree to it. According to The Wall Street Journal's source, the Department of Homeland Security has requested 316 miles of new fencing plus an additional 407 miles of reinforcing fencing to be built over the next decade, costing taxpayers $18 billion. According to NBC News, Democrats are already condemning the plan. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the minority whip,...

The watchword for 2018 is: UNHINGED!That refers to Wall Street, Washington, the Dems and the GOP, and all the far and near corners of the planet which are implicated in their collective follies.The latter begins with the fact that Imperial Washington has become so dysfunctional that the most powerful government on earth can't seem to keep its doors open for more than a few weeks at a time.The next continuing resolution (CR) deadline is January 19 and the route thereto resembles nothing less than kick-the-can-alley. It's strewn with $100 billion of unfunded disaster aid, defense and nondefense sequester caps...

Lawmakers are bracing for a chaotic January as they prepare to plunge into several fights in the first weeks of 2018. The nightmare legislative storm comes after Congress headed home for the year without resolving spending battles or getting an agreement on contentious issues such as immigration and foreign surveillance. It all means Congress must reach another deal to prevent a government shutdown by Jan. 19. Lawmakers also likely have to solve the issue of whether to protect young immigrants losing the protection of an Obama-era program shielding them from deportation beginning in March. Democrats may not agree to keep...

The Republicans have passed their tax bill, without a single Democratic vote, despite low to dismal poll ratings. It's reminiscent of the passage by Democrats, without a single Republican vote, of Obamacare in March 2010. Democrats lost 63 seats and their House majority that fall. Republicans hope they won't follow suit. They argue, accurately, that their bill will lower taxes for almost all taxpayers and that it will stimulate economic growth, which already has risen above the growth in the Obama years. The effects of Obamacare, in contrast, were harder to model, and some backers' claims -- if you like...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said he cannot imagine a government shutdown taking place days before the Christmas holiday if Congress cannot strike a deal on a spending bill, adding that he also cannot rule out the possibility that it may take place. "I can’t rule it out, but I can't imagine it occurring," Mnuchin told host Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." The finance chief said if Congress cannot reach a deal by Friday, the deadline to pass a spending bill, then they would have to pass a "short term extension" into January in order to gain time...

Speaking to reporters in the Capitol, Pelosi said Democrats will insist on safeguards for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program before the holiday recess, suggesting Republicans will be on their own to prevent a government shutdown if that language is excluded. "We will not leave here without a DACA fix," Pelosi said.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday that Democrats squandered their ability to demand a so-called “DACA fix” as part of the year-end spending bill when their leaders refused to show up for a meeting with President Trump this week to conduct negotiations. Mr. Ryan also rejected the year-end deadline Democrats have set up for granting citizenship to illegal immigrants, saying the phaseout for the Obama-era deportation amnesty runs through March, giving Congress until next year to figure out what to do. He took a tough line on Democrats’ decision to ditch Mr. Trump in a bipartisan leaders meeting Tuesday,...

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was not surprised that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) did not show for their planned meeting and accused them of being weak on crime and immigration. “Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi did not show up for our meeting today. I'm not really that surprised. We have a lot of differences. They're weak on crime, they're weak on illegal immigration,” the president said during a meeting with GOP congressional leadership. “They want the illegal folks to come pouring into our border and a lot of problems are being...