Nation's Well-Being Depends on a Healthy Two-Party System

Nation's Well-Being Depends on a Healthy Two-Party System

Our nations core political well-being depends on the existence of a healthy two-party system. One year ago, I joined with former Sens. Alan Simpson and William Cohen, along with 34 other distinguished former Republican elected officials, to launchOur Republican Legacy(ORL) to serve as the resistance to the new populist direction taken by the GOP. We may be Republicans in exile, but we will not be silenced. Now, because the early days of President Trumps second term are as bad as we feared and getting worse, we are taking ORL from a messaging organization to a mobilizing one, and I am asking you tojoin us. ORLs first initiative is utilizing our existing framework to build a nationwide, grassroots organization. We are creating a 50-state national committee of volunteer activists who embrace our principles and want a constructive, common-sense approach to solving the many issues facing our country. Each state organization will recruit members, engage local and state media, and be active and visible within their respective Republican party at all levels. Our second initiative is to ramp up our visibility with frequent messaging across all platforms on the critical issues we face. Our messaging and the positions we adopt will be grounded in our principles and guided by the real needs of the people and businesses across this great country. In ourannouncement last year, we proposed a framework based on five foundational principles - Unity, the Constitution, Fiscal Responsibility, Free Enterprise, and Peace through Strength - to reestablish traditional, conservative Republican values to meet the many challenges facing our nation. Onunity, we believe in preserving our union and democracy by uniting - not dividing - Americans. We encourage free debate and civil discourse to agree by majority rule on common-sense solutions to the problems we face. With respect to our laudedConstitution, we support and will defend the rule of law, including individual freedoms and liberties. We oppose circumventing the rule of law by exceeding legal executive authority and ignoring lawful court orders. We support the independence and impartiality of the Department of Justice and law enforcement. We oppose using government institutions for retribution against political opponents, settling grievances against individuals or corporations or law firms with different points of view, and ignoring due process for everyone. We supportfiscal responsibilityto protect and defend the full faith and credit of the United States government for future generations. We oppose profligate spending. While protecting programs like Social Security and Medicare, we pledge to work to reduce annual deficits and lower the national debt over time to encourage greater private sector investment in our economy and growth with price stability. We will defend the role of the U.S. dollar as the worlds reserve currency. We believe infree enterpriseand a globally competitive economy based on market principles with sound regulation, full transparency and disclosure, and a clear legal framework. We oppose Trumps senseless, destructive tariffs, which are regressive taxes that raise prices, lead to inflation, invite recession, and unleash unnecessary trade wars that no one wins. Instead of protectionist barriers and raising tariffs, we pledge to work strategically to lower tariffs to encourage trade and investment here as a means to grow our economy and create more opportunities for everyone. Finally, we supportpeace through strengthby maintaining a strong national defense. We wholeheartedly support the U.S. military and respect all of our veterans, including all that our country has promised them in return for their service to our nation. We oppose any retreat into isolationism and a position of global weakness by abandoning our allies and strategic alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). We support and will fully defend Ukraine and Israel against all acts of aggression by our common enemies, such as Russia, Iran, and their allies. For everyone who is tired of being misled by lies and watching the very destruction of our system of government, we invite you to join our resistance of real Republicans to restore a viable, two-party political system. Lets rise to this essential fight by organizing and speaking up for our vision of a truly democratic nation based on fundamental principles - our "shining city on the hill" to channel President Reagan - to achieve better outcomes for our nation and all of our citizens. John Danforth is a former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

byRicky Wilson

in

May 30, 2025

Nation's Well-Being Depends on a Healthy Two-Party System

Nation's Well-Being Depends on a Healthy Two-Party System Our nations core political well-being depends on the existence of a healthy tw...

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Pam Bondi Ends Bar Association Role in Trump Judicial Picks

Pam Bondi Ends Bar Association Role in Trump Judicial Picks

President Donald Trump, accompanied by Pam Bondi, speaks before Bondi is sworn in as U.S. Attorney General in the Oval Office of the White House on Feb. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Credit - Andrew Harnik—Getty Images The Department of Justice has announced that it will be curtailing the ability of the American Bar Association (ABA) to rate candidates for tenure in the federal judiciary. This will hinder the ABA's ability to vet nominations put forth by President Donald Trump. Attorney General Pam Bondisaid in a letterto the ABA president William Bay on Thursday, May 29, that she is cutting off the association's access to non-public information about Trump nominees. Bondi referred to the non-partisan membership organization as an "activist" group. "Unfortunately, the ABA no longer functions as a fair arbiter of nominees' qualifications, and its ratings invariably and demonstrably favor nominees put forth by Democratic Administrations," said Bondi, accusing the ABA of having "bias" in its ratings process. "There is no justification for treating the ABA differently from such other activist organizations and the Department of Justice will not do so." Bondi went on to say that judicial nominees will no longer need to provide waivers to allow the ABA access to non-public information, nor will they respond to questionnaires or sit for interviews with the association. In a subsequent social media post, Bondi doubled down, saying: "The American Bar Association has lost its way, and we do not believe it serves as a fair arbiter of judicial nominees. The Justice Department will no longer give the ABA the access they've taken for granted." The move against the ABA came a day after Trump announced six new judicial nominees, which included top Justice Department official Emil Bove being put forward to serve as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.In a post on Truth Social, Trump saidthat Bove "will end the weaponization of Justice, restore the rule of law, and do anything else that is necessary to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN." Bove defended Trump during his hush-money trial,during which the President was convicted on 34 counts. Trump also nominatedKyle Dudek,John Guard,Jordan E. Pratt, andAnne-Leigh Gaylord Moeto serve as Judges on the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida, andEd Artauto serve as a Judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The President has previously threatened to revoke the ABA's status as the federally-recognized accreditor of law schools in anExecutive Order signed on April 24. As part of his wide-scale crackdown onDEI efforts, Trump said that the ABA has required law schools to demonstrate commitment to diversity and inclusion, something which he says is a "discriminatory requirement" and that "similar unlawful mandates must be permanently eradicated." Critics have recently raised concerns over current practices at the Department of Justice."I think what's happening in the Department of Justice right now is that it's being transformed into Donald Trump's personal law firm,"said Liz Oyer, the DOJ's former pardon attorney. "The Attorney General has made it clear that directions are coming from the very top, from the President, and she is there to do his bidding." Read More:Democrats Grill AG Pick Pam Bondi Over Whether She Can Defy Trump Founded in 1878, theABA works on the"commitment to set the legal and ethical foundation for the American nation," according to the organization's website. Its main three areas of focus revolve around advocating for the legal profession, eliminating bias and enhancing diversity, as well as advancing the rule of law. It is theABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciarythat typically oversees and conducts the judicial nominee vetting process, something it has done since 1953. According to the ABA, the committee "makes a unique contribution to the vetting process by conducting a thorough peer assessment of each nominee's professional competence, integrity, and judicial temperament." The organization asserts that these assessments are non-partisan, providing the Senate and sitting Administration with "confidential assessments of the nominee's professional qualifications." Contact usatletters@time.com.

byRicky Wilson

in

May 30, 2025

Pam Bondi Ends Bar Association Role in Trump Judicial Picks

Pam Bondi Ends Bar Association Role in Trump Judicial Picks President Donald Trump, accompanied by Pam Bondi, speaks before Bondi is sworn i...

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Same as It Ever Was

Same as It Ever Was

In their upside down, Alice-in-Wonderland version of reality, the left has a point when they cast George Orwell as a prophet of our times. Our world increasingly resembles the soul-crushing landscape of manipulation the English writer limned in the pages of "1984" and "Animal Farm." Powerful forces in government, media, academia, and business have transformed much of the news into propaganda. During the Biden years, for example, the left cast their push for censorship as a commitment to truth and the coercive control of everyday life as the flowering of freedom. Talk about Orwellian. Now that Donald Trump is back in office, they are once again insisting the president and his populist supports on the right are an existential threat to liberty. Blessedly, however, we still live in a relatively open society. Many of us can see through and expose their deceit. Thats why Hans Christian Anderson rivals Orwell as our most useful modern prophet. His tale, "The Emperors New Clothes," captures the daily experience of watchingvery serious peopleholdingvery serious conversationsabout total nonsense. Its why watching the news makes us channel our inner Elvis -give me a gun soI can shoot that TV. The most recent front-page example is the wall-to-wall coverage of Jake Tapper and Alex Thompsons new book, "Original Sin: President Bidens Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." They report thathundreds of peopleknew that Biden was not up to running the country, and yet this scheming horde hid this secret from the legacy media. It was only after they lost the election that these conspirators decided to spill the beans. In fact, polls showmillions of peopleknew the score on Biden well before the election. One didnt need special access, just two eyes to see the truth. Yes, it is nice to have the books detail on the consternation about Bidens infirmities, but that just confirms rather than expands our knowledge. Even as it pretends to reveal the truth, "Original Sin" is another exercise in gaslighting, because it tries to make the starting point of the story - the effort to hide Bidens incapacity - its endpoint. The pressing issue, however, is not the cover-up, but the cover-up of the cover-up. Which unelected officials were running the government in Bidens name? How did they do it? How did they justify it? Turning the old Watergate question around: What did the presidentnotknow and when did he not know it? And, why did so many of the nations most influential news outlets participate in this charade? How was Bidens health discussed in top newsrooms? Who made the decision to dismiss these consequential concerns? Answering those questions and naming names is the urgent task for media outlets who have already lost the trust of much of the country because of their partisan coverage. Instead of experiencing a come-to-Jesus moment, however, the legacy media is likely to use its coverage of the book to bury the Biden years under the claim that the key questions have now been asked and answered. It will use the "lessons" it learned as a reason to pound Trump even harder, including questioning his mental fitness. If Democrats and their media stenographers have learned anything, it is that they will almost certainly get away with it. The Biden cover-up is part of a decades-long pattern in which they have stridently misled the American people -against all evidence- about the biggest issues of the day. The short list includes advancing the clearly bogus claims that Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election; attacking those who made the obvious connection between the origins of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology; delegitimizing reports about the material on Hunter Bidens laptop detailing the Biden familys influence-peddling schemes; and the truly Orwellian effort to disparage honest challenges of official narratives as "misinformation" and "disinformation." Going back nearly two decades, there was the 2006 Duke lacrosse case, in which local and national media outlets echoed a local Democrat district attorneys assertion that a bunch of rich preppies had raped a poor black stripper. There was never any real evidence for this heinous crime, apart from the troubled womans claims. Yet the young men were convicted in the press simply because of their alleged privilege. A few years after this shameful episode, the media were back it, advancing false narratives about the deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and Michael Brown in 2014 to allege a war on blacks - setting the stage for the racist convulsions of the Black Lives Matters movement and DEI programs. None of these missteps resulted in soul-searching - though a few did result in Pulitzer Prizes. The next few years promise more of the same: the Orwellian twisting of facts that will bombard us with dangerous lies. As the aptly named group "Talking Heads" once sang: Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. Its enough to make you go full Elvis. J. Peder Zane is an editor for RealClearInvestigations and a columnist for RealClearPolitics. Follow him on X@jpederzane.

byRicky Wilson

in

May 30, 2025

Same as It Ever Was

Same as It Ever Was In their upside down, Alice-in-Wonderland version of reality, the left has a point when they cast George Orwell as a pro...

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White House grapples with whiplash legal rulings hitting heart of Trump’s economic agenda

White House grapples with whiplash legal rulings hitting heart of Trump's economic agenda

For a White House that has grown accustomed to a rollercoaster of legal rulings, judicial decisions over the past day throwingPresident Donald Trump'stariff plans into question landed like a bombshell. The rulings– which strike at the heart of Trump's economic agenda – represent far more of a threat to his priorities, White House officials said, than many other court opinions over the last four months since Trump returned to office. And perhaps no fight will prove as consequential to the president's agenda — at home and abroad — as the effort now underway by Trump and his administration to rescue his tariff policy after it was imperiled by a relatively obscure tribunal this week. The day after the US Court of International Trade — a panel housed in a boxy glass building in Lower Manhattan —ruled Trump lacked the authorityto apply the sweeping sky-high tariffs under federal emergency powers, the president and his team quickly moved to have the ruling frozen. The administration blasted the Wednesday night decision, which was reached by a three-judge panel appointed by Trump, Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan. Trump's team was successful; by Thursday afternoon, a federal appeals court in Washington had preserved the tariffs on an administrative basis, buying the White House time. In the interim, there wasa scramble inside the White Houseto both identify other authorities that would allow Trump to move ahead with the stiff new duties and to swiftly petition the courts to pause enforcement. Back-up options could prove cumbersome. Many of the alternative routes would involve lengthy investigations or require approval from Congress, where support for tariffs — even among some Republicans — is lukewarm. "We're not planning to pursue those right now because we're very, very confident that this really is incorrect," Trump's top economist Kevin Hassett said early Thursday in a Fox Business interview, before affirming later in the day what other White House officials had been saying: that Trump's team was exploring all its options. "Heaven forbid, if it ever did have trouble in the future, we've got so many other options on the table that the president's policy is going to be there," he told reporters in the White House driveway. Still, it seemed evident that Trump's advisers believed the courts would provide the best resource, even if there was little certainty at how judges will ultimately rule. "We will respond forcefully, and we think we have a very good case with respect to this," Trump's hawkish trade adviser Peter Navarro said following the stay decision. The whiplash rulings — which joined a string of on-again, off-again tariff moves orchestrated by Trump himself — only seemed to emphasize the degree of chaos that continues to color Trump's trade agenda. The tariffs were restored only temporarily, leaving foreign trade partners and investors in a state of limbo at least until June 9, the date by which the Justice Department must respond to those challenging the duties. The ultimate fate of Trump's prized tariffs, both a lynchpin of his wider economic agenda and the motivating force of his foreign policy, has now been thrust into deep uncertainty. And the prospects of the roughly 18 trade deals that the administration has said are being negotiated under threat of withering new tariffs — including three in their final stages, according to White House officials — now appear unclear. The legal and trade fights, which are now fully intertwined, present one of the biggest challenges yet for the administration – further complicated by urgent efforts to push the Senate to advance its budget and tax bill. Taken together, Trump faces a multi-front battle that could well define his presidency. Trump lashed out at the judiciary in a lengthy Thursday evening Truth Social post, taking aim at the three judges from the Court of International Trade. "How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of 'TRUMP?' What other reason could it be?" Hours earlier, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had struck a similar tone, attacking "unelected judges" ahead of the stay decision. "America cannot function if President Trump, or any president for that matter, has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges." Trump remained behind closed doors Thursday, but did hold a meeting with Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell, whom he has sharply criticized for not lowering interest rates. Powell has also expressed concern Trump's tariffs could lead to higher inflation and lower economic growth. The president's long-standing belief in tariffs has not been shaken, officials said, despite the series of legal, political and economic setbacks. While Trump has repeatedly argued that tariffs will make the United States wealthy, the counterargument that import taxes will be paid by consumers has made his sales pitch far more difficult. And businesses are begging for a sense of certainty and a consistent policy. It was a coalition of small business owners and 12 states that challenged the legality of the Trump tariffs before the US Court of International Trade. "We brought this case because the Constitution doesn't give any president unchecked authority to upend the economy," Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement. "We're very confident in our case," said Jeffrey Schwab, a senior counselor at the Liberty Justice Center, which represented the small business owners who filed suit. "The Trump administration is asserting a vast unilateral authority that is not supported in the law." As for the uncertainty abroad, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued Thursday night that trade negotiations with international partners haven't been affected. "They are coming to us in good faith and trying to complete the deals before the 90-day pause ends," he told Fox News. "We've seen no change in their attitude in the past 48 hours. As a matter of fact, I have a very large Japanese delegation coming to my office first thing tomorrow morning." But some US trading partners tread cautiously in their response. "We will study this ruling of the US Federal Courts on reciprocal tariffs closely and note that they may be subject to further legal processes through the courts," said Australia's trade minister Don Farrell, who was careful not to get ahead of ongoing judicial review. "You will have to bear with us," said a spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs when questioned about the court ruling. India remains in intensive discussions with the Trump administration on a trade deal. Still, the leader of one nation that has borne the brunt of Trump's trade agenda was more receptive. "The government welcomes yesterday's decision," Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney, who helda stiffly cordial meetingwith Trump earlier this month, told his country's parliament, calling the tariffs "unlawful as well as unjustified." For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com

byRicky Wilson

in

May 30, 2025

White House grapples with whiplash legal rulings hitting heart of Trump’s economic agenda

White House grapples with whiplash legal rulings hitting heart of Trump's economic agenda For a White House that has grown accustomed to...

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New Zealand hails 'breakthrough' in trade talks with India, but no timeline for deal

New Zealand hails 'breakthrough' in trade talks with India, but no timeline for deal

NEW DELHI (AP) — New Zealand's deputy prime minister said on Friday that talks over afree trade agreementbetween his country and India were ongoing, but he didn't provide a timeline for when the two nations could eventually sign a deal. Winston Peters, who is on a two-day visit to India, said that the negotiations were "going with real meaning now," calling them "a breakthrough in our economic relationship." India and New Zealand began negotiations in March for a trade pact, and had aimed to sign a deal in 60 days. The deal will significantly bolster economic ties between the two countries, but it has faced delays because of differences over tariffs on dairy products. Bilateral trade between India and New Zealand stood at $1.7 billion in the 2023-24 financial year. Talks between India and New Zealand were taking place amid global trade tensions, after U.S.President Donald Trump's decision to impose now-paused reciprocal tariffs on imported goods from several countries, including India. Earlier this month, India and the United Kingdomclinched a trade deal. India is also engaged in trade talks with Washington. Peters, who met with India's Group of 20 emissary, Amitabh Kant, in New Delhi, said that India was New Zealand's 12th-largest partner in trade and "we are determined that we're going to work to change that." "Our strengths, from food and beverage products to agriculture, forestry, horticulture, education and tourism are world class. And our innovation in areas like outer space and renewable energy will find a welcoming partner in India," he said. Peters said that the relationship between the two countries extended to defense and security, calling it a "priority for New Zealand in the Indo-Pacific." "During a time of great uncertainty, instability and disorder, we have taken steps to work more closely on matters of defense and security with India," he said.

byRicky Wilson

in

May 30, 2025

New Zealand hails 'breakthrough' in trade talks with India, but no timeline for deal

New Zealand hails 'breakthrough' in trade talks with India, but no timeline for deal NEW DELHI (AP) — New Zealand's deputy prime...

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