conservatives

President Donald Trump reversed himself on Friday on the release of reams of Justice Department and FBI documents he claims show an internal bias to wreck his 2016 campaign and then his presidency.

Trump earlier this week announced the text messages and other documents would soon be made public, per the request of House Republicans. But he backtracked in a Friday tweet, saying Justice Department officials and “key allies” urged him to avoid a huge document dump.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell clearly doesn’t think the sexual assault allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh will be anything more than a stumbling block on his path to confirmation to the Supreme Court.

“President Trump has nominated a stunningly successful individual. You’ve watched the fight. You’ve watched the tactics, but here’s what I want to tell you: in the very near future Judge Kavanaugh will be on the United States Supreme Court,” the Kentucky Republican said.

Updated 10:03 a.m. | President Donald Trump suggested Friday that if Christine Blasey Ford had been sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh when they were both in high school, then charges would’ve been filed against him.

That claim runs contrary to the fact that most sexual assault victims do not report the incidents.

Aiming to boost vulnerable Nevada Sen. Dean Heller on his home turf amid a fierce re-election bid, President Donald Trump dubbed the Republican a “champion” of conservative causes and called his Democratic foe “wacky.”

“There’s been no better friend — we started off slow — but I’ve had no better friend in Congress than Dean Heller,” Trump said Thursday at a campaign rally in Las Vegas.

President Donald Trump has a message for Senate Democrats and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser about an upcoming hearing to discuss the sexual assault allegations against the judge: “Get on with it.”

“I don’t think you can delay it a little longer,” Trump said of that session during a Thursday interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. “I have been accommodating,” he added, saying Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, should be allowed to speak to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

South Carolina GOP Rep. Ralph Norman opened an election debate Thursday by cracking a joke that attempted to play off the controversy over the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

It did not go over well, according to a report from The Post and Courier.

President Donald Trump raised the odds of a government shutdown that lawmakers from both parties thought they had averted, calling a spending package headed his way to keep the federal lights on “ridiculous.”

“I want to know, where is the money for Border Security and the WALL in this ridiculous Spending Bill, and where will it come from after the Midterms?” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.

House Republicans prepare a legislative strategy with President Donald Trump seemingly on board, only for the president to catch them off guard with a last-minute tweet suggesting his opposition to the plan.

That scenario has played out a few times this year as lawmakers debated immigration and appropriations bills. And it could realistically happen again next week as Congress plans to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown that Trump has already signaled he might force.

OPINION  — The topic never pops up in statistical analyses or pundit roundtables on cable TV, but one of the most underappreciated factors shaping politics is overconfidence.

Historically, second-term presidents have been particularly vulnerable to arrogant overreach. For eight decades, the prime example has been Franklin Roosevelt’s ill-fated plan following his 1936 landslide re-election to pack the Supreme Court with six new justices. (A personal plea: Please don’t mention this scheme to Donald Trump.)

OPINION — Orrin G. Hatch, the Republican senator from Utah, is nothing if not consistent.

His words about distinguished lawyer and professor Anita Hill in 1991 — when she testified in the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings before the Judiciary Committee on which he sat — were clear. He said there was “no question” in his mind that she was “coached” by special interest groups. “Her story’s too contrived. It’s so slick it doesn’t compute.” Hatch mused she may have cribbed some of her testimony from the novel “The Exorcist” — the horror!