Free Republic

PHOENIX — A Senate panel agreed Thursday to open the door to allowing all 1.1 million students in Arizona schools to use state dollars to attend private or parochial schools, so that parents can choose. The 4-3 vote by the Senate Education Committee followed hours of testimony from people who already get what lawmakers call “empowerment scholarship accounts,” detailing how they’ve helped their children. Eligible groups include children with special needs, those living on tribal reservations and those who attend schools rated D or F, among others. Sen. Debbie Lesko, R-Peoria, sponsor of SB 1431, said vouchers save taxpayer money....

I don’t know why people are up in arms about Kellyanne Conway hawking Ivanka Trump’s clothing line live from the White House briefing room. I mean, it’s not as if she was telling people to go out and buy ugly clothes. Let’s just be honest here. You can’t Make America Great Again until America looks great again, preferably in Ivanka's Kayden4 Dress Pumps. Or in her Pleated Zipper-Trim Scuba Sheath Dress. (Now on sale for $79.99!) Or her Ivanka Trump Eau de Parfum Spray For Women. (America, after all, should smell as great as it looks.) But alas, Ivanka’s line...

Twenty-one years after moving to the U.S. from her native Guanjuato, Mexico, Guadalupe García de Rayos has been dropped off alone in Nogales, Sonora, a bustling border town just over the 20-foot fence from Arizona and nearly 1,200 miles from the home she left behind at age 14. “That’s a long drive,” her husband, Aaron Rayos, said at a press conference in Phoenix Thursday, the news of his wife’s deportation visibly just starting to sink in. Of course, for undocumented immigrants, the fear of deportation is one that always looms heavily. But, said Rayos, “We never thought this day would...

FORT HUACHUCA - The Shadow RQ-7Bv2 unmanned aircraft which lost connectivity with the ground station here Jan. 31 was found today by a hiker in the mountains west of Evergreen, Colorado. No one was injured, but the aircraft has sustained damage. Soldiers from Fort Carson, Colorado, along with Clear Creek County and Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff Departments are currently assisting with security and recovery efforts. Search efforts were aided by the National Radar Forensics Team at 1st Air Force's Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, which specializes in tracking lost and/or downed aircraft. The team...

An Arizona woman who has lived in the U.S. for more than two decades was arrested Wednesday night after her regular check-in with immigration officials and has been deported to Mexico. She was sent to Nogales, Mexico, on Thursday, reports Katherine Fritcke of member station KJZZ. Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos' deportation — which has been protested by dozens of activists, some of whom were arrested late Wednesday — is a glimpse of how immigration enforcement is changing under the Trump administration. She had had a deportation order against her for several years but was not considered a priority for deportation...

Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, a mother of two in Arizona, has been deported to her native Mexico, Carlos Garcia, director of the advocacy organization Puente Arizona, said Thursday. Garcia de Rayos was taken into custody Wednesday and ordered to be deported during her yearly check-in with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Phoenix.

An American-born Muslim convert convicted of supporting the Islamic State terror group and helping to plot a 2015 attack on a Prophet Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years behind bars. Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem told the judge in Phoenix he “had nothing to do” with the attack. However, authorities said Kareem provided the cash that his two friends – Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi – used to open fire outside the anti-Islam event in Garland. Simpson and Soofi were killed in a police shootout outside the contest and a security guard was wounded. No one...

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich met with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, where the company announced it will invest $7 billion in a factory employing up to 3,000 people. The factory will be in Chandler, Arizona, the company said, and over 10,000 people in the Arizona area will support the factory. Krzanich confirmed to CNBC that the investment over the next three to four years would be to complete a previous plant, Fab 42, that was started and then left vacant. The 7 nanometer chips will be produced there will be "the most powerful computer chips on the planet," Krzanich...

FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. (NETCOM) -- From March 30 to April 1, the Army's Network Enterprise Technology Command will sponsor an Army-wide, low-power, high-frequency communications exercise/competition -- QRPX 2017. The purpose of this event is to allow personnel to train on basic HF radio procedures and to test their HF radio equipment and antennas during a no-threat, semi-competitive environment. Units and personnel from the U.S. and Canadian Active Duty, Reserve, National Guard, and Military Auxiliary Radio System are invited to train and compete during this event. In order to be eligible to compete for points, units are limited to 20...

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighing the appeal of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, is the federal appeals court conservatives have long ridiculed as the "nutty 9th" or the "9th Circus." Covering a huge swath of territory — nine western states plus Guam — the San Francisco-based court handles far more cases than any other federal appeals court, including some rulings that have invoked furor from conservatives over the years. Among them: finding that the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, that the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays...

Photo-enforcement firm Redflex Traffic Systems Inc. announced on Monday that it will pay $20 million to the city of Chicago to settle its high-profile bribery scandal. The Glendale, Arizona-based firm released details of its settlement agreement on the same day that its former CEO, Karen Finley of Cave Creek, is scheduled to report to prison. Finley was sentenced in November to 30 months in federal prison and pay $2 million in restitution for conspiracy to commit bribery in Illinois and Ohio. She was supposed to report to the U.S. Marshal's Office in Phoenix on January 3, but that was since...

One Iraqi national and one Egyptian national were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents after the individuals from terror-hotbeds had illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) confirmed the concerning apprehensions to Breitbart Texas in a statement. CBP declined to confirm that the foreign nationals were men, though a source operating under the umbrella of their agency claimed they were both males to Breitbart Texas. “USBP agents [U.S. Border Patrol agents] from Lordsburg Station apprehended two individuals, one Iraqi national and the other from Egypt, while on patrol Saturday at 2:15 p.m. local time along...

<p>People always knew that RINOS were present in Washington, but reports from OpenSecrets.org just revealed that some of them were BIG traitors.</p> <p>“The non-profit, non-partisan research group based in Washington, D.C., that tracks the effects of money and lobbying on elections and public policy, revealed that while George Soros is responsible for funding Democrats and progressive causes, he has also bankrolled Senator John McCain and a small but select group of other Republicans.</p>

SALT LAKE CITY — The Interior Department's Office of Inspector General investigated an unnamed Bureau of Land Management supervisory agent in Salt Lake City for more than a year on ethics complaints, with the independent panel concluding that breaches had occurred. The agent, which the Deseret News has confirmed is Dan Love through a source familiar with the investigation, is accused of using his position to secure preferential treatment for his family during the 2015 Burning Man event in Nevada, including using federal law enforcement officers as personal escorts for their safety, using his BLM vehicle to transport his girlfriend...

In a decision sure to ripple across the political landscape in a presidential election year, the court's 5-3 ruling upheld the authority of the federal government to set immigration policy and laws.

PHOENIX — The Phoenix City Council will be asked to vote in two weeks on the issue of becoming a sanctuary city, a councilman said Wednesday. “A citizen dropped off a petition requiring a public vote on whether or not the city of Phoenix is going to vote on becoming a sanctuary city,” Councilman Sal DiCiccio said, who also tweeted the news.

ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. -- For Marine Corps aviators, hydraulics are critical part of performing all the heavy lifting required during aircraft operations. Marine Cpl. Habtamu Sharew and Lance Cpl. Juan Herreragonzalez know that better than anyone. The two are hydraulic mechanics from Marine Aviation Logistics Squadron 29 in Jacksonville, North Carolina. They work specifically on the hydraulics systems. Not long ago, they entered their idea for streamlining hydraulic line maintenance into the 2016 Marine Corps Logistic Innovation Challenge. Out of more than 300 entries, theirs was chosen as one of 18 to move to the next step. That brought...

Aross the massive mall parking lot from the Red Lobster, Rush Limbaugh’s radio show blared from the speakers of a silver sedan, idling near Party City with its windows down. The nominal topic Monday was the alleged liberal assault on NFL quarterback Tom Brady, but Limbaugh had long since moved on: to a border wall, suspicions of nationwide protests and President Trump’s response to the threat posed by foreigners. Nodding approvingly in the driver’s seat was Doyle MacCree, 84, of Goodyear, a conservative suburb west of Phoenix. Here, more than 120 miles from the border, Arizona voters outraged with President...

The former head of Boulder City’s animal shelter was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail for needlessly euthanizing her own dog. Mary Jo Frazier pleaded guilty in October to a felony charge of animal cruelty after admitting she killed her dachshund. She previously denied allegations that she euthanized animals for fun at the shelter.

Sen. McCain has served notice he is the Republican lawmaker most willing to defy the new Republican president. In just over a week’s time, Mr. McCain has called the new Trump ban on immigration from a set of Muslim-majority countries a recruiting boon for Islamic State radicals; threatened to codify Russian economic sanctions into law to prevent Mr. Trump from lifting them; called the president’s decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership “a serious mistake”; and called the idea of imposing a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico to pay for a border wall “insane.” The senator also served noticed...