Free Republic

President Biden signed a bill Saturday extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program another two years. The Senate passed the reauthorization bill early Saturday, after hours of intense debate, narrowly avoiding a key national intelligence gathering capability going dark. Senators voted 60-34 to send the bill to Biden’s desk shortly after the midnight deadline. The program looked as if it was headed for a lapse until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a breakthrough on the Senate floor.

The International Monetary Fund sounded the alarm on the Biden administration’s rampant spending as “out of line with what is needed for long-term fiscal stability.” The latest forecast from the IMF — a Washington-based group tasked with fighting financial crises worldwide — warned that the ballooning national debt and the fiscal deficit threatened to exacerbate sky-high levels of inflation while posing a long-term risk to the global economy. The IMF noted in its forecast that the US federal budget deficit grew from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2022 to $1.7 trillion last year. ... The debt held by the public, which...

A group of House Democrats on Friday unveiled legislation that would rename a Florida federal prison after former President Donald Trump. The bill seeking to redesignate the Miami Federal Correctional Institution as the Donald J. Trump Federal Correctional Institution was introduced in response to a Republican-backed measure that called for Dulles International Airport in Virginia to be renamed after the 45th president. “When our Republican colleagues introduced their bill to rename Dulles after Donald Trump, I said the more fitting option would be to rename a federal prison,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), one of the three Democrats sponsoring the legislation,...

A federal judge admonished a Jan. 6 rioter during his sentencing Wednesday after the man downplayed the severity of the riots and his violent conduct. “This cannot become normal. … We cannot condone the normalization of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot,” Judge Royce Lamberth said during the sentencing of Taylor James Johnatakis, CNN reported. Johnatakis, a self-described “sovereign citizen,” was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and other felony and misdemeanor charges related to the riot, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison. After his conviction last year, he repeatedly downplayed the riots in interviews, calling...

A federal district court has overturned the Biden administration's climate rule that required states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. In a sweeping judgment late Monday, Judge Benjamin Beaton of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky ordered the Federal Highway Administration to stand down on the rules, which the agency finalized in November. The ruling represents a major victory for the State of Kentucky, which challenged the regulations alongside 21 other states. "President Biden’s radical environmental agenda has lost touch with reality, and Kentucky families, farmers and workers...

Maryland lawmakers are expecting the federal government to cover the lion’s share of the cost of the collapse and subsequent rebuilding of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge — with Congress potentially on the hook for only a fraction of the total as talk about an emergency supplemental bill increases. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told reporters that roughly 90 percent of the bridge’s reconstruction will be paid for via the Federal Highway Administration’s emergency fund, which has about $950 million and is replenished yearly with $100 million. The state sent a letter to the federal government Wednesday saying it will...

resident Biden is facing criticism after a bombshell report revealed that all federal agencies are less than 50 percent occupied - wasting billions in taxpayer dollars - over a year after he declared the COVID-19 pandemic over. According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) memo to Sen. Joni Ernst, obtained by DailyMail.com, not a single federal agency has over half of its workforce in the office. That's a staggering statistic since federal agencies spend about $2 billion taxpayer dollars per year to operate and maintain federal office buildings - and over $5 billion annually in leases. The shocking findings comes...

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is not known for his resolve. It’s the main reason why the new and emerging consensus among Wall Street Fed watchers is that he will cut interest rates at least twice this year despite signs of persistent inflation, the Post has learned. If the CEOs and top executives who follow the Fed can be believed — and these folks have sources inside the central bank’s building in DC — Powell is already brushing off last week’s high inflation reads as a likely anomaly. His first rate cut since he started to raise them in March...

The jets collided on the tarmac while passengers were inside both aircraft.. One was headed to Las Vegas, while the other was on its way to Orlando.. The FAA confirmed that the collision occurred at 6.40am at the Boston airport ... Two JetBlue airplanes collided on the tarmac at Boston's Logan Airport on Thursday. The jets collided while a fleet full of passengers were inside both aircraft. One plane was left with damage to its wing, while the other aircraft’s tail section was wrecked. Debris was scattered on the runway and both jets were taken out of service. The incident...

One of the stranger political crusades of the past few years has been the Republican war on so-called woke capital, which has led GOP politicians across the country to adopt a kind of anti-corporate, pro-regulatory rhetoric that one normally associates with the left wing of the Democratic Party. And among the GOP’s favorite targets in this war has been ESG investing—investment funds that take “environmental, social, and governance” considerations into account. For Republicans, ESG funds are a Trojan horse, designed to smuggle progressive attitudes toward climate change, and diversity and inclusion, into executive suites and corporate boardrooms, all under the...

The QAnon believer who allegedly decapitated his dad, showing off the federal employee’s severed head in an online video, had earlier waged an unhinged legal battle against the government over his student loans — claiming he should have been warned he still wouldn’t be able to get a job because he was an “overeducated white man.” Justin Mohn, 33, was taken into custody Tuesday night on suspicion of first-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and possessing an instrument of crime with intent in the killing of his 68-year-old father, Michael Mohn. The arrest came after he allegedly held up his...

Technology company iRobot is undergoing major layoffs after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and European regulators opposed its acquisition by Amazon on Monday, multiple outlets reported. Amazon had planned to acquire iRobot, which is most known for making robot vacuums, but the deal could not go through because of regulatory hurdles, according to a press release announcing the termination. iRobot immediately disclosed impending layoffs affecting about 350 employees, constituting 31% of its total workforce, after the termination announcement. The companies primarily attributed the dissolution of the deal to the European Union (EU), stating in the press release that “Amazon’s proposed...

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in two related cases challenging a 40-year-old precedent that requires courts to defer to the judgment of federal agencies in administrative law cases. At the end of three-and-a-half hours of arguments, a majority seemed disposed to overturn Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, and consign the so-called "Chevron deference" principle to the compost heap of terrible Supreme Court precedents.Ever since the creation of the administrative state during the administration of our first socialist president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, federal agencies have assumed the authority to interpret federal statutes pretty much as they please. This became...

The Biden administration has continued the modern Democrat tradition of perverse federal land use policy. It comes as a surprise to most Americans that the federal government owns nearly one-third of the nation’s land mass, in excess of 640 million acres. (It also owns 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), but that is another story.) Most know of the National Park Service in the Department of the Interior and its 80 million acres of parks, preserves, reserves, monuments, memorials, historic sites, battlefields, and recreation areas, in every state. Many Americans may be familiar with the 141 national...

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) said Wednesday “CNN This Morning” that the current migrant influx into his city was “not sustainable” without “significant federal support.” Johnson said, “Since taking office a little bit over seven months ago, my administration has responded to this humanitarian mission with the full force of government. We have roughly 15,000 people living in shelters, temporary shelters here in Chicago, nearly 27 shelters. A total of 4500 children are in our Chicago public schools system, providing health care and also making sure that we are screening individuals as they come through the city of Chicago, providing,...

President Biden on Thursday issued an executive order implementing his plan to provide civilian federal workers with an average 5.2% pay raise next month. As first proposed in his fiscal 2024 budget plan last March, the increase amounts to a 4.7% across-the-board boost to basic pay, alongside an average 0.5% increase in locality pay. As authorized in the fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which Biden is expected to sign this week, military service personnel also will see an average 5.2% pay raise next year. An average 5.2% pay increase marks the largest authorized for federal workers since the Carter...

'Congress alone has the authority' to breach federal dams, lawmakers write in letter to White House.. The Biden administration is quietly discussing a potentially far-reaching settlement with environmental groups that advocate for tearing down four hydroelectric dams in Washington... ... In the filings, jointly submitted by the federal government and eco groups... However, the filing failed to detail exactly what conditions were included in the secretive package .... We find it necessary to remind you Congress alone has the authority not only to order the breach of the Lower Snake River Dams, but also exclusive authority to direct the study...

On Thursday, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez launched a major legal offensive in an attempt to address the online risks faced by minors. The lawsuit targeted Meta Platforms, Inc., its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and associated entities such as Instagram, LLC and Facebook Holdings, LLC. This bold action seeks to prevent the exploitation of children on social media platforms. “Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” Attorney General Torrez said in a statement. “As a career...

On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Kleeh issued a decision striking down the federal prohibition against 18 to 20-year-olds purchasing handguns. The plaintiffs in the case are Steven Robert Brown, Benjamin Weekley, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the West Virginia Citizens Defense League. Judge Kleeh, a Donald Trump appointee, is Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia. Kleeh put the case in context: This case requires the Court to assess the protected right of the people under the Second Amendment to the Constitution to keep and bear arms. U.S. Const. amend. II. Plaintiffs...

Unimaginably, a staggering 500 federal agencies currently operate with almost no oversight. They procure items that our nation cannot afford, launch studies that are marginal at best, and manipulate the government in ways that the Founding Fathers could not have foreseen. These government agencies, headed by self-regarded elites, hire contractors in ever-burgeoning numbers. Since Biden took office, federal contracts that fall outside the regulations have made quantum leaps. Biden and company cannot issue them fast enough. Government Accountability Office (GAO) data shows that even before the useless expenditures to contain COVID-19, the Federal Government spent $665 billion on contracts, a...