Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump’s Sunday golf outing at his Trump International Golf Club was a last-minute decision, sources told CNN.​This unscheduled appearance has ignited speculation and questions regarding a security incident that occurred at the club earlier that day.Sources revealed that the golf outing was not on Trump’s public schedule, raising concerns about how an individual was seemingly able to time an incident during Trump’s presence at the club.

The State Department sought to denigrate two reporters and a member of Congress as part of damage control attempts over having helped fund an advertisers’ “blacklist” of The Post and other outlets allegedly spreading “misinformation,” according to internal documents. In March 2023, the department distributed press guidance about how to counter bombshell reports by “Twitter Files” scribe Matt Taibbi and Washington Examiner investigative journalist Gabe Kaminsky concerning the State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC). Taibbi’s first report about the GEC, in a lengthy Twitter thread published Jan. 3, 2023, revealed efforts to pressure US social media platforms early in the COVID-19...

A Texas state representative in Houston has decided to leave the “almost unrecognizable” Democrat Party for the Republican Party. In her announcement on Friday, State Rep. Shawn Thierry explained she made the switch because the Democrat Party “has veered so far left, so deep into the progressive abyss, that it now champions policies that I cannot, in good conscience, support,” the Texas Tribune reported. In a social media post, Thierry said she had voted Democrat her entire life because her parents believed it was the “party of the people.” “But as the years have passed, I have watched with dismay...

The Illinois State Comptroller has cut fund payments to a small town after the town's embattled mayor refused to hand over finance reports. Susana Mendoza said that she would be immediately suspending 'offset' fund payments to Dolton after the village failed to hand over financial reports. The money is on pace to total $135,000, according to The Chicago Tribune, and is she threatening to fine them a total of $78,600 if they don't hand over the reports. Mayor Tiffany Henyard has been clinging onto power despite criticism over her management of Dolton and her alleged lavish spending. Mendoza said that...

PETERSBURG, Va. (WRIC) — Four people were shot on Virginia State University’s campus Wednesday in the early hours. According to the Chesterfield County Police Department, at 12:36 a.m., officers responded to a reported shooting outside the university’s Daniel Gymnasium. When officers arrived, they found four people shot. All four were taken to a local hospital for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries. Police say that no one involved in the shooting was a student, and no officers fired shots during the shooting. Multiple suspects have been identified by police, and charges are pending, though officials have not clarified the number of suspects.

It's one of the wealthiest states in America, with residents of its fanciest zip code luxuriating in $3 million red-brick apartments. But the writing is on the wall for Massachusett, says an alarming new study. The 50,000 non-legal migrants who've entered the state since Joe Biden became president are putting a costly strain on schools, healthcare, and other services. Jessica Vaughan, author of the report for the Center for Immigration Studies , says the state is destined for bankruptcy. That's because migrants will drain state coffers of a staggering $1.8 trillion over the next two years. Even though some non-legal...

Former President Donald Trump’s plan to expand the universe of swing states is paying off. Left-wing panic is reportedly sinking in over New York’s increasingly competitive status, with one local Democrat official saying it has morphed into a “battleground state.” Politico reported on the development in the long-blue Empire State on Wednesday in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump on June 27: Elected officials, union leaders and political consultants are panicking over polls showing a steady erosion of Biden’s support in a state he won by 23 points four years ago. They’re so worried they’ve...

Let’s discuss the latest BLS report on employer costs with a special focus on teachers.Employer costs from the BLS, chart by MishEmployer Cost SynopsisGovernment Wages Plus Benefits: $61.27Private Wages and Benefits: $43.78Government Wages: $37.90Private Wages: $30.76Government hourly wages are 23.2 percent more than private workers on average.Benefits are the real killer.Government total compensation is 39.9 percent more than private workers.What About Teachers?Employer costs from the BLS, chart by MishTeachers make $37.90 per hour in direct wages. But they make a whopping $79.38 per hour in total benefits.Benefits for teachers are a mere 109 percent of wages.Economic FairnessEducation Week reports Biden...

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CBS’s “The Late Show,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) responded to a question on America’s role in the Israel-Hamas conflict by stating that “We have a foreign policy that pretty much follows the idea of peace through strength, and what that means is we need to have a very strong military so that we can scare other countries into doing what we say. I wish we would use our wealth and our resources and our means to lead with diplomacy.” And we should “build a Palestinian state” with our resources. Host Stephen Colbert asked, “What do you...

~Favorite City and State and Road Songs~ City of New Orleans, Arlo Guthrie *Video*Okalahoma *Video*

Rafah isn’t just the last stand for Hamas, but for an entire foreign policy establishment. The desperate effort to keep Israeli soldiers from going into the last Gaza stronghold of the Islamic terrorist organization is about more than the sum of the geopolitical parts. After nation building failed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and everywhere else it’s been tried, the radioactive ‘Palestinian’ nation building experiment from over 30 years ago is its last hope. Long before George W. Bush tackled nation building after 9/11, his father began the era of turning Muslim terrorist groups into countries with the project to give...

Former President Donald Trump is appearing in blue Minnesota on Friday, delivering the keynote address at the Minnesota Republican Party’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner as all eyes are on traditionally blue strongholds that the former president hopes to flip in November. Trump has a busy day on Friday and is headed to Minnesota after attending his youngest son Barron Trump’s high school graduation in Palm Beach, Florida, earlier in the day. In early May, the Republican Party of Minnesota announced Trump as the headliner for the 2024 Lincoln Reagan Dinner. At the time, Minnesota Trump Campaign Chair and House Majority Whip...

Some voters in battleground states are confused about the origins of the current abortion landscape in the United States, despite President Joe Biden making abortion the centerpiece of his reelection campaign. A New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll of voters in battleground states — including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin — found that nearly one in five registered voters (17 percent) think Biden is responsible for the end of the constitutional “right” to abortion. Fifty-six percent credit former President Donald Trump, and 13 percent say they do not know or refused to answer. Notably, Trump nominated three Supreme Court...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced his proposed $288 billion state budget, which would cut thousands of vacant state jobs and funding to more than 200 state programs in order to close the state’s $27.6 billion deficit. Newsom revealed his budget proposal on Friday for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which starts on July 1, citing the importance of accountability and responsibility, according to ABC7 News. This comes a month after state officials agreed to reduce California’s deficit by $17.3 billion after Newsom announced in January that the state’s deficit was $37.9 billion. The state deficit ended up being closer to $45...

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the State Department's new senior DEI hire will "destroy" the foreign affairs agency and make America "less safe" in an interview Friday with Fox News Digital. Zakiya Carr Johnson was hired by the State Department last week as chief officer of diversity, equity and inclusion. Fox News Digital exposed her past anti-American remarks, including her saying the U.S. represented a "failed historical model" embedded with racism, colonialism and other isms. Carr Johnson has also called for tradition to be dismantled. Pompeo believes Carr Johnson's hire was part of the "Biden administration's core commitment…...

First daughter Ashley Biden made a rare appearance at a lavish state dinner welcoming the Japanese prime minister to the White House on Wednesday, a day after the woman who stole and sold her diary was sentenced to a month of prison time. The New York Times noted the timing of her appearance: Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, politely but quickly drifted away from the cameras after telling reporters about her dress. On Tuesday, a Florida woman was sentenced to jail for selling Ms. Biden’s private diary to a right-wing activist group. But outside worries rarely come between a Biden...

A State Department official resigned Wednesday and has since gone on a media tour blasting President Biden’s “horrific policy” toward Israel, accusing the administration of enabling “a genocide in Gaza.” Annelle Sheline’s resignation from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is the most significant public departure from the department since last October, when Josh Paul, a senior official in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, announced he was calling it quits. “For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in...

President Biden and Vice President Harris are set to travel to every battleground state in March as part of his reelection campaign’s effort to ramp up after Super Tuesday and the State of the Union, the campaign announced Friday. Biden will travel to New Hampshire on Monday, Wisconsin on Wednesday and Michigan on Thursday, according to the campaign. Ahead of that, he will visit Pennsylvania on Friday and Georgia on Saturday, directly following his State of the Union address, and more travel to battleground states will be announced throughout the month. The campaign has deemed March the “I’m on Board”...

Add Bloomberg/Morning Consult to the latest round of polls showing Donald Trump sweeping all the 2024 swing states. Just a few days ago, EmersonPolling/the Hill surveys found former President Trump leading His Fraudulency Joe Biden in the seven states most likely to decide the next president. Thursday, Bloomberg/Morning Consult showed the same. Here are the results from a two-way race: Arizona: Trump 49 / Biden 43 — Trump +6 Georgia: Trump 49 / Biden 43 — Trump +6 Michigan: Trump 46 / Biden 44 — Trump +2 Nevada: Trump 48 / Biden 42 — Trump +6 North Carolina: Trump 50...

The federal government won an 8.7 percent profit of $37.5 billion from the resident population of 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers in the 15 years before 2020, says a celebratory report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The report also notes that the imported refugees also inflicted a 7.3 percent loss of $21.4 billion on the taxpayers who fund state and local governments. The report calculated the costs by comparing the $739 billion in taxes paid by migrants and their families to their $723.4 billion in government aid.