Free Republic

Jerome Powell is not quite done running the Federal Reserve yet. The Federal Reserve Board voted on Friday to designate Jerome Powell as chair pro tempore until Kevin Warsh is sworn in as the new chair. The move was announced in a terse press release: “This temporary action to name the incumbent as chair pro tempore is consistent with past practice during similar transitions between chairs.” The press release did not explain what statutory authority the Board was relying on. Nor did it address the fact that the claim of consistency with precedent is, in critical respects, unsupported by the...

California remains the largest offender of DHS sanctuary jurisdictions violations House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) chaired a high-stakes hearing Thursday exposing the deadly consequences of so-called sanctuary policies, using Fairfax County, Virginia, as a case study in how local officials prioritize illegal aliens over public safety. In his opening statement and pointed questioning, McClintock dismantled the “nullification” doctrine embraced by sanctuary jurisdictions, likening it to John C. Calhoun’s failed states’ rights theory that once threatened the Republic. “These nullification or sanctuary jurisdictions now extend to 11 states–coincidentally the same number as...

A New York man was convicted Wednesday of helping operate a secret Chinese government-linked police station in Manhattan used to monitor dissidents, federal prosecutors said. Lu Jianwang, 64, a U.S. citizen also known as "Harry Lu" from the Bronx, was convicted by a jury on two counts related to operating an overseas police station in New York City on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), as well as obstruction of justice for destroying evidence. According to prosecutors, Lu and his co-defendant, Chen Jinping, acted as illegal agents of the Chinese government beginning in 2022 and established what authorities...

n a move that's left progressive D.C. absolutely reeling, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro just announced that if your little angel is out running wild in one of those charming "teen takeover" thingies that have been terrorizing our nation's capital, you - yes, you, the parent - are going to face consequences. VIDEO AT LINK........ Parents, do your job. Or we will do ours. As Pirro says, taxpayers shouldn't have to keep footing the bill for what she calls "parental neglect." Breathe it in, folks, this is what sanity smells like! For those of you unaware,...

A convicted child sex offender is now a fugitive after a California judge allowed him to remain free on $1 million bail following his conviction, a decision that prosecutors are now sharply criticizing after the man disappeared before sentencing.Carl Cacconie was convicted on July 17 at the South Lake Tahoe Courthouse of six felony sex crimes involving an 11-year-old girl. Despite the verdict, Judge Michael McLaughlin, a registered Democrat, permitted him to leave court pending sentencing, which was set for Aug. 25. He never returned. SNIP “To expect that a person on $1 million bond, who has now been convicted,...

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday cut former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ nine-year prison sentence in half, and ordered the 70-year-old, who has become a national martyr for election conspiracy theorists, to be released on parole June 1. Peters’ sentence for orchestrating a security breach of her county’s election system in 2021 in a failed attempt to uncover voter fraud is now four years and four and a half months under a clemency order issued by the governor. “She, because of her incorrect and unpopular speech, got an unduly harsh sentence,” Polis said Friday in an interview with The...

Jared Polls, the Democrat governor of Colorado, reduces the sentence of election denier Tina Peters. She will be released the 1 June, says the Governor.

The Biden administration may have failed to convince Congress to double Medicaid spending on home healthcare in 2021, but the funding increase occurred anyway. An RCI analysis of federal data has found that spending on the program, which pays health aides and family members to act as caregivers for elderly and disabled adults, nearly doubled between 2019 and 2024, to $46.4 billion a year – an amount nearly identical to the $50 billion per year Biden wanted. As a result, American taxpayers paid more than $217 billion for home-based care under the program during that five-year span. Lacking congressional approval,...

Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s point man for Medicare and Medicaid, says the billions of entitlement fraud being uncovered in Democrat states may be intentionally driven by politics rather than incompetence. “I do think it's a feature for some of these states,” Oz told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Thursday night in which he detailed why the administration led by Vice President JD Vance temporarily pulled $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding from California and uncovered foreign fraudsters stealing taxpayer welfare monies. “Republicans always suspected there was fraud of this magnitude. Democrats feel embarrassed that it's gotten this...

SNIP The governor revealed the secret contingency plan to prevent two Republicans from advancing in the governor election — as polls show Trump-endorsed Steve Hilton near the top of the field in the packed race. Newsom alluded to “action efforts” behind the scenes to make sure Democrats aren’t locked out of the governor’s race, saying he “making my case” to “encourage that doesn’t happen.” Recent surveys show Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra and Hilton as favorites among registered voters, with billionaire Tom Steyer, Republican Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco and Democrat Katie Porter trailing a few points behind.

Gov. Greg Abbott is pushing a sweeping criminal justice package next legislative session that would expand state oversight of local prosecutors, create a governor-appointed state prosecutor, and make district attorneys subject to impeachment. During a Thursday press conference with law enforcement officials and Republican lawmakers, Abbott framed the proposals as necessary to protect victims and keep repeat offenders off the streets. “Our top priority must be public safety,” Abbott said. “We want to protect communities and prosecute criminals.” Abbott argued that too many dangerous offenders are being released back onto the streets because of decisions made by judges and prosecutors....

MONTGOMERY, Ala. —President Trump in his first term proved a windfall for the Southern Poverty Law Center, the antiracism nonprofit famed for its courtroom wins against the Ku Klux Klan decades ago. In 2017, the same year Trump took office and a white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned violent, annual contributions and grants to SPLC surged from $50 million to more than $130 million and have remained above $100 million nearly every year since.

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Fourteen people were arrested and millions of dollars in stolen items were recovered from a retail theft scheme after undercover detectives infiltrated the operation, Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister announced in a news conference Wednesday. Last week, the sheriff’s office served several search warrants, including one at a home in Lutz, which was identified as the base of the multi-state operation. The home’s garage was packed floor-to-ceiling with stolen items, which were grouped together and arranged like a makeshift store. Chronister said “customers” would request certain items, and the group behind the scheme would take them...

Roughly 8% of the more than 3,000 people enrolled in the often-criticized electronic monitoring system in Cook County are missing, according to the chief judge. In other words: 243 people are missing. “Transparency is not optional — it is a core obligation of this office,” Chief Judge Charles Beach II said in a statement. “The public has a right to know how this program operates, what the data shows and what we are doing every day to make it stronger." Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke, a frequent critic of electronic monitoring, issued a statement Wednesday saying she welcomes...

The owner of a healthcare software company was convicted of massive Medicare fraud on Thursday, the Department of Justice said, ending what Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche called "one of the most egregious fraud schemes in Florida history." HealthSplash owner and CEO Brett Blackman, 42, and co-conspirators "aggressively targeted hundreds of thousands of Medicare beneficiaries to get them to accept medically unnecessary" products including orthotic braces, according to a DOJ news release. Blackman and his co-conspirators used Power Mobility Doctor Rx, LLC, or DMERx, a platform acquired by HealthSplash in 2017, to coordinate illegal kickbacks with telemedicine doctors and pharmacies...

Jewish groups in the Bay Area of California are protesting a judge’s removal of a local Jewish district attorney from a case involving pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters accused of vandalizing the office of Stanford University’s president. The district attorney, Jeff Rosen, was disqualified from retrying a felony case against five protesters after the judge ruled that Rosen had crossed a legal line when suggesting in a campaign message that the protest was antisemitic. “Rosen is allowed to take a strong stance against crime in the community, against antisemitism. But caution and care need to be taken when utilizing active litigation in...

The Trump administration has blocked $60 million in fraudulent student loan applications since launching a new risk assessment tool last month, the Daily Caller has learned exclusively. The Department of Education launched a new risk assessment tool on April 26 to screen federal student aid applicants for fraud. Since the tool launched two weeks ago, the administration has found about 300,000 fraudulent applications that amounted to $60 million in student loans, officials told the Caller. “We’re using best in class technology, and we’ve been able to stop a lot of those fraudulent activities that are there,” a senior administration official...

FHA loans to non-permanent residents quickly grew to represent 6% of mortgage issuances. The percentage was undoubtedly higher in places like the DFW area, where H-1B visa holders are disproportionately concentrated. I don’t have anything against people in America on H-1B visas. I’ve said it before—and I’ll say it again—that I’ve found many of them to be great people on an individual level, and I wish them all nothing but the best. Individual immigrants—especially those here legally—are not at fault for flawed US immigration policy. But this might be the most radicalizing thing I’ve ever seen. Not only are American...

EXCLUSIVE: Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force has withheld $1.4 billion in federal funding from home health and hospice providers nationwide, following a wave of suspensions enacted by an anti-fraud task force targeting operations in California, Minnesota and several other states. Approximately 90% of the suspended providers have not reached out to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency tasked with combating fraud, waste and abuse, since payments have been suspended. Trump administration officials told Fox News Digital that they believe a lack of communication between alleged fraudulent providers and CMS indicates that the providers were...

The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension and prosecution of Monica Witt, a former U.S. service member and counterintelligence agent.Witt was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran.Witt, a former active-duty U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, served in the military between 1997 and 2008 before working as a U.S. government contractor until 2010. FBI Washington Field Office Announces $200,000 Reward for Information...