Free Republic

Several major blue cities in the U.S. have been marred by a slate of massive budgetary problems in recent years. City officials in Chicago and Los Angeles are currently grappling with how to address substantial budget shortfalls. Meanwhile, Philadelphia is struggling with various financial issues across several sectors, with both its school district and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), the city’s public transit system, facing massive budget deficits. Chicago is facing a projected budget gap of nearly $1.2 billion for fiscal year 2026. The city’s budget deficit has largely been exacerbated by soaring pension costs, declining state revenue and...

Pope Francis passed away two days ago, on Easter Monday. He had been the leader of the Catholic Church for just over 12 years. He presented himself as a well-intentioned and deeply religious man, none of which I ever doubted. But good intentions are the paving stones of the road to hell. I often tried to find some positive things about Francis so that I could admire him. But unfortunately I think that his overall impact on the world and on the church was overwhelmingly negative. Thinking that he was working to uplift the poor and downtrodden of the world,...

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an illegal migrant whose deportation to El Salvador has garnered nationwide controversy, was once pulled over in a vehicle owned by a convicted human smuggler, federal authorities have confirmed. Abrego Garcia was pulled over on a Tennessee highway in 2022 and suspected of human smuggling after local authorities discovered he was transporting eight passengers with no apparent luggage. The vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving belonged to Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, an illegal migrant who was sentenced to prison for human smuggling in 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed Wednesday ... When a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer...

Setting the record straight in defense of Israel Yoseph Haddad, the well-known Israeli Arab who served in the IDF, and has become an articulate defender of Israel in speeches all over the UK, including a memorable evening at the Oxford Union, recently organized a group of 35 Israeli Arabs — Muslim, Christian, and Druze — to travel to the UK and to speak from their own experience in Israel, defending the state from the canard that it practices “apartheid.” They were determined to protest against this and the calumnies hurled at the Jewish state, the anti-Israel lies that have spread...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports” that if President Donald Trump disobeyed a Supreme Court order, “extraordinary action will be necessary.” Jansing said, “The Supreme Court said the administration must facilitate the return of Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. That has not happened. Are we at the point, Senator, where you feel extraordinary action is warranted?” Schumer said, “Look, the case will be back to the Supreme Court, they sent it down to the lower court judge. But if the president disobeys a Supreme Court order, extraordinary action...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic Party’s top fundraising platform, the latest example of Trump using the tools of the government to go after his political opponents. Trump, in an executive order signed Thursday, directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate allegations that Republicans have raised that ActBlue allows illegal campaign donations. Democrats, who had anticipated they would be targeted, condemned the move Thursday and ActBlue called it an “oppressive use of power” by the White House.......

During an interview with WVON on Thursday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said “the fluctuations of the market and Trump’s tariffs” have resulted in massive losses to the city “just because of the uncertainty and the chaos.” And also stated that he wants to raise taxes by imposing a financial transaction tax and expressed openness to a corporate head tax and stated that those things, along with lots of other ideas, would put “the burden on the very people that Donald Trump is trying to protect.” While discussing the city’s budget, [relevant remarks begin around 5:35] Johnson said that the budget...

Fetterman says he 'can't understand why Trump would negotiate with this diseased regime' in Iran. "Waste that s---," the lawmaker declared to the Washington Free Beacon. "You're never going to be able to negotiate with that kind of regime that has been destabilizing the region for decades already, and now we have an incredible window, I believe, to do that, to strike and destroy Iran's nuclear facilities."

“I’ve never seen anything like this.” — Donald Kenkel, Cornell University. Last week, the New York Times discovered that President Donald Trump was serious when he promised to liberate the economy from the oppressive weight of the regulatory state, describing it as “deregulation on a mass scale.” Cornell’s Donald Kenkel, who was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in the first Trump administration, told the Times that “It’s going on much more quietly than some of the other fireworks we’re seeing, but it will have great impact.” Great, indeed. In both senses of the word. Gutting...

More than 2,000 Confederate symbols are still standing in public spaces across the U.S., according to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Of those symbols, 685 are Confederate monuments, the nonprofit legal advocacy group said. The remaining symbols are a mixture of government buildings, plaques, markers, schools, parks, counties, cities, military property, and streets and highways named after anyone associated with the Confederacy, the report said. "As the Trump administration escalates its efforts to rewrite our history, we cannot let up in telling the whole, true story of our nation," Margaret Huang, president and CEO of...

Newly-declassified memos written by disgraced FBI official Andrew McCabe shine new light on how he kept the Trump-Russia collusion hoax investigation alive during a critical period in the first half of 2017 before he got it handed off to a special counsel. The eight memos penned by McCabe, most of which had never been released until earlier this month, span his discussions and meetings (including with President Donald Trump) held from January 24, 2017 to May 21, 2017 — a critical time period ranging from just before the FBI sprung an interview on retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn to just...

Any Democrat capable of redemption has already repented. Thus, those who know the truth and still remain Democrats surely must work for Satan. For instance, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement news release, earlier this month ICE agents arrested 23-year-old Guatemalan illegal immigrant Keycy Robinson Alexis Barrera-Rosa at the Charles County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland, then, on Friday, the CCSO charged Barrera-Rosa with murdering his 23-year-old girlfriend, Lesbia Mileth Ramirez-Guerra, mother of his two children. The charges came as Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland visited El Salvadorian prison, where he met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the...

~In a shrewd assessment of the current campaign Down Under, Paul Collits cites a certain "niche Canadian"": Mark Steyn says that we cannot vote our way out of the Western mess. The 2025 Australian election is living proof of the truth of his claim. Whoever wins here will inherit an unholy mess, and will not have the will to address it. Of course, he could be talking about next week's Canadian election or last month's German election. As we have noted, Fred Merz, the incoming chancellor in Berlin, has yet to take office but what Americans call the honeymoon is...

President Donald Trump's tariffs just cost America a chunk of Canadian business.Subaru, which sold 68,043 cars in Canada in 2024, is reshuffling its supply chain in response to escalating car trade scuffles. The company sold over 17,700 American-built vehicles in Canada last year, making up 26 percent of its 2024 sales. ***the Japanese automaker’s Canadian division will slash US imports to just 10 percent by the 2026 model year, representing thousands of cars and millions of dollars lost. The biggest impact will be on the American-built Outback. The popular car will no longer ship north after 2026. Instead, it will...

China just scrapped 12,000 metric tons of pork orders from the US — the largest cancellation since 2020. That single move dragged US pork export sales to their lowest level in over six months. Lean hog futures immediately took a hit in Chicago, sliding as much as 1.6% before recovering slightly. Behind the scenes, it's not just about pork — it's about tariffs, trade power plays, and a shifting global protein map that could catch some investors off guard. The sharp pullback from China isn't random. It's a direct response to longstanding US tariffs — some dating back to Trump-era...

Peter Brabeck Letmathe Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has replaced Klaus Schwab as the acting CEO of the World Economic Forum in what appears to be a stage coup. The 80-year-old Austrian businessman spent his career working for Nestle, moving through the ranks from 1968 to 1997 when he was appointed CEO, a position he held until 2008. He remained at Nestle as a chairman until 2017, when he was appointed as Chairman Emeritus. Brabeck-Letmathe held board memberships with Credit Suisse, Roche, Exxon Mobil, L’Oréal, and Salt Mobile SA. He was the founder and chairman of the 2030 Water Resources Group (WRG), a...

I confess to being a troglodyte or cave man or idiot or whatever metaphor you'd like to use but I'm very skeptical of AI...

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration this week released its most detailed explanation to date on its legal reasoning behind diverting $10 million in Medicaid settlement money to the Hope Florida Foundation. In short, only $57 million of a $67 million legal settlement Florida made with the Medicaid contractor Centene was considered “potential Medicaid-related damages to the State,” Agency for Health Care Administration General Counsel Andrew Sheeran wrote to lawmakers on Tuesday. That meant that Centene could be directed to divert the remaining $10 million to the Hope Florida charity, Sheeran wrote. The charity was created by DeSantis’ administration to support the...

Trends favor cord-cutting and switching to streaming services, leading to customer losses. Comcast's Peacock service saw growth, but remains unprofitable after five years. Universal Studios' earnings dropped in part due to the California wildfire. It's the time of year when Q1 earnings reports are starting to trickle in, and much like Verizon's recent report that showcased significant subscriber losses, Comcast is also feeling the pinch, with a report detailing customer losses across paid TV and broadband (via Bloomberg). While it's not all bad news, Comcast’s Peacock service saw some growth, it's still not a profitable service after five years. Ouch....

The head of the US National Science Foundation, a $9 billion agency charged with advancing discoveries across the scientific spectrum, resigned Thursday amid sweeping changes spearheaded by the current Trump administration. NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan has led the agency since he was selected by President Donald Trump during his first term and unanimously confirmed by the Senate in June 2020. “I believe I have done all I can to advance the critical mission of the agency and feel that it is time for me to pass the baton to new leadership,” Panchanathan said in parting remarks, which were provided to...