Free Republic

The effort’s biggest cuts were to the civil service—and they worked.Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) went from an inside joke about a Musk-favored cryptocurrency, Dogecoin, to the biggest story in Washington to a near-nonentity—all in under a year. During DOGE’s whirlwind tour in power, the press highlighted its improbable promises of trillions of dollars in savings, its exaggerations of the savings it did achieve, and its occasional naivete about the politics and policy of Washington.Yet the media spent so much time disputing DOGE’s claims that they largely ignored how it did change spending. In the end, while DOGE...

MINNEAPOLIS — Members of Minnesota's growing Somali community, including a city council member, tore into President Donald Trump and his administration when speaking with Fox News Digital after Monday's raid on Rep. Ilhan Omar's Washington, D.C., residence. "Somalis — we all feel attacked by President Trump," Jamal Osman, the Somali-born vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, said of the impact of the raid carried out by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents. "Our president has broken the law many times. ICE [is] terrorizing our community ... and we're not surprised such action has taken place," Osman continued in reference to...

U.S. — As rumors continued to swirl that she was preparing to make another run at the White House in 2028, former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on a podcast to demand the abolishment of the Electoral College and also the popular vote and also anything else she could lose. Appearing on the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer show and tiptoeing around any formal announcement that she would again run for president, Harris advocated for expanding the U.S. Supreme Court, doing away with the Electoral College, disregarding the popular vote, and removing any other obstacles in general that might prevent...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A 41-year-old Jacksonville woman was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison for assaulting officers during an immigration operation, federal authorities announced Wednesday. Senior U.S. District Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger handed down the sentence to Jennifer Susan Cruz following an investigation into the January 13 incident in Jacksonville. According to court documents, federal immigration officers assisted by the Florida Highway Patrol were conducting an operation in Jacksonville on January 13 to arrest individuals unlawfully present in the United States. Cruz drove past the site while recording on her cellphone, parked nearby and began shouting at a trooper...

The last time an Islamic terrorist attack was carried out in New York City before Mamdani was in Times Square on the last day of 2022. In under a year since Mamdani took office, there have already been two terror attacks. The mass stabbing in Manhattan by an ex-con shouting “Allahu Akbar” followed a previous attack on a protest rally against Islamization at the mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion by two Muslim teenagers throwing homemade bombs. In previous years, Christian Sturdivant, a convert to Islam, had been arrested on December 31, 2025, over a New Year’s Eve stabbing spree plot...

A violent career criminal accused of killing a Philadelphia police officer and wounding another told investigators he did it because the cops were white. Early Saturday, 35-year-old Eric Lewis was arrested after an hour-long standoff with police. Originally, law enforcement was called due to reports of a man standing on a porch with a gun around midnight. After they arrived, Lewis confronted them and, after a brief struggle, opened fire on the officers. Sadly, 40-year-old Officer Shane Seiber — a father of two, 10-year police veteran, and Air Force veteran — was shot and died hours later at the hospital....

Watch how this $9 million robotics project could revolutionize how we survey and protect our sewage systems In January, a collapsed sewer pipe outside Washington, D.C., spilled more than 240 million gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River. It is likely the largest sewage spill in U.S. history, but just one of an estimated 75,000 across the country each year, according to the EPA. As aging sewer networks struggle with growing populations and changing weather patterns, a team of engineers and professors in Europe is developing a robot designed to detect and potentially address problems before disaster strikes. Watch...

New England Patriots MALE cheerleader celebrates the NFL teams win while showing off his dance moves. 0:12 Video at link...........

The State Department failed to launch the program on time, jeopardizing a pathway to permanent U.S. residency for up to 55,000 people. ========================================================================= SAN DIEGO (CN) — A federal judge in San Diego ordered the U.S. Department of State on Wednesday to reopen the diversity visa lottery for 2027, also known as the Green Card Lottery. U.S. District Judge Jinsook Ohta’s preliminary injunction will allow for up to 55,000 people from around the world to apply for permanent residence in the United States. The Trump administration, which has opposed the program, did not open the program’s registration period on time...

[Catholic Caucus] EXCLUSIVE: Amoris laetitia synthesis report to address Communion for divorced Catholics, but issue ‘not the centre’ A member of the committee responsible for the final synthesis report on Amoris laetitia has confirmed to AdVaticanum that the document will address Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, but insists the issue was “not the centre” of discussions, with Pope Leo XIV to review the report before its publicationA member of the committee responsible for reviewing the final report on the tenth anniversary of Amoris laetitia has confirmed to AdVaticanum that the document will address Holy Communion for divorced and...

Khan is set to replace Smith as the most popular surname for newborns next year following a surge in immigration and a decline in the native birth rate, according to an analysis of official data. The Telegraph has the story. Smith is believed to have been the most common family name in England for centuries but has been in decline for the past 30 years. Khan is poised to overtake it in 2027, with the traditionally Muslim name more than doubling in popularity in the last 30 years. Data showed that 4,102 babies were born with the surname Smith in...

Brian Cates - Political Columnist & Pundit repostedObserving Consciousness@holonabove·2hElon's comment to spin up Amazon competitor isn't a fluke... Amazon has major problems...Amazon has become a Chinese flea market operating inside an American distribution empire... 55.9% of its top 10,000 sellers are now China based, while American entrepreneurs invest in developing products, building brands, proving demand and creating the very markets that overseas competitors move in to capture...The pattern is well documented... an American inventor develops something successful, Chinese knockoffs flood the marketplace, prices collapse, original listings get hijacked, and fraudulent intellectual property complaints can even force legitimate sellers offline...Forearm Forklift...

Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to campaign in Florida next week for Democrat David Jolly. This will be Clinton’s first public appearance on the 2026 trail outside of earlier New York events. David Jolly spent the last year calling the Epstein file dump “dripping with depraved criminality” and telling Republicans to do the right thing. Now he’s happy to stand next to Bill Clinton the guy Epstein visited at the White House 17 times, who flew on the Lolita Express 26 times, who paid Paula Jones $850k, and who got impeached over the Lewinsky cigar. The outrage only applies...

[Catholic Caucus] Roche falsely claims Summorum Pontificum’s goal was SSPX ‘returning’ to Church Pope Benedict XVI has said it is ‘absolutely false’ that the ‘reauthorization’ of the Latin Mass was ‘primarily a concession’ to the SSPX.Anti-traditionalist Cardinal Arthur Roche has repeated the false claim that Pope Benedict XVI issued Summorum Pontificum to “smooth the way” for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) to “return to the Church.”The prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship told AdVaticanum in an interview published Tuesday that “Summorum Pontificum was created to accommodate, and also to smooth the way for, the Society of Saint...

Pennsylvania State University is recommending the closure of 47 undergraduate programs across its various campuses, including 11 programs at its flagship campus in University Park. ... The affected programs represent 11.5 percent of the 403 undergraduate programs that are offered across all Penn State campuses, affecting 784 students, equal to about 1.1% of Penn State's overall undergraduate population. The 11 programs flagged for closure at the University Park campus are professional photography (BDES), geobiology (BS), geosciences (BA), elementary and kindergarten education (BS), middle level education (BS), world languages education (BS), information sciences and technology (BS), security and risk analysis (BS),...

[Catholic Caucus] James Martin: Gays ‘treated like dirt’ by being asked not to receive Communion In a podcast with JD Flynn, James Martin erroneously called denial of Holy Communion to sexually active homosexuals mistreatment rather than fidelity to Jesus Christ.Notoriously heterodox Jesuit priest Fr. James Martin, S.J., claimed in a recent interview that homosexuals are “treated like dirt” in parts of the Church, citing as an example the refusal of Holy Communion when a priest knows someone is “doing whatever and you’re gay.”In the October 12 episode of The Pillar Podcast titled “On bridges, with Fr. James Martin,” hosted by...

Kennedy stated that the purge would save taxpayers $738 million in 2026 alone and that future savings would reach an annualized rate of $1.5 billion. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced the purge of 189,000 subsidized Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP enrollments for deceased persons or duplicate enrollees, saying the move would stop more than $1 billion in erroneous payments to insurance companies annually. "In 2026, CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] identified 189,000 subsidized enrollments involving duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage on record showing the enrollee has died," he said in...

Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive1.) 💎🧵 Dean Logan has run elections in Los Angeles County since 2008. 5.2 million registered voters.Tuesday afternoon the Justice Department delivered a thumb drive to his office, with the password on a handwritten note.He has not plugged it in.Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive·1h2.) The letter is from Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter. The drive holds names the federal government "believes are likely noncitizens" who were mailed a ballot for November 3.The ask: check every name in 48 hours. Noon Eastern, October 15.Jewels Jones ®@JewelsJonesLive·1h3.) For any name the county cannot confirm, the letter's word is "segregate." Not cancel....

Calls are growing for a deep cleaning of Santa Monica’s main library after an outside organization allegedly found fecal matter and E. coli on tables, computer keyboards and other surfaces. What they're saying: John Alle, with the Santa Monica Coalition, hired an outside organization to collect samples inside the library. He says the results raise concerns about sanitation and safety. "And what we found is awful," Alle said. Dr. Houman Hemmati, a Santa Monica resident and physician, discussed the alleged findings, saying fecal coliforms and E. coli should not be present on those surfaces. The coalition is also raising concerns...

Wisconsin election officials say a loss of trust in the U.S. Postal service is likely behind a roughly 30 percent decline in the number of absentee ballots received three weeks ahead of the November election. As of Tuesday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported clerks have gotten around 128,000 absentee ballots. Three weeks out from the 2022 election, clerks reported getting nearly 184,000 ballots by mail. During a Tuesday press conference in Madison, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe was joined by Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell and acting Madison Clerk Kaitlyn Bernarde. McDonell was asked why he thinks the number...