Free Republic

President Donald Trump celebrated after the Supreme Court moved to block lower courts from issuing universal injunctions, something that had impacted his executive orders. The president held a news conference just over an hour after the ruling was issued and said the Supreme Court had stopped a "colossal abuse of power." "I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers," Trump said on Friday....

Federal workers frequently violated work-from-home policies under the Biden administration, a government watchdog revealed in a report released Friday. The “rampant telework abuse” was the result of “compliance failures and weak internal oversight” at former President Joe Biden’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM), according to the agency’s inspector general, which sampled the badging data, timesheets and remote-work agreements of dozens of federal employees. “Under the previous administration, OPMʼs telework and remote work policies were mismanaged and oversight was virtually nonexistent,” OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement. “That era of telework abuse is over,” Ezell declared. “At President...

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - A former Waco elementary school teacher was arrested Tuesday on allegations she used an electronic dog whistle to force compliance by a 6-year-old autistic student. Amber Escamilla, 46, a former teacher at Bell’s Hill Elementary School, 2100 Ross Ave., remained jailed Wednesday in lieu of $3,000 bond after her arrest on an injury to a child or disabled person charge, a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. According to arrest records, Waco Independent School District police detectives received a referral from Child Protective Service workers about possible abuse of an autistic student...

At the General Congregations, the so-called pre-conclave, the cardinals gathered in the Vatican are currently discussing the state of the Church and the profile of the next pope. What "skills" will the next head of the 1.4 billion Catholics need? And what issues will the cardinals be particularly concerned with when they soon retreat to the Sistine Chapel for the Papal election, the Conclave? "I believe that the issue of abuse will already play a role in the preliminary discussions, the so-called pre-conclave," German child protection expert Hans Zollner told the news agency Kathpress in Rome based on conversations with...

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, has died by suicide, her family said Friday. Giuffre, 41, died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years. Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Other Epstein abuse survivors later credited her with giving them the courage to speak out.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, newly sworn in as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has exposed billions of dollars in fraud, waste, and abuse plaguing America’s healthcare safety nets. Appearing on America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer, Dr. Oz laid out a clear and urgent mission: protect the most vulnerable — not enrich bureaucrats, fraudsters, and corrupt insiders. “Right now, my main focus, without any question, is to wage a war on fraud, waste, and abuse — because that’s what’s required. All hands-on deck,” Dr. Oz said.

California will soon reopen its e-bike voucher program, offering eligible residents up to $2,000 toward the purchase of an electric bicycle. The state-funded program is designed to help lower- and middle-income Californians replace car trips, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut commuting costs. Incentive funds can be applied as a discount at the time of purchase toward the cost of an eligible e-bike and related accessories. To be eligible, applicants must be at least 18 years old and have a current and valid California driver’s license, AB 60 license, or state ID. Additionally, participants must meet income requirements, with household...

EU funding of non-governmental organisations is "too opaque", auditors found on Monday in a report set to further fan a heated political tussle over the financing of environmental groups. The European Union awarded about 7.4 billion euros ($8 billion) to a plethora of NGOs between 2021 and 2023, but public information about who got the money and how it was used is patchy, the European Court of Auditors (ECA) said. "EU funding for NGOs is too opaque and suffers from a lack of transparency," said Laima Andrikiene, the report's lead auditor. "We are not talking about peanuts here," she added,...

At DOGE.gov, the merry elves of DOGE regularly post what they’ve been doing. The actual, rather than rhetorical, transparency is shocking. In its volume and breadth, the outright fraud, theft, incompetence and arrogance is as jaw-dropping as it is disgusting. Let’s review a few of those posts for the savings and insights they provide. Graphic: DOGE X ScreenshotNormal Americans would imagine anyone applying for government grants would have to be very specific indeed about what they intended to do with those billions. One would also imagine they would have to prove those billions would be of direct benefit to America...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Purpose. Promoting financial integrity and operational efficiency are critical responsibilities of the Federal Government. The Federal Government processes trillions of dollars annually in disbursements to individuals, businesses, and organizations, and in receipts from taxes, fees, and other payments to finance daily and long-term Government operations. These transactions flow into and out of the United States General Fund (General Fund), which might be thought of as America’s bank account. In Fiscal Year 2024, $33.9 trillion...

The Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) issued a new update in its ongoing audit of government credit cards. This has been a significant focus for the department, and DOGE has issued updates on its findings weekly on X. Their most recent post announced the cancellation of over 200,000 government credit cards. According to their post, DOGE has continued its pilot program with 16 federal agencies to audit unused cards. They say that while hundreds of thousands of credit cards have been deactivated, millions more need to be deactivated. For context, DOGE acts on the president’s authority, and Trump directly addressed...

After Donald Trump won the presidency again, Rebecca Carlson was counting on this being the year things turned around for her 1,300-acre farm in northern Michigan. The farm has been in her family for generations but has struggled over the past several years amid the rising cost of fuel, fertilizer and other operating expenses. Then, last year, bad weather wiped out much of her crop. But the return of Trump, she thought, would help reverse things. Her farm had been awarded a grant worth $400,000 through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help pay for the costs associated with hiring...

BREMEN, Maine (AP) — Commercial fishermen and seafood processors looking to switch to new, lower-carbon emission systems say the federal funding they relied on for this work is either frozen or unavailable due to significant budget cuts promoted by President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. The changes are designed to replace old diesel-burning engines and outdated at-sea cooling systems and are touted by environmentalists as a way to reduce seafood’s carbon footprint. Decarbonization of the fishing fleet has been a target of environmental activists in recent years. That is far less than agriculture, but still a significant piece of...

WASHINGTON - At NASA headquarters in Washington, just a mile from the U.S. Capitol, employees returned to an infestation of cockroaches and some are working in chairs with no desks, according to two people familiar with conditions there. In a private chat, staffers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services likened the hunt for desks in some regional offices to "The Hunger Games," the popular series of novels and films where young people must fight to the death in a government-sanctioned contest. And at an Internal Revenue Service office in Memphis, Tennessee, tax assessors sharing a training room are unable to...

Every morning, one federal employee wakes up and wishes she had not. She has lost 20 pounds and says she is traumatized. Another employee, an Iraq War veteran with PTSD at the Department of Veterans Affairs, says he has gone from loving his work to considering taking his life. A third is struggling to sleep and has stress headaches, fearing the loss of a job he once thought was guaranteed as long as he met his targets. The three are among a growing number of federal employees who say their mental health is suffering as President Donald Trump's administration seeks...

When Kajol contracted tuberculosis in January, USAID kept her alive. Now she and her family are in danger again after the Trump administration ordered most US aid spending to end. "You ask people on the street, they will say yeah, it's the US, they are the ones that are keeping it [tuberculosis] in control," said a director of a USAID project in Bangladesh. "Bangladesh was USAID's largest programme in Asia," says Asif Saleh, executive director of the non-profit BRAC organisation. "In terms of its impact, particularly in the healthcare sector, it has been massive. In 2024, Bangladesh received $500m in...

Universities across the U.S. have announced hiring freezes, citing new financial uncertainty as the Trump administration threatens a range of cuts to federal contracts and research grants. Some have announced layoffs. Johns Hopkins University said Thursday it is eliminating more than 2,200 workers because of a loss of funding from USAID. Some employees are in Baltimore but most work in 44 other countries in support of the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, its medical school and an affiliated nonprofit organization. Some schools already have shelved projects because of the cuts, which have been delayed temporarily by a court challenge....

NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration’s recent changes to student loans are causing frustration and confusion for some borrowers. In response to a February court ruling that blocked some Biden-era programs, the Education Department has taken down online and paper applications for income-driven repayment plans. “This especially hurts anyone who’s lost their jobs, including federal workers,” said Natalia Abrams, founder and president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “A few months ago, they would have been able to get on a zero-dollar income-driven repayment plan.” Adding to the uncertainty are layoffs at the Education Department, which oversees the federal...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been squandering money on thousands of unused software licenses, an audit found, according to DOGE. For example, there were "11,020 Acrobat licenses with zero users," DOGE noted in the post on X. The list also included other examples. DOGE's "initial findings on paid software licenses" also included, "35,855 ServiceNow licenses on three products; only using 84," "1,776 Cognos licenses; only using 325," "800 WestLaw Classic licenses; only using 216" and "10,000 Java licenses; only using 400." "All are being fixed," the tweet concluded.

MEKELE, Ethiopia (AP) — As a displaced person in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, 76-year-old Haile Tsege is no stranger to hunger. During its war with Tigray fighters that devastated the region in 2020-2022, Ethiopian government restrictions on the rebellious region reduced aid flows to a trickle. Then in 2023, U.S. and U.N. aid distributions of grain were halted for months over a corruption scandal. Now the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, has again halted food deliveries to a sprawling camp of over 20,000 people outside Tigray’s regional capital, Mekele. “We will just die...