Free Republic

Washington state Democrats are magicians! In the time it takes to say abracadabra, they made millions upon millions of dollars disappear just like that!As if it weren’t bad enough that Seattle is under the reign of a communist mayor, statewide radical Democrats passed a bill masquerading as a “millionaire tax,” ushering in the state’s first-ever income tax.As I reported in a recent West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, this "millionaire tax" was always going to change — POOF! — into a thousandaire income tax, and the Washington Policy Center has the email receipts. But now, as night follows day, as thunder...

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is ditching his longtime residence in Seattle for Florida, just as Washington Democrats are nearing the finish line on a proposed "millionaires tax." Schultz, who served as board director of the coffee chain until 2023, said in a statement on social media that he and his wife are moving to Miami as part of the "retirement phase" of their lives. Schultz, who has lived in Seattle for more than four decades, purchased a $44 million penthouse in Surfside, Fla., according to reports, and will relocate his private family office to Miami. Schultz, who owns roughly...

A Republican won a deep-blue Northern Virginia county-level seat in a major upset Tuesday after revelations that her Democratic opponent made racist social media posts more than 10 years ago. Republican Jeannie LaCroix, 64, won a special election for a Prince William County Board of Supervisors seat defeating Democratic nominee Muhammed Sufiyan Casim, 36, a Muslim Pakistani immigrant, who in the 2010s made a series of online posts containing racist, misogynist and antisemitic content, Potomac Local News reported. Casim, who was in his 20s when he posted the content, apologized for the posts in an interview with the Prince William...

What a statement Mayor Zohran Mamdani could have made — if he’d hosted those two hero cops instead of a terror sympathizer at Gracie Mansion on Sunday night. NYPD Chief Aaron Edwards and Sgt. Luis Navarro literally leapt into action on Saturday to nab the ISIS-inspired alleged bomb throwers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, outside the mayor’s official residence. Having the two Finest at a Gracie Mansion meal the next evening would’ve signaled major respect for the men and women in blue who keep the city safe, and a rejection of the hateful brand of Islam that inspired the suspects

You may have read about numerous prominent large corporations headed for the exits in blue states like California and heading for more welcoming climates in business-friendly states like Texas and Florida. Why? They’re sick of getting constantly hammered with taxes, regulations, and hostility from state governments.Now it’s the Exxon Mobil Corporation, which announced Tuesday that 144 years after it incorporated in the state, its Board of Directors unanimously recommended that shareholders change the company’s legal domicile from New Jersey to Texas.They passed over former President Joe Biden’s home state:This is a big one. ExxonMobil to move its state of incorporation...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday floated the idea of passing a sweeping spending package aimed at targeting what he described as fraud, waste and abuse in Democratic-led states. Johnson said during a news conference at the House Republican retreat in Doral that he’s been a “champion for reconciliation as one of the important tools in the toolbox.” “I think that we can come together and envision a Venn diagram as I do — what are those handful of issues that are in the center of those concentric circles that is something that every Republican can agree on, that is...

Nature documentaries abound, covering the various species as they embark on their epic migratory journeys. From bird flocks to wildebeasts on the savannah to even monarch butterflies, these travels and travails are captured in dramatic fashion. Currently, another group shift is taking place in the corporate world, where a growing number of companies are pulling up stakes and seeking out more verdant economic landscapes, escaping harsh environments wrought by Democrat tax policies. It is enough to warrant its own Netflix documentary. Have David Attenborough narrating the footage of these fiscal nomads, and title it “March of the Corporate Titans”. In...

The Boston Globe ran a poll last December which found that a full third of respondents were thinking about leaving the state because of the high cost of living.The Globe/Suffolk survey found that about one-third of Massachusetts voters have seriously considered leaving the state in the past year because of affordability pressures, even as a majority still believe the state is generally moving in the right direction. Inflation, health care costs, housing, taxes, and soaring utility bills topped the list of financial stressors.Boston.com asked their readers how they felt and and even higher percentage said they were looking to move....

You may vote red or blue, but would you rather live in a blue state or a red state? Regardless of what people do at the ballot box, newly released data from the Census Bureau overwhelmingly show people voting with their feet, leaving blue states for red states. And this is nothing new.From July 2024 to July 2025 (the latest numbers available), blue states like California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts hemorrhaged their most valuable resource—people—at an alarming rate.These were the five worst states for net domestic migration, meaning more people left those states than moved in, for...

The Democratic Party has come a long way from 1996, when President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign declared that America “cannot tolerate illegal immigration” and added, “We continue to firmly oppose welfare benefits for illegal immigrants.” When we seek explanations for why today’s Democrats refuse to call those here without permission “illegal,” oppose lawful deportations, and seek government benefits for those who’ve snuck into the country, we probably need to look no further than the population woes of Democratic states. At a time when states are governed increasingly by one party or another, the latest migration trends, released last week, show...

You’ve seen the video. Nick Shirley, a citizen journalist (aka a journalist), traveled around Minnesota looking for fraud at state-funded daycare centers largely run by Somali immigrants. He found obvious evidence of malfeasance — and a worldwide audience on X. Shirley’s 42-minute video has now been viewed 115 million times, even forcing a huffy response from Governor Tim Walz (last seen exaggerating his military service). Shirley deserves the attention. But when it comes to waste, fraud, and abuse in government programs, nothing holds a candle to health-care spending. Especially in blue states. And especially since the Affordable Care Act and...

WASHINGTON — Just eight states are on track to allow their residents to cash in fully on popular tax cuts from President Trump’s marquee legislation in 2026, experts told The Post, with several blue states unwilling to give workers an additional break. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act exempted federal taxes on tipped wages and overtime pay, but hard-working residents will still have to pay state taxes on that income — unless local elected leaders step up. Democratic strongholds like New York, Illinois and California have so far declined to extend state-level tax breaks, Reuters first reported, citing billions of...

The National Popular Vote (NPV) plan is the latest in a long line of schemes designed to replace the Electoral College. Imbued with the ideals of this nation’s Founders, the Electoral College has proved itself both effective in providing orderly elections for President and resilient in allowing a stable transfer of power of the leadership of the world’s greatest democracy. Therefore, while it would be a mistake to replace the Electoral College, replacing this system with the NPV would be a disaster. The NPV would devalue the minority interests that the Founders sought to protect, create electoral administrative problems, encourage...

Hispanic voters — crucial to Trump’s 2024 victory — are abandoning him in significant numbers. Sure, the Hispanic flight from the Trump camp is slower among Cuban Americans and Venezuelan Americans in Florida, but the cracks are already visible. In New Jersey, Trump won 46% of the Latino vote in 2024. But this time, Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli got only 31% of the Hispanic vote in the Nov. 4 election, CNN exit polls show. The Democratic winner, Mikie Sherrill, won by a landslide, thanks in part to the Latino vote. In heavily Hispanic Passaic County, where Trump won...

On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities…But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart. Placer has a Scandinavia-like life expectancy of 82.3 years. In Lexington, the figure is 77.7, a little worse than China’s. Step back and look at a map of life expectancy across the country and the geographic patterns are as dramatic as they are obvious. If you live pretty much anywhere in the contiguous...

Thread on the ( mostly all) Blue State Elections

U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy has issued an injunction preventing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) from redirecting $233 million in Homeland Security Grant Program funds, following a lawsuit by a coalition of Democratic-led states. The decision comes amid concerns that the reallocations have curtailed vital counterterrorism and emergency preparedness resources. Additional states are considering joining the litigation, citing potential impacts on national security funding, as the case progresses. McElroy said, “This sort of last-minute changing of the way the funding happens, and especially when it happens right in the wake...

All this talk about redrawing congressional districts overlooks the big picture. In other words, the census will end up doing in 2030 what some GOP state legislatures are trying to do before 2026. This is from Tom Rogers:Much has been written about the various attempts to create more Republican House districts through extreme gerrymandering. This column recently discussed a pending Supreme Court case that could strike down the Voting Rights Act’s remedy of creating majority-minority districts and result in the creation of even more Republican House seats.However, none of these actions affect presidential elections, which are decided in the Electoral...

The Department of Justice filed lawsuits Thursday against Hawaii and Michigan over planned climate-based litigation against fossil fuel companies. The DOJ also filed separate lawsuits against New York and Vermont over those states’ “climate superfund” laws, that levy fines against fossil fuel companies for producing legal products that consumers willingly and needfully purchase. Citing President Donald Trump’s “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach” executive order, Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement that these laws and lawsuits “threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security.” States, cities and anti-fossil fuel nonprofits like Our Children’s Trust have...

As Tax Day approaches on April 15, a new WalletHub report ranks New Mexico dead last in the nation for taxpayer return on investment (ROI), raising serious questions about how effectively state government uses public funds. The annual study from WalletHub evaluated all 50 states using 29 metrics across five key categories: education, health, safety, economy, and infrastructure & pollution. New Mexico ranked 50th overall despite having one of the highest tax burdens in the country. The state placed near the bottom in nearly every category: 49th in education 42nd in health 50th in safety 45th in economy 34th in...