Free Republic

I will admit, when I first read that Susan Rice was still ensconced on the Defense Policy Board well into the new Trump administration, I thought it must surely be fake news, some hallucination conjured by an overactive internet rumor mill. Yet, with the bitter taste of disbelief still fresh, the facts became clear. Not only had she lingered, she had lingered officially, and with all the institutional imprimatur the position carries. It is the sort of stunning oversight that shakes one's faith in the assumption that elections carry consequences. Rice, a veteran of Obama-era foreign policy failures and perhaps...

Immigration advocates are livid over the Biden transition team’s addition of Cecilia Muñoz, a former Obama administration official who was the public face of that administration’s immigration policy. Muñoz, who once served as the head of former President Obama’s White House Domestic Policy Council, was named by the Biden campaign Friday as part of a group of eight new senior transition advisers. The pick was quickly criticized by immigration reform advocates, a reaction that exhibited both ideological divides within the Democratic Party and a lingering resentment felt by many immigration advocates over the actions of the Obama administration, particularly in...

If you were president of the United States, would you hire an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro to be ambassador to El Salvador, a country teetering on the brink of hard-core socialism? President Obama just did. On Dec. 9, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador, despite the fact that in the late 1990s, the FBI discovered that she was working with Cuban intelligence officers. According to Insight Magazine, "When the FBI eventually questioned her about her involvement with Cuban intelligence, she reportedly refused to cooperate." Why would Aponte escape the Obama administration's scrutiny?...

President Trump repeated a false claim to reporters Tuesday, wrongly blaming the Obama administration for instituting a policy in which children were separated from their parents at the Southern border. "I'm the one that stopped it," Trump said. "President Obama had child separation." Trump made the comments during a photo op prior to his meeting with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. Asked whether the administration was considering reinstating the policy of child separation to curb the number of migrant families crossing the border from Mexico, Trump responded that "We're not looking to do it." But he seemed to imply it was...

This is just too rich. Seriously. From the insufferable Iran deal… to the appeasement “Russian Reset”… to the Libya fiasco… to the rise of ISIS… to installing the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt… to the explosion of terrorism in Yemen… to civil war in Syria… to the crisis in Ukraine… to the 2010 State Department apology tour (WikiLeaks cables scandal)… to their inability to stop North Korean nuclear ambitions and the rise of China as an influential power… there were/are zero foreign policy successes in eight years of the Obama administration. There was not a single Obama foreign policy initiative that...

Months after the Obama administration spent $19 million to register new immigrant voters that will likely support Democrats in November, it’s dedicating an additional $10 million in a final push as the presidential election approaches. The money is distributed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees lawful immigration, to organizations that help enhance pathways to naturalization by offering immigrants free citizenship instruction, English, U.S. history and civics courses. Officially, they’re known as “citizenship integration grants.” Since 2009 USCIS has doled out $63 million in these grants to prepare more than 156,000 resident immigrants in...

President Obama has appointed open border/amnesty advocate Cecilia Munoz...as the head of the Domestic Policy Council. Munoz, a strong supporter of the failed DREAM Act, is the former senior VP for the radical open-border National Council of La Raza. Muñoz is now serving as the White House's director of intergovernmental affairs and is in charge of outreach to state and local governments.... Muñoz is an immigration expert who worked for the National Council of La Raza, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, until she joined the administration in 2009. The group works to improve...

A year after President Obama launched his Task Force on New Americans the administration is injecting it with a $19 million infusion so it can achieve its key initiative of registering new voters that will likely support Democrats in the upcoming election. Officially, this is being described as enhancing pathways to naturalization by offering immigrants free citizenship instruction, English, U.S. history and civics courses. The cash is being distributed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees lawful immigration, and the obvious goal is to register more immigrant voters because they tend to be Democrat....

White House Holds Meeting With Muslims And Sikhs by KRISTIN DONNELLY, CHRIS JANSING and CORKY SIEMASZKO President Obama's top advisers held a series of meetings Monday with Muslim and Sikh religious leaders to discuss the fallout their communities are facing in the wake of the deadly San Bernardino shootings. Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Munoz, and Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes took part in the White House sit-downs — a dozen days after a radicalized Muslim couple fatally shot 14 people and wounded 21 more in California. The Chicago-born Syed Farood and his wife Tashfeen...

Last year, as part of his Imperial decree of amnesty for illegal immigrants, resident Barack Obama created the White House Task Force on New Americans, whose goal is to vastly increase the numbers and rates at which immigrants were naturalized and granted citizenship. This Task Force works hand-in-hand with the George Soros-funded, open borders-promoting Migration Policy Institute, as well as the openly racist group La Raza, a Mexican nationalist organization that has called for the mass murder of white Americans and a return of the western states to Mexico. The Task Force is headed up by one Cecilia Munoz, Obama’s...

Much has been written about Obama’s controversial appointments, not only to the federal bench, but to key cabinet positions, as well as to the unaccountable (and probably unconstitutional) “Czar” positions. Much of the criticism has dwelled on the Obama administration’s lack of vetting when filling these rolls—but that’s not the issue. To the contrary, the Obama team did investigate thoroughly and they choose precisely. When an administration repeatedly nominates hard-left individuals, it’s not a vetting error—it’s a pattern. We should not allow the media to portray these appointments as a series of errors; but rather, we need to realize that...

It was supposed to be a phone call for Obama administration ears only. But hear it the radio host did, she says. And what she heard should make your blood run cold — and perhaps your rage hot. Obama’s amnesty plan is to use illegal aliens as “seedlings,” said the federal officials. They will “navigate, not assimilate,” as they “take over the host,” create a “country within a country” and start “pushing the citizens into the shadows.” Welcome to the “fundamental transformation” of America. The above was alleged by WCBM radio co-host Sue Payne in an interview with talk giant...

Two top aides to President Obama hailed his “year of action” as a success Monday, saying the president took more than 80 executive actions without Congress to help the middle class. National Economic Council Director Jeffrey Zients and Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Munoz said in a blog post that Mr. Obama will try to work the the new Republican Congress next year, but will also “continue to use every authority available to make progress through executive actions” in 2015.

Long before Barack Obama ran for president, Cecilia Munoz was on the front lines of the immigration debate. In 2000, she was named a MacArthur genius fellow for her work on civil rights and immigration. When Obama won the election in 2008, one of his first orders of business was persuading Munoz to join his White House staff. Those were the heady days when legislative change seemed possible, and an activist like Munoz could dream of achieving her goal from an office on the second floor of the West Wing. It hasn’t turned out the way many Obama supporters hoped,...

....the WH quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist....Cecilia Munoz, now intergovernmental affairs director, will head the Domestic Policy Council. She’ll wield influence at Obama’s morning briefings and expand her reach into education, health care and beyond. Munoz was chief registered lobbyist for La Raza (“The Race”)......which promotes drivers’ licenses and in-state tuition for illegals; opposed cooperative US immigration-enforcement efforts and a southern border fence. Munoz advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for illegal-alien amnesty....La Raza protested post-9/11 homeland-security measures and joined a failed lawsuit to block immigration information-sharing between the feds and local police. The group also has called...

With public attention focused on the GOP primaries, the White House quietly promoted another self-dealing lobbyist to serve as President Obama's top domestic policy adviser. Promises? What broken promises? Cecilia Munoz, the current director of intergovernmental affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., will now serve as head of the Domestic Policy Council. She'll wield heightened influence at Obama's daily morning briefings and expand her reach from immigration issues to education, health care and beyond. Gushing headlines heralded the advancement of Obama's top Hispanic civil rights "advocate" as a win for the "middle class." But Munoz is a veteran member of the...

Today CNS News reported that White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Cecilia Munoz equated illegal immigration with jaywalking. She went on to say that the administration would only deport violent criminals. Policies like this prove how dangerous the Obama administration is to America. First and foremost, illegal immigration is a massive drain on the U.S. economy. According to a recent report by Fox News showed that illegal immigration cost American taxpayers a staggering $113 billion per year. Many of the reasons for this are that the Latino dropout rate is nearly 20-percent. Even worse, the dropout rate among illegal immigrants...

President Obama’s favorite La Raza group has teamed up with a federal agency to promote one of the administration’s many government cash giveaways with Spanish ads encouraging Latinos—possibly illegal immigrants—to apply for free U.S. taxpayer dollars.The new campaign warns Hispanics that time is running out to get up to “$50,000 in help” from Uncle Sam to pay their mortgage, past due charges, taxes, insurance and even legal fees associated with their home. The money is being disbursed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of a billion-dollar Emergency Homeowner Loan Program (EHLP).In 2008 the agency revealed...

The progressive politically-connected National Council of La Raza has been a staple (illegal) immigration advocacy group on the left and has long benefited from the generous support of government financial grants. But according to an investigation by Judicial Watch, federal funding of the group “skyrocketed” shortly after one of its top officials got a job in the Obama White House. Cecilia Munoz, La Raza’s senior vice president and lobbyist, joined the Obama administration as director of intergovernmental affairs in 2009. Since then, Judicial Watch reports, federal funding being poured into the organization has more than doubled: At the pro illegal...

A Judicial Watch investigation reveals that federal funding for a Mexican La Raza group that for years has raked in millions of taxpayer dollars has skyrocketed since one of its top officials got a job in the Obama White House.The influential and politically-connected National Council of La Raza (NCLR) has long benefitted from Uncle Sam’s largess but the group has made a killing since Obama hired its senior vice president (Cecilia Muñoz) in 2009 to be his director of intergovernmental affairs.Ignored by the mainstream media, Judicial Watch covered the appointment because the president issued a special “ethics waiver” to bring...