Free Republic

Declaring that religious freedom is “under threat,” President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to repeal a rarely enforced IRS rule that says pastors who endorse candidates from the pulpit risk losing their tax-exempt status. “I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution,” Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast, a high-profile event bringing together faith leaders, politicians and dignitaries. Trump’s pledge was a nod to his evangelical Christian supporters, who helped power his White House win. So far he has not detailed his plans...

Though they are officially “non-profit” organizations, Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and several other Christian organizations are profiting from lucrative contracts with the federal government to resettle refugees in the United States. Of the 100,000 refugees resettled in the United States in 2014 under the Refugee Resettlement program, an estimated 40 percent were Muslims. In FY 2015, the State Department, through the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, spent more than $1 billion on these programs, which settled international refugees “vetted” by the United Nations High Commission on International Refugees in all 50 states...

“I hope President Trump will get to the bottom of just how corrupt and fraudulent this program has become when he ‘drains the swamp’ that is covering up years of dirty secrets and lies about the poor, downtrodden ‘refugees,'” Hohmann said. “The program has been sold to American taxpayers on humanitarian terms, but it has become, at its core, a money-making operation for nonprofit ‘charities’ that get paid a fee of $2,050 for every Third Worlder they distribute into our cities and towns.” -- “These globalists always feed us the line that these refugees are good for our communities,” he...

What You Need to Know About American-Based Terror Funding: A Summary Under the Obama administration, the federal government appeared to ease up on prosecutions of American Islamist charities linked to terror.   This was a marked change from the years after 9/11, when scores of charities were shut down after prosecutors found financial and logistical links to terrorist groups across the globe. This effort culminated in 2008, when the Holy Land Foundation was found guilty of financing terrorism. Islamist charities do not just provide a means to move money; they also offer legitimacy to American Islamist organizations struggling to free themselves...

The NFL informed teams last week in a league-wide conference call that "Pink October" - a three-week window in October in which the league dressed up its fields, sidelines, and players in pink to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer - will not continue in 2017. Instead, teams will be able to choose their own cancer cause to support next season, reports Jenny Vrentas of the MMQB.com. "It's a balancing act," says Anna Isaacson, the NFL's VP of social responsibility, when asked if this is the start of a trend "We have seen a lot of success in...

Hi! A friend asked me to donate to a charity called water.org. Do you think it is a legitimate charity? I'd love to get your advice. Thanks in advance!

The worst charities, ranked by money blown on soliciting costs

Free up the money to go to charities who actually do what they say they do Whenever the Clintons find their corruption exposed, you can always count on their cronies taking to the nation’s talk shows and making, er, creative arguments in their defense. That has never been more true than this past week, when we learned that Hillary’s State Department basically operated as the shakedown wing of the Clinton Foundation. More than half of all the non-governmental parties who got meetings with Hillary during her time at State were major Clinton Foundation donors, and e-mails released by Judicial Watch...

The star’s much-lauded effort to help girls in the African nation of Malawi just imploded. In this week’s Newsweek, Wayne Barrett asks: Is Kabbalah to blame?Late last month, it was reported that Madonna’s Raising Malawi foundation, one of the most visible celebrity-driven charity efforts in the Third World, one that pulled in major donations from around Hollywood and elsewhere, was abandoning its planned mission: to build a $15 million girls’ academy in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world. A report by the Global Philanthropy Group, which Madonna brought in to represent her as trouble developed in the...

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Allied Veterans of the World case are disputing whether Attorney General Pam Bondi must answer a subpoena and testify. Court records show the state has asked a judge to quash a subpoena for Bondi, who is scheduled for a deposition next week by attorneys for several defendants in the gambling and money laundering case. Bondi argued in her motion that her testimony is no different from what other witnesses could offer and she is entitled to “testimonial immunity” due to her rank. Defense attorney Curtis Fallgatter argued in court documents that Bondi was briefed...

A Sanford judge today ruled that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi does not have to answer defense attorneys' questions under oath in a mammoth Internet casino gambling case pending in Seminole County. Circuit Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. made that ruling this morning.The case involves more than 50 defendants, accused of violating the state's gambling, racketeering and money laundering laws by operating Internet cafes that prosecutors say served as storefront gambling parlors. Each had ties to the non-profit Allied Veterans of the World, a group that provided charity to military veterans but, according to authorities, donated just two percent of its...

More than two months after Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump claimed to have raised $6 million for veterans' charities at a fundraiser held on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, most of the organizations targeted to receive the money have gotten less than half of that amount.

The board of the Wounded Warrior Project, one of the largest veteran support organizations in the country, has fired the nonprofit’s chief executive officer and the chief operating officer, according to a statement released by a public relations firm on behalf of the embattled organization. The departure of two top executives, CEO Steven Nardizzi and COO Al Giordano, comes at a time when the wounded veteran-focused organization is awash in controversy amid news reports accusing the group of wasteful spending. The statement by the PR firm, Abernathy MacGregor, said a preliminary financial audit found that “some policies, procedures and controls...

When a devastating earthquake leveled Haiti in 2010, millions of people donated to the American Red Cross. The charity raised almost half a billion dollars. It was one of its most successful fundraising efforts ever. The American Red Cross vowed to help Haitians rebuild, but after five years the Red Cross' legacy in Haiti is not new roads, or schools, or hundreds of new homes. It's difficult to know where all the money went. NPR and ProPublica went in search of the nearly $500 million and found a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success,...

In 2014, Sister Hatune Dogan had been rescuing Christian and Yazidi girls from ISIS captivity for eight months, but she was desperate. If only the world could see the harm being done, understand that rescues were possible, people would open their hearts and their wallets, [so she] found an independent British filmmaker, Edward Watts.. In an email dated February 6, 2015, Watts’s producer, Rosie Garthwaite, wrote: "Hatune you will be the lead story in a documentary about women living under IS.” Watts spent nine days in Germany, Turkey, and Iraq with Sister Hatune. She introduced him to Sheikh Khaire, the...

WASHINGTON DC, September 10 (C-Fam) A second source has come forward to confirm earlier Friday Fax reporting that the Obama administration intends to force Catholic and other Christian groups to accept LGBT applicants in hiring. The source, who insists upon anonymity, described a meeting held for department and agency heads at the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House where they were informed of the change in policy. An official from the Obama administration told the group that they would be required to add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to hiring guidelines for grant recipients, just the same...

So I'm in a checkout line the other day, and the clerk asks me if I want to donate to this well-known charity. Sure, I say, and the donation is added to my bill. Then, out of curiosity, I look this charity up on Charity Navigator. The charity's president makes quite a bit over $500,000 a year. Well, that just doesn't sit right. Your thoughts?

Bill Clinton back at centre of ethics debateBy Alex Spillius Last Updated: 3:02am GMT 01/02/2008 Bill Clinton used his influence with the president of Kazakhstan to help a business friend gain a lucrative uranium mining deal, it has been claimed. Bill Clinton: influence The report in the New York Times will raise concerns about possible conflicts of interest that the former president could face if he returns to the White House as "first gentleman" and raised the spectre of the financial scandals that dogged the Clintons in the White House. Mr Clinton has already began cutting his links to Ron...

Questions are being raised over two U.S. foundations that have poured more than three million dollars into abortion rights, LGBT activist, and legal groups to push the message that exemptions based on religious beliefs are “un-American” and an abuse of liberty. The Arcus Foundation and the Ford Foundation have spent over $3 million in combined spending against religious liberty exemptions since 2013, according to a CNA review of tax forms and grant listings.