Free Republic

A federal judge ruled against the Trump administration in the case that alleged fraud in a Biden-era clean energy program, unfreezing roughly $20 billion in funding meant to support projects like new solar energy arrays and efficiency upgrades for small businesses. Judge Tanya Chutkan on Tuesday ruled in favor of the eight nonprofits that sued Citibank and the Trump administration, finding that the Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully terminated the program. Chutkan ordered the congressionally appropriated funds to be unfrozen at 2 p.m. Thursday and distributed to the nonprofits they were originally intended for. The Trump administration said it will appeal....

A massive wave of job cuts got underway at US health agencies early Tuesday, with some employees receiving early morning emails that their jobs were eliminated and some unable to access the building when they arrived at work... At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the entire Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights – which handles issues of diversity, civil rights and a supportive work environment – was let go, according to a former HHS employee. The notices sent to staffers in the office suggested that they contact the former director of the office if they had a...

CNN - President Donald Trump keeps lying not only about the 2020 election he lost but the 2024 election he won. In a Saturday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump correctly noted that he earned 77 million votes in 2024 — then falsely said his vote total was “actually much more than that,” since unspecified people “cheated like hell.” There’s no basis for this claim. Trump’s official vote total is his actual vote total, and there is no evidence of unsuccessful cheating by vote counters or by his Democratic foes. Trump made various other false claims at CPAC,...

After nearly three weeks in the minority, Democrats have finally settled on a target to rally against: Elon Musk. The party and allied groups this week have shown up at the doors of agencies impacted by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, held rallies and press conferences calling the president’s ally an “unelected billionaire,” and introduced legislation to push back on the administration’s efforts to eliminate agencies and force out federal employees. The coordinated effort comes after weeks of Democrats grappling with how to oppose the new administration after a bruising election in which President Donald Trump made gains with key...

At least six senior FBI leaders have been ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, according to sources briefed on the matter, extending a purge that began last week at the Justice Department across the street from the FBI headquarters. The senior officials are at the executive assistant director level or special agent in charge level and include those who oversee cyber, national security and criminal investigations, the sources told CNN. Some were notified while Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the agency, sat answering questions from senators for his confirmation hearing Thursday. Trump transition officials...

In 2020, then-Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard introduced legislation calling on the federal government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of the bulk collection of American phone records by the NSA before fleeing to Russia. On Thursday, she refused under persistent questioning by Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee to say whether she now believed Snowden’s actions were traitorous. Gabbard’s repeated dodges during her nomination hearing to become President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence may have further imperiled a nomination that already appeared to be...

(CNN) - President-elect Donald Trump has offered Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik the job as US ambassador to the United Nations, two sources familiar told CNN on Sunday. The New York congresswoman, the fourth-ranking House Republican, has been a strong ally of the president-elect and a major fundraiser for the GOP.

Much of the federal workforce is on edge and bracing itself for the likelihood its ranks will be purged when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump, who has derided civil servants as agents of the “deep state,” promised on the campaign trail to reinstate a 2020 executive order known as Schedule F, giving him the power to commence mass firings of nonpartisan federal employees who might spoil Trump’s partisan plans. “The objective is to create space to put loyalists in what were, what are still, career civil service positions,” former Trump appointee Ronald Sanders – who resigned over Trump’s politicization...

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Monday on “Deadline” that the Republican National Convention was a “testosterone-laden grievance machine,” while praising the first night of the Democratic National Convention. McCaskill said, “Look at the split screen, between the Republican convention and this one so far. The Republican convection was a testosterone laden grievance machine. Trump coming out to the song “Men Rule the World” and Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt and you know it was just ridiculous. It is like women don’t have the right to vote.”

Former Trump Administration National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s sister-in-law just filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against CNN. Valerie Flynn claims the network deceptively edited a video to falsely make it appear she is a follower of QAnon.The lawsuit says: “CNN abandoned all journalistic standards and integrity, including CNN’s own standards and code of ethics, in writing, editing, and publishing the false narrative. CNN did not seek the truth or report it. It betrayed the truth to sensationalize the news for self-glory, profit and politics. “The entire family then exclaimed, ‘God Bless America.’ In the altered clip used in the...

(CNN)The man who was president during the attacks of September 11, 2001, used a speech commemorating the 20th anniversary of that terrible day to call out the "malign force" coursing through the country thanks to the presidency (and post-presidency) of Donald Trump and offered an alternative vision for his party and the country. George W. Bush gave the speech at the Shanksville, Pennsylvania, site where Flight 93 was brought down -- thanks to the heroics of the passengers who revolted against their hijackers. Here's the key bit (bolding is mine): "In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, I...

Auditors hired by the Arizona state Senate backtracked Tuesday from claims that a key database had been deleted from Maricopa County's elections servers -- admitting in a hearing held by the Senate Republicans overseeing the audit that the data is intact and they'd been looking the wrong way...But, Maricopa County officials explained and auditors acknowledged Tuesday, those conducting the audit had made a technical mistake and the database was never deleted...RAID arrays, used in enterprise servers, are designed for redundancy: They split data among multiple hard drives in a way that allows the data stored on those drives to be...

The Biden administration is considering using outside firms to track extremist chatter by Americans online, an effort that would expand the government's ability to gather intelligence but could draw criticism over surveillance of US citizens. The Department of Homeland Security is limited in how it can monitor citizens online without justification and is banned from activities like assuming false identities to gain access to private messaging apps used by extremist groups such as the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. Instead, federal authorities can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and other open online...

After President Biden gave his historic speech before (some of) Congress last Wednesday evening CNN hosted a panel of leftist sycophants to analyze the night. The blatantly slobbering affair was full with fulsome praise for the man, but then Gloria Borger took things to a new level. The expert analyst was being critical of some comments made by Donald Trump, where she was perturbed that the former President was not giving the current President proper credit on his pandemic response.Borger made the astounding announcement that, "everybody understands that Operation Warp Speed happened under Joe Biden." It is something to behold.https://t.co/cZTdMcP9yG—...

(CNN)Donald Trump has no remorse about the deadly violence he incited with his lies about a stolen election in his uprising against the US Congress. This much was clear when the ex-President put the Republican Party on notice on Sunday that he intends to use his hold on its grassroots to try to suppress the vote heading into the presidential election in 2024, in which he hinted he might run. In his first public remarks since leaving the White House, he also dangerously lashed out at Supreme Court justices for failing to intervene to throw him the election he clearly...

(CNN)How much longer President Donald Trump continues waging battle over an election he lost remained in question Thursday as more of his advisers voiced doubt his gambit to contest the results would succeed. One person who spoke to him called him "dejected" over the ordeal. Trump himself was waffling by the hour and day between a pugilistic desire to keep fighting and a more resigned attitude that his efforts will ultimately fail, people who spoke to him said. None said they believed a full-blown concession was imminent, or likely to ever materialize. Some people close to the situation pointed to...

A group of “bipartisan” neoconservative Republicans and establishment Democrats have been “simulating” multiple catastrophic scenarios for the 2020 election, including a simulation where a clear victory by the incumbent provokes “unprecedented” measures, which the Biden campaign could take to foil a new Trump inauguration. A group of Democratic Party insiders and former Obama and Clinton era officials as well as a cadre of “Never Trump” neoconservative Republicans have spent the past few months conducting simulations and “war games” regarding different 2020 election “doomsday” scenarios. Per several media reports on the group, called the Transition Integrity Project (TIP), they justify these...

Washington (CNN)Dramatic new disclosures on Day 1 of the House impeachment hearings painted an incriminating picture of Donald Trump as a President instinctively willing to sacrifice America's interests for his own. In the most critical step so far in the investigation into Trump's alleged scheme to coerce Ukraine's help for his reelection campaign, Democrats posed a question to every US citizen at the core of this dark national chapter. "If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?" House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, asked, arguing that the republic's values and the concept of an accountable presidency were at...

CNN aired a chyron Friday evening labeling Virginia Democrat Gov. Ralph Northam a Republican during a report on the Virginia Democrat apologizing for a racist medical school yearbook photo depicting two men— one of them himself— in blackface and Ku Klux Klan garb. The chyron aired at 9:00 p.m. EST during a CNN broadcast of Anderson Cooper 360, which showed a video of Northam addressing the inflammatory yearbook photo in a video posted to his Twitter account.

Several former classmates of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh told CNN that they've had trouble getting in touch with the FBI to share information they believe is relevant for its investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against the judge. The network spoke with several individuals who said they had not heard back from the FBI despite making efforts to reach out to the bureau. Liz Swisher, a college classmate who suggested that Kavanaugh had been misleading about his drinking habits while he was a student at Yale University, told the outlet that she had not been contacted by the FBI as...