Free Republic

Mykalai Kontilai, the broadcast executive-turned-entrepreneur who bought Jackie Robinson's first major and minor league professional contracts and then used them to launch a sports memorabilia/auction business, pleaded guilty to wire fraud Thursday in Las Vegas. He will be sentenced Dec. 4 and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, according to the Department of Justice. Kontilai, 55, purchased Robinson's Montreal Royals contract for the 1946 season and Robinson's 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers contract for $2 million in 2013, subsequently using their purported value to lure investors into his sports memorabilia/auction business called, at various times, Collector's Café or Collector's...

The Feds raided Alfie Oakes’ Naples, Florida home and farm with a battering ram on Thursday. Alfie Oakes is an outspoken Trump supporter and owner of Seed to Table grocery store. The raid was conducted by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service which investigates criminal behavior with the Department of Defense. --snip-- According to reports, the Feds used a battering ram to bust the door down at Alfie Oakes’ home while his wife and daughter were home. IRS agents were seen carrying boxes out of Alfie Oakes’ home.

America has pledged over $100 billion in military aid since the War in Ukraine began. Most of that stays in the US to fund military operations and weapons contracts. But the US has also sent Ukraine its own shells, tanks, rockets, cannons, anti-tank weapons, drones, and missile defense systems worth $1 billion each. So which weapons have proven most critical on the battlefield? And will the latest round of aid really help Ukraine against Russian forces in a war many are calling a stalemate?

One of the Biden/Harris administration's signature programs is marketed as 'Build Back Better," but there is a slight problem: it has built basically nothing despite spending billions of dollars.It's the policy equivalent of burning a stack of $100 bills a mile high. Except, to a certain extent, it isn't. What they are doing is transferring those billions to leftist activist groups whose main job is making our lives miserable. There are many examples to choose from, and the Washington Free Beacon has yet another featured today. REPORT: Kamala Harris Touted a $5B Electric School Bus Program. Three Years Later, It's...

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has been chipping away at the oil, gas and coal industries ever since President Joe Biden took office. Wyoming is an energy state that produces half the nation’s coal, as well as part of its oil and gas output. Since the federal government owns nearly half the state’s land, virtually all oil, gas and coal operations in the Cowboy State are heavily impacted by every rule the BLM throws at fossil fuels. Although the Biden administration is waging war on fossil fuels, Wyoming is fighting back. The state, along with Utah, filed a lawsuit...

American universities have entered more than $2.3 billion in contracts with China in the past decade amid on-going concerns about the influence of its communist government on U.S. higher education, a new investigation found.These contracts included agricultural research regarding orange crops, trainings for airline pilots, and medical trials for a tumor treatment drug developed by a Chinese pharmaceutical company, the Wall Street Journal reported.The investigation uncovered approximately 2,900 contracts from 2012 and 2024 between Chinese businesses and about 200 U.S. public colleges and universities in all 50 states.Some involved specialized training, such as $37 million in contracts between Chinese airlines...

Biden administration officials are in preliminary “conversations” about options for stabilizing post-war Gaza, including a proposal for the Pentagon to help fund either a multinational force or a Palestinian peacekeeping team. The options being considered would not involve U.S. troops on the ground, according to two Defense Department officials and two other U.S. officials, all granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door diplomatic and military negotiations. Instead, DOD funding would go toward the needs of the security force and complement assistance from other countries.

For decades, the US Navy has been the world's most powerful ocean going force. It operates some of the most successful warship designs in recent history. It also operates some with more...complex...stories. In this episode we look at US efforts to develop a new generation of surface warships, including the LCS and Zumwalt Destroyers, and ask both what went wrong with these incredibly expensive projects and what we might be able to learn from them.

WASHINGTON — Much attention has been paid to the Air Force’s plans to junk an older group of F-22 Raptor jets, but newer, more combat-capable versions of the stealth fighter are the service’s “highest priority” for a near-term fight, according to a senior official. Speaking at the McAleese Defense Programs conference today, Air Force acquisition boss Andrew Hunter called the F-22 the “foundation” of the service’s airpower amid a larger effort to “reoptimize” for competition with China, noting that the jet will serve a vital role until its successor, the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) platform, comes online. “F-22 is...

Planned Parenthood is allegedly transferring “proprietary” aborted baby body parts to the University of California San Diego (UCSD) “in exchange for ownership of the university’s ‘patents’ and ‘intellectual property’” created through experiments. The Center for Medical Progress (CMP) obtained documents showing the alleged transaction between the abortion organization and the university after filing a public records request. CMP Founder and President David Daleiden told CatholicVote: “These documents show that the whole time Planned Parenthood swore to Congress and the public they did not sell body parts, they were lying about active contracts like this one to sell aborted fetuses for...

Travel At this point, the RSC will coordinate with the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, to schedule your flight to the United States. Your family is eligible to receive a loan to pay for your travel to the United States. Family members over 18 years of age each receive their own loan. Learn more about Traveling to the United States below.

Todd Bensman Breaks Down Globalists' "Welcoming Center" Offering Interest-Free Loans To Migrants https://rumble.com/v4gfjm5-todd-bensman-breaks-down-globalists-welcoming-center-offering-interest-free.html 9 m 36 s

A new IRS inspector general report said the nation’s tax collection agency continued to give 19 contractors access to sensitive systems despite having background reports that were returned as “not favorable.” Despite having the unfavorable rating returned as recently as July 13, 2023, “These contractors still retained their access to one or more sensitive systems because the IRS did not take action to suspend or disable the contractors from the IRS’s systems, as required,” according to a report issued this week by the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration. IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel — who took over the agency...

Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine gave the FBI his approval to investigate Catholic parishes in his own state on Monday. When asked by a local ABC affiliate about the FBI’s Richmond division infiltrating Catholic communities to spy on the church for alleged extremism, Kaine called the revelations a misunderstanding. “I think the key is communication,” Kaine told ABC13. “If the FBI has a concern like that, then go to the church leaders and say, ‘Hey look, we have a concern and we don’t want your members to get unwittingly caught up in something.'”Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin blew the...

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis paid her alleged romantic partner, Nathan Wade, to work at a higher hourly rate on the case against former President Donald Trump than she contracted one of the state’s leading racketeering experts, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. John Floyd, who wrote a book on federal and state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statutes and is considered Georgia’s top expert, entered into a contract with the Fulton County District Attorney’s office on March 10, 2021 at an hourly rate of $150 per hour, according to a contract obtained by...

Three women who worked in former President Donald Trump’s administration bleakly warned voters against returning him to the White House in 2024. They cautioned that he poses a grave threat to American democracy and some even mused about backing the Democrat option should Trump lock down the GOP nod. “Everyone who was in the West Wing, and frankly, a lot of Cabinet secretaries, they know how dangerous Trump is,” former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin told ABC’s “This Week.” “This is not about politics. It’s not about policy. It is about the character of the man.” Griffin was...

Americans are strongly dissatisfied with the direction of the country and the economy. According to Gallup, just 19% of the public is satisfied with how things are going, compared with 80% who aren’t. Incredibly, consumer sentiment is lower now than it was during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It’s easy to see why. Inflation remains elevated above pre-pandemic levels, meaning that real weekly earnings are down by more than 4% since January 2021. Rising interest rates have caused the median mortgage payment to double over the same period. In a good economy, hardworking Americans steadily get ahead as income gains...

A New York City comptroller has revoked Mayor Eric Adams’ emergency right to make deals with contractors for migrant services without prior approval. Comptroller Brad Lander’s office made the revocation known in a letter dated this past Thursday, three months after he retroactively rejected a $432million, no-bid contract with a for-profit medical services firm accused of mistreating migrants. The mayor's office has previously said the loss of such a power would slow down its response to the ongoing migrant crisis, which has seen more than 140,000 asylum seekers arrive in The Big Apple since spring 2022.

A statewide grand jury in Florida has issued its latest report, detailing how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) profit billions from securing federal contracts to resettle illegal aliens across all 50 states. Among the findings in the statewide grand jury’s report is that from October 2022 through September 2023, over 900,000 border crossers and illegal aliens were released into the United States interior after arriving at the southern border. The overwhelming majority, the report notes, do not have valid asylum claims but are still able to take full advantage of federal welfare programs meant for struggling Americans. In particular interest to the...

WASHINGTON — The flyaway cost for the F-15EX Eagle II is approximately $90 million for each aircraft in the program’s second production lot, about $7.5 million more than the newest price for an F-35A, Breaking Defense has learned. The Air Force has confirmed to Breaking Defense that a contract for the next three production lots of the Boeing-made F-15EX was finalized on Sept. 28, a major milestone for the program. But the $90 million per unit cost in the contract — a number that is expected to grow in successive lots — will likely raise eyebrows among critics both within...