Free Republic

President Donald Trump failed Tuesday to sway key House Republicans from blue states to drop opposition to a major tax bill, which they say does not do enough to boost so-called SALT deductions for their constituents. Opposition to the bill from five self-identified members of the "SALT Caucus" threatens to derail the legislation, which Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., hope to see passed before Memorial Day weekend. Trump visited the GOP House caucus on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to push lawmakers to approve the bill quickly and directly called out the caucus, which is focused on the question...

What a remarkable coincidence that Joe Biden’s wranglers discovered he had cancer right in the middle of the revelations about how he was totally senile and everyone around him, including his very real doctor wife, covered it up. Yeah, right. His puppet masters knew, even if that human rutabaga didn’t. Stage IV prostate cancer doesn’t sneak up on you. It’s easy to detect. I know my PSA. It’s .07. I got it tested a couple of weeks ago. I get it tested every year. Weird that I have better medical care than the President of the United States, right? But...

One of six inmates still at-large after a New Orleans jailbreak last week has been captured, and a jail worker who allegedly helped the inmates escape has been arrested, the Louisiana attorney general's office announced Tuesday. Sterling Williams, 33, an Orleans Parish jail maintenance worker, was arrested after admitting to helping the 10 inmates escape Friday. He is charged with 10 counts of principal to simple escape and one count of malfeasance in office. Williams said he turned off the water to the cell from which the inmates escaped, allowing them to dismantle a toilet and flee. Williams said one...

Illegal aliens are being recruited to join sophisticated criminal networks in the United States that stage accidents and injuries to get payouts through the nation’s personal injury system, House Republicans told Attorney General Pam Bondi. In a letter led by Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), the group of Republicans warned Bondi that personal injury fraud is a growing industry in the U.S. that requires immediate attention from the Department of Justice (DOJ). “These fraudulent schemes pose serious risks to public safety, increase consumer costs, and raise insurance premiums for the motoring public,” the Republicans wrote. “According to the Coalition Against Insurance...

Merrick Garland was not selected to be Joe Biden’s Attorney General because the crew in control of the events wanted Merrick Garland as Attorney General. Garland was removed from his position as DC Circuit Court Justice in order to make room for Ketanji Brown-Jackson to take Garland’s place, get Senate confirmed and then await the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer. As a standalone Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson would have been a radical pick. Judge Brown-Jackson was a known activist in the DC District Court; however, by removing Garland as chief circuit justice and replacing him with...

This column really has two audiences. The first is moderate Republicans who are getting in the way of major fiscal reforms necessary to correct decades of financial irresponsibility. The second is Republican leadership who, in all honesty, are in a tough position trying to herd a bunch of unruly cats with personality disorders ranging from extreme anxiety to a desire to fight everything that moves. Throughout this entire chaotic budget fight over the One Big Beautiful Bill, a dangerous delusion has begun creeping back into the Republican Party, especially among the moderate class and some in GOP leadership. It’s this...

Whoever had control of the “AUTOPEN” is looking to be a bigger and bigger scandal by the moment. It is a major part of the real crime, THAT THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN! Millions and millions of people knew that, but the Radical Left Democrats waged a campaign of inoculation and innocence like none that had ever been waged before. THIS IS WHY THE UNSELECT COMMITTEE OF POLITICAL THUGS, WHO WERE GIVEN A FULL AND COMPLETE PARDON BY THE PERSON WHO WIELDED THE NOW ILLEGALLY USED AUTOPEN, DELETED AND DESTROYED ALL EVIDENCE AND INFORMATION FROM THEIR...

Good news for millionaires and billionaires: They are currently eligible for unemployment benefits, whether they need it or not. That has been true since 1964 when the Department of Labor determined unemployment is for all eligible workers no matter their income level. In 2022, The Biden Administration paid unemployment compensation to 5,773 people earning $1 million or more, with nearly $58 million going to out-of-work millionaires. It is an average of nearly $10,000 per person. In 2021, a COVID quarantine year with extra dough baked into unemployment, 14,972 people earning $1 million or more received unemployment compensation. The Biden Administration...

The European Commission was wrong to refuse to release text messages sent by Ursula von der Leyen to the head of Pfizer during negotiations to secure Covid-19 vaccines, the EU's top court has ruled. The General Court said the commission had not given a plausible explanation as to why the exchanges between its president and Pfizer's Albert Bourla could not be made public when an investigative journalist requested them in 2021. That year, Pfizer signed billions of euros in vaccine contracts with the EU, including a deal for 1.8bn extra doses. The content of the messages between von der Leyen...

VIDEOWith the aid of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the animation magic of Al Barry we find out the reason why Bernie Sanders gets so outraged by allegations of Big Pharma corruption. So give the poor guy a break. He has beach houses to buy and Gulfstream jets to fly.LEAVE BERNIE ALONE!!!

Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom is under new federal scrutiny as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opens an investigation into whether the state improperly funneled taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens. The DHS probe, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Los Angeles, focuses on the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI) — a 100 percent state-funded program designed to provide monthly benefits to non-citizens ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) due to their immigration status. According to a Title 8 subpoena issued by HSI Los Angeles, federal officials are demanding records from the Los...

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “News Central,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) claimed President Donald Trump accepting a $400 million jet from Qatar’s royal family was “brazen corruption.” Host John Berman said, “Congressman, apparently the U.S. and Qatar are working out the final details of a gift, a big gift, a giant luxury 747 aircraft that President Trump is reportedly going to accept and the military is going to convert into being able to use as Air Force One. And then it may end up at the Trump presidential library after he leaves office. How do you feel about this gift?”...

A photograph with a prominent drug cartel figure may be behind the Trump administration's refusal to grant a top Mexican politician a visa to enter the United States. The picture showed Baja California governor Marina del Pilar Avila hugging Emmanuel 'El Botas' Serrano while she was campaigning for mayor of the border town of Mexicali in 2019. Serrano allegedly reports directly to Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, who leads half of the infamously brutal Sinaloa Cartel. The photo first emerged in September 2022, with the governor's office disputing allegations that she had any ties to the so-called El Botas. 'It's a...

In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News. The gift is expected to be announced next week, when Trump...

Rahn+Bodmer Enters into Deferred Prosecution Agreement for Criminal Misconduct; Agrees to Pay $22 MillionAudrey Strauss, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Stuart M. Goldberg, Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, and James C. Lee, Chief of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (“IRS-CI”), announced the filing of a criminal Information against RAHN+BODMER CO. (“R+B”), a financial institution located in Zurich, Switzerland. The Information charges R+B with one count of conspiring to help U.S. accountholders evade their U.S. tax obligations, file false federal tax returns, and otherwise defraud the Internal Revenue Service...

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was disappointed with a U.S. court decision to sentence a former Russian diplomat to the U.N. to prison for money laundering and fraud. The ministry said in a statement that it would consider demanding Vladimir Kuznetsov be returned to Russia. The former diplomat, who once chaired the United Nations' powerful budget oversight committee, was sentenced Friday to four years and three months in prison by a U.S. district court after being found guilty in March of laundering money from foreign companies seeking U.N. contracts. He was also ordered to pay a $73,000 (€51,500)...

Nature abhors a vacuum, the saying goes. Of late, the democrat party has been in a vacuum, trying desperately to find something to justify its existence. The best they have come up recently is the to rush to aid and defend illegal alien murderers, rapists and child traffickers. Of and by itself it wasn't attracting the kind of attention they've been desirous of, so they hatched a new plan to get it. There are two ICE detention facilities in New Jersey, one in Elizabeth and one in Newark. The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, decided he was going to storm...

The blue state of Hawaii is suing oil companies over climate change, but for some strange reason they have exempted one refinery that has executives who give a lot of cash to Democrats. What an odd coincidence. The entire conversation about climate change should have ended the instant that leftists began targeting Teslas and Tesla dealerships over DOGE. It proved that the left doesn’t really care about this issue, they just want what they want. The lawyers for the oil companies will surely point this out, if they’re smart. Hawaii Sues Oil Industry for Causing Climate Change—But Spares State’s Largest...

As my late mother used to say, God has a great sense of humor. About a year ago, AG Leticia James was in the courtroom watching President Trump on trial. My guess is that she was enjoying the show and imagining what her TV ads for governor were going to be like. “Vote for me because no one, not even Trump, is above the law” or something like that. Well, it didn’t turn out that way. Maybe President Trump will go to her trial. Here is the latest in the life and times of AG Letitia James: The FBI in...

A New York budget item negotiated by Albany Democrats sets aside $10 million to cover “reasonable" private legal expenses that state employees incur in defense of actions brought by President Donald Trump's administration since Jan. 1. Although the fund is for any state employee, critics say it appears to have been set up for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is the subject of a criminal investigation opened by the FBI and U.S Attorney’s Office in Albany on Thursday.