Free Republic

A federal appeals court has blocked the Trump administration from ending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of the approximately 350,000 Haitians living in the United States, CBS News reports. As News Center 7 previously reported, TPS was set to end on Friday. The new ruling extends it to Monday, July 27. TPS allows people from countries affected by war, natural disasters, or other major crises to legally live and work in the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that the Trump Administration could end TPS for Haitians.

An 88-year-old widow living in a trailer in rural Michigan has been listed as funneling over $150,000 to Democrat causes through ActBlue. Nearly 15,000 separate donations averaging eight per day, every single day, for five years, Michigan Enjoyer first reported. The latest allegations come as ActBlue continues to face intense scrutiny from congressional investigators and federal authorities over its donor verification practices and allegations of potentially fraudulent contributions.

Former Biden special counsel Jack Smith could face potential criminal prosecution after Republicans accused the ex-prosecutor of misleading Congress about the scope of his investigation into President Donald Trump. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued a criminal referral for Smith Wednesday, arguing newly released records contradict Smith's testimony to his committee that he did not obtain or review lawmakers' text messages during his multiple probes into President Donald Trump. "All individuals have an obligation to comply with a duly authorized congressional inquiry. Mr. Smith, a former public servant, is no different," Jordan wrote in a letter to acting...

No-bid contracts require justification to the Department of General Services and public posting Gavin Newsom has a $6.2 million diaper problem. His administration awarded a no-bid contract to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit with longstanding ties to the Newsom administration. One of its co-CEOs, Norah Weinstein, also serves on the board of the California Partners Project, the nonprofit co-founded by First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom. Then Newsom told Californians the deal had gone through “a competitive bidding process.” It had not. California’s own contracting database labels the $6.2 million deal “NON-COMPETITIVELY BID.” Newsom’s administration now says the governor was referring to the...

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico (D) received a harsh reception from an attendee at his town hall in Houston on Sunday. Video from the event, during which Talarico took questions for more than 90 minutes, captured by the Austin American-Statesman’s Faith Bugenhagen, shows a Black woman yelling, “So you stay here, you answer our questions or you suffer the consequences.” Other attendees clapped in support of the woman’s remarks, while one man said, “Say it with your chest.” When Talarico told the woman he appreciated her for traveling to attend the town hall, she replied, “I did it for my...

Trust is important. Verification is essential. More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal posed a timeless question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — “Who will guard the guards themselves?” or “Who watches the watchers?” The Romans could never have imagined artificial intelligence, facial recognition, or nationwide networks of automated license-plate readers. Yet their question may be even more relevant today than it was three millennia ago. Recent debate over Flock Safety cameras illustrates why. The cameras have become an invaluable law enforcement tool. A stolen vehicle that crosses several jurisdictions can now be identified in minutes rather than days....

Trust is important. Verification is essential. More than 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal posed a timeless question: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? — “Who will guard the guards themselves?” or “Who watches the watchers?” The Romans could never have imagined artificial intelligence, facial recognition, or nationwide networks of automated license-plate readers. Yet their question may be even more relevant today than it was three millennia ago. Recent debate over Flock Safety cameras illustrates why. The cameras have become an invaluable law enforcement tool. A stolen vehicle that crosses several jurisdictions can now be identified in minutes rather than days....

In 2025, Rep. Maxine Dexter gave a speech comparing Israel’s campaign against Hamas terrorists to the Holocaust, falsely calling it “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide”. “After the Holocaust, the international community made a commitment that such evil can never happen again to any people, anywhere. Never again, they said. That is why I recently signed on to a resolution recognizing Israel’s actions in Gaza led by the Netanyahu government as a genocide,” Rep. Dexter said in her speech, backing Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s pro-terrorist resolution “Recognizing the Genocide of the Palestinian People in Gaza.” The director of the United States Holocaust Memorial...

A coalition of progressive prosecutors promising to target federal immigration agents has amassed a war chest funded by secret donors with the help of left-wing networks. Legal experts said the arrangement is "terribly corrupt" and blurs the lines between legitimate law enforcement and politically motivated prosecutions. The Project for the Fight Against Federal Overreach—or FAFO, an acronym that also stands for "f*ck around and find out" in internet lingo—was formed by two George Soros-funded prosecutors, Philadelphia's Larry Krasner and Mary Moriarty of Hennepin County, Minn., after federal officials shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti as they interfered with...

BATON ROUGE - The former head of Impact Charter School, her family members and an independent contractor were indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday in connection with the embezzlement of school funds. The school's previous CEO Chakesha Scott, her husband Eric Scott, their daughter Courtney Scott and contractor Sam Green were named in a criminal indictment filed in the Middle District of Louisiana. The four are accused of conspiring with one another to use school funds for personal use and creating false documents to make the payments appear as business expenses, a scheme that allegedly spanned from 2018...

(The Center Square) – A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation that would fast-track a floor vote on Social Security's looming insolvency, using an independent board to draft a starting plan Congress could no longer easily ignore. The Protecting Retirement Opportunities and Maintaining Income Security for Everyone, or PROMISE Act, would direct the Social Security Advisory Board to submit a base bill guaranteeing at least 50 years of solvency. Congress would then be forced to debate, amend and vote on it within 100 hours, bypassing the inaction that has left the retirement trust fund six years from depletion. Eight senators...

HINESVILE, Ga. — A former Georgia housing authority executive director and a Savannah man have been indicted on federal fraud charges stemming from what prosecutors say is a yearslong scheme that allegedly cost a public housing agency more than $2.5 million. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, Melanie S. Thompson, 55, of Savannah, is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 19 counts of wire fraud, and two counts of making false, fictitious, or fraudulent claims. Toriono L. Byrd, 52, of Savannah, is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Federal prosecutors say the...

The Democratic Socialists of America this week unveiled a new political platform calling for sweeping changes to the structure of the U.S. government, including replacing the presidency and Supreme Court with institutions subordinate to Congress. The platform, titled "Workers Deserve More!," proposes replacing the presidency and Supreme Court "with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress," a change that would require constitutional amendments and fundamentally reshape the nation's system of separated powers established more than two centuries ago. The proposal is among the most far-reaching reforms included in the platform, which also calls for abolishing the Electoral...

Hundreds of staff members and attorneys at Brooklyn Defender Services may walk off the job on Thursday after their union authorized a potential strike. The public defenders represent thousands of low-income Brooklyn and Queens defendants in court who cannot afford their own attorneys. "The idea of my clients standing in court without me is not something I ever want them to have," Julia Coppelman, a senior staff attorney in criminal defense at Brooklyn Defender Services and strike captain, told NY1. Attorneys, represented by the United Auto Workers Local 2325, authorized a strike to take place at 8 a.m. on Thursday...

For sixty years, the food stamp program has operated under an arrangement no family and no business would ever accept: one level of government runs the program, and another level of government pays for it. States sign people up, calculate benefits, and process the paperwork while federal taxpayers cover the bill. When the people writing the checks and the people doing the work are in different buildings, nobody watches the register. The results are exactly what you’d expect. In fiscal year 2024, the federal government spent roughly $100 billion on SNAP, and at least $10.5 billion of it was lost...

Cincinnati — For Avondale resident Christopher Adams, going to the grocery store was a twice a week trip. After the store closed, that task may become a lot harder. The neighborhood of Avondale’s only sizable grocery store, The Country Meat Co. Marketplace, announced that it’s shutting its doors on Facebook in early July. It opened in February 2025, and when it closed the “now open” banner still hung above the door. Before the store opened, Avondale was considered a “food desert.” Many of its residents lived more than a mile away from a grocery store that could provide nutritious, fresh...

Washington state officials are refusing to investigate daycare providers that reportedly received hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer subsidies after reporters found little evidence that children were being cared for at some locations. According to a report from The Center Square, over the past six months, its reporters visited roughly three dozen daycare providers that had received large state and federal subsidy payments intended to support childcare for lower-income families, but only a small number appeared to have children present. [embedded tweet] In one case, a daycare listed at a West Seattle address received more than $229,000 between July...

President Trump declared Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz is open after the US hit 140 targets in Iran over the latest attack on cargo ships in the critical passage. Trump doubled down on US Central Command’s insistence that the key oil choke point was now open following an intense bombing campaign against Iran overnight, which targeted missile and drone sites, naval assets, ammunition storage facilities, communication networks, and surveillance locations. “Yeah, it’s open. We bombed the hell out of them last night,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” contradicting Tehran’s warnings that the strait remains closed.The president went on...

Seven former and one current Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MTBA) employees have been charged with a federal superseding indictment alleging that they falsified records and reports and then fraudulently collected overtime pay. The MTBA, although it collects fares, is heavily subsidized by tax dollars. According to the Department of Justice, defendants Brian Pfaffinger, Ronald Gamble, Magda Trinh, Jensen Vatel, Nathalie Mendes, Danny Barbosa, and Matthew Leonard have been charged with various crimes, including conspiring to commit wire fraud, falsifying records, and wire fraud. The defendants were all former Red Line Maintenance of Way employees, per the DOJ. Pfaffinger, Gamble, Vatel,...

A Hungarian conservative influencer was arrested in the early hours of Wednesday, July 8th and has since been released after spending several hours in custody, in a case that seems to confirm the new, pro-Brussels Hungarian government’s authoritarian tendencies. István Szakács was taken into custody in the western city of Győr after police searched his home. Eight officers arrived shortly after 6 a.m., carried out a house search, and took him away for questioning. The police said they were investigating Szakács on suspicion of making threats related to a terrorist offence. The allegation stems from a Facebook video in which...