Free Republic

Worse Than They’re Telling You. Prop 1 — officially the Reproductive Freedom and Privacy Act — is being presented to voters as a measure about privacy and routine reproductive care — things like contraception and miscarriage treatment that are already legal in Idaho today and privacy is protected in every instance. But the operative language goes much further than the campaign behind it is letting on.

A recent report from the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (OCC) in the Treasury Department shows that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was a driving force behind the debanking of conservative groups prior to its indictment. The SPLC is a left-wing anti-racism advocacy group that has faced scrutiny from conservatives for years over its alleged bias against them and penchant for labeling mainstream political figures on the right as “extremists.” The group has also faced withering criticism from the left, such as Ken Silverstein, who followed its expelled founder Morris Dees for years for Harper's and The New...

In "PrEP Deserts: Why HIV Prevention Still Misses Those at Risk," our experts turn to the forces behind PrEP underuse, from how people perceive their own risk to how far they must travel for care. Dr. Cocohoba introduces the concept of PrEP deserts and asks what drives underuse in Dr. Urbina's community. He calls it the million-dollar question. Gay men were the earliest adopters of PrEP, shaped by the history of the epidemic, but uptake has not spread to other groups. Dr. Urbina describes a disconnect between a person's actual risk and the risk they perceive. He argues that acquisition...

On the University of Texas campus, students, staff and visitors will see the same sight at noon, Monday through Thursday: faculty members silently marching through campus for 15 minutes, wearing black and holding signs. "There's a part of it that really is just a place to put our grief, so there's a piece of this that really is ritualistic in that way," said Karma Chávez, UT chapter president of the American Association of University Professors and professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies. Since Sept. 21, Chávez and other faculty members have protested changes at UT Austin that include department...

Newly declassified State Department emails and documents show former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch received frequent briefings from top aides on Burisma and Hunter Biden, conflicting with her congressional impeachment testimony. Internal emails also show her deputy in Kyiv believed the Burisma/Biden relationship was adversely affecting U.S. policy. ======================================================================= Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their first impeachment of Donald Trump, received repeated briefings, emails and memos related to the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, according to declassified documents that directly conflict with her and other witnesses’ testimony in the failed...

The Trump administration argues that its proposed multibillion-dollar Russian oil deal would advance American foreign policy interests and lower energy prices. But most of the ownership in the deal would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to key U.S. officials involved in the negotiations, according to people familiar with the talks. The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine. The United States government, through...

Schools are ending gifted and talented programs. They will no longer separate kids by ability. Why? To address “inequity.” “This is so misguided,” education researcher Michael Petrilli said in my new video. “These equity people say, ‘Oh, we’re against gifted education.’ At the same time, they’re upset that universities aren’t very diverse. Guess what? The [equity advocates] are a big part of the problem.

Hundreds of Palestinians reportedly marched in Gaza City on Saturday, chanting against #Hamas after activist Iyad Abu Jendeya was detained following social media posts accusing businessmen and Hamas-linked figures of corruption. Independent journalists and activists said protesters gathered near Ahli Hospital, where they believed Abu Jendeya was being held. The corruption allegations and circumstances surrounding his detention have not been independently verified.

Each year the federal government loses an estimated $233 billion to $521 billion to fraud. There is no single or simple solution to combat fraud in federal programs, including those administered by states. But, over the years, GAO has identified hundreds of actions federal agencies and Congress can take to better protect taxpayer money from fraudsters and increase public trust in government. Today’s WatchBlog post looks at nine key actions Congress can take. These actions include passing new legislation, as well as increasing oversight of agency counter fraud efforts. Millions of Americans receive payments from the federal government—including through Social...

I ignored the written description of filtering the other night,” Molly Gaston messaged her fellow federal prosecutor, J.P. Cooney, in the early days of the post-2020 election targeting of President Donald Trump, documents obtained exclusively by The Federalist reveal. “Me too,” Cooney replied, showing that two of the attorneys whom Jack Smith would later choose to lead the special counsel team disregarded rules when judged “not tenable.” And additional documents whistleblowers provided Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confirm the special counsel office ignored the protocol established to protect privileged documents. Monday afternoon, in advance of Jack Smith’s Tuesday testimony before the...

Want to know how the lights stay on at the low-major ranks of college basketball? Mississippi Valley State's 2026-27 nonconference schedule tells the tale. The Delta Devils -- fresh off a miserable 3-30 season -- will not play a home game until Jan. 9. Instead, they have 16 consecutive road games to kick-start the 2026-27 schedule with buy games galore. Mississippi Valley State will earn upward of $100,000 apiece to get smoked by the likes of Oklahoma, Washington, Oregon, Arkansas, Michigan, UConn, Ohio State, Texas Tech and Baylor. Yep, you read that right. The stacked schedule includes matchups against the...

(The Center Square) - Medicare Part D sponsors made $587.7 million in ineligible payments to pharmacies for five drugs carrying obsolete prescription-only labeling more than a year after the corresponding brand-name drugs switched to over-the-counter status, a federal watchdog found. The money won't be recovered, because the payments complied with Medicare guidance in place at the time, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General, which made the finding in an audit covering calendar years 2021 through 2023. Medicare Part D, the federal prescription drug benefit, is delivered through private "sponsors," including Medicare Advantage...

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan is investigating how the United Nations is working with the Biden administration to “fast-track” thousands of migrants into the United States as the country reels from the ongoing border crisis.Jordan demanded the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which are each part of the UN, hand over documents showing how they have coordinated with the Biden administration to resettle thousands of foreign nationals into the U.S., according to two letters obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday. Both the UNHCR and the IOM work with...

Walter Giardina — an FBI agent whistleblowers claim “openly stated his desire to investigate Trump, even if it meant false predication” — cited a Wikipedia article in support of launching yet another investigation of Donald Trump. That detail is but one of the crazier revelations buried in the latest cache of documents Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, made public last week in conjunction with FBI Director Kash Patel’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As The Federalist previously reported, last week Patel testified before “the Senate Judiciary Committee on a wide-range of topics.” He dropped in the middle of the four-hour-plus...

It’s not the end of the world and they know it. Anthropic has helped seed a growing AI panic in Congress through an aggressive influence campaign, as the company and its rivals pour tens of millions into a spending war that’s just getting started — and some lawmakers say it’s a disguised power grab using safety concerns to freeze out the competition. The company, which is pushing Congress to impose new regulatory “guardrails” on the AI industry, has poured $40 million through two donations to the super PAC Public First Action, with a $20 million check arriving in late July....

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Administration (FNA) announced a sweeping crackdown on fraudulent SNAP retailers—bodegas, convenience stores, and grocery stores—across New York’s five boroughs. This investigation, dubbed Operation SNAP Back, included hundreds of undercover investigations leading to action against 170 retailers. “This is just the latest action in the Trump Administration's fight against fraud. The message is clear, if you accept any portion of an annual $100 billion taxpayer program, you must follow the rules or face the consequences,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. “We owe it to every American...

In spring of 2021, a man visits a small storefront in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He tells the woman at the desk – the business owner– that he wants a nursing degree. What happens next, captured on undercover video, helps unravel one of the largest healthcare fraud schemes in recent U.S. history, operating heavily in South Florida’s tight-knit Haitian immigrant networks. The con secretly recruited and collected money from people who wanted to buy, not earn, nursing diplomas. Isaac Bledsoe is a federal Special Agent in Charge of the Inspector General’s Miami office at Health and Human Services. He says his...

ATLANTA — A member of the Georgia House of Representatives is facing federal charges after prosecutors accused him of fraudulently collecting thousands of dollars in COVID-19 unemployment benefits while continuing to work and earn income. Federal prosecutors announced that Dexter L. Sharper, 54, of Valdosta, was charged with making false statements to obtain unemployment assistance funds administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. According to the criminal information, Sharper allegedly applied for pandemic unemployment benefits between April 2020 and May 2021 while serving as the state representative for House District 177, which includes portions of Lowndes County. Prosecutors say Sharper...

Kosta Diamantis flees United States, skips sentencing for criminal charges

Do we have time for one more look at the insane women who made up the Lindsay Clancy jury, now that, according to The Boston Globe, the lone holdout juror is "getting the negative attention he deserves"? The other jurors claim that the holdout disregarded jury instructions, but the jury had one job: to determine Clancy's innocence or guilt. Not to make a feminist statement. Not to get a national conversation going. Just determine innocence or guilt, based on the facts. The facts are that Clancy murdered her three children, aged 5 years to 8 months, with an exercise band....