Free Republic

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) left open a GitHub repository named “Private-CISA” containing plain-text passwords, private keys, tokens, and secrets – with obvious file names like “external-secret-repo-creds.yaml” and “AWS-Workspace-Firefox-Passwords.csv” – for six months. GitGuardian researcher Guillaume Valadon, fresh off a recent talk on Kubernetes secret leaks, found the public repository on May 14, and told The Register that he “quickly understood that the leak was bad and that time was running out. A national agency having 844 MB of production infrastructure material in a public GitHub repository for six months is as serious as a secrets leak...

Massie apparently told West at the time that he had sex with Lauren Boebert shortly after his wife passed away. After Boebert had reportedly spent the weekend campaigning for Thomas Massie. [cut] Massie bragged about his sexual relations with Boebert while Ms. West was dating Massie and that Massie's district director, Christopher McCane, would allegedly 'manage' the women Massie dated... According to Cynthia West, Thomas Massie used a burner phone to communicate with the woman he had dated after the death of his wife. As per West, Massie even named the phone a 'boner phone." West further claimed that he...

ALPHARETTA, Ga. — A woman who ran homes for at-risk youth is accused of funneling drug money to buy a multi-million dollar home, a luxury car and more. Kristen Draper of Alpharetta owns Reflections Group Home, LLC in Dayton, Ohio. Reflections runs three group homes in Dayton with space for 15 children. Draper reported she earned nearly $1 million from those 15 beds in 2024, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Georgia. An investigation found Draper worked with her boyfriend, Antwaun Brown, to mix in money from his drug deals with income from Reflections to hide the...

Democrat James Talarico is in striking distance of flipping Texas, according to a new poll of the Lone Star State’s 2026 Senate race released ahead of the Republican runoff between Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democrats believe a favorable national environment, a weakened GOP nominee and reversion among Hispanic and Latino voters that shifted rightward in 2024 could create a perfect storm for them to flip Texas in the midterm elections. Texas has been a site of Democratic ambitions for several election cycles, but Republicans have held onto their iron grip of the state. However, the new...

WASHINGTON — Former FBI Director James Comey taunted Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to “bone up on the rules” as he stares down the second indictment against him and once again stood by his decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton email probe in late 2016. Comey, who was indicted late last month for allegedly threatening to kill President Trump in a May 2025 Instagram post calling for “86 47,” chided Blanche for telling the public the case is about more than that social media post. “I don’t talk about the case because the federal court rules require you not,” Comey...

This is a good interview with DOJ whistleblower Johnathon Gross discussing the failure of the DOJ to seriously address corruption and lawfare within its ranks. The video is over two hours long and covers a lot of material, but in summary, Gross was hired in the early months of President Trump's second term as part of a team tasked with addressing civil right violations relating to J6 and lawfare in general. He ended up being pushed out of his position for being too persistent in his efforts for accountability.

An artificial intelligence data center was running up a water bill for the ages, and local residents were the ones to point out the problem. In November, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Microsoft had a new “superfactory” named Fairwater spanning over 1 million square feet outside of Atlanta. Chief Technical Officer Mark Russinovich explained why the site is so massive. “To make improvements in the capabilities of the AI, you need to have larger and larger infrastructure to train it,” he said in a statement. The site developer, Quality Technology Services, purchased the plot in 2022 for $154 million. Ironically, Microsoft...

Elf Aquitaine, until its privatisation in 1994, was much more than a oil company - according to prosecutors at the trial of Elf's top managers. They claim the state-owned firm worked as an unofficial arm of France's murkiest diplomacy. The close relationship between Elf and French officials is well-documented, and goes back to the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle. As the company expanded into Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Elf paid secret "commissions" to African officials with the blessing of French governments. By the 1980s Elf had operations in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria - which,...

California remains the largest offender of DHS sanctuary jurisdictions violations House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) chaired a high-stakes hearing Thursday exposing the deadly consequences of so-called sanctuary policies, using Fairfax County, Virginia, as a case study in how local officials prioritize illegal aliens over public safety. In his opening statement and pointed questioning, McClintock dismantled the “nullification” doctrine embraced by sanctuary jurisdictions, likening it to John C. Calhoun’s failed states’ rights theory that once threatened the Republic. “These nullification or sanctuary jurisdictions now extend to 11 states–coincidentally the same number as...

New York City and Chicago voters made the most injudicious decisions possible electing Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson to be their mayors. Both democratic socialists are inept yet destructive, unserious yet dangerous, demagogues who spew venom and traffic in incendiary divisive rhetoric. Their deranged policies will bankrupt their cities, financially, morally and culturally. Will Los Angeles voters do the same? Actually, they already have. The question is, will they repeat their mistake and reelect Karen Bass? The current mayor is a Fidelista and a member of the Venceremos Brigade, a Cuban “enterprise that had a goal of encouraging the health...

About a dozen years ago, having wandered for decades, I returned to the Catholic Church into which I was, as an infant, baptized in 1959. Therein lies my proprietary interest. I’ve long found Fox News host Sean Hannity to be a voice of common sense, when most in the political media sphere reliably tote woke Democrats’ water. But I wholeheartedly disagree with lifelong Catholic Sean’s April decision to leave our Church (while remaining Christian). He cited current officials hiding wrongdoings and their pursuit of popularity over traditional doctrine as causal factors. “I left the Catholic Church in large part due...

A New York man was convicted Wednesday of helping operate a secret Chinese government-linked police station in Manhattan used to monitor dissidents, federal prosecutors said. Lu Jianwang, 64, a U.S. citizen also known as "Harry Lu" from the Bronx, was convicted by a jury on two counts related to operating an overseas police station in New York City on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS), as well as obstruction of justice for destroying evidence. According to prosecutors, Lu and his co-defendant, Chen Jinping, acted as illegal agents of the Chinese government beginning in 2022 and established what authorities...

The Biden administration may have failed to convince Congress to double Medicaid spending on home healthcare in 2021, but the funding increase occurred anyway. An RCI analysis of federal data has found that spending on the program, which pays health aides and family members to act as caregivers for elderly and disabled adults, nearly doubled between 2019 and 2024, to $46.4 billion a year – an amount nearly identical to the $50 billion per year Biden wanted. As a result, American taxpayers paid more than $217 billion for home-based care under the program during that five-year span. Lacking congressional approval,...

Dr. Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s point man for Medicare and Medicaid, says the billions of entitlement fraud being uncovered in Democrat states may be intentionally driven by politics rather than incompetence. “I do think it's a feature for some of these states,” Oz told Just the News in a wide-ranging interview Thursday night in which he detailed why the administration led by Vice President JD Vance temporarily pulled $1.3 billion in Medicaid funding from California and uncovered foreign fraudsters stealing taxpayer welfare monies. “Republicans always suspected there was fraud of this magnitude. Democrats feel embarrassed that it's gotten this...

Erin Stewart suspended her campaign for governor of Connecticut Thursday after an investigative report concluded that her personal use of a city credit card as mayor of New Britain was a “repeated and deliberate circumvention of the city’s purchase order system to benefit herself, members of her family, and her political campaigns.” The “great majority” of the $207,076 in purchases charged to Stewart’s city-issued credit card over nearly a decade were unrelated to city business, and they warrant a criminal investigation by state and federal criminal authorities...

Defendant Allegedly Attempted to Defraud the New York City Campaign Finance Board of $1 Million in Public Matching Funds Earlier today in federal court in Brooklyn, a criminal complaint was unsealed charging Angela Aquino, a 2025 candidate for New York City Public Advocate, with wire fraud in connection with her scheme to defraud New York City’s campaign finance system to obtain public matching funds. Aquino was arrested today and is scheduled to be arraigned this afternoon by United States Magistrate Judge Clay H. Kaminsky. Joseph Nocella, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Nadia I. Shihata,...

Fairfax County Commonwealth’s attorney Steve Descano testified Thursday that voters are “obtuse” if they expect him to fulfill his campaign promises. Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan got into a heated exchange with Descano after his office removed his immigration policy from his website weeks prior to the hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement. Descano said his campaign promises are not actually his policies. “My policies do not say that we do not prosecute based on immigration status,” Descano said. “Well if it’s not your policy, then why did you change your website?” Jordan asked....

A federal jury in the Northern District of Illinois has convicted an Illinois woman of unemployment insurance fraud for participating in a scheme that submitted nearly 700 fraudulent claims and caused more than $11 million in fraudulent COVID-19 relief benefits to be dispersed. Hiam Hmaidan, 54, of Orland Park, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and five counts of mail fraud, the Justice Department announced. She is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 2 and faces up to 20 years in prison. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Hmaidan operated the fraud...

From your weight and facial expressions to your destination, cars collect a startling amount of data about you. Some of it may even raise your insurance costs. But you can take some simple steps to limit what they know about you. ... Modern cars are computers on wheels, and giant corporations are using them to suck up intimate details about your life and make more money. If you think driving today is a chance for solitude and independence, think again. And it looks like it's about to get a lot worse.

“How do you solve a problem like Alito?” That’s the now-deleted Tweet D.C. Bar Senior Assistant Disciplinary Counsel Jack Metzler posted in August 2023. This was after multiple justices—including Justice Samuel Alito—faced death threats. But why was he posting this in the first place? For those unfamiliar, the D.C. Bar disciplinary counsel’s self-professed mission is to “(1) protect the public and the courts; (2) maintain the integrity of the legal profession; and (3) deter attorneys from engaging in misconduct.” The disciplinary counsel, and his assistants, often do this by bringing charges, prosecuting alleged violations of the D.C. Rules of Professional...