Free Republic

Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who sued ExxonMobil over climate change, is pressing the Trump administration to speed approval of a gas pipeline expansion. Healey asked Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter Thursday to ensure that federal reviews and permits for Enbridge’s Algonquin Reliable Affordable Resilient Enhancement (RARE) project “move without delay,” CommonWealth Beacon reported. She also asked that “sufficient staff and resources are dedicated to completing the required reviews in time to preserve the project’s planned 2028 in-service date,” according to the outlet. Marcellus Shale Coalition President Jim Welty said in a statement to the Daily Caller News...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday rejected a bill that would have given the watchdog of California’s expensive, delayed high-speed rail project the powers it says it needs to quickly staff up and provide expert oversight. The Democratic governor vetoed Assembly Bill 1608, which would exempt the Inspector General of high-speed rail from a lengthy job reclassification process for qualified auditors and give it a $1 million purchase authority to avoid drawn-out contracting rules. Those tools are “absolutely essential” for its auditing, the inspector general previously said.

In the aftermath of two devastating hurricanes, then-Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration steered some $100 million in disaster funding toward affordable housing projects — despite hundreds of storm victims stuck in temporary homes, according to an analysis. Under Cooper’s watch, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) sent $100 million for affordable housing as the $1 billion agency was suffering from a gaping budget shortfall, an analysis by the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank in the state, found. One of the affordable housing projects, Starway Village, was a $9 million 278-unit complex that opened...

Michigan's left-wing Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed billed county taxpayers $ 9,000 per month in consulting fees while running for Senate, according to public records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The Wayne County Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services approved a contract to hire El-Sayed for "consulting services" on April 23, 2025, six days after El-Sayed announced he was running for Senate. El-Sayed had previously served as director of the county health services department for two years, a post he resigned from on April 3, 2025. The contract, which extended through the end of the calendar year, stipulated...

There was a time when California built big things efficiently. In the 1930s, for example, the state simultaneously constructed the iconic Golden Gate Bridge and Bay Bridge — both marvels of engineering — in about a four-year span. Both on time. Both on budget. Those days are gone. Today, examples abound of California construction projects gone (way) awry. One of those is the long-awaited People Mover at LAX. The project’s contractor, LAX Integrated Express Solutions, disclosed this month that the train — intended to whisk people around LA’s famously sprawling airport — will not open in October as most recently...

QThestorm@17QStorm·4hOz just explained how Obamacare stays rigged.“You could be a billionaire and get Obamacare.”The statute says the subsidy stops at four times poverty. A Maryland court just blocked CMS from checking the tax returns that would prove it.Oz says the shop doing it a Democratic-aligned lawfare group he believes is Soros-funded has sued them 150 times on these rules. They just won the income check.Biden judge. The “file and reconcile” rule is frozen with it, so exchanges cannot even cut off people who never filed a return. Fourth Circuit is set for October.Last Tuesday they dumped more than 760,000 phantom...

Boston is offering immigrants—including people in the country illegally—$575 to complete a city-sponsored course in community organizing and advocacy. “Interested applicants are encouraged to apply regardless of their immigration status.” Run through Mayor Michelle Wu’s Office for Immigrant Advancement, Immigrants Lead Boston teaches participants how to organize their communities, engage government officials and advocate for change. Its fall 2026 course runs from September 21 through December 5. Boston calls the $575 completion payment a scholarship to make participation more accessible. Participants must attend the sessions and complete outside civic activities. The city also promises introductions to key officials. The published...

Gavin Newsom finally admits closing beaches during COVID was “insane,” and Bill Maher says he should have figured that out WHEN IT MATTERED! He adds Newsom's COVID rules were the exact OPPOSITE of what should have been done. Closing beaches was just the start: • Banned singing at church • Banned indoor church services until the Supreme Court stepped in • Shut down Bible studies in private homes until the Supreme Court blocked it • Rammed through the country's first COVID vaccine mandates for kids • Told diners to keep their masks on “in between bites” • Signed a law...

Nick Shirley takes his viral Minnesota fraud investigation directly to Congress, describing daycares with blacked-out windows, public funding and no children visible during his visits. He says federal action followed his reporting, including a freeze on $185 million in child-care funding.

Less than 40% of electric school buses purchased under a multibillion-dollar Biden-era program have been delivered, new statistics released by the EPA Thursday reveal. The slow pace of deliveries, coupled with concerns over the reliability of the EV buses, have prompted many school districts to pull out of the $5 billion “Clean School Bus Program,” for which some $2.7 billion in taxpayer funds has already been doled out — and almost exclusively on electric buses versus other alternative fuel vehicles. “Instead of following Congress’ directives to effectively provide safe and reliable transportation for American school kids, the Biden-Harris administration rushed...

Minnesota Lt. Gov. and Democratic Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan is set to attend a fundraiser hosted by an individual who has served as the state’s Medicaid medical director during a time period where Medicaid fraud exploded onto the national scene. Dr. Nathan Chomilo has served as Minnesota’s Medicaid medical director since January 2020 and is listed as one of the hosts of an October 1 fundraiser supporting Flanagan, first reported by Townhall’s Dustin Grage. Much of Minnesota’s broader fraud scandal has centered on Medicaid-funded programs, including autism services and Housing Stabilization Services, and although Chomilo was not the official responsible...

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District announced last year Sacramento electricity ratepayers would be under a new rate system that charges residential users higher rates between 5:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. — just in time for everyone to arrive home after work and begin evening family rituals: homework on computers, dinner, television, stereo, baths, laundry, and dishwasher after dinner.”

The biggest surgery in the history of Obamacare is about to amputate more than $2 billion in fraud. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, led by Vice President J.D. Vance, is cutting 760,000 individual accounts that are on the Affordable Care Act’s books, administration officials said, according to The Wall Street Journal. Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, estimate canceling those accounts will save taxpayers $2.2 billion. During the Biden administration, Obamacare enrollment increased from about 10 million people to more than 22 million. A Department of Health and...

This just in: the House Oversight Project has unveiled never-before-seen photos of Joe Biden’s classified documents, which were found stored at the Penn Biden Center and his home in Wilmington. For years, the government fought to keep these photos hidden away. But now, they have finally been released to the public. See all of the photos right here for yourself: MANY PICS AT LINK............... As you may notice from those images, the way that the FBI handled the classified docs at Biden’s home is extremely different than how they handled the docs during the raid on Mar-a-Lago. For reference, here’s...

...LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: California Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday, September 19, signed a package of 13 election-related bills aimed at strengthening protections for the state’s voting process ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. The legislative package includes measures restricting the seizure of ballots and election records, imposing penalties for interference with mail ballots and limiting deceptive political advertising. Newsom and other California Democrats have said that the measures are intended to address concerns about potential federal involvement in the state’s elections, particularly over mail-in voting. ...

Minnesota Senate candidate Michele Tafoya dragged her Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Gov. Peggy Flanagan, over alleged welfare fraud in the state under her watch — as new polls predict an incredibly close match-up. Tafoya, a former NFL reporter who won a crowded Republican primary last month, urged voters to “not give [Flanagan] a promotion” to the vacant Senate seat as the lt. governor leads Tafoya by 1.8 points, according to the latest Real Clear Politics poll. “She really needs a pink slip,” Tafoya said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday.

The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send agents to polling stations violate the Voting Rights Act. Civil rights groups and labor unions sued the Trump administration on Friday, asserting that its aggressive immigration enforcement and suggestions that it could send armed agents to polling sites amounted to voter intimidation and violated the Voting Rights Act. Brought by a coalition of Black, Asian and Latino civil rights groups and unions, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Service Employees International Union, the lawsuit seeks to block any effort by the Trump administration to deploy federal...

The House Judiciary Committee, along with the House Administration Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released an interim staff report on ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform. In that report, the Committees found that ActBlue failed to prevent illegal foreign political contributions, and it's being called an "explosive" insight into the organization's practices. Two years ago, the Committees began investigating ActBlue's fraud-prevention practices. In 2024, ActBlue changed its fraud policy twice during the presidential campaign, reportedly implementing "more lenient" standards that let foreign donors and other suspicious donor money flow into U.S. campaigns. Earlier this year, The New...

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed claimed that slavery “profoundly” influenced the American health care system and that any public opposition to taxpayer-funded treatments for illegal immigrants would be a “deliberate, racist attack.” In a resurfaced 2022 interview, the doctor claimed slavery still weighs on America’s for-profit health care. “Racism continues to flummox our capacity as a society to invest in collective public goods” and remains “more powerful than the self-interest of … lower income white folks … in legacy confederacy states,” he said. The Michigan Democrat, who ran a failed campaign for governor of his state in 2018, went...

Link to Summary The video is a critical investigative piece arguing that California’s high-speed rail project is a massive failure of waste, delay, and mismanagement—essentially “high-speed rail to nowhere.” It contrasts the project’s poor progress with China’s rapid nationwide high-speed rail buildout and interviews locals, officials, and critics along the route. Core claims about status and costsIn 2008, voters approved a plan to connect Los Angeles to San Francisco. After roughly 18 years and about $15 billion spent, the project has connected nothing. Visible work consists mainly of concrete, rebar, and incomplete structures in the Central Valley (derisively called a...