Free Republic

Gavin Newsom’s transport secretary has admitted criticism of California’s high-speed rail is justified — as estimates of the project show it will be a struggle to be completed. Officials now say it will cost an eye-watering $126 billion to finish the line from Los Angeles to San Francisco — which is more money than Amtrak has ever received from the federal government since it was established in 1971, a damning 60 Minutes report revealed. That’s and a huge uptick when compared to the $33 billion voters were told the rail would cost when it was announced way back in 2008....

Two corrupt town workers in posh East Hampton accepted thousands of dollars in cash bribes from contractors in exchange for near-instant under-the-table building permits, according to prosecutors. Town Building Inspector Ryan Benitez, 37, and his senior office assistant, Evelyn Calderon, 46, pocketed more than $16,000 from four unnamed contractors so that the builders could sidestep the months-long approval process and have their permits and certificates of occupancy secretly fast-tracked, Suffolk County prosecutors claimed. The pair of government employees would sometimes jump into action within minutes of getting a request — and cut down the typical months-long process to mere hours...

YouTuber and investigative journalist Nick Shirley’s quest to uncover fraud continues to yield results that — while alarming — are also admittedly hilarious in watching. After gaining national attention for his investigation of Minnesota’s Somali communities, Shirley has made his way to Los Angeles, California. In an update posted to social media platform X on Sunday, Shirley paid a “friendly” visit to a “hospice consulting” business, inquiring with employees as to how he could start one. They were, predictably, unwilling to oblige. “LA hospice fraudsters shut down their fraudulent business and flee the building. This ‘business’ was operating as a...

The FBI on Thursday announced the arrest of 8 of 15 defendants charged in connection with a major multi-million dollar health care fraud scheme. The arrests were made in and around Los Angeles County, as well as in Court d’Alene, Idaho. Officials said some of the defendants are health care professionals, including nurses, a psychologist and a chiropractor. Losses to taxpayers reportedly exceeded $50 million, according to the Department of Justice. Six of the defendants arrested Thursday are expected to make their initial appearances Thursday afternoon in United States District Court in downtown Los Angeles. ... Essayli announced the arrests...

California is a cash machine. The state collects some of the country’s highest income, business, and fuel taxes, and now spends more than $300 billion per year. And yet, everywhere you look, California seems to be falling apart. Mismanaged wildfires have turned neighborhoods into ash. Drug addiction and homelessness have metastasized, turning parts of Los Angeles and San Francisco into no-go zones. And the cost-of-living crisis is pricing middle-class taxpayers out of basic necessities like groceries and gas, even as the state spends billions on welfare programs that never seem to lift anyone out of poverty. Where is all this...

Independent journalist and YouTuber Nick Shirley is set to release part two of his California fraud investigation, this time targeting alleged childcare scams. In a teaser clip, Shirley examines a San Diego facility listed as serving 14 children, yet state inspectors had never seen the children, citing missing records and the absence of an official roster. In the brief clip, the woman Shirley question's becomes immediately confrontational, threatening to call the police and accusing him of targeting Somalis. https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2038740552158421088? - 2 MIN "Here is Hayden Serra Family Child Care," Shirley said. "This is a daycare right here. Apparently, they have...

A disgraced San Francisco human rights chief and her longtime beau have been arrested for allegedly grifting taxpayer funds for personal use through a city program intended to help the city’s black communities. Sheryl Davis, former heard of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, and her nonprofit boss partner James Spingola were taken into custody Monday on suspicion of multiple felony counts of misappropriating public funds and conflicts of interest. “Public integrity matters because our communities must be able to trust that government agencies treat everyone fairly and serve all members equally,” said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins at a press...

State officials have awarded the City of Sacramento $2.5 million to support equity efforts in the local cannabis industry. The funding comes from the Cannabis Equity Grants Program for Local Jurisdictions, administered by the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (Go-Biz).

California sued the Trump administration Monday to block what it says is an unprecedented power grab: using emergency authority to force the restart of an offshore oil operation shut down more than a decade ago. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, argues a March 13 order by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright oversteps his authority under the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law. “No matter how much President Trump may claim there’s a so-called national energy emergency — it’s just not true,” Attorney General Rob Bonta told reporters. “The U.S. already produces significantly more oil and...

A massive power outage left tens of thousands of people without electricity Thursday night across South Orange County and parts of San Diego County. San Diego Gas & Electric reported that more than 100,000 customers were initially affected. Video taken near the Civic Center in Mission Viejo showed one of the areas impacted by the blackout. Other areas that were impacted included Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel. The cause of the outage was not immediately known.

A former Los Angeles Unified School District employee has been charged in what prosecutors described as a pay-to-play scheme that directed more than $22 million in contracts to a single technology company, making it one of the largest money laundering schemes in the district’s history. Officials with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office allege that between 2018 and 2022, 53-year-old Pasadena resident, Hong “Grace” Peng, who worked as a technical project manager for LAUSD, of illegally awarding Innive, a Texas-based tech company, millions of dollars worth of contracts for work on the district’s My Integrated Student Information System (MiSiS)....

All those empty office buildings in downtown Seattle are dragging down property values, according to newly-released King County Assessor data. According to the King County Assessor’s Office, the city’s most valuable skyscrapers have lost $3.7 billion in value since 2022. Approximately a third of downtown commercial space remains vacant. Among the biggest decreases in value are the Amazon Doppler Tower and Meeting Center (62% drop), Amazon’s Day One Tower and Spheres (59% drop), the DocuSign Tower on 999 Third Street (56% drop), Amazon’s Re-Invent Towers (55% drop), and the US Bank Centre (53% drop). The three Amazon office buildings listed...

70 hospice and home health providers in Los Angeles were cut off from federal funding in one week after being flagged for fraud by Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, with officials indicating that additional providers are likely to be flagged as the review widens. Early findings point to a broader network of activity than the initial suspensions suggest. “As the task force to root out waste, fraud and abuse ramps up, we expect this number to grow exponentially.” As RedState previously reported, the GOP-led House Oversight Committee has now opened an investigation into what they describe as “rampant”...

Travelers are waiting in 270-minute-long queues at America's busiest airports after nearly half the Transportation Security Administration officers called off work. Wait times have reached nearly five hours at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas after 42 percent of TSA staff called out Tuesday. Security queues snaked around the Houston airport and through an underground tunnel as staff warned travelers whose flights were departing 'soon' that they 'may not clear security in time,' CNN reported.Nearly 50 percent of staff at Houston's Hobby Airport called off Monday, but chaos has since calmed at the Southwest hub with security wait times...

A California school district is teetering on the verge of collapse after out of control spending and hiring. Santa Rosa City Schools, which are about 1.5 hours north of San Francisco, have been reprimanded by Sonoma County education chiefs for blowing stacks of cash. Staff saw bumper pay packets and brought in too many new workers for the revenue it was generating, authorities said. Meanwhile the district has seen student enrollment dwindle from 16,000 in 2016 to under 12,000 last year across 24 schools in the region. In a stark warning, Michael Fine, CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management...

A 55-year-old man convicted for murdering his girlfriend in South Los Angeles was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Darryl Lamar Collins, of Los Angeles, killed Fatima Johnson in her apartment in July 2021, a slaying that came just under a year after he was granted parole for two murders in 1995. Johnson's cause of death was asphyxia due to neck pressure and possible smothering, according to the L.A. County District Attorney's Office. The 53-year-old victim was found by her daughters and best friend - bound with shoe laces and duct tape, gagged and wrapped...

Pennsylvania’s welfare fraud rate surged 165 percent in 2025, vaulting the Commonwealth to the fourth‑highest rate in the nation and raising fresh questions about whether Harrisburg and its largest cities are equipped to protect taxpayer dollars. The spike comes as the state’s primary anti‑fraud watchdog, the Office of State Inspector General, operates with long‑standing vacancies and limited independence, while major jurisdictions such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh lack their own welfare fraud units or truly independent inspectors general with law‑enforcement authority

Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman criticized Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for attacking YouTuber Nick Shirley during a Wednesday “All-In Podcast” episode. Shortly after Shirley released a Monday video in which he claimed to document over $170 million in taxpayer fraud in California, Newsom’s press office X account posted a cartoon image of the YouTuber at a daycare, asking to see the children there. On the podcast, Fetterman appeared to reference the post, and accused Newsom of implying Shirley was a pedophile and suggested the governor should seek common ground with the YouTuber on reducing fraud. “Why can’t you celebrate...

The Merabi Professional Medical Plaza, a three-story, 32,000 square foot stucco and glass office building in Los Angeles, is home to a salon, a law office, a modeling agency, a realty corporation and, also, 89 licensed hospice companies. Patient advocate Sheila Clark, who has worked to expose allegations of widespread Medicare fraud in the hospice industry, calls this building "ground zero" for the issue. "This particular building I noticed, I'm like, 'dang, how can there be that many licensed and certified hospices in this tiny little building?,'" Clark said. The building is among the most extreme cases of what's known...

In 2022, California Gov. Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing (WAWC), a project featuring an overpass for animals atop ten lanes of the 101 Freeway in Southern California. At the ceremony, Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to “complete the job within another $10 million,” before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick. Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass, and estimated that the entire project — which includes the bridge and other ancillary developments — would cost $92 million, some of it coming...