Free Republic

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the government may need to seize private property to advance clean energy initiatives. Dimon discussed the need to quickly begin investing in solar projects and other green initiatives and suggested that the government should use eminent domain to seize property for those projects. “At the same time, permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. We may even need to evoke [sic] eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar,...

Activists are upset that the Bruce family, which received oceanfront property last year that was unjustly taken from its forebears by the government, has now sold it back to Los Angeles County for $20 million. As Breitbart News reported in 2021, the story of the Bruce family was a compelling case for restitution: The owners, Willa and Charles Bruce, purchased the land in 1912 and created a beach resort catering to black clients before the city used eminent domain to seize the property. The land was dormant for decades until the city built a park in 1960 and later renamed...

Decades-long mantras about “vanishing habitat” and ever-growing threats to wildlife have long been used to justify locking up more land through federal ownership or other restrictive measures. The perfect example is the Biden administration’s proposal to conserve 30% of the nation by 2030—aka “30 by 30.” Exactly what the administration envisions is ambiguous, as it hasn’t defined words like “conserve” and “protect,” although insiders at the Department of the Interior say the 30% language is being incorporated into many Interior Department documents.

Jacob Cantu says he nixed a major land deal due to plans for an open-field gun range which would have impacted his business and family's safety. The government reportedly plans to use eminent domain to take the land and build it anyway. A Freer man is accusing the federal government of potentially using eminent domain to take his land for "pennies on the dollar" after negotiations to buy the land fell through. Jacob Cantu, the owner of J.A. Cantu Ranch, told Laredo Morning Times the government is potentially planning to force the sale of 30 acres of his land for...

During his presentations of a bill that would enter the state of Mississippi into an interstate compact with Arkansas and Tennessee, the Senate sponsor completely omitted that, if passed, the law would create an unelected quasi-governmental entity with very broad powers, including eminent domain. The bill went on to pass the state Senate unanimously on February 3. SB2716, sponsored by Republican Senator David Parker (R-DeSoto), is a 17-page document that creates the RegionSmart Development District (District) and the RegionSmart Development Agency of the Greater Memphis Region (RegionSmart Development).

Fairbourne is a tiny Welsh village of only 700 people, tucked between mountains and the Irish sea. Founded around 1865, the pace is so slow that "Dragon's Teeth" tank traps from World War II still dot the beach to fend off a German invasion that never came. There's nothing particularly outstanding about Fairbourne to attract visitors. It's just a lovely little place to live. Or it was. In 2014, the authorities decided that Fairbourne was at high risk of flooding from climate change. Let's just ponder that for a moment. Seven years have gone by since the arbitrary decision that...

One of the region’s most prolific apartment builders has sued the city of Los Angeles over its COVID-19 eviction moratorium, saying his companies have experienced “astronomical” financial losses and are legally entitled to compensation from the city. Palmer’s companies allege that the moratorium...violated the “takings clause” established in the 5th Amendment, which says private property shall not be taken for public use without “just compensation.” “While the eviction moratorium ostensibly protects tenants who are unable to pay rent due to circumstances related to the COVID-19 pandemic, it arbitrarily shifts the financial burden onto property owners, many of whom were already...

An FBI agent applied for a federal warrant in 2018 to seize a fabled cache of U.S. government gold he said was “stolen during the Civil War” and hidden in a Pennsylvania cave, saying the state might take the gold for itself if the feds asked for permission, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

President Biden halted construction on the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border shortly after taking office in January. However, ongoing eminent domain cases were not paused... ...hundreds of eminent domain cases were brought to take the land (during the Trump Administration)... In the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, McAllen Division, there are currently 60 active cases, according to federal records.

The Biden administration is still seizing land along the U.S. southern border for Donald Trump’s border wall despite announcing that he was not going to finish it. The administration insists they’re in the midst of a “review of federal resources to build the wall” and are allowing Trump-era court cases to proceed, including land seizure cases. That review was supposed to be concluded 60 days after Biden’s inauguration — March 20. The president made the announcement of the wall cancellation with great fanfare and publicity. And yet land has continued to be seized. “I’m … very, very disappointed in Joe...

A Harrisburg attorney said Thursday that a state appeals court has just given him the next clue toward hopefully solving the mystery of whether the FBI dug up a cache of lost Civil War gold worth about $400 million from a remote Pennsylvania forest nearly three years ago. That clue, William J. Cluck said, is the name of the federal magistrate judge who ordered all records of the March 2018 excavation in the Dent’s Run area of Elk County to be sealed from public view. Cluck said he can use that information, secured through his latest Right-to-Know Law appeal to...

This is a rather odd story that I’ve been following for a while now, so bear with me. It’s been featured on a couple of the Travel Channel’s conspiracy theory shows and you’ll see why in a moment if you’re not familiar with it. But a recent development may bring it out of the tinfoil hat column and at least into the realm of possibility. The tale starts in the 1860s when legend has it that a large wagon full of gold bullion was either stolen or “went missing” in a remote area of western Pennsylvania. The shipment had supposedly...

Go for the gold? The U.S. government went for it. FBI agents were looking for an extremely valuable cache of fabled Civil War-era gold — possibly tons of it — when they excavated a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania three years ago this month, according to government emails and other recently released documents in the case. On March 13, 2018, treasure hunters led the FBI to Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend has it an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia....

Construction for a maglev train line that would take passengers from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes could alter a D.C. neighborhood and affect nearby properties for years, District officials said Monday. A maglev station in the Mount Vernon Square area has the potential to change the character of the neighborhood and bring “substantial construction and long-term operational implications on nearby properties,” Andrew Trueblood, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, said in a statement that urged residents and city leaders to engage in the federal review of the multibillion-dollar project. The 40-mile “superconducting magnetic levitation train system,” commonly called...

The free speech social media platform Parler is calling for “Twexit” — a mass exodus of Twitter users — in its recently issued tech “Declaration of Independence” and “Bill of Rights,” in which it takes a stand against acts of censorship and data abuse by Silicon Valley giants like Twitter and Facebook. Parler said this week that Silicon Valley “technofascism” is threatening Internet freedoms as companies crack down on speech they don’t like and engage in acts of censorship and blacklisting. “Twitter long ceased to be a public square. They are now merely a publisher. And a bad, biased publisher...

(Laredo, TX) City Council reaches agreement with government providing right of entry for 982 acres along the Rio Grande. The city is the largest landowner in the Laredo area to have been sued over this right of entry, the first document the federal government needs signed by any property owner with land that could be impacted by a border wall. If a landowner does not agree to sign this form, the Department of Justice will pursue a condemnation case against them in federal court. A landowner has never won a right of entry case against the government... The agreement, which...

The federal government on Wednesday filed a condemnation complaint to survey 104 parcels of land owned by the City of Laredo, up and down the Rio Grande, in order to assess where exactly the border wall should go. Maps included in the lawsuit outline in red the “proposed project area” for the wall... As just compensation for this expansive taking and condemnation, the federal government is offering its standard $100 to access the land. The 104 parcels total about 982 acres, according to the lawsuit. This legal action stems from City Council’s decision in January to deny the feds access...

... The practice of government taking land for recreational uses—typically bike lanes, hiking paths and fashionable “rail trails” and “greenways”—is spreading across the country, marking a sharp and troubling expansion of eminent domain. The Takings Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment grants government the authority to seize property to be used for the public good, as long as government pays “just compensation” to the owner. Over the years, the Supreme Court has consistently expanded what is considered a “public good” to justify government seizures. In 2005, for instance, the high court upheld the taking of Susette Kelo’s waterfront home by...

Los Angeles politicians will make housing affordable, by force if necessary. On Friday, City Councilmember Gil Cedillo introduced a motion that asks city staff to draft plans for using eminent domain to seize Hillside Villa Apartments, a 124-unit, privately-owned development in the city's Chinatown neighborhood to avoid rent increases at the property. The property is currently under an affordability covenant that requires its owner to rent out a number of its units at below-market rates. That covenant is set to expire soon, meaning rents on some 59 units will increase to market rates—which means rent hikes of up to $1,000...

Virginia House Del. Ibraheem Samirah introduced a bill that would override local zoning officials to permit multi-family housing in every neighborhood, changing the character of quiet suburbs.Oregon passed a similar bill, following moves by cities such as Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; and Seattle.Proponents say urban lifestyles are better for the environment and that suburbs are bastions of racial segregation. Democrats in Virginia may override local zoning to bring high-density housing, including public housing, to every neighborhood statewide — whether residents want it or not.The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on...