Free Republic

Thirteen years after Tallahassee attorney Ron Meyer successfully challenged the state’s major school-vouchers program, he is preparing to sue the state again, this time over its newest taxpayer-funded scholarships. A number of organizations want Meyer to represent them in a case to try to strike down the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, which was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis last month. The organizations, which include Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Southern Poverty Law Center, argue it is unconstitutional for Florida taxpayers to give low-income and middle-income students scholarships to attend private schools, including religious...

Suspected sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was handed another break by the Department of Justice on Monday when federal prosecutors rejected his victims’ efforts to throw out his plea deal and prosecute him for abusing dozens of underage girls. In the 35-page motion, filed in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia, federal prosecutors said that there is no legal basis to invalidate Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement — and they warned the federal judge in the case against doing the same. U.S. Attorney Byung “B.J.” Pak said that because Congress did not outline specific penalties in the Crime Victims’ Rights Act...

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., June 25 (UPI) -- SpaceX's third-ever Falcon Heavy rocket launched early Tuesday from Florida, carrying 24 satellites in a complex government mission from Kennedy Space Center. It was the first time the military used the world's most powerful rocket, the first nighttime launch for the Falcon Heavy and the first time such a government mission used two SpaceX boosters that have been flown before. The space company also made history by catching one half of the rocket nose cone -- or fairing -- in a net on a fishing boat at sea, as the fairings fell...

The English Court of Appeals has reversed a decision to force a woman with developmental disabilities to have an abortion, overturning a decision from Justice Nathalie Lieven on June 21 in England's Court of Protection. The woman in question is 22 weeks pregnant, meaning the abortion would've been late-term. In her ruling, Lieven explained that she "has to operate" in the woman's "best interests, not on society's views of termination.� She reportedly accepted the opinion of NHS trust, which concluded that an abortion would be less traumatic for the pregnant woman than giving birth.In its overturning, the Court of Appeals...

A Florida Chick-fil-A franchise owner was arrested Wednesday on two counts of lewd and lascivious molestation of a 15-year-old, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office said. Heather Matuszek, 32, was the alleged victim’s youth leader at Clearwater Community Church in Pinellas County in 2014 and 2015 when the incidents allegedly took place, The Tampa Bay Times reported. The alleged victim, who is now 19, told deputies Matuszek touched her inappropriately two times, the report said. She reported the allegations last March. The investigation is ongoing and the sheriff’s office says they believe there could be more victims. The alleged victim also...

There’s 934.5 million for processing facilities, food, water, sanitary items, blankets, etc. $866 million would go to “reduce reliance on influx shelters to house children.” Another $200 million is allocated to develop an “integrated, multi-agency processing center pilot program for families.” You’re probably getting the idea. There’s another serious poison pill in the package as well. One provision would, “require the federal government to prospectively notify illegal immigrants that if they bring an unaccompanied child into the country and sponsor them, their illegal status would in no way be used against them, a source said, and that the child will...

On June 18th, over 7300 voters in Coral Springs, Florida went to the polls in a Special Election to cast their votes for the individual they wanted as their new City Commissioner. The former Commissioner, Dan Daley, left the seat vacant, after he won his own Special Election, for Florida State House. Out of the six candidates in the Commission race, one, Khurrum Wahid, raised far more money than any of the others. But for many voters, Wahid, a terror-linked lawyer, represented a danger to society, and therefore, he was soundly rejected. Khurrum Basir Wahid, a South Florida attorney,...

I thought it was satire, something cooked up by his political enemies. You couldn't put out a less attractive video than the one Gavin Newsom did for illegal aliens on Twitter, advising them himself on how to obstruct ICE from any deportation maneuvers.  And sure enough, he wasn't hacked — it really was blue-checked he. Leave aside the fact that he's the governor of a U.S. state, supposedly there to represent the interests of that state's citizens rather than those of the foreigners who come here without papers, quite illegally, and run up the tab using his state's services.  They're his constituents, too, now, in fact,...

Good Morning/Afternoon,MEGARushBackForEIBEXCELLENCEDITTOS!

The Riviera Beach City Council authorized the city’s insurer to pay nearly $600,000 worth of ransom to regain access to data walled off through an attack on the city’s computer systems. In a meeting Monday night announced only days before, the board voted 5-0 to authorize the city insurer to pay 65 bitcoins, a hard-to-track cryptocurrency valued at approximately $592,000. An additional $25,000 would come out of the city budget, to cover its policy deductible. Without discussion on the merits, the board tackled the agenda item in two minutes, voted and moved on. The dollar amount was not mentioned before...

Democrats are looking to make inroads with Florida Latinos as President Trump prepares to launch an aggressive effort to court the state’s fastest-growing voter bloc. Eager to avoid a repeat of 2018, when two Trump allies edged out Democrats in the state’s Senate and gubernatorial contests, Democrats are wading into Florida’s Hispanic communities earlier this time around, mobilizing dozens of organizers in the Sunshine State and fine tuning Spanish-language outreach. And on Friday, more than half a dozen Democratic presidential hopefuls gathered at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials’ (NALEO) annual conference in Miami, where they pitched...

ORLANDO, Fla.—The state dubbed it the I-4 Ultimate for its grand scope. For some here, it’s more like the ultimate headache. A reconstruction of 21 miles of congested interstate highway through the heart of Orlando will build or rebuild 140 bridges, redesign 15 interchanges, move exits and add new toll lanes, in a $2.3 billion project to smooth traffic through one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities. Dense cities have grown up around the aging freeways, hemming them in so that expensive engineering feats are needed to do work on them. Yet work is often unavoidable. I-4, for instance, was built...

A slate of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates hammered President Trump Friday for his administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the census. Speaking at the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Presidential Campaign Forum hosted by Telemundo, the candidates panned the question as an effort to undercount immigrant communities and possibly reduce their resources and representation in Congress. The census will help determine the number of congressional seats and electoral votes each state gets, making it critical to how votes will be counted in the decade after it is taken. The prospect of a citizenship question’s...

Immigration agents will target Miami, Atlanta, Chicago, Baltimore, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco this weekend, sources from congressional offices and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told the Miami Herald. Earlier this week, a Trump administration official confirmed that ICE will specifically target for deportation as many as 1 million people “who have been issued final deportation orders by federal judges yet remain at large in the country.”

President Trump is beginning his 2020 re-election effort by trying to woo Hispanic voters with a kickoff event in the crucial swing state of Florida. Vice President Mike Pence will visit Miami on Tuesday to roll out the "Latinos for Trump" campaign, a nationwide project aimed at engaging Hispanic communities. Florida is home to more 2 million Hispanic voters and could play a key role in next year's presidential election, Politico reported. "The strong Latino support for President Trump and his policies will be instrumental in re-electing the president for a second term," Hannah Castillo, director of coalitions for the...

Watching live TV coverage of President Trump at his Orlando rally announcing his reelection campaign, I was blown away by Trump's unprecedented, straightforward honesty. With no holds barred, Trump told the American people the truth about numerous important issues which have been lied about or hidden by fake news media. I thought, “My goodness, the president just gave the American people a year's worth of truthful news in one speech.” I guarantee that Americans who only watch fake news media heard for the first time during Trump's speech that the Mueller investigation of Trump did not find any collusion with...

Democrats should not delude themselves: unless they shape up – and fast – the president is heading for four more years On Tuesday night President Trump launched his re-election campaign with a by now classic rally in Orlando, Florida. It was a “Greatest Hits rally” in which he accused the Democrats of undermining democracy (by trying to impeach him), talked about the many threats to “this country as we know it”, and even railed against Hillary Clinton (for old time’s sake). In short, Trump’s message for 2020 is: “I made America Great Again, now vote for me so I can...

week of June 17-21 Tuesday June 18 2. Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #22, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas 3. Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #28, Allen Cothrel Winsor, of Florida, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Florida 4. Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #50, James David Cain, Jr., of Louisiana, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Louisiana 5. Motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar #118, Greg Girard Guidry, of Louisiana,...

RUSH: That’s right, my friends, you are in the right place, to have everything that happened last night and all the reaction to it put in proper perspective, you are right where you need to be. And when we’re finished today, you’re not gonna need to go anywhere else. In fact, this program probably would be a gold mine of information to the liberal Democrats and the Democrat Party if they would only listen to it. But their arrogance and their conceit prevents them from learning anything, so I’m not worried about giving anything away because they will discount it...

NBA star Dwyane Wade spoke to Variety about why it was important for him to support his younger son attending a pride parade last spring. In April, Wade’s then 11-year-old son Zion posted pictures of himself at Miami Pride.... “I don’t really talk about it much because it’s Zion’s story to tell,” Wade said to Variety during an interview... Wade said he was surprised that his love for his son resulted in some backlash on social media. “This is my job as a father,” Wade said. “I’m very uneasy.... Wade is at Cannes Lions this week to speak about his...