Free Republic

Michigan made $39.9 million in Medicaid payments to deceased enrollees over a two-year period a decade ago, with a total of $249 million spent across 14 states. This is according to a new report titled the “Welfare Walking Dead” from the non-profit the Foundation for Government Accountability, which looked at federal audit data from the Office of Inspector General, among other research. In an exclusive interview with The Center Square, Jonathan Bain said that every taxpayer should be concerned with these findings. Bain is a senior research fellow at the FGA and authored the report. “The average citizen should care...

"Squad" member and congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has reportedly tied a turkey giveaway to political campaign donations, according to a report from the New York Post. The outlet reported that an email was sent out by Ocasio-Cortez that stated, “Thanksgiving is two weeks away. Will you chip in $5 or anything you can today to help us bring the joy of the holiday season into homes around NYC this year?” However, clicking on the contribution link sends those who read the email to a campaign fundraising page on the Democrat donations platform, ActBlue. Those submitting donations were prompted to...

In late December 2020, President Trump made a call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger asking him to look at some of the items that were uncovered by his auditor. There was plenty of evidence for a competent auditor or any man of integrity to know that the election was uncertifiable. Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger’s office secretly recorded the phone call with President Trump, then lied about it to the far left Washington Post. Raffensperger’s office later ran to the Washington Post and leaked a fraudulent transcript of the call. After they were caught lying to the America...

Minnesota got looted for BILLIONS while Walz, Omar, and Ellison protected the Somali fraud machine for votes. •$250M fake meals → Lambos & Dubai palaces •$400M autism scam → kickbacks & ghost clinics •$300M housing fraud → cash suitcases to Somalia & Al-Shabaab Omar took their dirty money and praised the scams. Ellison slow-walked every probe. Walz signed the waivers and cried “racism” instead of doing his damn job. Trump just killed TPS for the fraudsters. Good. Now arrest the politicians who enabled it. Minnesota deserves better than these vote-chasing cowards.

A legal fight is brewing over a Maryland county board of elections’ heavy redactions to the voter registration records of an illegal immigrant who served as superintendent of Iowa’s largest school system until he was arrested by federal authorities this year, Fox News Digital has learned. "This was shocking," Justin Riemer, CEO and president of the conservative legal group Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), told Fox News Digital in a Zoom interview on Friday. "When I saw the news reporting, and they showed screenshots of the registration applications with all this information redacted, I was just shocked." Riemer...

The following quote is the opening salvo from an article titled “The Largest Funder of Al-Shabaab Is the Minnesota Taxpayer,” by Ryan Thorpe and Christopher Rufo, both with the Manhattan Institute: Minnesota is drowning in fraud. Billions in taxpayer dollars have been stolen during the administration of Governor Tim Walz alone. Democratic state officials, overseeing one of the most generous welfare regimes in the country, are asleep at the switch. And the media, duty-bound by progressive pieties, refuse to connect the dots. [snip] In many cases, the fraud has allegedly been perpetrated by members of Minnesota’s sizeable Somali community. Federal...

This fundraiser is for the birds. Power-hungry “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cooked up a new way to have her cake and eat it too this Thanksgiving – by tying her annual turkey giveaway to her massive reelection campaign enterprise. And critics are crying fowl. “Thanksgiving is two weeks away,” the self-described “Bronx girl” wrote in an email pitch last week. “Will you chip in $5 or anything you can today to help us bring the joy of the holiday season into homes around NYC this year?” But clicking on the contribution link sends people directly to a campaign...

There is no whitewashing this scandal: segments of the Somali community in Minneapolis have been engaged in systematic welfare fraud, and used some of the proceeds to fund the Al-Shabaab terror group in their homeland. The enraging City Journal exposé presents a case study in why the United States must drastically slash the number of immigrants it admits, and become significantly more rigorous in choosing whom to admit and how to assimilate them. “There is an issue here that is real,” a law-enforcement source said, “and if there is ever an event that is traceable back to these funds, or...

Disgraced ex-TV anchor Stephanie Hockridge will spend the next ten years behind bars for her role in a multi-million-dollar COVID fraud scheme – serving her time in the same cushy lockup as notorious sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. The 42-year-old, a former Phoenix TV anchor turned entrepreneur, was sentenced in Texas federal court Friday and ordered to cough up nearly $64 million in restitution for the bogus Paycheck Protection Program loans she helped secure during the height of the pandemic, the Justice Department announced. Hockridge, found guilty in June of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, will report to prison on Dec....

SANTA ANA, California – An Orange County staffing company owner and three other defendants were arrested today on an eight-count federal indictment alleging they cheated the IRS out of more than $90 million and defrauded numerous clients by failing to pay employment taxes withheld from the wages of temporary workers – many of them illegal immigrants – and used the unpaid taxes to fund their luxurious lifestyles. Some of the defendants documented their extravagant lifestyles on Instagram and other social media. Lorena Padilla, 49, of Villa Park, the case’s lead defendant, is charged with one count of wire fraud conspiracy,...

Minnesota, under Governor Waltz, is a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity. I am, as President of the United States, hereby terminating, effective immediately, the Temporary Protected Status (TPS Program) for Somalis in Minnesota. Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State, and BILLIONS of Dollars are missing. Send them back to where they came from. It’s OVER! President DJT

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — United Nations climate talks in Brazil reached a subdued agreement Saturday to deliver more money to countries hit hardest by climate change to help them adapt to extreme weather’s wrath. But the agreement doesn’t include an explicit detailed map to phase out fossil fuels or strengthen inadequate emissions cutting plans.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) apparently used his DC home, which is at the center of a mortgage and tax fraud investigation, in a video announcing his California gubernatorial campaign. Swalwell, 45, kicked off his run for the Golden State governor’s office on Thursday night with a minute-long campaign video that pledged to “keep the worst president in our history out of our homes, out of our streets and out of our lives” and lower the cost of living. But X users quickly saw something was amiss and began comparing photos of the congressman’s $1.2 million Victorian-style bungalow in...

Republican Sens. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Ted Cruz of Texas introduced legislation on Friday to recover savings from former President Joe Biden’s rural broadband initiative. The $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program has not started a single project since the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) was signed in 2021 by Biden, drawing Ernst’s attention in a November 2024 letter to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Tesla CEO Elon Musk outlining up to $2 trillion in savings. Ernst, who chairs the Senate DOGE Caucus, introduced the Recovering Excess Communications Appropriations while Protecting Telecommunications Upgrades, Reinvestment, and...

Somalis in Minnesota swindled millions in state Medicaid autism-care programs and sent the cash back to their homeland and its terror groups, investigators say. Breitbart News reported in July that nearly 100 autism clinics in Minnesota were being investigated for fraudulently billing Medicaid for treatment of children supposedly diagnosed with autism, most of it in connection with the rampantly corrupt Somali community around Minneapolis. But the fraud is far more widespread with far more money involved than was previously reported — all of which has been presided over by former Democrat Party vice-presidential nominee Gov. Tim Walz. The money paid...

Former Republican state legislator Austin Smith pleaded guilty Monday to what he previously called “ludicrous” charges that he personally forged more than 100 signatures on his petitions for reelection last year. The Republican from Surprise was a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, which has a history of spreading false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and pushed for election law changes in the state legislature.

While Farghali noted that it is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood to “exploit Gaza and Palestine for money.” The Muslim Brotherhood allegedly stole half a billion dollars from donations for the Gaza Strip in a single campaign, Egyptian researcher Maher Farghali reported on Sunday. While Farghali noted that it is typical of the Muslim Brotherhood to “exploit Gaza and Palestine for money,” the difference with this incident is that Hamas condemned the theft. The association Waqf al-Ummah/Ummet Vakfı, founded by the Muslim Brotherhood, is said to have been responsible for taking half a billion, which it raised in a single...

For nearly two years the Office of Inspector General investigated travel spending at Chicago Public Schools. The report found 'questionable, excessive and even exorbitant' travel spending across the district. Inspectors say it's fueled in part by federal COVID relief money and a broken travel expense process with no official oversight, according to a new report. The report found eight schools used more than $142,000 of CPS funds to pay a vendor for 15 staff trips to Finland, Estonia, Egypt and South Africa. However 13 out of the 15 trips were not pre-approved as required. One trip was even rejected, but...

The OIG found that despite prior audits and corrective actions, some of the same issues persist, such as states continuing to make capitation payments to MCOs for enrollees who have passed away. A new report from the Office of Inspector General within the Department of Health and Human Services shows multiple states made improper Medicaid payments to managed care organizations after enrollees had died, which exposes persistent fiscal and oversight problems in the nation’s Medicaid managed-care system.In addition, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said late last week that SNAP benefit payments have been going to deceased people as well.The audit,...

Ashley Sharp reports.