Free Republic

California's delayed, over-budget high-speed train from Los Angeles to San Francisco is running fast in only one direction: Rising costs to even get rolling, which are now estimated to be $126 billion. "Today, we estimate with the right optimization just over $125 billion," California High Speed Rail Authority board member Anthony Williams told CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday. "I think $126 billion is the current estimate for that." Snip "We’re now in 2026: There are no trains; there’s no track laid; it was a complete bait and switch," Rep. Vince Fong, R-Calif., told "60 Minutes," saying the project "needs to...

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....

My jaw dropped watching this Reporter Matt Seedorff asks Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass about the homeless numbers, he says people don’t trust the data because they can see the growing number of encampments in LA She literally says not to trust what you’re seeing, trust her Reporter “There's just overall a lack of trust with these numbers. It's not what people see” Mayor Karen Bass “I will tell you something. It is absolutely what you see”

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...

Chicago has seen better days. The city is losing residents and businesses and is digging itself deeper into debt just to maintain the status quo. Yet city officials show no intention of cutting back on spending. This crisis, however, will have nationwide implications. An unconditional bailout will signal to other fiscally mismanaged cities that their irresponsibility can be rewarded. At its core, Chicago’s fiscal problems are straightforward. For decades, the city has committed itself to unsustainable spending levels. While its ridership is declining, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is flush with funds thanks to sales tax and driver fees. Chicago...

Yesterday I had some figures from the NYC vs LA deathmatch over who can spend more on the homeless population. Los Angeles was looking pretty good with $650,000 per housing unit for the homeless, but don’t count NYC out yet. These numbers come from the NY comptroller’s annual report via Mike Bird of the Economist. New York City’s unsheltered population increased from 3,588 in FY 2019 to 4,504 in FY 2025 — a 26 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels In that time, spending on services for this population has more than tripled, growing from $102 million in FY 2019...

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...

A homeless nonprofit paid the son of San Francisco’s top human rights boss $10,000 to prepare five slides for a panel his mother moderated — as she was signing city contracts worth millions to the organization, according to prosecutors. Sheryl Davis, former head of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission, was arrested Monday on a slew of public corruption charges stemming from her time leading the scandal-scarred Dream Keeper initiative, a $120 million plan to aid the city’s black communities. Davis signed city contracts worth more than $3.5 million to Homeless Children’s Network, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides substance...

MJTruthUltra @MJTruthUltra John Solomon Name Drops Samantha Power, (Obama, Hillary, and Biden Ally) as a Person of Interest who was running USAID when they discussed funneling hundreds of millions back into Democrat coffers. Don Jr. Who on the American side was coordinating this scheme? Solomon: We don’t know that yet.. the NSA intercepted only high level Ukrainian Officials discussing it with USAID people working in Kyiv. https://rumble.com/v77uk1s-john-solomon-name-drops-samantha-power.html 3/30/2026 ransomnote: Samantha Power was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017,[1] and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2021 to 2025....

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...

ALBANY – State lawmakers will blow past Wednesday’s deadline to pass Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $263 billion budget plan, as negotiations drag on over her push to delay green energy mandates and her bid to lower car insurance premiums. Democrats in the state Assembly and Senate passed a one-week stopgap measure Tuesday keeping the government funded through next week amid the largely-stalled discussions between Hochul and legislative leaders. “We’re still at the beginning of the middle, as it turns out,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Westchester) said, using a stale Albany adage to indicate the discussions have not moved much since...

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...

A Brooklyn Council member, her sister — an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul — and the husband of a Democratic state Assembly member are being investigated by federal prosecutors looking into whether they took bribes to help a migrant shelter provider that has received $200 million in city contracts, according to a report. Democratic Councilwoman Farah Louis and her sister, Debbie Louis, who served as Hochul’s assistant secretary of New York City intergovernmental affairs, were named in a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press seeking evidence for possible criminal violations. Edu Hermelyn, the husband of state Assembly Member and...

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).

The abomination that is urban “homelessness” policy rests on the reinforcement of certain unspoken fictions. A recent article on New York’s latest “homeless” outreach program demonstrates how that process works. Before recycling the usual “homelessness” myths, New York Times reporter Emma Goldberg lets loose with a fabrication of her own making. It is a whopper.

U.S.Department of Agriculture(USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins revealed the shocking number of fraud cases uncovered and stamped out by her agency in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. During a sit-down chat Friday at her department’s headquarters, Rollins shared how the Department of Government Efficiency(DOGE) helped her tackle the massive black hole of unnecessary Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP) and unrelated grant spending left over from the Biden administration. “I can’t give enough credit to Elon Musk, who I still am in contact with today, and to the DOGE team that came in,” the secretary said. “I know some of the other...

Taxpayers are yet again helping fund disruptive activism in Los Angeles — this time the radicals planning to chaos across the city and county for Saturday’s “No Kings” protests, which organizers claim will be the biggest yet. One the leading groups participating in the event is the Liberty Hill Foundation, a social justice nonprofit that receives $14 million in Los Angeles city funding for tenant outreach and housing programs. Public filings show the group has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the ACLU of Southern California, raising further questions about taxpayer-supported organizations being used for radical political advocacy. ACLU...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom teared up Wednesday when announcing an expansion of the state’s Service Corps geared at recruiting young men. “Forgive me, this is embarrassing,” he said, as his eyes welled. “All the noise, we just need to turn off. Listen to this, this is it,” he continued while wiping tears off his face. “We’re all just sitting there, screaming and yelling at each other, everybody’s getting at each other’s throats, trying to tear everybody down, and how are we going to get out of this? This is it,” he went on. The governor’s teary showcase was in response...

U.S. INTERCEPTED UKRAINE MESSAGES OF PLOT TO ROUTE MONEY TO BIDEN CAMPAIGN “The United States government, the National Security Agency, intercepted conversations of President Zelensky's government in Ukraine in 2022...conspiring with federal workers at the USAID to come up with a plan to take $200 million dollars of USAID money, that is your money folks, taxpayer money, route it through a series of transactions, move it into the United States, and launder it into Joe Biden's 2024 campaign and the Democratic National Committee.” - 2 min video https://x.com/realamvoice/status/2037292005105996157?

Even while faced with a Russian invasion of their nation, some elements in the Ukrainian government were plotting to help the Biden re-election campaign — with U.S. taxpayer money. That was the gist of an explosive article Thursday from the Washington-based website Just the News, citing a declassified intelligence report. And Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is reportedly on the case. The Just the News report was authored by website founder John Solomon, a veteran, highly respected D.C. journalist, and Just the News chief investigative correspondent Jeff Dunleavy. It claimed that U.S. intelligence intercepts had revealed that personnel in...