Free Republic

Texas hospitals incurred more than $1 billion in health care costs for patients not lawfully present in the United States during fiscal year 2025, according to new data obtained from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. The figures were collected under an executive order issued by Gov. Greg Abbott in August 2024, which requires hospitals to report the cost of inpatient and emergency care provided to individuals in the country illegally. Under Abbott’s order, hospitals are also required to inform patients that responses regarding immigration status will not affect their care, as required by federal law. Statewide totals show...

Brussels is panicking—and for once, the reason has nothing to do with Russian tanks or climate deadlines. The real crisis is informational. It is an open secret how Europe’s so-called “civil society” has long depended on American money, much of it routed through USAID-linked programs, foundations, and transatlantic NGO networks. That money built careers, offices, media platforms, and a permanent activist bureaucracy whose main function was to police politics and impose Berkeley-style liberalism across the continent. It all changed after President Trump and Secretary Rubio all but abolished USAID, closing down an estimated 83 per cent of its projects—many of...

President Donald Trump shared a chart on social media this week showing welfare usage rates among immigrant households in the United States. The chart, titled “Immigrant Welfare Recipient Rates by Country of Origin,” lists the percentage of immigrant households receiving public assistance, broken down by country or region of birth. According to the data shown, approximately 72 percent of Somali-born households in the US receive some form of government welfare, placing Somalia among the highest-listed countries on the chart. Other groups shown with high welfare participation rates include households from Bhutan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and several African, Middle Eastern, and...

Upcoming changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will soon restrict which Ohioans are eligible for benefits. The One Big Beautiful Bill, which President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, changes “non-citizen eligibility for SNAP.” Only U.S. citizens, green card holders who have gone through a five-year waiting period, and some Haitian and Cuban nationals with special status will be eligible for SNAP. This means refugees, people who have been granted asylum and human trafficking survivors will all lose their benefits, according to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service...

UnitedHealth Group’s stock nosedived Thursday morning after earnings fell short of Wall Street’s expectations, and the healthcare giant substantially downgraded its projected results for 2025, citing problems in its Medicare business. There were steep declines in share prices across the insurance industry, as investors reacted to the bellwether company’s unexpected financial woes. In premarket trading, shares of UnitedHealth fell more than 20%. Meanwhile Humana shares dropped more than 13%, while Elevance was down nearly 11% and CVS fell almost 8%. [Snip] UnitedHealth slashed its guidance for the full year, to a range of $26 to $26.50 per share in adjusted...

The response from the EU is exactly what we would expect to see from the end of the 80-year-old Marshal Plan.EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyden has three big concerns with the new trade/tariff reset. I strongly suggest everyone to read the EU concerns slowly to fully absorb decades of hypocrisy now surfacing:#1 The EU will not be able to compete for U.S. market share with 20% general tariffs and 25% auto tariffs.#2 The EU must deploy countermeasures against the risk of losing industrial capacity and manufacturing to the United States.And #3 The EU must defend itself against China...

President Trump rankled federal workers by ordering them to stop teleworking and get back to the office. Around Washington this week, government employees balked at Mr. Trump trying to force them back to the daily grind of sitting in traffic and the other workday rituals that go with showing up in person at federal office buildings.“Nobody is liking that,” said Kyra Toland, a budget analyst with the Department of Labor who has worked in the federal government for over three decades.Ms. Toland said federal employees — particularly those in data-driven jobs like hers — have a proven track record of...

Haitians are not just arriving in Springfield, Ohio, but also in small rural towns nationwide as a result of several Biden-Harris administration policies. Since fiscal 2021, more than 485,000 Haitian illegal border crossers, a record, have been reported by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The overwhelming majority were reported this fiscal year, nearly 216,000, compared to 48,727 in fiscal 2021. Since fiscal 2021 through August, the majority have been apprehended at the southwest border of nearly 262,000, followed by nearly 221,000 nationwide and nearly 2,300 at the northern border, according to the data. Additionally, since July, 205,000 Haitians have been...

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) has been banned from all nine of South Dakota’s tribal nations. On Tuesday, the final tribe that had not yet banned her, the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, voted in favor of banning Noem from its reservation. Flandreau President Tony Reider called an emergency meeting in response to some of the governor’s comments. “President Reider informed the governor that a ban from our territories is imminent and requested that the Governor refrain from making future blanket statements that offend the tribes within the boundaries of the State of South Dakota, some of which depend on state services...

HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — Immigrants and their advocates are asking lawmakers in Hartford to expand state health care coverage. Right now, only undocumented children aged 12 and younger are eligible for the HUSKY Health program.

Blame Canada. Overrun by asylum-seeking migrants sent to the city from southern border states, New York has been offering free bus tickets to the Canadian border for migrants wanting to start a new life up north, but some are turning straight back around. Ilze Thielmann, the director of nonprofit Team TLC — which has been organizing busses to Plattsburgh, where there is an unofficial crossing to Montreal — said the reality isn’t as rosy as people expect. She told CBS: “They think that there are all these jobs up there. They think they’re going to be able to get asylum...

Dozens of migrants stood their ground outside the Watson Hotel in Hell’s Kitchen on Sunday night and refused to leave for a new shelter at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.

Treasury prices rallied further on Monday on expectations of a halt to rising interest rates, although the market faces a hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve that aims to see inflation truly slowing before it can pivot. Fed Chair Jerome Powell could insist when he speaks on Tuesday that more time is needed to show inflation is under control. But consumer price data on Thursday could bolster the market's view that inflation is on track towards the Fed's 2% target.

Tsarizm wrote earlier about the approaching winter in Ukraine and how the government was not prepared to handle the coming humanitarian disaster. BREAKING: SOURCE – US Aid Not Reaching Ukrainian People. 40% Without Power. Government Not Doing Anything For People, No Generators, Tents, Heat, Etc. Kyiv Blackout Tonight. Riots Could Ensue.As we stand today, sources tell Tsarizm the power is only on for 2 hours every 10 hours in the capitol city of Kyiv. There is no heat in much of the city, especially in high rise apartment complexes. The only generators working are in the supermarkets, which lack product....

The year 1850 was plagued by stormy weather and the turbulent conditions were closely followed by the aptly named George Merryweather, a doctor in Whitby, North Yorkshire, who claimed to forecast storms using leeches. Merryweather had been inspired by distinguished predecessors such as the 18th-century poet William Cowper. “I have a leech in a bottle that foretells all these prodigies and convulsions of Nature,” Cowper wrote. “He is worth all the barometers in the world.” Edward Jenner, inventor of the smallpox vaccine, was another believer in the forecasting abilities of leeches, observing how agitated they became before storms: “The leech...

Researchers used DNA from leeches' last blood meals to find out what animals live where in China's Ailaoshan Nature Reserve.You can't argue with 30,000 leeches. In the largest study of its kind, researchers used the blood-sucking worms to reveal a marvelous variety of mammals, birds and frogs in China's Ailaoshan Nature Reserve. The findings demonstrate the value of the park and help establish leeches as a conservation surveillance tool. "From a conservation angle, the number of endangered, near-threatened [and] threatened things that they found with this was just awesome," said Michael Tessler, a biologist and leech expert at St. Francis...

Canada slapped a traveler with a $15,000 fine after he was caught at the airport with a bizarre, blood-sucking secret in his carry-on luggage, officials said. Ippolit Bodounov of Niagara Falls, Ontario, had flown from Russia to Canada on Oct. 17, 2018, when agents discovered “a large quantity of live leeches in his carry-on luggage” at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, the country’s environment and climate change agency said in a news release Monday. “An enforcement officer detained the leeches to identify the species and determine if the import was lawful,” environment officials said. Lawful it was not: Bodounov pleaded guilty...

The city is planning another homeless sweep in urban Honolulu- and it's happening on Christmas Eve. Police officers will be at the Kakaako Makai area before dawn - from 3 to 5:30 a.m. - on Monday. The city posted the notice to its website on Friday. The city periodically removes homeless from public areas when the parks get overrun with homeless people and their tents, tarps, and dogs.

When UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was appointed, she said she'd be "taking names" of countries that didn't "have our back" at the world body. The State Department has released its annual report on UN voting records that clearly shows who our friends are and who isn't. Haley emphasized that U.S. taxpayers pay for 22 percent of the U.N. budget – more, she said, than the next three highest donor nations combined. Haley noted that the U.S. cares more about “being right than popular and are once again standing up for our interests and values” but said: “Either way, this is...

The leech man: Lawyer hopes nightly blood-sucking treatment will help return his sight after his 'schizophrenic son blinded him'A lawyer is hoping that a nightly blood-sucking leech treatment will help return his eyesight after his schizophrenic son allegedly blinded him in a blitz attack. John Dunlap, 80, is placing his trust in an experimental treatment that requires him to attach several leeches around his eyes so that one day he might see again. The lawyer from Memphis started the bizarre therapy after his bipolar and schizophrenic son Andrew, 41, allegedly attacked Dunlap and blinded him in 2015. With the help...