Free Republic

U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey unexpectedly quit on Thursday, saying the government is unwilling to spend enough on the military at a time of “rising threats.” The resignation dealt another blow to embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is already facing demands from Labour colleagues to step down. Healey told Starmer in a letter that the government’s Defense Investment Plan falls “well short of what is required at this dangerous time.” Publication of the plan has been delayed amid reports of disagreement between the Defense Ministry and the Treasury. Starmer said in a letter to Healey that he was sorry...

This report examines welfare use...for households headed by non-citizens...About half of non-citizens are illegal immigrants...Traditional welfare programs examined are TANF, SSI, SNAP, WIC, school meals, Medicaid, and public/subsidized housing...The non-citizen [welfare use] rate rises to 57 percent when eligibility for the EITC or ACTC [Tax Credits] is added, compared to 34 percent for the U.S.-born.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is investigating what happened to $30 million it sent to a Muslim nonprofit to help resettle Afghan refugees in the US, The Post has learned. The department is the latest to look into the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid accusations it has ties to dangerous groups in foreign nations including terror group Hamas. In letters to the governors of California and Washington, where the $30 million was sent, HHS — headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — claims it has received information that “raises concerns about the business practices and...

The Trump administration is planning to tell NATO allies this week that it will shrink the pool of military capabilities that the US would have available to assist the alliance’s European nations in a major crisis, three sources familiar with the matter said. Under a framework known as the NATO Force Model, the alliance’s member countries identify a pool of available forces that could be activated during a conflict or any other major crisis, such as a military attack on a NATO member. While the precise composition of those wartime forces is a closely guarded secret, the Pentagon has decided...

A group of Congolese refugees was seen protesting in Washington, DC, on Monday, calling on the US to increase its involvement in addressing violence in central Africa, despite data showing thousands from the region have already been resettled in the US in recent years. According to reporting from the Daily Caller News Foundation, Congolese Tutsi demonstrators marched near the White House to protest against the governments of Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Activists accused both governments of carrying out anti-Tutsi violence and called on US officials to take stronger action. One protester held a sign that read...

Silicon Valley was energized by legal immigrants from all over the world who founded eBay, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Stripe, Sun Microsystems, Tesla, Yahoo and a host of others. The Greek-American Elia Kazan’s 1963 film “America America” is based on the Herculean struggle of the director’s uncle to immigrate to the United States. It summed up Americans’ traditional view of immigrants: They had risked everything for the chance to reach America, and once there, became hyperpatriotic in their gratitude for the magnanimity of their new hosts. I grew up in rural California surrounded by hard-working immigrant farm families from Armenia, India,...

As the Trump administration works on deporting the millions of illegal immigrants that the Biden administration let in through the southern border, Democrats and the left have insisted that America is "a nation of immigrants." It's just another attempt to twist words and meanings to fit their ideology. Traditionally, immigrants expected to come to the U.S. and work hard to achieve success. As if we didn't already suspect, today's immigrants appear to have a very different idea of what coming to America is.Center for Immigration Studies Director Jessica Vaughan on the burden of illegal aliens on taxpayers:“Over 60% of illegal...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — In some ways, 10-year-old Giancarlo is one of the lucky ones. He still goes to school. Each morning, he and his family bundle up and leave their Minneapolis apartment to wait for his bus. His little brother hefts on his backpack, even though he stopped going to day care weeks ago because his mom is too afraid to take him. As they wait behind a wrought-iron fence, Giancarlo’s mother pulls the boys into the shadow of a tree to pray. It’s the only time she stops scanning the street for immigration agents. “God, please protect my son...

Former Minnesota Vikings captain and University of Minnesota football player Jack Brewer spoke out against the anti-ICE agitators in his state. Unrest erupted in and around Minneapolis on Saturday after a Border Patrol agent fatally shot one of the agitators. Brewer called out the state's liberal leadership for inciting the unrest, arguing the Democrats are opposed to ICE because the agency is "deporting their voters." "We’re deporting their voters. That’s part of what’s happening and it’s blowing up their whole plan," Brewer told Fox News Digital. "You can’t allow people to come into your country who don’t carry the same...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ordered all public housing authorities and owners receiving department-funded housing Friday to verify tenant citizenship and eligibility after an audit conducted with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) flagged tens of thousands of deceased and ineligible tenants nationwide. HUD said the audit identified nearly 200,000 tenants requiring eligibility verification, including nearly 25,000 deceased tenants and nearly 6,000 ineligible non-American tenants across federally funded housing programs. Under the directive, HUD said all public housing authorities and participating owners have 30 days to take corrective action or face potential sanctions.

Donald Trump has ordered ICE agents to begin rounding up Somali migrants in Maine as part of the administration's latest immigration crackdown. Federal agents are sweeping through the state's two largest cities, Portland and Lewiston, as the Department of Homeland Security announced 'Operation Catch of the Day' on Wednesday. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin announced that agents had arrested multiple individuals on the first day of the operation. Local officials in Maine's two biggest cities are warning residents that ICE will begin ramping up its enforcement operations in the next few days. Meanwhile, the US attorney’s office in Maine warned...

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...