Free Republic

"As many as 40 million illegal aliens may currently be living in the U.S., according to figures provided to immigration news outlet Border Hawk by former immigration judge Matt O’Brien."

Steering the utility from the brink of bankruptcy justified a $1.7 million raise for its CEO, the company said. Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. and its subsidiaries faced torrents of bad news in 2024. Federal investigators found the company’s equipment had started the Lahaina wildfire that killed 102 people and destroyed most of the historic town. The company agreed to pay $1.9 billion to settle hundreds of lawsuits blaming it for the fire. Legislative measures to help bail out the company stalled. The bottom line: a net loss of $1.4 billion for the company. [Caption] Hawaiian Electric Industries, whose equipment sparked...

A former US Postal Service worker was convicted of stealing around $1.6 million in checks to fund a “lavish lifestyle that included international travel, stays at luxury hotels, and purchases at gentlemen’s clubs,” federal prosecutors said. Hachikosela Muchimba, 44, of Washington, DC, was found guilty by a federal jury last week on charges of mail theft and bank fraud, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. “According to court documents, between December 2020 and March 2023, Muchimba was an employee of the US Postal Service when he executed a scheme to steal US Treasury checks and...

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced a number of new initiatives to bolster defence in a speech in Warsaw, as European powers appear set to comply with U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands that the continent pay for its own protection rather than relying on America. Speaking before the Sjem parliament, Prime Minister Tusk declared Friday: “Hope is no substitute for strategy. Hope is a beautiful feeling, but in politics, it is often adjacent to naivety or illusion… Today, Europe is beginning to understand that since the United States expects much greater outlays, determination and courage from us, it must be...

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) sent a letter Friday to Congress asking for $40 billion in funding for fire relief — two weeks after signing $50 million in spending to fight the Trump administration on immigration and other policies. As Breitbart News reported, “Both bills were passed after a special legislative session called by Newsom after the election to prepare California to lead the opposition to the second Trump administration. Newsom and the Democrat-controlled legislature reached a deal to fund the anti-Trump effort even as the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire were still smoldering in Los Angeles.”

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday uncovered a $59 million FEMA payment from just last week to house illegal aliens in “luxury hotels in New York City,” Elon Musk announced Monday. The payment comes after the Biden administration had claimed FEMA was not using funds to support illegal aliens. “It’s just categorically false. It is not true,” former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in October. Republicans argued FEMA did not have enough money in the fall to help victims of the hurricane in North Carolina, but President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security claimed those...

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), who was on a trip to Ghana when fire engulfed large portions of the city, cut nearly $20 million from the city’s budget for fire services for the current fiscal year — and proposed even higher cuts. As the Westside Current reported in April 2024, Bass proposed about $23 million in cuts to the fire department: Significantly, the proposal — described by Bass a “reset” — includes $65 million in cuts to her signature Inside Safe homelessness] program; an increase of more than $138 million for the Los Angeles Police Department; and a decrease...

Apple CEO Tim Cook has made a personal contribution of $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund. Cook, who Trump famously nicknamed “Tim Apple,” is the latest in a long line of tech lords bending the knee to Trump in hopes of currying favor with the new administration. Axios reports that as the United States prepares for the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, 2025, tech giants are making efforts to ensure they are noticed by the new administration. The latest to do so is Apple CEO Tim Cook, who has personally donated $1 million to the...

President Joe Biden’s border deputies will have admitted roughly nine million inadmissible migrants at the southern border by President Trump’s Inauguration Day, according to data quietly released just before the November 5 election. The agency data shows that Biden’s pro-migration chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, registered 10.5 million illegal migrants at the border from January 2021 to June 2024.

Americans have already cast 30 million votes in the first weeks of early voting, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. The number of early votes suggests Americans are highly motivated to cast their ballot before Election Day, which saves the Trump and Harris campaigns time and money. Swing state early voting data, which is more valuable than polling, appears to be benefiting former President Donald Trump thus far. More on Trump’s preliminary lead is here. Republicans took the lead in cumulative early voting in North Carolina and continued to hold it for a couple of days. The lead...

The British taxpayer is footing the bill for a record number of out-of-work migrants, who are reportedly costing the government up to £8.5 billion per year. A record 1,689,000 foreigners are currently unemployed or otherwise “economically inactive” in the UK, according to analysis of government figures by the Centre for Immigration Control. The think tank noted that the current level is the highest in British history, surpassing the previous high in 2012 of 1,628,000.

s many as a million jobs could vanish from US jobs data in revised numbers released this week. Jobs growth in the year through March was likely much lower than initially estimated, top bankers are warning. This could refuel concerns that the US economy is not as robust as it has appeared, and that the Federal Reserve is falling behind in its aim to lower interest rates. symbol 00:04 02:24 Read More The government will release its first revisions of jobs growth data on Wednesday, and then the final numbers are due early next year. Goldman Sachs economists expect jobs...

Vice President Kamala Harris promised Friday that she would build 3 million new homes in four years if she were elected, but she and President Joe Biden barely managed to build eight EV charging stations in two-and-a-half years. Harris said at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina: There’s a serious housing shortage in many places. It’s too difficult to build and it’s driving prices up. As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing. We need both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape including at the state and...

Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the Trump administration will start mass deportations with a million people. Anchor Jonathan Karl said, “One of the proposals in the platform you’ve talked about, and Trump has talked about, is a mass deportation. You said he said he’ll start with the easy ones, the criminals, people who commit crimes, deport them, but he said deporting 15 million to 20 million people, how do you actually do that?

Vice President Harris raised nearly $50 million in grassroots donations Sunday in the hours after President Biden stepped aside as the nominee and backed her to replace him. “Since the President endorsed Vice President Harris yesterday afternoon, everyday Americans have given $49.6 million in grassroots donations to her campaign,” said Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, in a statement. The impressive haul is a sign of the grassroots enthusiasm among Democrats in the immediate aftermath of Biden’s decision not to seek reelection, and it reflects Harris’s strength as the likeliest choice to replace the president atop the ticket

President Joe Biden’s (D) reelection campaign raised $27 million just after his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump on Thursday. A Biden campaign spokesperson shared the announcement with CNBC on Saturday, and the outlet noted that in May the campaign, the Democrat National Convention, Biden PACs, and committees raised $85 million.

The wild $30 million cash heist from a Los Angeles warehouse Easter Sunday was apparently pulled off by a top-notch group of criminals — and so clean that it could go unsolved, an expert says. “This is a group that would have to have a lot of prior experience,” Scott Selby, a Harvard-educated lawyer and co-author of “Flawless,” a book about the famous Antwerp Diamond Heist, told The Post. “It’s like if you were a gymnast, you know, by the time you’re world-quality, you’ve already done a lot of work,” Selby said of the type of thieves who seem to...

CHICAGO (CBS) – In the past nearly year-and-a-half, Chicago has spent nearly $300 million responding to the ongoing migrant crisis, according to the city's latest numbers. That number does not include the cost incurred by other agencies like Chicago Public Schools, the Department of Streets and Sanitation, or Cook County Health. About $206 million of the total has gone to Favorite Healthcare Staffing to operate the city-run shelters. The group has come under scrutiny by some aldermen who have said the city was paying them too much.

NEW YORK — A federal jury ordered former President Trump to pay $83.3 million for defaming E. Jean Carroll when Trump in 2019 denied the longtime advice columnist’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her decades earlier. It marks the second time Carroll has won damages from Trump at trial, with the new total adding to a $5 million verdict last year finding Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and defaming her over a separate comment. Carroll’s latest trial became intertwined with the heat of the early primary contests, beginning the day after Trump’s historic win in the Iowa caucuses and...

Joe Biden botched his big announcement about rail investment on Friday, declaring that the federal government would spend 'over a billion, three hundred million, trillion, three hundred million dollars'. The president was in Las Vegas, unveiling $8.2 billion in new federal funding for 10 major passenger rail projects across the country. Among them is a new line from the Nevada city to Los Angeles, which when completed - potentially as soon as 2028 - can carry over 11 million passengers a year, powered entirely by renewable energy. Biden mocked his predecessor for repeatedly promising Infrastructure Week, but failing to deliver....