Free Republic

Leaders of California's Democratic Legislative Latino Caucus on Monday said everything should be considered in order to keep providing health insurance to undocumented immigrants, including a new tax on Californians.

After firing back at Bruce Springsteen for criticizing him during a concert tour, President Trump is now calling for “major investigations” into Springsteen and other celebrities for their support of his opponent, Kamala Harris, in the 2024 election. In addition to Springsteen, Trump also named two other singer/songwriters — Bono and Beyoncé — as well as longtime TV host, actress, and producer and l Oprah Winfrey. Giving the all-caps key his usual workout, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Monday, May 19: “HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR...

Administration officials and members of billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service — aided by local and federal law enforcement agencies — seized the institute’s privately owned headquarters in March and summarily removed its leaders.“The President’s efforts here to take over an organization outside of those bounds, contrary to statute established by Congress and by acts of force and threat using local and federal law enforcement officers, represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better,” Howell wrote in her 102-page opinion.The judge said...

Smartmatic, the electronic tabulator company suing Fox News for alleged defamation following the 2020 election, failed in a February court hearing to disclose a meeting with Democrat megadonor Reid Hoffman, newly unsealed court documents allege. Following the 2020 election, both Fox News and Newsmax “hosted commentators who aired concerns that tabulators were not secure, were vulnerable to voter fraud, and had possibly changed Trump votes to Biden votes,” as described in these pages by Logan Washburn. Smartmatic sued, arguing the comments amounted to defamation. Fox previously settled a suit with Dominion Voting over similar allegations while Newsmax recently settled with...

Good news for millionaires and billionaires: They are currently eligible for unemployment benefits, whether they need it or not. That has been true since 1964 when the Department of Labor determined unemployment is for all eligible workers no matter their income level. In 2022, The Biden Administration paid unemployment compensation to 5,773 people earning $1 million or more, with nearly $58 million going to out-of-work millionaires. It is an average of nearly $10,000 per person. In 2021, a COVID quarantine year with extra dough baked into unemployment, 14,972 people earning $1 million or more received unemployment compensation. The Biden Administration...

CV NEWS FEED // Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago has contracted with a lobbying firm that also represents organizations supporting or providing abortions, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. The firm, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies, is currently registered to lobby on behalf of Catholic Charities before the Illinois state government. Public records show that the same firm also lobbies for Rush University Medical Center, which provides abortions, and CVS Health, whose pharmacies dispense drugs used in chemical abortions, according to the outlet. Beyond client representation, the Sun-Times found that Cozen O’Connor and its employees have contributed to political campaigns...

In a massive sting operation straight out of a crime thriller, Spanish police have smashed one of Europe’s most powerful underworld banks – a slick, secretive syndicate laundering millions using the ancient and shadowy “hawala” method. Cash, crypto and contraband – the works. In unbelievable scenes, Spain’s National Police, backed by EUROPOL and EUROJUST, swooped on a web of luxury and illegality. The secret January raids – now revealed – saw over 250 officers hit 13 locations across Spain and Belgium in a coordinated blitz, nabbing 17 suspects, seizing mountains of loot and blowing apart a money-moving machine that had...

Federal agents have arrested Utah oil magnate James Lael Jensen, his wife Kelly Anne Jensen, and two of their sons, Maxwell Sterling Jensen (aka “Max”) and Zachary Golden Jensen, in connection with a sprawling $300 MILLION smuggling and money laundering conspiracy tied to Mexican criminal organizations. Court records reveal that all four members of the Jensen family were arrested on Wednesday, April 23 — with sons Max and Zachary taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley, while James and Kelly Jensen were apprehended at their 26,893-square-foot mansion in Sandy, Utah, reportedly worth over $9.1 million. The arrest was carried...

Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom is under new federal scrutiny as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opens an investigation into whether the state improperly funneled taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens. The DHS probe, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Los Angeles, focuses on the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI) — a 100 percent state-funded program designed to provide monthly benefits to non-citizens ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) due to their immigration status. According to a Title 8 subpoena issued by HSI Los Angeles, federal officials are demanding records from the Los...

A USAID employee has been charged with fraudulently creating a fake company to secure COVID-19 benefits for himself, federal prosecutors said Friday. Yusuf Akoll, who was in charge of managing contracts for the agency, made false statements to obtain Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. “Yusuf Akoll worked as a Senior Procurement Contract Specialist at the U.S. Agency for International Development,” according to a previously unreported court document. “From at least in or around March 2021, and continuing through at least in or around August 2021, Akoll [made] materially false, fictitious, and fraudulent statements…that resulted in Akoll receiving two [Paycheck Protection...

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was disappointed with a U.S. court decision to sentence a former Russian diplomat to the U.N. to prison for money laundering and fraud. The ministry said in a statement that it would consider demanding Vladimir Kuznetsov be returned to Russia. The former diplomat, who once chaired the United Nations' powerful budget oversight committee, was sentenced Friday to four years and three months in prison by a U.S. district court after being found guilty in March of laundering money from foreign companies seeking U.N. contracts. He was also ordered to pay a $73,000 (€51,500)...

Bill Gates pledged on Thursday (May 8) to give away $200 billion (S$260 billion) via his charitable foundation by 2045 and lashed out at Elon Musk, accusing the world's richest man of "killing the world's poorest children" through huge cuts to the US foreign aid budget. The 69-year-old billionaire co-founder of Microsoft said he was speeding up his plans to divest almost all of his fortune and would close the foundation on Dec 31, 2045, years earlier than previously planned. Gates said he believed the money would help achieve several of his goals, such as eradicating diseases like polio and...

It's absolutely amazing where the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) finds taxpayer money and how it gets there. The Daily Wire has been investigating a small USAID-linked organization that described itself to Congress as "a low-overhead charity sending its money to Africans." But the African Development Foundation was actually a grifter's paradise, siphoning taxpayer money in the name of charity and sending it to friends and cronies in Africa and the U.S. Mathieu Zahui, Foundation's chief financial officer, became something of a left-wing hero when Elon Musk and DOGE showed up for an audit. Bravely, Mr. Zahui stood up and...

Part one: African Development Foundation CFO told the White House he would not acknowledge a Trump appointee as agency head. Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation / ADF ********************************************************************************** Editor’s Note: This is part one of a series of investigative reports on the African Development Foundation, which gained notoriety for resisting the microscope of the Department of Government Efficiency. — A foreign aid official who refused the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to his agency’s financial records may have had a reason to keep auditors out: he steered illicit contracts to a friend who sent...

For years, would-be higher-education reformers have warned that America’s higher education crisis—soaring tuition, crippling student debt, and weak learning—was rooted in a dangerous myth: every high school graduate should go to college.In 2025, the proof is glaring. Public confidence in colleges has crashed to 36%, down from 57% in 2015. The college-for-all dream, though well-intentioned, has inflated costs, buried millions in debt, and watered down education. Built on sand, its reputation is collapsing before us.But you wouldn’t know any of this from many media accounts, according to which, as in this breathless headline, “Trump’s Demands of Harvard Escalate His War...

Mathieu Zahui, chief financial officer of the African Development Foundation, refused to grant DOGE access to its books and told the White House that the agency would not acknowledge President Donald Trump’s appointee as chairman of the board. After a dramatic showdown in March, DOGE physically took over the building with U.S. Marshals, but control of the agency is now the subject of a lawsuit objecting to “swooping in with DOGE staff, demanding access to sensitive information systems” — an objection

Board members who oversee the California high-speed rail project raised concerns over the financial commitments. Rail CEO says project could take roughly 20 years to complete if private sector can be utilized. As California’s High-Speed Rail Authority awaits word from the Trump administration over its future support for the train, leaders who oversee the project sounded the alarm about its financial viability.The authority’s board of directors voted Thursday to approve contracts for the development of Central Valley station designs and to solicit and approve construction bids for the Fresno station. Ahead of the votes, board member James Ghielmetti raised concerns...

Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue. Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as “unlawful ‘straw donor’ and foreign contributions to American elections” in a presidential memorandum on Thursday. “President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,” a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. “ActBlue has become notorious for its lax...

April 24, 2025 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL THE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT SUBJECT: Investigation into Unlawful “Straw Donor” and Foreign Contributions in American Elections Federal law (52 U.S.C. 30121 and 30122) strictly prohibits making political contributions in the name of another person, as well as contributions by foreign nationals. Notwithstanding these laws designed to protect American democracy, press reports and investigations by congressional committees have generated extremely troubling evidence that online fundraising platforms have been willing participants in schemes to launder excessive and prohibited contributions to political candidates and committees. Specifically, these reports raise...

HARRIS FIGHT FUND Over the last few months, Republicans have escalated their attacks on an unlikely target: ActBlue, the platform Kamala Harris and many Democrats use to receive campaign contributions. In the next hour or so, Donald Trump himself is expected to sign a "presidential memorandum" asking his Attorney General to perform some kind of investigation into ActBlue. Let's be clear on what this is about: Donald Trump wants to make it harder for people like you to contribute to Democratic candidates so it's easier for billionaires like Elon Musk to buy elections.