Free Republic

Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing pressure on multiple fronts this week. His campaign refunded $120,000 to two PACs tied to city vendors — part of a larger pattern of nearly $290,000 in refunds and over $120,000 spent on compliance since taking office. At the same time, Johnson signed an executive order creating “ICE-free zones” across Chicago, blocking federal immigration agents from using city-owned properties such as schools, parks, and libraries for civil enforcement operations. And now, his budget plan touts a record $1 billion surplus from Tax Increment Financing (TIF) districts — even as the city faces a projected $1.15...

The Justice Department is probing whether Black Lives Matter (BLM) defrauded donors who sent the organization millions of dollars during the racial justice protests in 2020, the Associated Press is reporting. Federal law enforcement authorities have issued subpoenas and served a search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. that helped ignite protests in U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, anonymous sources told the wire service. Protests in some locations resulted in deaths, rioting, looting, fires, and extensive property destruction. According to AP: It was...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has launched an investigation into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Ford Foundation over reports the organizations funneled millions of dollars to the Chinese Communist Party and its affiliates. Grassley sent letters to each foundation asking whether the reports are accurate and how any such payments comply with federal tax laws governing 501(c)(3) charitable status. “According to recent reports, [your organizations], through grants and direct payments, have funded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its allies,” Grassley wrote. “To maintain tax exempt status, an organization’s activities must be...

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) has spent millions of dollars in 2025 supporting an array of anti-Israel groups, several of which have ties to terrorism abroad and extremist activists in the United States, a Washington Free Beacon review of the organization’s grantees shows. The RBF in April of this year awarded a $135,000 grant to 7amleh, the "Arab Center for Social Media Advancement," under the umbrella of "Peacebuilding." The organization describes itself as an advocate "for Palestinian digital rights," creating a "safe, fair and free digital space for Palestinians." Its leadership, rather than a list of notable peace activists, consists...

“Follow the money trail” was a comment made on an October 12, 2025 article describing Chicago politics as a gangster movie rerun. Well, both Jesse Watters of Fox News and the Chicago Sun-Times decided to “follow the money trail” for Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, now that he is standing in the way of arresting criminals and blocking President Trump’s heroic attempt to shut down crime in Chicago. Jesse Watters reported that Pritzker made over a million dollars playing blackjack in 2024 while staying in Sin City Las Vegas. Senior National Correspondent Kevin Corke stated Pritzker made “$1.425 million bucks in...

Florida GOP Rep. Jimmy Patronis, who previously was the state's chief financial officer, is raising concerns about nonprofits potentially exploiting tax loopholes to turn such groups into profitable ventures for their leaders or owners. “I'm done with this stuff,” Petronis said recently on Just the News: No Noise. “I get at the end of the day, it may not affect … how much I pay for my cup of coffee, but it's unethical and immoral.” Patronis questioned how non-profit organizations can afford some luxuries. When host John Solomon asked where Patronis would start in the process of eliminating non-profit benefits,...

Finally! After a decade of corruption, Stacey Abrams’ nonprofit, ‘New Georgia Project’ announced it is shutting down. “We are proud of the milestones we have achieved, the communities we have engaged and the countless individuals whose lives have been strengthened by our work,” the Board of Directors wrote in a statement. Earlier this year, the Georgia Senate launched an investigation into Stacey Abrams and her nonprofit, The New Georgia Project, for illegal fundraising activity. “Abrams and the New Georgia Project, from which she is no longer affiliated, are being investigated by the same Senate panel that has been examining Fulton...

One of President Trump’s biggest political adversaries stunned the political world after revealing that he won an unusual amount of money gambling in Las Vegas last year. As The New York Times reported, Illinois Democratic Governor JB Pritzker released his 2024 tax returns on Wednesday as rumors circulate about him as a 2028 presidential candidate.The returns revealed that Pritzker and his wife reported $10.7 million in adjusted gross income. But the biggest shock was the fact that he won $1.4 million playing blackjack in Las Vegas in just one trip. Such an amount is surprising, especially considering Pritzker is not...

FBI Director Kash Patel said on Oct. 15 that the agency is cracking down on espionage by foreign adversaries, with an increase in arrests as high as 50 percent. “We have gone after espionage activities against our main counterparts in China, Russia, and Iran,” he said at a press conference. “In China alone, we’ve had over a 50 percent increase in espionage arrests alone, and prosecutions,” Patel said. “In Iran, we have had a 50 percent increase, again, in espionage cases. And in Russia, we had a 33 percent increase in espionage cases alone.” State Department employee Ashley Tellis, arrested...

The charges are related to payments the company allegedly made to secure a contract with the Philippine government to help oversee its 2016 presidential election and secure timely payment for its work. Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged the voting technology firm Smartmatic with money laundering and bribing Philippine election officials with $1 million, according to the Associated Press. The charges are related to payments the company allegedly made to secure a contract with the Philippine government to help oversee its 2016 presidential election and secure timely payment for its work. The payments were made between 2015 and 2018. Three former...

[Catholic Caucus] Leo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation on the Poor Further Impoverishes the Church and WorldLeo XIV’s Apostolic Exhortation, Dilexi Te, says many pleasant things but ultimately does little more than make stones look more appetizing. Our greatest service to the Church, world, and even Leo XIV is to insist on the Truths of the Church. Yes, Catholics must always strive to practice corporal works of mercy, but the spiritual works of mercy are immensely more necessary today and the greatest obstacle to them happens to be the fact that Leo XIV and his Vatican are apparently fixated on continuing the...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) signed a bill into law on Friday, launching a process for California to administer reparations for descendants of slaves. The governor gave the final green light to Senate Bill 518, which establishes a new state agency responsible for verifying eligibility, processing claims, and recommending forms of reparations for descendants of slaves. “This law reflects a critical acknowledgment of the historic injustices that have shaped the Black experience in California and across this country,” California Legislative Black Caucus chair Weber Pierson said in a statement celebrating the new law. “For generations, Black Americans have faced exclusion, exploitation,...

The sun will soon be setting on the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert. Boosted by $1.6 billion in taxpayer-backed loans in 2011, the gargantuan project was hailed by President Obama’s first energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.” Instead, it has become yet another example of central planners squandering taxpayer money on an ill-conceived green-energy boondoggle. Covering five square miles of the sun-drenched Mojave Desert, 65 miles southwest of Las Vegas, Ivanpah features three 459-foot towers and 173,500 computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats. “The mirrors reflect...

Rep. Thomas Massie is turning his defiance of President Trump into dollars. The Kentucky Republican raised more than $750,000 in the last three months — surpassing his previous best fundraising quarter since entering Congress by more than $100,000. “A lot of times, candidates get tripped up when Trump endorses their opponents because they can’t raise money, that basically shuts off all the fuel to the engine of their campaign, and that is not the case with me,” Mr. Massie told The Washington Times. Mr. Massie credits the surge in donations to Republican voters. “Every time he’s attacked me, there has...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Leo urged the world's Catholics to help immigrants in his first major document, which was released on Thursday and invoked one of the late Pope Francis' strongest criticisms of U.S. President Donald Trump's anti-immigration policies.Leo's document, known as an apostolic exhortation, is focused on the needs of the world's poor. It calls for widespread changes to the global market system to address rising inequality and to help people living paycheck-to-paycheck.The 104-page text started as a writing project by Francis, who was unable to complete it before his death in April after 12 years leading the global...

MAE SOT, Thailand (AP) — Mohammed Taher clutched the lifeless body of his 2-year-old son and wept. Ever since his family’s food rations stopped arriving at their internment camp in Myanmar in April, the father had watched helplessly as his once-vibrant baby boy weakened, suffering from diarrhea and begging for food. On May 21, exactly two weeks after Taher’s little boy died, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sat before Congress and declared: “No one has died” because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program. Rubio also insisted: “No children are dying on my watch.” That, Taher...

The SCIF @TheIntelSCIF OBAMA was running a MONEY LAUNDERING operation through the CAYMAN ISLANDS using USAID as a front, DISGUISED as "FOREIGN AID." You just can't make this stuff up. It ALWAYS seems to be the same culprits, the same groups, and the same people. Every, single, time. During the Obama USAID era, we were running rogue operations in Cuba. USAID pumped $1.2 BILLION into activist groups, teaching them how to use Facebook, Twitter, hashtags, and coordinate street protests. All of it was structured to fool the American people, Congress, and even the White House. Obama even secretly funded a...

Democrats want to provide extravagantly expensive free healthcare to illegal aliens from throughout the world so as to draw them here to receive benefits at other people’s expense, thereby building their voter base for generations to come. This treasonous strategy may have worked for them in the past due to their stranglehold on the media. But that control is slipping. Journalists sometimes ask uncomfortable questions. Watch prominent congresskook Maxine Waters (D-CA) squirm and snap when called on her party’s willingness to shut down the government over free healthcare for foreign invaders: video on link When a Democrat calls you “divisive,”...

NOW - Ursula von der Leyen announces 4 billion euros will be disbursed to Ukraine today, including 2 billion for drones and proposes "reparation loans for Ukraine, on the basis of the immobilized Russian assets, Ukraine has to pay back this loan, if Russia pays reparations."

Just 40 percent of the $110 billion the United States has invested into global HIV/AIDS prevention since 2003 actually went toward on-the-ground deliveries of life-saving medical supplies, with at least two recipients using more than $30 billion in taxpayer money to pay "exorbitant" executive salaries and push "leftwing ideology," a State Department audit found. When the Trump administration unveiled its "America First Global Health Strategy" earlier this month, it contended the nation’s "foreign assistance programs are deeply broken" and often plagued by fraud, mismanagement, and waste. An internal State Department review of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)...