Free Republic

How far will changes at the beleaguered Illinois tollway go and how will that affect day-to-day operations? Illinois House lawmakers voted 100-6 Tuesday to end the terms of nine tollway directors appointed by departing Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner after concerns about "unethical behavior." The state Senate is expected to vote Wednesday, and the tollway directors could be sent packing shortly after Democratic Gov.-elect Pritzker takes office Monday. The agency can continue to run normally without a board in the short term, one expert said. "The tollway will be fine -- at this time of year they're working on long-term planning...

Vanecko and Davis. Their firm made millions in fees even as retirement plans for teachers, cops, other Chicago city workers suffered big losses. A dozen years ago, five financially strapped city of Chicago pension funds invested $68 million in a shaky real estate deal put together by a former boss of resident Barack Obama and a nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley. It was a high-risk investment. Allison S. Davis — who once headed a small Chicago law firm that gave Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School — and Daley nephew Robert G. Vanecko even warned in...

Meghan McCain on Saturday presented the legacy of her father, John McCain, as a sharp contrast to the conduct of President Donald Trump, with whom the late senator bitterly feuded. Although McCain didn't mention the President by name -- and he was not present at the service, in accordance with the late senator's wishes -- she made several unmistakable and pointed references throughout her emotional remarks. "We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness, the real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of...

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters, one of the most outspoken members of the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ in Congress, is facing fresh questions about a longstanding controversy regarding how her campaign raises money and how those funds have flowed to her daughter. The California congresswoman has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each election cycle from some of her state’s biggest politicians paying to be listed on her slate mailers—sample ballots traditionally mailed out to about 200,000 voters in Los Angeles highlighting whom she supports. Since 2004, the campaign in turn reportedly has paid $750,000 to the congresswoman’s daughter, Karen Waters, or her...

Pope Francis has appointed his personal theologian and ghostwriter Archbishop Victor Manuel Fernandez to head the Argentinian Archdiocese of La Plata, the Holy See’s press office announced June 2. Fernandez, 55, replaces Archbishop Hector Aguer, who turned 75 in May, the age at which diocesan bishops are required to submit letters of resignation to the Pope. Fernandez was replaced as rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina in April after serving in the position since 2011, and university officials told Catholic News Agency at the time Fernandez was hoping to be named archbishop of La Plata, considered to be...

Clinton on Notion of Ivanka Being First Female President: ‘We Don’t Want Any More Inexperienced Trumps in the White House’ Hillary Clinton shot down the idea of Ivanka Trump being President of the United States, a rumor that was written about in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury. During an interview flagged by Newsweek, Clinton sat down with Dutch public broadcasting company KRO-NCRV where she was told daughter of the president Ivanka Trump wants to be the first female President of the United States. "That’s not going to happen," Clinton said. "No?" the interviewer responded. "No," Clinton said, shaking her head....

WASHINGTON — Representative John Conyers Jr., who faces allegations that he sexually harassed former employees, announced Tuesday that he will leave Congress immediately, and he endorsed his son, John Conyers III, to replace him. Mr. Conyers, the longest-serving current member of the House and the longest-serving African-American in history, called into a local radio show on Tuesday to break the news. “I am retiring today,” Mr. Conyers said from a hospital in Michigan. “I am in the process of putting together my retirement plans. I will have more on that soon.” He continued to deny that he has harassed any...

BIASED Judge in Fusion GPS Case FORCED to Recuse Herself This may be the most obvious case of conflict I’ve seen in a while. How this judge could have ever gotten the Fusion GPS case shows a lack of integrity in our justice system. As True Pundit wrote of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, and her “blatant conflicts of interest in the Fusion GPS case”: On Thursday the United States District Court for the District of Columbia re-assigned the Fusion GPS bank record case to a new federal judge, removing Chutkan from making any additional decisions on the case. This...

A federal agent who had been scrutinized for his handling of rare evidence and his behavior at the counterculture Burning Man festival is no longer an employee of the Bureau of Land Management, authorities said Friday. Daniel Love, who played a command role in federal agents' 2014 standoff with Nevada rancher and states' rights figure Cliven Bundy, no longer works for the agency. .... Love still worked for the agency on Aug. 24, when a federal investigative report was released saying he handed out valuable stones known as moqui marbles to colleagues and a contractor "like candy,". The rocks are...

Bernie Sanders Denies Allegations Over Dirty Land Deal and Blatant Nepotism While His Wife Was In Charge Of The Now Shuttered Burlington College Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, has engaged in blatant nepotism while she was president of the now inoperable Burlington College. The Sanders family are not the lovable old Socialists the left thinks they are. They are a corrupt political family and flawed human beings who will do what they have to do to get ahead in life and help their family along the way. Jane Sanders approved a deal for Burlington College with the Vermont...

While one deal struck by Jane O’Meara Sanders during her time as Burlington College’s president has triggered a federal investigation, another arrangement she engineered is breeding claims of nepotism and allegations of veiled threats against her husband’s presidential campaign. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ wife, Jane Sanders, is facing criticism over a “sweetheart deal” granted to a school founded by her daughter while president of the now-defunct Burlington College. Carol Moore, who served as the final president of the college from 2014 until its closure in May 2016, says Jane Sanders approved a deal for the college with Vermont Woodworking School...

President Trump's senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner personally called the CEO of Lockheed Martin during a meeting with a Saudi delegation earlier this month to ask her to cut the price of a missile defense system, The New York Times reported Thursday. The call was part of Kushner's effort to secure a roughly $110 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia before Trump's scheduled trip to the kingdom on Friday.  During the meeting with the delegation, Kushner determined that cost could prohibit the Saudis from purchasing a THAAD missile defense system, which is designed to shoot down intermediate-range ballistic missiles. 

Kushner almost never speaks publicly--his chats with FORBES mark the first time he has talked about the Trump campaign or his role in it--but interviews with him and a dozen people around him and the Trump camp lead to an inescapable fact: The quiet, enigmatic young mogul delivered the presidency to the most fame-hungry, bombastic candidate in American history. "It's hard to overstate and hard to summarize Jared's role in the campaign," says billionaire Peter Thiel, the only significant Silicon Valley figure to publicly back Trump. "If Trump was the CEO, Jared was effectively the chief operating officer." "Jared Kushner...

If Ivanka Trump listens to the Americans who elected her father in one of the greatest upsets in American electoral history, she will discover her clear path to saving our Republic. It is a measure of the unprecedented nature of the period of history we are in that a young woman with no background, experience or training in politics, political philosophy, American civics or the Constitution, finds herself in a position of such power. Yet even in the absence of any credentials of the statesman or knowledgeable political officeholder, Ivanka has the opportunity to set our nation back on track...

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, played a key role in the Trump administration’s decision to back down from its threat to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Exactly what that role involved, however, is a matter of dispute. Kushner was a conduit between Canadian officials and the Trump administration but accounts differ about the details. Last month, various news reports said that Trump was preparing to invoke Article 2205 of NAFTA, the first step in withdrawing from the trade agreement that the U.S. president had attacked so fiercely on the campaign trail. Several...

Ivanka Trump has been tapped by her father, President Donald Trump, to review the United States’ commitment to the Paris Climate Change agreement, signed by former President Barack Obama as an executive agreement in 2015 without congressional approval, the Associated Press is reporting. The agreement requires countries to cut greenhouse emissions on a country-by-country basis, with Obama committing the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions by at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The U.S. is expected to have a representative at the United Nations’ climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, next week but Trump’s advisers — including daughter...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4481200/Kushner-family-hoping-lure-Chinese-investors-US.html

The Kushner family came to the United States as refugees, worked hard and made it big — and if you invest in Kushner properties, so can you. That was the message delivered Saturday by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s sister Nicole Kushner Meyer to a ballroom full of wealthy Chinese investors in Beijing. Over several hours of slide shows and presentations, representatives from the Kushner family business urged Chinese citizens gathered at a Ritz-Carlton hotel to consider investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a New Jersey luxury apartment complex that would help them secure what’s known as an investor...

Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner didn’t include his ownership in a real-estate finance company that makes him business partners with George Soros when filing financial disclosure forms. ... Kushner also failed to disclose loans totaling $1 billion from more than 20 lenders. ... Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, wasn’t open about his business dealings with Soros — a left-wing billionaire funding activists fiercely opposed to the president’s agenda — is unlikely to go over well with Trump’s base. ... Kushner’s ownership stake in real-estate startup Cadre makes him business parters with Soros, Peter Thiel and other...

“There’s a lot I don’t know about how government works and how things get done, but I feel I know enough now that I can be much more proactive about the type of change and reform that I’d like to see happen,” she said. [snip] In interviews last week, she said she intended to act as a moderating force in an administration swept into office by nationalist sentiment. Other officials added that she had weighed in on topics including climate, deportation, education and refugee policy.