Free Republic

Things continue to spiral for the embattled UnitedHealth.UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer in the United States, is reportedly the subject of a federal criminal investigation for potential Medicare fraud, according to an exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal.The investigation, led by the U.S. Department of Justice’s health-care fraud unit in New York, has been underway since at least the summer of 2024 and centers on the company’s Medicare Advantage business practices, according to the report.Medicare Advantage, a program that provides private insurance alternatives to traditional Medicare, serves over 8.2 million members through UnitedHealth, making it a significant revenue...

There are at least six million job openings in the U.S., yet we have a record number of working age men not working. Maybe one reason is the Feds are still paying people welfare not to work. Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey of the Institute for Family Studies report: The 2024 Current Population Survey indicates that 31% of men ages 25-40 who are not working full-time collected some form of cash or cash-equivalent benefit in the form of food stamps, Social Security for disability, Supplemental Security Income, or unemployment insurance in the prior year. Such benefits are particularly common among...

Since he first started running for president in 2016, Donald Trump has sought a 15% corporate tax rate. Unleash Prosperity co-founders Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore were in the room with him nine years ago when he first started talking up that rate. In the 2017 bill we got the rate down from 35% to 21%. Corporate revenues increased. Trump ran on 15% in 2024 and won. Still the House GOP tax bill has no rate cut. Even the scaled back 15% rate for made-in-America companies is nowhere to be found. This could have easily been paid for with the...

In a chaotic scene, roughly two dozen protesters stormed the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s budget reconciliation markup, protesting rumored cuts to Medicare. Despite the shameful and potentially illegal actions of the protestors, Democrats capitalized on the event by thanking the protestors, prompting widespread condemnation. For context, since the January 6 debacle, Democrats have treated the date as if it were a national day of mourning. Despite the broad media support for the dangerous George Floyd riots, far-left pundits in the mainstream media have reduced themselves to hysterics while discussing the events of the Capitol riot. Breaking the news on...

Remember this story from 2018? An armed man shot up the lobby of the Trump National Doral Hotel in Miami (see update), forcing a temporary evacuation while the perp dragged around an American flag. One police subdued him, Jonathan Oddi went off on weird rants during his police interrogation, claiming to have been part of a sex-trafficking ring run by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and other rappers, while also spewing some nonsensical claims about Barack Obama and Donald Trump as well. Police at the time figured Oddi was in a manic-psychotic state after having stopped taking meds. Well, back that...

Middlebury College professor Gary Winslett somehow got the Washington Post (of all places) to print this list of the key ingredients that caused the Midwest to rust and the South to boom. It reads like a greatest hits of HOTLINE themes: Right-to-work laws, cheap energy, affordable housing, low-cost land, fast permitting, low taxes, immigration. That’s a powerful combination, and it has had big effects. In 1992, there was not a single auto plant in Alabama. Today, Alabama is the No. 1 auto-exporting state, producing more than 1 million vehicles a year. That’s brought more than 50,000 jobs and billions of...

NASA has revived a set of thrusters on the nearly 50-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft after declaring them inoperable over two decades ago. It's a nice long-distance engineering win for the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for keeping the venerable Voyager spacecraft flying - and critical one at that, as clogging fuel lines threatened to derail the backup thrusters currently in use. The things you have to deal with when your spacecraft is operating more than four decades beyond its original mission plan, eh? Voyager 1 launched in 1977. JPL reported Wednesday that the maneuver, completed in March, restarted...

The entrepreneur tells Michael Odell about inheritance, his new London hotel, dancing on the tables at 74 and why he has stopped afternoon drinkingSo what does a billionaire business tycoon eat for breakfast? I’m sitting with Sir Richard Branson in his spanking new, 120-room Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch, where I imagine they served him something delicious this morning. I am wrong. “I went to E Pellicci in Bethnal Green, it’s a proper old East End restaurant,” he beams. “The welcome you get and the size of the breakfast is incredible. You should go there — 84-year-old Maria Pellicci still runs the...

Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people. The chatbot, made by Musk’s company xAI, kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa. One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence...

Top spy agency withdraws “extremist” label on AfD political party in widening scandal Last week, the German government officially designated the opposition party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a “confirmed extremist” organization. The announcement came from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, and was endorsed by outgoing Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who claimed the party posed a fundamental threat to democracy. The designation opened the door to enhanced surveillance, undercover infiltration, and a potential party ban. But Faeser provided no evidence to the public, just a press release about the 1,100-page report.

Louisiana’s attorney general is investigating a second case involving New York doctor Margaret Carpenter after she allegedly prescribed and mailed abortion medication to another woman in the state, this time located in the city of Shreveport. The Shreveport woman was 20 weeks pregnant when she took the abortion medication and subsequently went into labor, Attorney General Liz Murrill said during a testimony for an anti-abortion bill in the state’s House Civil Law and Procedure Committee on Monday. “She and her boyfriend, after she gave birth, took the baby, wrapped it in a towel, and threw it in a garbage can,”...

This is a call for the assassination of President Trump by the former FBI Director!

A joke circulating on social media suggests how President Trump could arrest terrorism against Indian Kashmir by jihadist groups based in Pakistan—a country that at its worst actively arms and shelters these terrorists, and at its most benign turns a blind eye. Let Mr. Trump open a large resort in Kashmir, the joke goes. Give him rent-free land on a long lease for golf courses and ski lodges—and then watch how quickly the terrorism falls off. Humor aside, Mr. Trump has helped to calm the region and scored his first major diplomatic achievement. On April 22, terrorists said by India...

Former FBI Director James Comey deleted his Instagram post, which appeared to call for the assassination of President Trump. James Comey posted a cryptic message to his Instagram account on Thursday spelled out in seashells: “86 47” “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey said in his caption. Comey Trump assassination social media post Comey deleted the post after major backlash, and he updated with an unbelievable comment. “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with...

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/05/top-trump-aide-dan-scavino-calls-james-comey/President Donald Trump’s close aide White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, Jr., called out former FBI Director James Comey for posting “a plea to bad actors/terrorists to assassinate the POTUS’ while traveling internationally” with his now-deleted “8647” Instagram post. A short while later, Scavino (not so) cryptically posted, “FAFO.” President Trump is in the midst of an historic Middle East trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates that wraps up Friday. The government of Iran was caught plotting to assassinate Trump last year as he campaigned for president.Trump fired Comey from his FBI director post...

The European Union will adopt sanctions against Russia on May 20 in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's declining to attend face-to-face talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on May 15. "The fact that President Zelensky nonetheless traveled to Istanbul is a significant gesture of goodwill. Putin did not show up — and by doing so, he alone placed himself in the wrong," Merz wrote on X. "A new sanctions package is ready. We will adopt it on Tuesday in Brussels," Merz added.

The Secret Service is investigating after ex-FBI Director James Comey posted an Instagram photo of seashells arranged to make the numbers "86 47" — a message that White House officials swiftly condemned as an attempt to put out a "hit" against the 47th president. Comey later deleted the post after online backlash from government officials, lawmakers and President Donald Trump’s son. Trump has faced two assassination attempts — one of which resulted in him being shot and a bystander being killed — in the past year. The post including the alleged "hit" showed the numbers in question etched into the...

“It’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it’s still pretty bad,” New York Republican Andrew Garbarino said of the climate law’s gutting.House Republicans who spent months defending renewable energy tax credits expressed disdain for a proposal that would all but eradicate such incentives in the GOP-led megabill.But that small subset of Republicans say they are running short on time and options in the lower chamber. The House Ways and Means Committee is poised to advance a measure that phases out or eliminates billions of dollars in Inflation Reduction Act renewable energy and other tax...

A top financial backer of left-wing causes in the US has been accused of sexually harassing a female employee, pushing for “threesomes” with her and her future husband while they worked at his California winery — and then retaliating against them for calling out his “lewd” conduct. Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss exposed himself, “brazenly groped,” and made other unwanted sexual advances toward Madison Busby before forcing her to resign her job, according to a jaw-dropping lawsuit filed April 25 in San Luis Obispo County Superior Court. ... Wyss, a resident of Teton County, Wyo., purchased the property in 2000 and...

(CNN) — Former Director of the FBI James Comey on Thursday took down an Instagram post of seashells spelling out the numbers “86 47” after Republicans claimed that it was a threat against President Donald Trump.The number 86 can often refer to getting rid of or tossing something out, while 47 corresponds to Trump’s current term in office as the 47th president.“Just James Comey causally calling for my dad to be murdered. This is who the Dem-Media worships. Demented!!!!” Donald Trump Jr. posted on social media.Comey – who emerged as a Trump critic after the president fired him early in...