Free Republic

An attorney celebrated by the Obama White House for campaigning against violence toward women is now facing nine criminal charges over an alleged yearlong campaign of abuse and intimidation against his girlfriend. You cannot make this up. Cody McDavis, 32, the 6-foot-8 former University of Northern Colorado basketball standout who later earned a law degree from UCLA and joined the firm Vedder Price, was charged on July 20 with six felony counts and three misdemeanors. Prosecutors in Los Angeles County Superior Court allege he “willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly” followed and harassed his girlfriend from July 2025 through June 2026, leaving...

Pro-life leader says garden could lead to serious health risks or abuse if students use plants Purchase College, a public university in southeastern New York, is home to a student-run “Reproductive Justice Garden” that features plants promoted because of their abortifacient properties. Social media posts by the student club appear to encourage people to use the plants in the garden for self-induced abortions — which one pro-life leader told The College Fix she fears could lead to serious health risks or abuse. The garden, which was launched in 2019 and revamped in 2024, is run by students who are part...

Weeks after the Obama Presidential Center’s star-studded opening in Chicago, a subcontractor who previously claimed his company was stiffed for nearly $4 million has shut down operations and laid off 25 union workers. Mike Owen, the owner of Chicago-based Adamson Plumbing Contractors, told Fox News Digital that the financial fallout forced the company to abandon about half a dozen other construction jobs and left it on the verge of collapse. Owen described the shutdown as a painful decision he believed was necessary to save the company from bankruptcy. "Laying off close to 30 people is something that no owner in...

Barack Obama’s presidential library opened a few weeks ago with a star-studded celebration, and ongoing criticisms about its Star Wars-prison appearance and failure to pay contractors who worked on the monolith project. Now one subcontractor has shut down operations because the project manager has refused to pay for work that was done on the project. A report at Fox News outlines how Mike Owen, owner of Adamson Plumbing Contractors, confirmed his company was on the verge of collapse because of payments that were due, but never were made. “Laying off close to 30 people is something that no owner in...

President Donald Trump signed an executive order drastically shrinking the size of two national monument areas in Utah on Monday. The order applies to the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears national monuments, shrinking their total coverage by roughly 90% from 3 million acres to 300,000. The areas were established as federal monuments by President Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2016, respectively. "They took the land from the people quite honestly," Trump said during the Monday signing ceremony. "We’re giving it back." Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also attended the signing and praised the move, saying the original size...

In the dangerous last two years of Obama's presidency, things could go from bad to worse. His allies are now backing a pro-Sharia populist in Nigeria's presidential election, with potentially disastrous results On Saturday, Nigerians will go to the polls to choose their president. The race pits an incumbent with an imperfect record against a former military dictator who has flirted with Islamism. As with the recent election in Israel, alumni of Obama are aiding the challenger -- and not because he would make the region safer. The decision Nigerians will make this weekend matters greatly, both for themselves and...

Premiums Could Jump More Than One-Third Over Two Years—Middle-Income Enrollees Face the Full Costs Without Enhanced Credits, Even as Existing Federal Subsidies Shield Most from Further Increases =================================================================== ACA Marketplace insurers are proposing a median premium increase of 14% for 2027— indicating a likely second consecutive year of double-digit increases, according to a new analysis of preliminary rate filings in 16 states and DC. If these increases hold, typical premiums for insurers participating in the ACA Marketplaces would jump by more than one-third between 2025 and 2027. Across the 77 ACA Marketplace insurers in the 16 states and DC that...

Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.” According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries — a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler. The survey,...

Although Donald Trump’s defenders describe the Russia hoax and other efforts to frame the president as a "grand conspiracy," RealClearInvestigations has learned that the man now leading the probe of that scandal is pursuing multiple conspiracy prosecutions that are smaller and more manageable, according to several sources with direct knowledge of the probe. Since taking over the Justice Department’s far-flung investigation in April, veteran prosecutor Joseph diGenova and his team quickly concluded that combining all of the alleged wrongdoing, which ranges from falsifying evidence and committing perjury to leaking classified information and obstructing justice, into one unified plot and trying...

There was a crooked man and he had a crooked smile he had a crooked legend and he built a crooked house

ransomnote: TRANSCRIPT is presented below the x.com post, and inserted between various related images captured from the 6 minute video.Tony Seruga@TonySeruga·6hThe Obama Deadman’s SSNThis isn’t really about one SSN. It’s about a much deeper phenomenon:Barack Obama’s entire personal history is a hall of mirrors. Sealed academic records. A literary agent’s bio that listed his birthplace as Kenya (later blamed on a “fact-checking error”).A birth certificate that took years to release and was immediately challenged by forensic document examiners.A Social Security number with a Connecticut prefix when he lived in Hawaii. A Selective Service registration card that shows signs of alteration....

The project was sold to the community – despite massive opposition from all sides, originally – as a huge influx of construction jobs for the community. When you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a building project, that money doesn’t all go to an architect; the vast majority gets spread around among small businesses, employing building materials vendors and plumbers, drywallers and carpenters, electricians and glaziers, carpet layers and escalator installers. This should have been a godsend for the area; it simply wasn’t. According to the African American Contractors Association, there’s a long list of such small businesses who...

In one of the latest examples of political extremes converging over Israel, Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie joined forces this week to challenge a provision expanding US-Israel defense cooperation. Khanna, a progressive California Democrat, and Massie, a Kentucky Republican, both said over the weekend that they would seek to remove a provision from the House’s annual defense bill that would expand US-Israeli defense technology cooperation. The section of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2027 that Khanna and Massie have taken aim at would require the Secretary of Defense to designate an “executive agent responsible for synchronizing cooperative efforts...

"People here in future years are going to hear about how this land was stolen from the Native Americans," Illinois GOP Chair Bob Grogan told Fox News Digital outside the center last week. "But, underneath, you should all be reading into this, that it was actually stolen from the citizens of Illinois, not from the Native Americans." The criticism stems from a yearslong legal and political battle over the transfer of 19.3 acres of Jackson Park public land to the Obama Foundation under a 99-year agreement requiring the one-time $10 payment. Critics also argue that what was originally presented as...

After officials kicked off the opening weekend of the Barack Obama Presidential Center with a widely mocked “land acknowledgment” — a nod to the political far left that believes the United States was built on “stolen land” — a traditional Native American dance show was featured during Saturday’s scheduled events. The Black Hawk Performance Company is a Native American dance troupe based in the Chicago area, composed of dancers from several Indigenous tribes. Saturday marked the third day of the Obama Presidential Center’s grand opening, which featured musical and cultural performances ranging from international superstars like John Legend to local...

Pastor Jeffery Campbell has deep ties to Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood. He was raised in the South Side neighborhood, and has served as pastor at Woodlawn Baptist Church for 22 years. And for the past decade, he’s attempted to protect its residents from displacement and gentrification. He’s seen rising rents, residents squeezed by university development and life becoming more unaffordable. Now, there’s a new challenge: the opening of the Barack Obama Presidential Center – part of a 19-acre, $850m campus – that has transformed life in the neighborhood, as well as the adjacent South Shore and Hyde Park, long before this...

The long-delayed and over-budget Obama Presidential Center opened Thursday in Chicago with a stolen land acknowledgment. “We’d also like to take a moment to recognize the original inhabitants of the land upon which we are gathered today,” Valerie Jarrett, chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation, said. “We honor the Anishinaabe, the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi nations.” A who’s who of liberal donors and political elites attended the opening ceremony, including former Presidents Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush; their First Ladies; and former Vice President Kamala Harris. Video circulating on...

As of the latest available information, the Obama Presidential Center campus in Chicago has not yet displayed the American flag outside. Multiple reports from June 2026 note that while the center is designed to reflect American values and history, there is currently no visible American flag on display, and some visitors have not even spotted flagpoles on the property The center, which opened to the public on June 19, 2026, is a 19.3‑acre campus combining a museum, library, community spaces, and a Chicago Public Library branch Wikipedia+1. It is intended to be a public space that embodies American heritage, but...

Cost to taxpayers for Obama Center keep piling up Illinois taxpayers may be on the hook for millions in unpaid contractor fees for the Obama Presidential Center as the foundation's promised $420 million "safety net" fund to prevent a taxpayer bailout has yet to materialize and many black-owned contractors are being left unpaid. Meanwhile, multiple contractors are now saying that the Obama Center hasn't paid them for millions of dollars for their work. And some are wondering if taxpayers will be forced to pay up, according to Fox News. Some of these subcontractors say they are locked in payment disputes...

The Obama Presidential Center was billed as a lasting legacy to former President Barack Obama, and its construction was touted as an ambitious model built with aggressive goals for minority-owned and local businesses. But now, some of the very subcontractors who helped build the 19.3-acre campus on Chicago’s South Side say they are facing financial ruin as they race to recover millions of dollars they claim remain unpaid ahead of the center's grand opening Friday. Overall construction costs were reported to be $830 million in 2021, and have likely climbed past the $1 billion mark. A Fox News Digital investigation...