Free Republic

This writer is old enough to remember that the debate over whether or not food stamps should cover junk food isn't a new thing. It goes back years. She's also old enough to remember when Democrats pushed for soda taxes as a way to discourage the consumption of unhealthy foods. ...Starting next year, however, 18 states will ban junk food for SNAP users....“It’s just a classic government operation where they’ve thrown this out there, and well-meaning though they may be, it’s caused mass confusion, and it’s making some retailers question whether they’re going to stay with the program or not,”...

The Department of Justice is closing a Democrat-created bureaucratic loophole that has allowed legal and illegal migrants to get a huge quantity of taxpayer aid since 1997, despite a 1996 law limiting aid to citizens. The loophole was created by President Bill Clinton’s administration after Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), which was intended to “strengthen… the principle that [legal and illegal] immigrants come to America to work, not to collect welfare benefits.” “We now retract that [1997] opinion and offer the best reading of the phrase ‘Federal means-tested public benefit,'” President Donald...

Housing and Urban Services Secretary Scott Turner said a majority of illegal alien families in the United States rely on taxpayer-funded welfare programs, costing tens of billions of dollars each year and placing significant strain on housing, healthcare, education, and public safety systems. Turner said roughly 59 percent of illegal alien families use at least one welfare program, at an estimated annual cost of $42 billion.

People living in “an Islamic country” must “at least have to profess [they’re a] devout Muslim.” Those living in “the United States or a Western Europe,” however, can believe and do whatever they want. Hanson breaks down the difference between “a Judeo-Christian country” and “an Islamic country” where it’s “almost impossible” to be “an apostate, an atheist, [or an] agnostic” in those countries, on today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words.”

The Trump administration’s aggressive deportation policies have heightened stress among the country’s approximately 14 million immigrants who are living in the U.S. without legal authorization. The sharp rise in dramatic arrests and deportations of immigrants over the past year has received widespread media attention. A less publicized issue is that many young, undocumented immigrants are also finding it harder to apply to and stay in college. As someone who researches teacher training and was a high school teacher in South Carolina, I have researched how restrictive education policies make it harder for immigrant students, particularly undocumented students, to receive a...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — The Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) says work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits are now being enforced in every county in Oregon. The policy changes at the USDA follow the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R.1). ODHS said about 37,000 Oregonians are immediately affected. The statewide rules took effect on Dec. 1, 2025, expanding the work requirements from six counties. The shift affects adults classified as able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs). These are people aged 18 to 64 who do not live with children under 14. Those individuals must now...

FIRST ON FOX: An Empire State Republican is criticizing New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani for his attendance at a conference in Puerto Rico, days after winning his race and during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. "If Zohran Mamdani is truly serious about helping working families, he wouldn’t be jetting off to a luxury resort the moment he wins an election," Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., first told Fox News Digital. Fox News Digital confirmed that Mamdani is expected to travel to the 2025 SOMOS Conference in Puerto Rico on Thursday. Mamdani is attending a cocktail reception on Thursday...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Large crowds of protesters marched and rallied in cities across the U.S. Saturday for “ No Kings ” demonstrations decrying what participants see as the government’s swift drift into authoritarianism under President Donald Trump. People carrying signs with slogans such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism” packed into New York City’s Times Square and rallied by the thousands in parks in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. Demonstrators marched through Washington and downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside capitols in several Republican-led states, a courthouse in Billings, Montana, and at hundreds of smaller public spaces....

There have been countless examples of liberalism being a mental disorder.Here is another one:Two researchers from Western Michigan University have written a paper titled “Beneficial Bloodsucking,” which was published by the journal Bioethics this past July. (No, it isn’t about vampires.)The paper argues that intentionally spreading alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, could be not only morally defensible, but perhaps even necessary, in order to reduce animal suffering and combat climate change.Here are the authors, Parker Crutchfield and Blake Hereth, in their own words:Because promoting tickborne AGS prevents something bad from happening, doesn’t violate anyone’s rights,...

While organizers have not released details on fundraising ahead of the protests, and the coalition has remained relatively decentralized, a few groups have indicated either heavy spending to promote the rallies or planned star power to increase buzz around them. For instance, Home of the Brave, a political group, said Monday it was spending $1 million to advertise the No Kings protests, including in local and national newspapers.

A SIKH GRANDMOTHER who had lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years has been deported to New Delhi, India, after spending a week in what her attorney called “barbaric” conditions at a private ICE detention center in Georgia. “There was no rationale to detain Bibi Harjit Kaur,” Deepak Ahluwalia, Kaur’s attorney, told American Community Media in a Sept. 24 interview. “It’s all part of their effort to fill beds.” “Her detention was nothing short of barbaric,” said Ahluwalia. “That type of treatment would affect most people. They chose to do this to a 73-year-old woman with disabilities and...

The Trump administration is putting illegal aliens on notice: taxpayer-funded housing is for AMERICANS, not for those who broke the law to come here. On Friday, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced that all Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) nationwide have 30 days to conduct audits verifying the legal status of every single tenant in Section 8 housing and other HUD-funded programs. The first housing authority to face scrutiny is Washington, D.C., where Turner confirmed that the DC Housing Authority has already been put on notice, according to Fox News. More than 3,000 PHAs across the nation are...

This week, President Trump officially launched his push to remove illegal aliens from state Medicaid rolls by cross-checking them against federal databases, a move that’s sure to send Democrats running to the courts yet again. But when it comes to illegal immigrants and welfare, Democrats have a serious problem — and it’s not just their continuing slide in favorability. It’s that they just can’t make up their minds about whether those here illegally are receiving federal Medicaid dollars at all. When Congress was debating Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, one of the left’s oft-repeated refrains was that there was...

Catturd ™ @catturd2 What’s really in your sushi? Parasites. They're common in fish, pork, produce, pets, and soil. Exposure is inevitable

A migrant mother who has received $30,000 through a Massachusetts housing assistance program is now asking for more help. Nadine, who declined to share her last name citing deportation fears, moved to the United States from Haiti in 2021, the Boston Globe reports. She has been living in a subsidized three-bedroom apartment in Dorchester, regarded as Boston's most diverse neighborhood, with her four-year-old son for the past year. Nadine received $30,000 in aid through Governor Maura Healey's HomeBASE emergency shelter program which can be used towards monthly rent payments, security deposits, associated broker's fees, furniture purchases and more. HomeBASE offers...

Once a hub of migrant passage, the El Paso–Juárez corridor has fallen eerily quiet.Trump’s tariff threats have stunned industry on the Mexican side of the border, with factories laying off thousands of workers. EL PASO, TEXAS — Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain. Only there hadn’t been many migrants of late. When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens...

‘Do you have any idea how many resources will be opened up for Americans when the illegals are gone? No more waiting in line at an emergency room, no more massive traffic in Los Angeles,’ Stephen Miller said.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is helping alleviate pressure on America’s emergency rooms because illegal aliens believe they might be arrested and deported if they use the emergency services. Illegal aliens are well-known to abuse such emergency services for non-emergencies, not pay, and leave the American people to pay for it. But the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services (LACDHS) confirmed to...

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has once again joined a coalition of other attorneys general in suing the Trump administration over new rules that could bar immigrants without legal status from health and education programs. The suit, announced Monday, seeks to stop a series of orders from federal agencies that would block people from the early childhood education program Head Start, Title X family planning, adult education, mental health care and community health centers based on immigration status.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Trump administration’s restrictions on social services for immigrants in the country illegally, including the federal preschool program Head Start, health clinics and adult education.Individual public benefits, such as food stamps and college financial aid, have been largely unavailable to people in the country without legal status, but the new rules and guidance from the administration curbed their access to community-level programs that receive federal money. The lawsuit led by New York Attorney General Letitia James argues the government failed to follow the rulemaking...

SACRAMENTO — For nearly 20 years, Maria would call her sister — a nurse in Mexico — for advice on how to manage her asthma and control her husband’s diabetes instead of going to the doctor in California. She didn’t have legal status, so she couldn’t get health insurance and skipped routine exams, relying instead on home remedies and, at times, getting inhalers from Mexico. She insisted on using only her first name for fear of deportation. Things changed for Maria and many others in recent years when some Democratic-led states opened up their health insurance programs to low-income immigrants...