Free Republic

Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump's administration on Saturday put journalists at Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly freezing outlets long seen as critical to countering a Russian and Chinese information offensive. Hundreds of reporters and other staff at VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received a weekend email saying they will be barred from their offices and should surrender press passes, office-issued telephones and other equipment. Trump, who has already eviscerated the US aid agency and Education Department, on Friday issued an executive order listing the US Agency for Global Media...

Turmoil on Wall Street is keeping financial planners’ phones ringing as 401(k) holders watch their retirement account balances fall with the stock markets they’re tied to. For the most part, they’re being told to sit tight and breathe through it. Vanese Pitts said she watched her husband’s 401(k) shed $8,000 on Monday, when a wide-ranging market selloff pushed the S&P 500 to its lowest close since September. The sharp downturn in recent days followed several weeks of losses on Wall Street that have left the stock index about 4.8% lower than where it started the year. Many 401(k)s follow the...

Massive layoffs initiated this week at the Education Department could hamstring the federal government’s efforts to assist students with disabilities, former officials and education experts said, citing blows to the agency’s civil rights and research divisions. On Tuesday, the department began laying off around 1,300 employees, cutting nearly half the staff in its Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and over 100 from the Institute of Education Sciences, according to information released by American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, the union for department staff members. The cuts in those two divisions mean there will be far fewer staff members to...

A family that was deported to Mexico hopes they can find a way to return to the U.S. and ensure their 10-year-old daughter, who is a U.S. citizen, can continue her brain cancer treatment. Immigration authorities removed the girl and four of her American siblings from Texas on Feb. 4, when they deported their undocumented parents. The family’s ordeal began last month, when they were rushing from Rio Grande, where they lived, to Houston, where their daughter’s specialist doctors are based, for an emergency medical checkup. The parents had done the trip at least five other times in the past,...

The Trump administration is halting a $1 billion program that helps preserve affordable housing, threatening projects that keep tens of thousands of units livable for low-income Americans. Preserving these units gets less attention than ribbon-cuttings, but it’s a centerpiece of efforts to address the nation’s housing crisis. Hundreds of thousands of low-rent apartments, many of them aging and in need of urgent repair, are at risk of being yanked out from under poor Americans. On it’s face, the over $1 billion Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, passed by Congress in 2022, is intended for energy-efficiency improvements. It is distributed in...

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Bernie Sanders is standing alone on the back of a pickup truck shouting into a bullhorn. He’s facing several hundred ecstatic voters huddled outside a suburban Detroit high school — the group that did not fit inside the high school’s gym or two overflow rooms. The crowd screams in delight when he tells them that a combined total of 9,000 people had shown up for the rally. “What all of this tells me, is not just in Michigan or in Vermont, the people of this country will not allow us to move toward oligarchy. They will...

Health authorities are calling attention to a looming consequence of the Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development: the risk of a global surge in tuberculosis cases and deaths. The World Health Organization warned this week that the sweeping funding cuts could endanger millions of lives, since many countries depend on foreign aid for TB prevention, testing and treatment. “Without immediate action, hard-won progress in the fight against TB is at risk,” Dr. Tereza Kasaeva, director of the WHO’s Global Programme on TB and Lung Health, said in a statement Wednesday. Until recently, USAID provided about a...

In interviews with NBC News, many federal workers shared stories of overwhelming stress, personal crises, rapid weight loss, panic attacks and more. ...NBC News spoke with 20 federal employees across agencies. Spanning the country, these workers lost their jobs, watched co-workers lose them or endured what amounted to a Goliath joyously stomping on David. In interviews, federal workers — many of whom are veterans — told of overwhelming stress, personal crises, suicidal ideation, rapid weight loss, prolonged lack of sleep, panic attacks and visiting the emergency room after a mental breakdown. They’re facing bombardment from every angle, some showing screenshots...

Last October, in the home stretch of the US presidential campaign, Donald Trump told supporters at a rally in Atlanta that he was “not a Nazi”. He was reacting to comments by his former chief of staff, John Kelly, who said in an interview that during his first term in office, Trump more than once suggested that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “did some good things”. Kelly said that after consulting a dictionary he concluded that Trump “certainly” met the definition of a fascist. Since the start of Trump’s second term as US president, comparisons between his administration and the Nazi...

The U.S. Forest Service manages 78% of the land in the Lake Tahoe Basin. Yet, a hiring freeze on seasonal workers and recent firings of key staff have gutted an already-stretched-thin agency, putting on hold critical work in water quality, environmental restoration and forest fuels reduction projects while also diminishing the forest service’s capacity to manage the millions of visitors who come to Lake Tahoe every year — especially on the Fourth of July. Eleven people who work at the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit lost their jobs last month in the so-called “Valentine’s Day Massacre” led by Elon Musk’s...

NEW YORK (AP) — Scrambling to replace their health insurance and to find new work, some laid-off federal workers are running into another unexpected unpleasantry: Relatives cheering their firing. The country’s bitterly tribal politics are spilling into text chains, social media posts and heated conversations as Americans absorb the reality of the government’s cost-cutting measures. Expecting sympathy, some axed workers are finding family and friends who instead are steadfast in their support of what they see as a bloated government’s waste. “I’ve been treated as a public enemy by the government and now it’s bleeding into my own family,” says...

Policy uncertainty and blistering job cuts in Washington threaten to shake the U.S. economy off its moorings, traders and analysts say, with fresh employment data set to provide the latest picture of the effects so far. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set to release its monthly employment report for February at 8:30 a.m. ET Friday. Analysts expect to see roughly 170,000 new payrolls added last month, up from January’s 143,000 job gains. The unemployment rate is expected to have held steady at 4%, a historically low level. Less than two full months into office, President Donald Trump’s new administration...

An undocumented mother is now in federal custody along with her undocumented son after ICE detained them, sending shockwaves through a family in El Monte, California. The family says the mother doesn’t have a criminal background, and she is the primary caretaker for her daughter Xitlali, who is battling cancer. Friends and relatives of the detainees held a protest this Thursday against the detention. The demonstrators say they are outraged with the way ICE, without apparent explanation, placed them in their custody. “Ma' it's okay. You didn't do anything,” said the Xitlali, while the mother tearfully responded, ”But they're going...

AWESOME VIDEO!......................

They're scientists. Veterans. Park rangers. Lawyers. Researchers. Administrative staff. They work on fire safety. Safe drinking water. Veterans' health. Combating bird flu. They're from all over the country, in red states and blue. They're young and old. Thousands of federal workers have been fired in the last month. They're victims of efforts by President Donald Trump and his senior adviser, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk, to cut the size of the government. And they want people to understand what they did and why they loved being public servants. Anna Conn, 35, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Asheville, N.C.:...

It's a wonder all of them parrot the same news.

CNN - President Donald Trump keeps lying not only about the 2020 election he lost but the 2024 election he won. In a Saturday speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Trump correctly noted that he earned 77 million votes in 2024 — then falsely said his vote total was “actually much more than that,” since unspecified people “cheated like hell.” There’s no basis for this claim. Trump’s official vote total is his actual vote total, and there is no evidence of unsuccessful cheating by vote counters or by his Democratic foes. Trump made various other false claims at CPAC,...

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt joined Fox News host Lara Trump for her first sit-down television interview since officially starting her historic role with the Trump administration. Leavitt is already making her mark on the American people a month into being the White House press secretary. At 27, the New Hampshire native is the first person from Generation Z to hold the title. "Definitely never imagined this, but I love my job. I'm so honored and humbled to be the press secretary for President Trump, who, as you said, truly is the most dynamic president in our lifetimes, and...

Farmers across the U.S. are struggling to make critical decisions ahead of the spring thaw, as billions of dollars in promised federal payments remain frozen by the Trump administration. Ang Roell, a farmer and beekeeper in Massachusetts, had planned to begin installing deer-proof fencing, mulch and an irrigation system for a recently planted orchard — an initiative supported by more than $30,000 in federal grants that are now on hold. Without that money, Roell worries that when the chestnut trees and elderberry bushes begin to sprout leaves in just a few weeks, there will be nothing to stop deer from...

Great start to the day! White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks to the press.