Free Republic

The EU cloaks supranational tax increases in green.On the hunt for fresh sources of cash, the European Commission has zeroed in on households and motorists. A planned expansion of the EU’s carbon pricing scheme to include home heating and transportation fuels is set to plug Brussels’ gaping budget deficit — at the expense of its citizens. What we are witnessing is a fiscal smash-and-grab dressed up in green. Starting in 2027, private homes, small businesses, and passenger vehicles will be folded into a second emissions trading system (ETS2), placing them under the strict control of EU-level cap-and-trade mechanisms. This bureaucratic...

🚨 Four men have officially pleaded GUILTY to a $550 MILLION USAID fraud scheme And democrats pretended like @elonmusk's exposure of the agency was just a conspiracy theory They used YOUR tax dollars to buy NBA tickets, country club weddings, and laundered MILLIONS in cash through corrupt entities. One defendant "exploited his position at USAID to line his pockets with bribes in exchange for more than $550 million in contracts."

Lawmakers from both parties have called for John Lausch to keep his job President Joe Biden is forcing Chicago's top federal prosecutor to resign amid ongoing criminal probes of powerful Illinois Democrats and their associates. U.S. attorney John Lausch is prosecuting close confidants of Democrat boss Mike Madigan, an ally of former president Barack Obama who resigned from the state legislature Thursday after a decades-long reign in Springfield. Lausch's office will also prosecute Chicago alderman Edward Burke (D.), an influential figure accused of strong-arming businesses into retaining his law firm. Lausch's abrupt removal has drawn bipartisan criticism from Illinois lawmakers...

31 NGOs behind 1,000+ protests this Saturday have been exposed by @DataRepublican —and the FBI is now investigating “any and all monetary connections responsible for these riots.”.. This isn’t grassroots. It’s Color Revolution 2.0—a coordinated, funded insurrection backed by shadowy donors. According to @DataRepublican , the “No Kings” rally is tied to 31 left-wing NGOs, including the ACLU Foundation, Black Voters Matter Fund, and Color of Change. Follow the grant money and you’ll find the usual suspects: Open Society, Schwab Charitable, and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Some groups openly push Marxist ideology. Others were caught handing out riot gear used in...

A bill that would compel Illinois public universities to provide, prescribe, and even promote abortion drugs is now one signature away from becoming law. House Bill 3709 passed the state senate May 31 and is now awaiting action from Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker. If signed, the bill would require schools to refer students to abortion providers and, where pharmacies are available on campus, directly distribute abortion drugs like mifepristone, according to a May 20 press release from Illinois Right to Life. The bill would also mandate that universities include information about chemical abortion on their websites, elevating the practice to...

Reality check: Trump has singled out ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising platform, for federal scrutiny of possible illegal foreign contributions. ActBlue has admitted to more than 200 such questionable donations. Democrats fear that they’re being targeted for political retaliation, and that a probe could force ActBlue to shut down. But AP’s Brian Slodysko and Steve Peoples sifted through Trump’s records and found that he got 1,600 similarly maybe-problematic contributions since 2020 — many through WinRed, Republicans’ answer to ActBlue. The response: The White House didn’t specifically address the AP’s findings, but said House Republicans had “uncovered specific evidence of potentially unlawful...

The Trump Administration has ordered US embassies to halt all student visa applications as the president cracks down on America's higher education business. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has directed officials to stop scheduling appointments with student visa applicants as they prepare to implement a social media vetting process, according to a cable obtained by Politico. 'Effective immediately, in preparation for an expansion of required social media screening and vetting, consular sections should not add any additional student or exchange visitor (F, M, and J) visa appointment capacity until further guidance is issued septel, which we anticipate in the coming...

Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom is under new federal scrutiny as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opens an investigation into whether the state improperly funneled taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens. The DHS probe, led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Los Angeles, focuses on the state’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI) — a 100 percent state-funded program designed to provide monthly benefits to non-citizens ineligible for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) due to their immigration status. According to a Title 8 subpoena issued by HSI Los Angeles, federal officials are demanding records from the Los...

Energy Secretary Chris Wright hinted that he would soon take action canceling billions of dollars' worth of Biden-era green energy loans that he said do not promote American energy security and are too risky for taxpayers. In an exclusive interview with the Washington Free Beacon, Wright took aim at how the Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office dished out billions of dollars in loans during the final months of the Biden administration. While Wright stopped short of naming particular projects he may cancel loans for, he said the Trump administration would only look to support projects that directly benefit Americans...

Paediatric gender dysphoria has rapidly emerged as one of the most divisive and urgent issues in medicine today. In the past decade, the number of children and adolescents identifying as transgender or nonbinary has soared. In the US alone, diagnoses among youth aged 6 to 17 nearly tripled—from around 15,000 in 2017 to over 42,000 by 2021—signalling a seismic shift not only in culture but in clinical practice. Children diagnosed with gender dysphoria—a condition defined by distress related to one’s biological sex or associated gender roles—are increasingly being offered powerful medical interventions. These include puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and, in...

It’s no secret Joe Biden’s team spent its final days shoveling money out the door, and in ways designed to limit Donald Trump’s ability to claw it back. Officials working under Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright have now completed a review of the Loan Programs Office (LPO)—the government entity that brought you Solyndra— and the extent of the shenanigans is remarkable. Figures and documents provided to me show a loan free-for-all: More than $90 billion showered on entities in a matter of months, a lot of it to companies of questionable taxpayer value. The highlights of DOE’s review: Unprecedented...

On Friday President Trump released a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that would take a chainsaw to social, environmental and education programs. Some of the sharpest cuts are directed at housing programs that are meant to serve the poor, housing insecure and unhoused. In California, millions are served by these funds and state and local governments depend on them to operate affordable housing, rental assistance, homeless service, planning and legal programs. In a letter to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, the president’s budget director, Russel Vought, laid out $163 billion in annual spending cuts coupled with “unprecedented increases”...

Democrats on Thursday were bracing for a sustained attack on their fundraising operation by Republicans, as President Donald Trump targets ActBlue. Trump plans to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the major online donation platform for what the administration cast as “unlawful ‘straw donor’ and foreign contributions to American elections” in a presidential memorandum on Thursday. “President Trump is taking action to address malign actors and foreign nationals who seek to illegally influence American elections, undermining the integrity of our electoral process,” a fact sheet detailing the memo obtained by POLITICO states. “ActBlue has become notorious for its lax...

The first RICO racketeering charges against members and associates of the migrant terrorist group Tren de Aragua were filed this week in New York. A statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said that the case is part of "Operation Take Back America," which it said is a "nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Justice Department to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime." According to the statement, the charges filed...

Fighting against the wishes of their voters is a classic Republican pastime — and this week is no different.When they apparently thought nobody was looking, a cabal of GOP senators comprised of Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Utah’s John Curtis, Kansas’ Jerry Moran, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis — who’s up for reelection next year — quietly sent a letter on Wednesday to Senate Majority Leader John Thune regarding ongoing negotiations over the party’s reconciliation package.Their concern? That the final version of the legislation containing priorities backed by President Trump (tax cuts and border security) will also include provisions fully repealing President...

Three Key Takeaways: Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered a disturbing 800% increase in Social Security numbers issued to noncitizens under the Biden administration, raising concerns about voter fraud and government benefits being accessed by illegal aliens. The investigation revealed a system where illegal aliens could easily receive work authorization and Social Security numbers without interviews or identification, allowing them to access taxpayer-funded programs like Medicaid and potentially vote in U.S. elections. Musk emphasized that the Biden administration’s border policies have fueled human trafficking networks, with cartels profiting from transporting migrants into the U.S. under dangerous...

Rumors are swirling around ActBlue, a key fundraising platform for the Democrats, which has repeatedly given money to progressive politicians and far-left groups like Black Lives Matter. Critics, including lawmakers and investigative journalists, have noticed suspicious financial activity that may indicate a vast network of fraud. For context, the House Administration Committee recently uncovered evidence that illegal donations from China, Russia, Iran, and Venezuela might have been laundered to Democratic campaigns through ActBlue. In response, the committee sent a letter to ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones to begin an investigation. In any case, Walter Curt, a prominent investigative journalist, took to...

Today, we’re releasing our preliminary findings: ActBlue made its fraud-prevention rules “more lenient” twice in 2024—even though there is extensive fraud on the platform, including from foreign sources. ActBlue admitted that this change led to between 14 and 28 additional fraudulent contributions in the first month alone—potentially totaling thousands of dollars in fraudulent contributions to Democrat campaigns and causes.

WASHINGTON — Elon Musk on Tuesday called for the arrest of leaders of “fake” organizations that receive federal funds — saying they represent a politically connected “uniparty” that’s engaged in “money laundering” of taxpayer resources. The Department of Government Efficiency chief’s call for legal action comes as he spearheads efforts to trim annual federal spending by $1 trillion to halve the deficit. “With respect to the non-governmental organizations, these sort of fake NGOs, I think there needs to be a number of arrests,” Musk said in an interview on Fox News’ “The Five.” “These are fake charities [run by] mostly...

Democrats run an economy of 'Grifterism,' where Billionaires, Productives, and Dependents fuel a system designed to keep the ruling class in power while stifling real economic freedom.I am a political junkie and a political conservative. Like so many conservative political junkies, I spend a good portion of my waking hours trying to understand what the words and actions of Democrats actually mean. Like the Politburo of the former Soviet Union, the words of Democrats often bear little resemblance to the actions their words embody. “Equity” is an excellent example, as when Democrats say “equity,” they really mean highly inequitable policy...