Free Republic

Customs and Border Protection agents began an immigration enforcement operation Saturday in Charlotte. Leaders of North Carolina's largest city have said the federal operation is causing fear and uncertainty. Charlotte real estate agent Tabatha Andonian has been tracking federal agent sightings and sharing information with the city's Latino community. “Right now, I’m just driving around to see if I spot any vehicles that are ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), seeing if they have out-of-state plates,” she said.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said that President Donald Trump called her on Monday following a speech in which she sharply criticized his record on costs and governance. "In my remarks, I made it clear that despite promising to lower costs On Day One, Trump has done nothing but raise costs for families," she said in the statement. She said Trump called her after her remarks at the event on Monday. "I told him that Congress can pass legislation to cap credit card rates if he will actually fight for it. I also urged him to get House Republicans...

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's push to stop the bankruptcy sale of more than 5,000 rent-subsidized apartments in the city has been blocked, temporarily, by the federal courts. Mamdani, who was sworn into office last week, directed the city’s Law Department shortly after taking over City Hall to intervene in the bankruptcy proceedings of more than 90 buildings with apartments all owned by Pinnacle, a real estate group. The Mamdani administration says the company owes the city $12.7 million in unpaid fines for housing code violations. The company declared bankruptcy in May after defaulting on more than $560 million...

There’s a cruel irony in working harder than your parents did and still being unable to afford what they had. For a generation of Americans who played by the rules—saved diligently, built credit, waited for the right time—the right time never seemed to come. The house with the yard and the room for grandkids to visit? It drifted further away with every passing year.The numbers tell a grim story. Home prices have surged 105% over the last decade, transforming what was once a milestone into a fantasy for millions of families. Young couples delay starting families. Retirees watch their fixed...

For millions of Americans, buying a home no longer feels like a goal. It feels like a gamble they are destined to lose. Prices rise faster than savings. Mortgage payments outpace wages. Each rejected offer chips away at confidence.Donald Trump says that cycle must stop.His plan to ban large institutional investors from buying houses has struck a nerve across the US. It speaks directly to people who believe the housing market no longer serves them.The message is blunt. Homes are for people, not corporations.A Promise Built on FrustrationFor many, housing affordability defines their daily lives. Their circumstances have changed; many...

President Trump on Wednesday called for a ban on “large institutional investors” buying single-family homes in a bid to address the issue of affordability. “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a Truth Social post, adding that he will discuss the topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, at the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month. The proposed ban could prove to be a way in for Trump and Republicans to...

Redfin’s 2026 Predictions: Welcome to The Great Housing ResetPublished on December 2nd, 2025 by Chen Zhao and Daryl Fairweather U.S. homebuyers will start to get some relief in 2026, with affordability improving as income growth outpaces home-price growth. Next year will mark the beginning of a long, slow recovery for the housing market. The Great Housing Reset will take shape in 2026. It won’t be a quick price correction, and it won’t be a recession. Instead, the Great Housing Reset will be a yearslong period of gradual increases in home sales and normalization of prices as affordability gradually improves. It...

Some of the Minnesota Somalians convicted in the Feeding Our Future scheme reportedly enjoyed luxurious lifestyles with money stolen from the federal government, the news coming as the state is under scrutiny regarding more alleged fraud. The fraudsters stole hundreds of millions of dollars in federal COVID relief money and apparently used it to fund lavish lifestyles and not feed needy children, the New York Post reported Saturday. Their rich lifestyles included condos, luxury cars, and real estate in Kenya, the outlet said, citing court documents. ne of those involved, 43-year-old Liban Yasin Alishire, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to...

A federal jury in Minneapolis Wednesday convicted Feeding Our Future founder Aimee Bock and former restaurant owner Salim Said on charges of wire fraud and bribery in a trial that followed a lengthy investigation into an alleged scheme to fleece taxpayers out of $250 million by exploiting government child nutrition programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jurors deliberated about five hours before finding Bock, 44, guilty on all seven counts. They convicted Said, 36, of all 21 charges, which also included five counts of money laundering. U.S. District Judge Nancy Brasel ordered Bock and Said jailed and did not set a...

Years before Minnesota welfare fraud captured the nation’s attention, a Somali-American leader of one massive scheme expanded his assets beyond the North Star State, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen, used some of his ill-gotten gains to buy property throughout the Twin Cities and Kentucky before the DOJ prosecuted him for using the nonprofit Feeding Our Future to defraud the government of $300 million in COVID-19 relief meant for hungry children, leading to a 28-year prison sentence in August. There are at least 1,687 people of Somali descent living in Kentucky....

Sant Chatwal courts controversy for helping Hillary By Arun Kumar, Washington, Sep 3 : Indian American businessman Sant Chatwal helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton's campaigns even as he battled to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens, the Washington Post alleged Monday. The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts, the daily said. Chatwal's case reached from...

The weekly mortgage rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell to 6.18 percent for the week ending Dec. 24 as the housing market continues to lean in favor of buyers.The 6.18 percent rate is the lowest level since 2022 and a slight decline from 6.21 percent the previous week, according to Freddie Mac data. The current rate is 0.86 percentage points below the yearly peak of 7.04 percent reached in mid-January.The recent rate decline comes as the U.S. housing market registered 37.2 percent more sellers than buyers in November, real estate brokerage Redfin said in a statement on Dec. 23.“That’s...

Getting The Brush-Off You’re searching for a home, scanning listings, barely able to contain your excitement; but your realtor seems to brush off every inquiry you make about a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) property. He keeps insisting that they’re “not worth the time,” but you somehow can’t shake the feeling he’s protecting his commission, not your interests. Here’s how FSBOs actually work and what options you have when an agent ignores them. What FSBO Listings Really Are FSBO homes are properties sold directly by the homeowners without the involvement of a listing agent. Sellers skip the listing commission but...

About one in three U.S. households rents, a ratio that has stayed surprisingly steady over the past six decades.But with mortgage rates soaring from 2.7% in 2020 to almost 7% today - and home prices continuing to climb - the share of renters has edged up.Today, it takes $121,400 to afford a typical home, or 43% higher than the average salary.This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the share of Americans renting versus owning by state, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.A Closer Look at Renting vs. Owning in AmericaAs the table below shows, states with the...

A former Drug Enforcement Agency agent was indicted on federal charges of conspiring to traffic drugs and launder millions of dollars for a Mexican cartel. Paul Campo, who was a DEA agent for nearly 25 years, his associate Robert Sensi, are accused in a new indictment unsealed Friday of converting cash into cryptocurrency to buy 220 kilograms of cocaine, worth $5 million, and launder $750,000 in proceeds from drug sales for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or CJNG. The State Department designated CJNG as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York allege...

Minnesota once prided itself on its Scandinavian-style safety net – high taxes, generous benefits and a shared belief that no child should ever go hungry. But that image lies in ruins after a billion-dollar fraud spree that siphoned taxpayer money away from the needy and poured it straight into luxury mansions, high-end cars, overseas real estate and designer lifestyles. What authorities first hoped was a one-off pandemic scam has now been exposed as something far bigger – and far uglier. Federal prosecutors say that over the past five years, scores of scammers – many operating inside Minnesota’s Somali diaspora –...

A welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota reveals that large numbers of new arrivals aren't assimilating and are funneling our tax dollars to literal terrorist groups. An innocent woman was set on fire in Chicago as the mayor resists federal law enforcement resources to bring peace to one of our great cities. The Obamacare insurance system is buckling under its own weight. And the country is $38 trillion in debt. Our administration is working hard on addressing all of these problems. But you know what really fires up the beltway GOP? Not any of the above. Instead, the political class is...

Vice President J.D. Vance discussed the nation’s affordability crisis and the difficulty for young Americans to purchase homes during an interview with FOX News host Sean Hannity. "A lot of young people are saying housing is way too expensive," Vance told Hannity. "Why is that? Because we flooded the country with 30 million illegal immigrants who were taking houses that ought by right go to American citizens, and at the same time, we weren't building enough new houses to begin with even for the population that we had, so what we're doing is trying to make it easier to build...

It was only just over a week ago — Halloween day, actually — that I had a post on the scariest houses in Greenwich Village. As the scariest house of all, I picked the one at 80 Washington Place, which had recently been the alleged site of rigged poker games where wealthy marks had gotten fleeced out of millions of dollars. Today, in a weekly column titled “Gimme Shelter,” the New York Post provides an update on that very house. It’s on the market! The headline is “Luxury NYC pad used in the NBA gambling scandal has listed for $22.5M...

The greatest generational wealth shift in history has already begun.Baby Boomers, the largest retirement generation to date, will finish shifting up to $105 trillion to heirs by 2048. And according to a recent LegalZoom survey*, 62% of what will be left behind is anticipated to be real estate or property.But rising home maintenance costs could pose a problem for younger generations.For instance, property values have increased “almost 27% faster than inflation since 2020,” per the Tax Foundation. And with higher home valuations, heftier property tax bills typically follow.So will the inherited wealth be enough to support the higher costs of...