Free Republic

New York City has more than tripled spending on unsheltered homelessness since 2019, shelling out nearly $368 million even as the number of people living on the streets continued to rise, according to a state comptroller’s report. The city’s own numbers show the unsheltered population grew from 3,588 in fiscal year 2019 to 4,504 in fiscal year 2025, a 26% increase from pre-pandemic levels. Over that same period, spending on services for the unsheltered jumped 262%, from $102 million to nearly $368 million. That works out to roughly $81,700 per unsheltered person in FY 2025 — slightly more than the...

Yesterday I had some figures from the NYC vs LA deathmatch over who can spend more on the homeless population. Los Angeles was looking pretty good with $650,000 per housing unit for the homeless, but don’t count NYC out yet. These numbers come from the NY comptroller’s annual report via Mike Bird of the Economist. New York City’s unsheltered population increased from 3,588 in FY 2019 to 4,504 in FY 2025 — a 26 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels In that time, spending on services for this population has more than tripled, growing from $102 million in FY 2019...

The Obama Foundation is looking for 100 unpaid volunteers to work alongside the former president’s highly paid cronies at the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Chicago when it opens in June. Officials are pitching the no-paycheck gigs as rooted in former President Barack Obama’s legacy of civic engagement. The recruitment campaign comes after Fox News Digital reported that the organization’s CEO, former top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, was paid $740,000 in 2024. Foundation officials told Fox News Digital the volunteers will complement about 300 full- and part-time employees at the long-delayed center, which the organization is promoting as a...

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie has revived a controversial benefit program once lauded as a step toward “reparations” for black San Franciscans. Known as the Dream Keeper Initiative, the relaunched program will grant $36 million to “community-serving organizations,” including some that have offered “Afri-centric” mental-health services, African ancestry DNA testing, and free doulas for “African American birthing people.” The Dream Keeper Initiative was founded by former San Francisco Mayor London Breed in 2021, fulfilling her promise to redirect police funding to “the African American community” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s 2020 death in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In February 2021, Breed...

Much has been written recently about the death of expertise in America. On one subject after another, those claiming to be experts have proved to be completely wrong. Covid provided multiple examples: from the origins (did it come from a lab leak?), to the efficacy of vaccines, to the necessity of lockdowns and “social distancing.” Another famous example was the Hunter Biden laptop, stated by 50+ “experts” from the intelligence community to carry “the classic earmarks” of “Russian disinformation.” But has there been any area where self-proclaimed experts have more made fools of themselves than the area of “climate change”?...

The scandal-plagued Obama Presidential Center in Chicago already stirred up plenty of controversy. Now the money trail surrounding it raises even more uncomfortable questions about how former President Barack Obama’s inner circle is cashing in while taxpayers get screwed over. New federal tax filings reveal the staggering salaries flowing through the Obama Foundation as construction of the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park nears completion. The foundation will operate the massive 19.3-acre campus, which sits on publicly owned Chicago parkland. The project includes a museum, an athletic center, and a public library branch. It will not operate as...

Fire victims in Pacific Palisades say they are frustrated and confused after receiving brush clearance bills from the City of Los Angeles for properties where their homes once stood. What we know: Nearly 14 months after last year’s deadly fire destroyed thousands of homes across the community, some residents say they were mailed $31 notices citing alleged noncompliance with brush clearance rules — even though their lots remain empty and covered mostly in dirt. "This is one final blow. After everything that happened, they’re still trying to take money," said resident Christine Martinez, whose home was destroyed in the fire....

Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex. And for what? Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources. The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy. Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree -- as even the alarmists will...

FIRST ON FOX: Former President Barack Obama once declared that his presidential center would be a "gift" to Chicago, but taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden costs related to the beleaguered project. A Fox News Digital investigation shows taxpayers are now stuck footing the bill for surging public infrastructure costs required to support the project — and no government agency can provide an accounting of the total public cost, despite months of queries and FOIA requests. "Illinois Republicans saw this coming a mile away. Now, right on cue, Illinois Democrats are leaving taxpayers...

In a stretch of Louisiana with about 170 fossil fuel and petrochemical plants, premature death is a fact of life for people living nearby. The air is so polluted and the cancer rates so high it is known as Cancer Alley. “Most adults in the area are attending two to three funerals per month,” said Gary C. Watson Jr., who was born and raised in St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority Black community in Cancer Alley about 30 miles outside of New Orleans. His father survived cancer, but in recent years, at least five relatives have died from it....

A new state bill aims to shield certain information about California’s High-Speed Rail project from the public. Supporters say it’s about protecting sensitive records, but critics think it puts the brakes on transparency. ... [O]pponents...say the project is too costly. They note the state has already spent about $15 billion on it over the last decade and a half, while the total cost projections for the full project have ballooned from the original $45 billion estimate presented to voters in 2008 to anywhere between $88 billion-$128 billion today. Inside California Politics Correspondent Eytan Wallace reports a new state bill would...

"A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money," Sen. Everett Dirksen is supposed to have said more than 50 years ago, and if you do that 370 times, according to California Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton, you might have enough to cover the Golden State taxpayer dollars diverted into Democrat "voter machines."The details get a little technical — money laundering isn't supposed to be easy to follow, after all — so I'll break down Hilton's allegations as quickly and cleanly as possible before we get to the big picture.According to Hilton’s unofficial CAL DOGE, after...

Word on the street is that tomorrow is the big day when the federal government’s phony-baloney greenhouse gas “Endangerment Finding” will finally get rescinded by EPA. It has now been more than 16 years since this idiotic and massive government power grab got foisted on the American people by the Obama EPA in December 2009. I don’t have any good insight into what the rescission documentation will look like. If the people writing it do what is really appropriate, they will heap mounds of scorn, derision and ridicule upon the Finding itself, and upon the legions fools, dopes and grifters...

Evanston, Illinois. will issue $25,000 to 44 residents in reparations payments, the City’s Reparations Committee has announced. Established in 2019 and approved by the City Council in 2021, the program issues $25,000 direct cash payments to Black residents and descendants of Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969. Evanston was the first city in the nation to pass a reparations plan, pledging $10 million over a decade to Black residents. The payments are intended to cover housing expenses, Evanston official Cynthia Vargas told the Chicago Tribune. Tasheik Kerr, assistant to the city manager, said during a meeting...

Listen to this article 3 min Evanston, Illinois. will issue $25,000 to 44 residents in reparations payments, the City’s Reparations Committee has announced. Established in 2019 and approved by the City Council in 2021, the program issues $25,000 direct cash payments to Black residents and descendants of Black residents who lived in Evanston between 1919 and 1969. Evanston was the first city in the nation to pass a reparations plan, pledging $10 million over a decade to Black residents. The payments are intended to cover housing expenses, Evanston official Cynthia Vargas told the Chicago Tribune.

The Justice Department accused two men of stealing $120 million from federal health care programs over the course of a decade by bribing patients to enroll in social adult day cares and submit unneeded prescriptions to a pharmacy. Inwoo Kim, 42, and Daniel Lee, 56, were charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud. They each face up to 10 years in prison. “Today’s complaint targets those who prey upon the vulnerable so they can steal from American taxpayers and defraud government programs meant to help the public,” A. Tysen Duva, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division, said in...

An outspoken global actor in the grand theater of climate policy, New York has long insisted the transition to green energy would be cheap and straightforward. For years, state leaders have promised aggressive emissions cuts at little cost. Now, reality is crashing the party, and the state has been caught out in that fib. Facing a court-imposed Friday deadline, New York has effectively conceded that its green goals would pose “costs consumers simply cannot bear.” This admission exposes the gaps between lofty ambition and the harsh economic realities of rapid decarbonization. The state’s 2019 climate legislation made grand, sweeping promises....

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A court on Wednesday ordered the Dutch government to draw up a plan to protect residents on the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire from the devastating effects of climate change — a sweeping victory for the islanders. The Hague District Court, in a stunning rebuke of Dutch authorities, also ruled that the government discriminated against the island’s 20,000 inhabitants by not taking “timely and appropriate measures” to protect them from climate change before it’s too late. “The island already suffers from flooding due to tropical storms and extreme rainfall, and according to several researchers, this...

When Gavin Newsom launched CARE Court with great fanfare, he promised help for people with severe mental illness who go back and forth between homelessness, jail, and emergency rooms. The California Governor boasted that CARE Court would be a 'completely new paradigm' that would compassionately force people's mentally ill loved ones off the streets and into treatment via a judge's order – and estimated that up to 12,000 people could be helped. A State Assembly analysis said up to 50,000 people might be eligible. However after spending $236 million in taxpayer dollars on CARE Court since the March 2022 announcement,...

Some of us are old enough to remember Matthew Lesko, the lanky, fast-talking late-night TV pitchman who promised people free government money to those who bought his books. There are, Lesko said in one of his countless ads decades ago, “15,000 programs you can use to get a better job, get an education, or start your own business. Those who know about the programs are the ones who get the money!” Lesko was right about how easy it is to get taxpayer money. What Lesko didn’t say is that it’s easy to do even when it violates the law —...