Free Republic

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 —...

As the magnitude and complexity of Minnesota’s Somali immigrant welfare fraud scandal come into clearer focus, Republicans in Congress are more boldly talking about it being part of a larger scheme by Democrats to use illegal immigrants and purported refugees to hijack federal elections and manipulate apportionment that determines Americans’ congressional representation and federal funding. The Republicans' argument goes like this: Democrats reversed Donald Trump’s related first-term executive orders and ensured that noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, were counted into 2020 U.S. Census. Then-President Biden opened the southern border so that millions of illegals could flood the country in just a...

A Bronx apartment building Mayor Mamdani showcased to highlight the talents of his new housing commissioner, Dina Levy, has racked up nearly 200 unresolved violations, The Post has learned. The 102-unit building at 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights as of Saturday had a staggering 194 open housing-code violations dating back to 2016 — including 88 “Class C” violations considered “immediately hazardous.” They included rat and roach infestation; broken doors and refrigerators; and mold, records show. Mamdani visited the affordable-housing complex best known for being the birthplace of hip-hop on Jan. 4 to introduce Levy, 54, a longtime tenants’ rights...

Billions of dollars in alleged fraudulent healthcare spending is being investigated in California, specifically probing foreign nationals operating illegal hospice facilities — officials announced Friday in a bombshell press conference. “We have witnessed a sevenfold increase in hospice in LA County, sevenfold. That doesn’t happen naturally,” Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told The Post during at the press conference. “There is not seven times more deaths in LA County than there were five years ago. These are fraudsters, and these do tend to be foreign influences, either Russian and Armenian gangs, mafia,...

Biden admin gave child care centers billions without verifying attendance — allowing ‘loopholes and fraud’ In child care, that ends now. https://x.com/PressSec/status/2008541001137463322Video TranscriptHello, I'm HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill. I'm Alex Adams, HHS Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families. For the past two weeks, everyone's been asking questions about the political patronage system in Minnesota. Incompetent state officials, through negligence or by design, for years have stood by as taxpayer money was diverted into the pockets of politically connected cronies. State officials have been unwilling to provide definitive confirmation about the size and scope of fraud. This...

California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Many environment and climate-related stories hit the headlines in 2025. Here at home, we had the record-breaking Storm Éowyn, one of the most powerful and widespread wind events to hit Ireland since the so-called “Night of the Big Wind” in 1839. Globally we had confirmation that average temperatures throughout the past three years exceeded 1.5°C of warming, and each of the past three years was either the hottest, the second hottest or the third hottest year on record. […] But one story is head and shoulders above all others when it comes to the most consequential environment event of 2025....