Free Republic

They call their newsletter "Politico Pro," but it can sound more like "Politico Promo." Take reporter Andrew Howard with his embarrassingly unskeptical pitch for funds on Monday, "Anti-Trump former Republicans have a multimillion-dollar plan to save House Democrats."When you hear the name "Lincoln Project" you should check your pocket to make sure the contents of your wallet are still intact. A co-founder of the Lincoln Project, Steve Schmidt, is back at the political money trough searching for funds using the name of the Save America Movement (SAM). And all they say they need is about $100 million.

Diagnosis rates of autism among children have more than tripled over the past 15 years. One reason, which Minnesota’s welfare scandal lays bare with shocking details, is Medicaid fraud and abuse. Medicaid pays healthcare providers big bucks to diagnose and treat children with autism—sometimes tens of thousands of dollars a month for a single child. Yet states rarely verify that kids who are diagnosed actually meet the medical criteria for the disorder or that they get appropriate treatment from qualified specialists. The result: Children covered by Medicaid or the government-run Children’s Health Insurance Program are 2.5 times as likely as...

The war that rages on in Burma today is fought on a multitude of fronts. In the mountainous regions of Burma, armed resistance groups are struggling to defend their communities against the bloody regime of the State Security and Peace Commission, SSPC (formerly called the State Administration Council), a military dictatorship with a track record of profiting from illicit activities. Within this convoluted conflict, a quickly expanding criminal empire has taken root. Cyber scam centers, run by established Chinese crime rings and manned by victims of human trafficking, are popping up all along the Burma-Thai border. According to a recent...

At a private home in the West Village on Tuesday evening, a cryptocurrency billionaire, a Qualcomm heir and a son of George Soros hosted a sold-out fund-raiser for Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s incoming mayor. The next morning, Mr. Mamdani was off to TriBeCa, where a Hunt oil fortune heiress and a major cryptocurrency advocate held another fund-raiser for the mayor-elect. Next week, he is slated to appear at a star-studded reception on the Lower East Side featuring Hollywood royalty, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Ramy Youssef, Tituss Burgess and the director Mira Nair, who is Mr. Mamdani’s mother. The...

If there was ever a perfect case study in just how destructive the Democrat Party’s top two policy priorities — mass welfare distribution and unchecked immigration from the Third World — are to America, it’s what continues to unfold in Minnesota.Federal prosecutors have uncovered hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars stolen over the past five years by Somali descendants living throughout the state in pockets of immigrant-dense communities. The schemes led to more than $1 billion in theft of welfare money intended for the impoverished who are supposedly unable to feed and house themselves. The dollars instead were pocketed primarily...

Despite the steady rise of contactless payments and mobile wallets, cash still plays a major role in everyday life across Spain. Whether it’s for small purchases, tips or local shops, many people continue to rely on banknotes — which means ATMs remain more important than ever. And unfortunately, that also makes them an easy target for criminals looking for quick and discreet opportunities. While we often imagine ATM crime involving complicated hacking or technical attacks, the reality is that some of the most effective scams are surprisingly simple. One of them, known as the so-called “banknote scam,” has been catching...

Earlier this week, in ‘Easy A’s for Ivy League Idiots’ I wrote about the massive level of grade inflation in the Ivy League. In 2005, a quarter of Harvard students received A’s. In 2025, it’s over 60%. At Yale, A’s went from 67% of grades in 2010 to 78% of grades in 2023. The prestigious university has had awkward moments like before, such as when 91% of students graduated with honors in 2001, and these days it tries to keep the number of honors graduates in the 50s. But much like shopping in a supermarket, it’s hard to avoid the...

This writer remembers being in kindergarten when her teachers started talking about the hole in the ozone layer. It was going to get bigger, we were told, and the world would begin boiling from heat, crops would burn from acid rain, and cities would be uninhabitable thanks to smog. That was 1988, and now — 37 years later — this writer is staring at a foot of snow outside her window, and there's nary a drop of acid rain in sight. Cities are uninhabitable, but that's because of Democratic Party policies and not smog. Ah, so we didn't have to...

Minnesota social service workers slam Gov. Tim Walz as ‘100% responsible for massive fraud’ of $1B roiling state Hundreds of state workers at the Minnesota Department of Human Services publicly excoriated Gov. Tim Walz for allowing a “massive fraud” scandal to unfold under his watch and retaliating against their whistleblowers. Over $1 billion in taxpayers’ money was fleeced by dozens of scammers in Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future fraud scandal, the largest known COVID-19 fraud case in the country. “Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a...

A Bangkok court has issued an arrest warrant for Jakkaphong Jakrajutatip, the co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization, after Mr. Jakrajutatip failed to appear in court on Tuesday in relation to a fraud case. Mr. Jakkaphong is accused of defrauding an investor in 2023 and was released on bail, but he was a no-show for court on Tuesday and did not notify officials, The Associated Press reported, citing a statement from the Bangkok South District Court. The court deemed him a flight risk and rescheduled the hearing for Dec. 26. Jakkaphong’s company, JKN Global Group, bought Miss Universe in 2022...

Classrooms across the European Union are about to change. A new decision folds climate education into the EU’s 2025 climate plan, from kindergarten through the end of high school in all 27 member countries. Students will not just hear about distant ice melt or heat waves. They will learn how climate science, local impacts, and job skills fit together as part of the European Union’s official response to the climate crisis. For young children, future lessons are likely to connect local weather, food, and energy use to simple climate ideas, instead of treating the subject as a one off event...

Opponents of a pair of radical California “green” mandates were handed a mixed bag in court last week as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily paused implementation of one state law but allowed another to remain in place for now. The brewing court battle could have serious implications for businesses nationwide – and the entire U.S. economy. The first law in question, SB 261, titled “the Climate-Related Financial Risk Act,” requires companies operating in California with more than $500 million in annual revenue to publish a report outlining their “climate-related financial risks.” Critics argue that SB 261 effectively compels...

"Squad" member and congresswoman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has reportedly tied a turkey giveaway to political campaign donations, according to a report from the New York Post. The outlet reported that an email was sent out by Ocasio-Cortez that stated, “Thanksgiving is two weeks away. Will you chip in $5 or anything you can today to help us bring the joy of the holiday season into homes around NYC this year?” However, clicking on the contribution link sends those who read the email to a campaign fundraising page on the Democrat donations platform, ActBlue. Those submitting donations were prompted to...

This fundraiser is for the birds. Power-hungry “Squad” member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) cooked up a new way to have her cake and eat it too this Thanksgiving – by tying her annual turkey giveaway to her massive reelection campaign enterprise. And critics are crying fowl. “Thanksgiving is two weeks away,” the self-described “Bronx girl” wrote in an email pitch last week. “Will you chip in $5 or anything you can today to help us bring the joy of the holiday season into homes around NYC this year?” But clicking on the contribution link sends people directly to a campaign...

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — United Nations climate talks in Brazil reached a subdued agreement Saturday to deliver more money to countries hit hardest by climate change to help them adapt to extreme weather’s wrath. But the agreement doesn’t include an explicit detailed map to phase out fossil fuels or strengthen inadequate emissions cutting plans.

Skepticism about climate change has resurfaced, as some experts claim the exact causes of global warming remain unclear and that the policies addressing it are motivated more by money than by science. Richard Lindzen, Professor Emeritus of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has spent decades studying atmospheric science. He told the Daily Mail that the public hysteria surrounding global warming isn't actually based on realistic data. Climate change is the term used to describe Earth's warming, mainly as a result of human activity, such as burning coal, oil and gas. Scientists and climate activists have warned that...

Countries are gathering in Brazil at the COP30 summit to take stock of climate change. As in past summits, the negotiations are starting on the back foot: countries already aren't meeting their goals to cut heat-trapping emissions from burning fossil fuels. The world has barely budged in its efforts to combat climate change compared to one year ago, according to a new report from the United Nations. If countries stay on that track, the planet will warm by about 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, compared to the pre-industrial temperatures of the mid-1800s. That's slightly better than...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause new California laws expected to require thousands of companies to report emissions and climate-risk information. The laws are the most sweeping of their kind in the nation, and a collection of business groups argued in an emergency appeal that they violate free-speech rights. The measures were signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and reporting requirements are expected to start early next year. Lower courts have so far refused to block the laws, which the state says will increase transparency and encourage companies...

More than 50 defendants have been convicted in connection to the massive Feeding Our Future fraud investigation since the first indictments came down in September 2022.

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — U.N. climate negotiations were expected to begin Monday at a meeting on the edge of the Brazilian Amazon, with leaders pushing for urgency, cooperation and acceleration after more than 30 years fighting to curb global warming by drastically reducing the carbon pollution that causes it. André Corrêa do Lago, president of this year’s conference, known as COP30, emphasized that negotiators engage in “mutirão,” a Brazilian word derived from an Indigenous word that refers to a group uniting to work on a shared task. Complicating the calls for togetherness is the United States. The Trump administration did...