Free Republic

Former President George W. Bush joined up with former President Barack Obama and U2 singer Bono to comfort United States Agency for International Development employees Monday, while also taking shots at President Donald Trump and his administration for shuttering the agency plagued by accusations of fraud and abuse. “Gutting USAID is a travesty, and it’s a tragedy,” Obama said in a video that was shown to departing USAID employees Monday, according to the Associated Press. “Because it’s some of the most important work happening anywhere in the world.” Obama summed up the decision to shutter the agency as “a colossal...

He really fell for this Friends’ request. A gullible British man was scammed by an online catfisher — believing it was a hard-up Jennifer Aniston madly in love with him. Paul Davis, 43, told The Sun he paid out non-refundable Apple gift cards after being sent messages he believed were from the “Friends” star blowing him kisses and holding up a sign reading, “I love you.” “I’ve had fake videos from Jennifer Aniston saying she loves me and asking for [about $270],” he told the UK paper of the scam using AI images. “I believed it – and I paid.”...

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres wants to “turn the world around” but is lacking in one thing: other people’s money. On Monday the veteran Portuguese socialist acknowledged the financial shortfall and demanded the world step up and give to the globalist organization to fill the gap in aid donations. Guterres made his call at a meeting in Valencia, Spain, citing a “$4 trillion financing gap” as cause for immediate action. He noted “massive headwinds” exist since U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew USAID contributions to U.N. projects soon after he returned to the White House via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)...

My wife ordered some exotic-ish tea and I got an email that my Samsung remote control device had been delivered. I ordered some water filters and I got an email that my Makita tool accessories had arrived. I never ordered, nor received, a Samsung remote control device. Ditto Makita stuff. Are they transitioning to all AI?

The FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) on June 30 said that almost $15 billion was reported in losses in the “largest health care fraud” investigation in U.S. history, with officials charging more than 300 people in connection with the alleged scheme.In a post on social media platform X, FBI Director Kash Patel wrote that $14.6 billion in losses were incurred, while $245 million was seized, as FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a separate post on X that hundreds of people were charged in the case.$245 million seized, hundreds of defendants and medical professionals charged, and $15 billion...

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...

Remember back when Bill Clinton was President and Hillary was his co-president? Back then, the ever-slavish media regularly referred to her as “the smartest woman in the room." That was never true. Not even close. She was never a feminist heroine because she “was no Tammy Wynette” and did not “stay home and bake cookies and stand by her man.” She was always just a mean, bitter, unattractive woman with narcissistic delusions of her own abilities. And after all the intervening years, when she was Obama’s Secretary of State (a pity appointment because she lost the election to him –better...

Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said her office has seized more than $225.3 million in cryptocurrency linked to a sprawling international fraud and money laundering network responsible for defrauding hundreds of victims through online investment scams.Pirro announced at a June 18 news conference in Washington that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court.The action targets the proceeds of a vast international fraud operation with ties to organized crime syndicates and human trafficking networks operating out of scam compounds in Southeast Asia.The $225.3 million seizure,...

The fire aid concert raised over a $100 Million, but where did all the money go? Jimmy Dore went to the the Annenberg Foundation who are in charge of the funds, to find out more. After repeated emails, phone calls, etc with no replies, they eventually heard from Barbara Chen of Annenberg. Turns out most of the money went into the pockets of NGO’s, etc with just 30% going to the actual victims of the fire. Anyone surprised? Nope. This is LA after all.

Issues & Insights "Carbon dioxide, we’ve been told over and again, is the enemy that must be subdued if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming. It is, however, a faulty premise. Physics, not politics, tells us that man’s CO2 emissions will not cause catastrophic climate change nor an increase in extreme weather. “The common belief that CO2 is the main driver of climate change and the EPA Endangerment Finding assertion that ‘elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated’ to endanger the public health and welfare are scientifically false,” conclude the authors of a new...

President Joe Biden’s USAID awarded an $800 million contract to a business operating out of a Virginia home even after it formally ruled that its key manager lacked “honesty or integrity” — a reference to the fact that, according to a May 12 guilty plea, he had secured USAID contracts through bribery for a decade. The contract was for addressing “issues affecting the root causes of irregular migration from Central America to the United States” — the work that Biden assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris, but which she never appeared to address, a Daily Wire investigation found. The Department...

The ink is dry. Hawaii has officially become the first state in the nation to impose a climate tax. It’s called the Green Fee. The name sounds harmless. The impact is anything but. Senate Bill 1396 is now law. It tacks on a 0.75% increase to the Transient Accommodations Tax. That means every hotel stay, every short-term rental, every cruise ship docking in the islands will now carry a new surcharge. The state expects this to rake in $100 million annually. This isn’t a symbolic gesture. It’s a full-scale revenue engine. The money will be funneled into climate resilience projects....

A cargo ship carrying 3,000 cars, including 800 electric vehicles, caught fire off the coast of Alaska and continues to burn. The Coast Guard says that all 22 crew members escaped the ship and were picked up by two nearby freighters. The ship, a Liberian-registered car-carrier named "Morning Midas," was on its way to Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico, from Yantai, China.. ... the Coast Guard is going to let the ship burn, since trying to put out a lithium-ion fire is nearly futile. ... In 2022, the Felicity Ace, a car carrier slightly larger than Morning Midas, sank in the Atlantic...

It could be the end of the line for the "train to nowhere." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has released a scathing report exposing what he said is the unfeasibility of California's long-troubled high-speed rail project — and is threatening to pull the plug on a plan that already has the federal government on the hook for $6.9 billion while Californians are underwriting an additional $9 billion. Duffy said that the federal government is moving to terminate around $4 billion it has currently obligated to the project unless the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) can prove it is tenable. He blasted...

This afternoon, a young woman claiming to be a Field Representative from the US Census Bureau knocked on our door and aske my wife if she could ask a few questions. The first was her birthday. My wife impulsively gave it to her and then thought better of it, and got quite agitated, asking why she thought she could just drop in and start asking questions. After all, we filled out our Census form in 2020, and the next one is in 2030, five years from now. The rep got a bit snippy, saying "once the interview had started it...

Departments of Motor Vehicles (DMVs) in multiple states are alerting drivers about a new wave of fraudulent text messages designed to trick recipients into revealing their personal and financial information. As digital scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the latest round of phishing attempts is targeting unsuspecting drivers across the United States. DMVs in at least three states — New York, Florida, and California — have reported a surge in fake text messages that employ fear tactics to deceive recipients into divulging sensitive data.

Preaching climate justice while arriving in a half-a-billion-dollar superyacht? That’s the kind of cinematic irony Lauren Sánchez served at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, pulling off a Leonardo DiCaprio moment of her own. The Amazon founder’s fiancée made her Cannes debut while being honored at the prestigious Global Gift Foundation charity gala for her environmental efforts through the Bezos Earth Fund and her work in social justice with This Is About Humanity, an organization that reunites families separated at the US-Mexico border. Interestingly, the soon-to-be Mrs. Bezos was joined by tech tycoon Jeff Bezos and their permanent third wheel, the...

The United Nations warned Wednesday there is a 70 percent chance that average warming from 2025 to 2029 will exceed the 1.5 degrees Celsius international benchmark. The planet is therefore expected to remain at historic levels of warming after the two hottest years ever recorded in 2023 and 2024, according to an annual climate report published by the World Meteorological Organization, the UN's weather and climate agency. "We have just experienced the 10 warmest years on record," said the WMO's deputy secretary-general Ko Barrett. "Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered some shocking data points about American foreign aid spending before the Trump administration reformed the system. During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, the top diplomat revealed that the White House discovered a foreign aid regime that was distracted and inefficient. Only 12 cents of every dollar spent by USAID reached recipients. ... while a mere 12 cents went to recipients, the other 88 cents was pocketed by third parties. ... Rubio noted that the United States is still giving “more humanitarian support than the next 10 countries combined” even after...