Free Republic

The Trump administration is surging federal law enforcement resources to Alaska amid the “troubling new revelations” of an apparent Democratic scheme to siphon votes away from incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) in the midterm election. The criminal investigation into “Decoy Dan” Sullivan’s alleged sham Senate campaign in the Last Frontier has been ongoing for the last “several months,” but additional assets are being deployed as a direct result of a bombshell New York Times report on the alleged involvement of Democratic Senate hopeful Mary Peltola’s campaign, as well as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), in the plot, Alaska’s top...

CBS’s Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan reportedly challenged CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss when Weiss asked reporters to investigate the scandal of Alaska’s ballot controversy. Fox News reported that several CBS staffers downplayed a New York Times report detailing how Democrats placed a decoy “Dan Sullivan” on the ballot to confuse voters and give Democrat candidate Mary Peltola an advantage in the Senate race. The New York Times reported that Peltola has ordered a staffer in Summer 2025 to find “as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can.” ... The Justice Department has reportedly started investigating...

WASHINGTON — Alaska Senate hopeful Mary Peltola refrained from issuing an unequivocal denial of involvement in the effort to recruit another Dan Sullivan into the race — even as her campaign, which fired a lot of its original staff — distanced itself. Instead, Peltola lashed out at the press for coverage of her team’s alleged involvement in recruiting Dan J. Sullivan, also known as “Decoy Dan,” into the Alaska Senate race to confuse incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan’s (R) voters. “This is just another distraction. It’s another diversion. Every day it’s some new, you know, look over here moment. Not Dan...

Don’t believe the Democratic National Committee’s official storyline: The DNC’s decision to make South Carolina the first Democratic presidential primary in 2028 isn’t about introducing more racial diversity into the early contests. It’s actually about keeping power in the hands of the party establishment — the people who backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, and who are likely to wind up supporting Kamala Harris in 2028. The fix is in. South Carolina was the establishment’s firewall against Bernie Sanders’ left-wing insurgency twice over. In 2016, Sanders nearly beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus, in Iowa,...

A woman allegedly tied to Minnesota’s massive “Feeding Our Future” scandal has been charged in a daycare fraud scheme after being featured in a viral video by influencer Nick Shirley, authorities said. She is accused of pocketing millions of dollars meant for children’s meals. Fahima Egeh Mahamud was charged Wednesday with wire fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to court documents. Earlier this year, Mahamud was indicted for her alleged role in the initial $250 million “Feeding Our Future” scheme. Prosecutors allege she enrolled Future Leaders Early Learning — a Minneapolis daycare where she served as CEO...

Talk about some dirty diamonds. A descendant of the Cartier jewelry dynasty was sentenced to eight years in federal prison after confessing to running an unlicensed cryptocurrency exchange that laundered more than $470 million in drug trafficking proceeds. Maximilien de Hoop Cartier, a resident of France who moonlights as a singer under the name “Max Cartier,” was sentenced in Manhattan federal court Tuesday after pleading guilty in October to operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Cartier, 58, funneled the money through a web of US shell companies disguised as fake software and tech firms —...

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a self-described "progressive" candidate’s bid to enter Ohio’s Republican primary, leaving in place a decision by state election officials to disqualify him for misrepresenting his party affiliation. Samuel Ronan, a former Democratic state and national candidate, attempted to run as a Republican in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District against GOP incumbent Rep. Mike Carey. To do so, he signed a declaration of candidacy — under penalty of election falsification — swearing he was a member of the Republican Party. However, court documents filed in U.S. District Court note Ronan was caught publicly admitting that his...

EXCLUSIVE: Fox News Digital spoke to Minnesota state Rep. Kristin Robbins shortly after she unveiled millions in alleged fraud in the state’s assisted living program and identified an individual already indicted for fraud who is still receiving payments from the state, adding to the already exploding fraud scandal in the state. The Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy, chaired by Robbins, held a hearing that focused on a new sector of fraud, the state’s assisted living programs, that comes amid a massive unfolding fraud scandal in the state that has affected a variety of other sectors and resulted in...

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is accusing the men who bought bankrupt chains RadioShack, Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Pier 1 Imports of running a Ponzi scheme that duped investors out of tens of millions of dollars. A complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida on Tuesday, alleges the co-founders of Miami-based Retail Ecommerce Ventures, Alex Mehr and Tai Lopez, together with the company's Chief Operating Officer Maya Burkenroad, raised approximately $112 million combined from hundreds of U.S. investors by selling investments in eight companies they created and controlled under Retail Ecommerce Ventures. Between...

Federal authorities have unraveled several schemes by the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) that were used to fund its regime through remote information technology (IT) work for U.S. companies, resulting in two indictments, tech and financial seizures and an arrest. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Monday that North Korean actors were helped by individuals in the U.S., China, the United Arab Emirates and Taiwan to obtain employment with over 100 U.S. companies, including Fortune 500 companies. In one scheme, U.S.-based individuals created front companies and fraudulent websites to promote the legitimacy of remote workers, while hosting laptop...

Twenty people, a mental health business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona’s Medicaid program was defrauded $60 million in a scheme involving billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation, the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes. The indictment announced Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Health LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated. Authorities say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral health business,...

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison raked in $10,000 in campaign donations shortly after meeting with individuals linked to a nonprofit that stole $250 million from a federal program meant to feed hungry children during the pandemic. “I’m not here because I think it’s going to help my re-election,” Ellison said during the Dec. 11, 2021, meeting with two future criminal defendants linked to the Feeding our Future scandal, according to audio obtained by the Center for the American Experiment, a conservative Minnesota-based nonprofit. Days later, on Dec. 20, 2021, Ellison received $10,000 in campaign contributions from individuals linked to Minneapolis...

A Long Island tax preparer allegedly bilked the IRS out of $12 million in a COVID scheme she used to buy jewelry, a Honda — and a house in the Dominican Republic. Damaris Beltre, 57, filed false tax returns for her clients between 2021 and 2024, and launched a scheme to illegally obtain Payroll Protection Program loans during the pandemic, federal prosecutors said. “The defendant’s fraudulent work as a tax preparer and in furtherance of a COVID-19 loan scheme, cost the government millions of dollars,” John Durham, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement...

The Biden Administration's latest scandal reveals an alarming misappropriation of public funds that should have ignited outrage among taxpayers and watchdogs alike. Reports indicate that over $2 billion was quietly allocated to a start-up tied to Stacey Abrams, a prominent figure in the Democratic Party and a champion of unsupported election claims. This funding spree is part of the Biden administration's ongoing push to allocate climate-related initiatives, which, under the so-called "Inflation Reduction Act," is anything but what its title suggests. In reality, the $375 billion earmarked for climate initiatives can be seen as a slush fund designed to boost...

Imperial College London research has found limits to how quickly we can scale up technology to store gigatonnes of carbon dioxide under Earth's surface. Current international scenarios for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century rely on technologies that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth's atmosphere faster than humans release it. This means removing CO2 at a rate of 1–30 gigatonnes per year by 2050. However, estimates for the speed at which these technologies can be deployed have been highly speculative. Now, findings from a new study led by Imperial College London researchers...

America's growing and aging population has led financial experts to raise concerns over the impact on the Social Security system, for which the number of claimants is also rising. The U.S. population has increased by over 103 million over the last five decades, and data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) shows that the proportion of Social Security claimants has risen by more than seven percent in this time. SSA data showed the average growth rate of Social Security recipients is 1.8 percent. If this trend stays the same, the number of beneficiaries will have increased by roughly 36,221,550 in...

Imagine a Super Bowl referee bending the rules to give his favorite team the win. Few would call that fair. Yet that is precisely what the Left wants to do to America’s elections. From noncitizen voting to lawsuits inviting activist judges to rewrite our election laws, left-wing activists are taking every opportunity to change elections permanently for partisan gain. Their latest tactic is to undermine the basic principle of “one person, one vote” with a new scheme called ranked choice voting. As we speak, liberal special interests are leading a sophisticated national campaign to push ranked choice voting in nearly...

Social Security benefits are the major source of income for most people over age 65, according to the Social Security Administration. That means living standards in later life can depend heavily on how well retired workers and spouses understand the program. Unfortunately, misunderstandings are all too common. A recent survey from Nationwide Retirement Institute found that 44% of adults were unaware that, upon the death of a spouse, the surviving spouse would inherit the bigger Social Security benefit. Social Security old-age and survivor benefits is a broad term that includes two subcategories: retired-worker benefits, and benefits for spouses and other...

Cities coast-to-coast grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed .. Between the federal government, states and municipalities, untold billions in taxpayer dollars have been spent adding electric buses to transit fleets across the U.S. in an effort to reduce carbon emissions. However, cities from coast-to-coast are grappling with broken-down e-buses that cannot be fixed, are too expensive to fix, or they have scrapped their electric fleets altogether. Officials in Asheville, North Carolina, recently expressed frustration that three of the five e-buses the city purchased for millions in 2018 are now sitting idle due to a combination of software issues,...

The wife of an Iowa county supervisor was convicted of 52 counts of voter fraud Tuesday in a ballot-stuffing scheme to help her husband secure the Republican nomination to run for Congress in 2020. Kim Phuong Taylor, 49, was found guilty by a federal jury in Sioux City of 26 counts of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting in the race which her husband, Jeremy Taylor, ultimately lost. He was running a congressional campaign for Iowa's 4th Congressional District and finished a distant third. After Taylor’s husband lost...