Free Republic

President Trump requested $9.3 billion in rescissions, targeting programs like the State Department, USAID, PBS, and NPR. Congress was expected to vote on this, with Republican support aiming to codify cuts suggested by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). That vote was cancelled. ... If Congress doesn’t approve the recissions request within 45 days of receiving it, Trump will be legally required to release the money back to the agencies. Congress was scheduled to vote on rescissions this week to cut waste and fraud identified by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), targeting programs like USAID, PBS, and NPR. However,...

A former State Department budget analyst has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than $650,000 from the agency over a two-year span, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Washington, DC. Levita Almuete Ferrer, 64, of Maryland, admitted to abusing her signature authority over a State Department checking account between March 2022 and April 2024 in her capacity as a senior budget analyst in the department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol. She wrote 60 checks to herself and three checks to someone else she had a personal relationship with, prosecutors said. She printed and signed each check before depositing all...

"Esteemed Comrades of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs! Today we ask you to review your files for any communications you may have had with unreliable elements who are critical of our Party and our leader. If you have had contact with journalists, researchers, or other subversives, we ask you to report these interactions in full to the senior comrades responsible for the important work of ideological vigilance. Also, please also indicate if you have encountered any suspicious use of the following terms…" That’s not actually how Acting Undersecretary of State Darren Beattie communicated his request for information - snip =,...

State Dept. to close woke programs. The Department of State revealed on Tuesday the Trump administration’s plans to slash the agency’s bloat. Internal documents obtained by the Free Press revealed that the State Department will close 132 agency offices — a 17% reduction. The office terminations also reportedly involve eliminating 700 positions, including civil service and foreign service employees. The news outlet reported that the offices earmarked for closure include those dedicated to advancing human rights, democracy overseas, and thwarting extremism and war crimes. The State Departmen's new shake-up will consolidate 137 offices by transferring them to other parts of...

The Trump administration is reorganizing the State Department to eliminate offices it considers redundant and cut some programs it says do not align with U.S. interests, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday. "This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies," Rubio said in a statement, describing the moves as part of President Donald Trump's "America First" agenda. "Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America’s core national interests will cease to exist," Rubio said. Work that fell to...

Colleges around the country are reporting some of their international students' visas are being revoked unexpectedly, expressing alarm over what appears to be a new level of government scrutiny.Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but college leaders say the government has been quietly terminating students' legal residency status with little notice to students or schools. That marks a shift from past practice and leaves students vulnerable to detention and deportation.The list of colleges that have discovered students have had their legal status terminated includes Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, UCLA and Ohio State University.The Trump administration has targeted students...

Car bomber survived and said he was trying to kill self. Footage of idiot walking around with burning pants dropped. WTF. Fire Department extinguished him. Oh, well. Stupid games, stupid prizes. DC: Suspicious package left near Treasury Department, SS, Bomb Squad and DC cops investigating, area locked down. Lock down ended. Transcript attached to video.

The State Department has officially notified Congress that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been dissolved, and the remaining operations of the agency will be run by the State Department itself. According to United Press International, the State Department officially told Congress that USAID was dissolving on Friday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, "Today, the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have notified Congress on their intent to undertake a reorganization that would involve realigning certain USAID functions to the Department by July 1, 2025, and discontinuing the remaining...

As Nigeria continues to experience unparalleled levels of murder, kidnappings, and rape at the hands of radical Islamist terrorists targeting Christians and other religious minorities, a House subcommittee hearing held Wednesday concluded that the most populous country in Africa must be redesignated as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) by the U.S. Department of State in order to pressure the Nigerian government to take more forceful action to quell the violence.

Why did the State Department (taxpayers) pay for Hillary Clinton’s 5-star hotel room and rental vehicles in France in 2024? Hillary Clinton traveled to Bordeaux, France, on February 23, 2024 and the American taxpayer paid for her lavish retreat. Clinton reportedly traveled to Bordeaux to promote climate change garbage at the World Impact Summit to benefit the Clinton Foundation. The twice-failed presidential hopeful stayed at the 5-star Mondrian Hotel (a Clinton favorite). The total cost for the luxury hotel ($16,759.18) and transportation ($22,570.19) set taxpayers back $39,329.37. Clinton also took a few “personal visits to the city” according to French...

Darren Beattie, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, is being criticized for some alarming statements he has posted on social media regarding sterilization and population control. The Independent reported on numerous odd and even disturbing social media posts authored by Beattie — some less than one year ago. In 2021, he wrote, “Interesting moral universe we live in where abortion is celebrated, but the notion of giving smart people incentives or cash to start families is so far out of overton window no sitting politician of either party would dare advocate it.” He repeated a...

It was inevitable. We have been together from the outset of the conversation where we admitted to ourselves that sooner or later the pretending was going to have to stop. Well, here we are. President Donald Trump begins a very uncomfortable process to peel back the mask that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy represents. This is needed: President Trump – Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S....

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has deputized State Department employees to carry out immigration enforcement duties, further expanding the pool of federal workers eligible to assist with President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort. The Washington Examiner learned late Tuesday that Noem had signed a memorandum to deputize up to 600 State Department special agents at field offices nationwide to assist DHS agency U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers with arresting and deporting illegal immigrants inside the United States.

Finding links to the Soros family in the Joe Biden White House should come as no surprise. In addition to George’s decades-long meddling in our politics, he spent tens of millions backing Biden and other Democrats in 2020, and Alex got in on the action too, throwing $700,000 at the would-be worst president of the 21st century. As documented in the book The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network for George Soros (2022), George planted his seeds of influence in the Biden White House even before Biden took office. During the transition, the incoming Biden administration assembled “Transition...

The State Department said Wednesday that U.S. government vessels can now transit the Panama Canal without being charged fees. "The government of Panama has agreed to no longer charge fees for U.S. government vessels to transit the Panama Canal," the department said in a post on X, adding the agreement will save the U.S. government millions of dollars a year. The Panama Canal Authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

An LGBTQ group in Ecuador tapped into a $25,000 grant from the Biden State Department to produce a two-day drag workshop intended to promote diversity and inclusion abroad. Footage obtained by The Post showed drag queens donning makeup, strutting around topless wearing nothing but pasties and crowing about how the displays could be used as a “political tool.” Fundacion Dialogo Diverso, a nongovernmental organization that aims to promote democracy and the “LGBTIQ+ population” of the South American country, organized the drag show and published footage of it last July. The State Department footed some of the bill for the show...

“The DOGE team is working on canceling those payments now.”

House Republicans who have led a nearly two-year investigation into a $500,000 State Department grant to an organization that promotes humanism and secularism are pressing the agency to conduct more diligent oversight after it admitted that the organization may have misused taxpayer funds.Rep. Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who heads the panel’s human rights subcommittee, have accused the State Department of trying to promote atheism overseas under the guise of advancing religious pluralism, a longtime U.S. foreign policy priority. Rep. Brian Mast, a Florida Republican who...

We’ve been reporting that Donald Trump is no fan of USAID, the US Agency for International Development, and he's determined to reform or eliminate the agency. Bureaucrats within the independent agency have not been taking it well and have been throwing temper tantrums and trying to “resist,” thinking somehow that the electorate voted them into office and not the president. On Saturday night, Trump decided it was a good time to mete out some more consequences for the uncooperative rebels: Two top security officials at the US Agency for International Development were put on administrative leave Saturday night after refusing...

The website for the US Agency for International Development, or USAid, appeared to be offline on Saturday, as the Trump administration moves to put the free-standing agency, and its current $42.8bn budget for global humanitarian operations, under state department control. A message stating that the “server IP address could not be found” appeared when attempts were made to access the website on Saturday. Two sources familiar with the discussions told Reuters on Friday that the Trump administration was moving to strip USAid of its independence as a government agency and put it under state department control. The apparent failure of...