Free Republic

National Guard members deployed in New York prisons have endured unacceptable treatment, including female members filmed changing clothes and exposure to noxious fumes from makeshift drug use, The Post has learned. Governor Kathy Hochul drafted in 8,200 members of the state National Guard and declared a state of emergency in February after an illegal strike by prison workers left facilities dramatically understaffed. However, after being mandated for duty, the guardsmen were badly trained and subjected to various horrors in the prison environment, according to a source. A group of eight female members stationed at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford...

Under the banner of national security, the Biden administration fused behavioral surveillance with ideological profiling to create a system that was intrusive, biased, and unconstitutional. On April 16, Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Tulsi Gabbard declassified the Biden-era “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” The release followed an April 2 declassification request from Stephen Miller’ legal organization America First Legal (AFL). While much of the document’s content had been publicly discussed in general terms, the newly declassified version reveals troubling new specifics. The declassified version features language that outlines how the Biden administration planned to operationalize counterterrorism efforts. It...

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has declassified a shocking plan by former President Joe Biden’s administration for dealing with domestic terrorists. Last Wednesday, Gabbard released a June 2021 document titled “Strategic Implementation Plan for Countering Domestic Terrorism” (henceforth “the Plan”). But despite the release receiving over 6.3 million views on X by Monday morning, the major media has ignored the document. While Americans are very familiar with many Biden era policies, the newly declassified document reveals that the actions were part of a coordinated action from early in the administration across a wide range of government agencies to target...

Ok, sorry it has a paywall---this is only my review of it. Everyone needs to read this powerful book. It's DENSE, and took me about 4 hours to read, but the insight into how the big social tech companies are stealing our lives is important. Previously in my substacks I had written part 1, covering the first 1/3 of the book. This covers the last 2/3.

The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges for individuals involved in a thwarted Iran-backed plot to kill President-elect Donald Trump before the election. Three people were charged in the alleged Iran-backed murder-for-hire plot on Trump's life. Shakeri, 51, still remains at-large in Iran while Carlisle Rivera, 49, and Jonathon Loadholt, 36, were arrested in New York. The criminal complaint filed in Manhattan on Friday alleges an unnamed official in the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard instructed a contact in September to put together a plan to surveil and kill Trump, according to the Associated Press. The court filing states that the contact,...

Legislation Reversing $600 Threshold for Reporting Payments to IRS Filed by U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty April 11, 2025 Tom Pappert Bill Hagerty U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) filed legislation on Thursday to reverse the decision to require third-party payment processors to report transfers more than $600 to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Hagerty called the three-year-old policy an “egregious and unwarranted overreach” into citizens’ privacy. Hagerty introduced the Stop the Nosy Obsession with Online Payments (SNOOP) Act, which his office said would remove the provisions of the Internal Revenue Code created by former President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP),...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed three gun control bills on Thursday. The bills ban certain gun mods, make gun shops post clearer warnings, and change how gun sales are tracked. “New Yorkers are sick of weapons manufacturers ignoring their role in the gun violence epidemic,” said Democratic Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, who sponsored the bill in the Assembly. “Glock has known that its pistols can be easily and cheaply converted into illegal fully-automatic machine guns. It’s time to put people over profit.” S745/A439 changes how credit cards categorize gun vendors, requiring the companies to use new merchant codes for...

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed new controls into law last week, including one that allows credit cards to track ammunition purchases. She described the ammunition control as one that “[refines] how credit card companies track purchases at gun dealerships.” Hochul noted, “This gives law enforcement the opportunity to find out exactly who may be stockpiling ammunition. And this is an indicator that something untoward could be happening, so it’s an important data point for us to have.”

Two police officers walked into a doughnut shop. It’s not the opening line of a joke; it’s what I saw as I was working on an early draft of this story in March at the Staunton Dunkin’, about a quarter mile from where my vehicle was captured on a Flock camera in January and February coming back from my trips to Cardinal’s Roanoke office. Their eyes may have strayed to the racks of Boston creme, lemon-filled and coconut-covered doughnuts as they strode to the counter with purpose, but they were here for something else. Surveillance footage. The research for State...

WASHINGTON, March 27 (Reuters) - The Trump administration has directed two intelligence agencies to train their satellite surveillance capabilities on the U.S.-Mexico border region as part of a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration and drug cartels. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which are part of the Department of Defense, oversee spy satellites and analyze imagery for the Pentagon and other intelligence organizations. Their engagement, coupled with troop deployments, shows increasing militarization of the southern border, where President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency. Reuters could not determine whether the effort, which has not...

Congressional Republicans are turning up the heat on Chinese influence in the U.S. with new legislation aimed at shutting down Chinese "police stations" operating across the country. These covert outposts, reportedly set up by the Chinese Communist Party, are part of a more significant effort to monitor and intimidate Chinese nationals and dissidents living in the U.S. The proposed bill seeks to counter these foreign operations, which many lawmakers consider a serious threat to American sovereignty and national security. The move underscores growing concerns over China's expanding reach on U.S. soil and its efforts to interfere in American affairs. This...

President Donald Trump celebrated the Treasury Department’s recent announcement that it is suspending enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act against U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies. "Exciting news! The Treasury Department has announced that they are suspending all enforcement of the outrageous and invasive Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirement for U.S. Citizens," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "This Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for Small Businesses Nationwide. Furthermore, Treasury is now finalizing an Emergency Regulation to formally suspend this rule for American businesses. The economic menace of BOI reporting will soon be no more." In a statement...

In a shocking revelation that has sent ripples through Washington, sources within the White House have confirmed that the Oval Office—including the historic Resolute Desk—was subjected to a high-level security sweep following suspicions of covert surveillance. The sweep reportedly uncovered sophisticated listening devices, leading to the immediate removal of the President’s desk for a comprehensive off-site scan. A senior official, speaking anonymously, revealed that the discovery followed routine electronic countermeasures that detected unusual signals. “The anomalies were subtle but consistent—enough to trigger a full investigation,” the source said. “We couldn’t risk compromising the integrity of the President’s workspace.” Specialized teams...

The government now has access to its citizens messages and camera roll. This is the biggest breach of privacy Western civilisation has ever seen. Britain is in big trouble.

There’s a story describing how to catch wild pigs. Step one is to scatter some corn in a field to attract them; this must be regularly repeated so that the pigs become accustomed to the offerings. Step two is to install a single length of fencing in the field. After the pigs became used to the fence, another length would be attached at a ninety degree angle. When the pigs became habituated to the new arrangement, the process would be repeated, with the pigs now feeding in an area that is enclosed on three sides. The last line of fencing...

Did Obama officials force Pope Benedict’s resignation? Open letter calls for Trump investigationWe are asking for an investigation into the affairs of our own government. It is not unprecedented for a corrupt government to attempt to insert itself into the life of the Church.Shortly after the first inauguration of President Trump in 2017, an open letter was published in The Remnant Newspaper requesting an investigation into potential involvement by the Obama Administration in the affairs of the Catholic Church. Specifically, the authors asked whether the U.S. Government was involved in the sequence of events that resulted in the resignation of...

Northern Command has conducted over two dozen surveillance flights over the U.S.-Mexico border using a slate of different aircraft, including RC-125 Rivet Joints, U-2s, P-8s and drones, a senior U.S. military official told the Times. The administration has not authorized the CIA to use the drones for lethal airstrikes, with the aircraft only being used to help Mexican authorities locate and dismantle drug operations within their territory. . . The CIA drones have reportedly proven successful at locating the labs, with chemicals emitted into the air by fentanyl production being easy to spot from the sky. The agency declined to...

...The power that the Government has to look into people's emails, their phones, their texts, their signal, their everything -- the idea that they're not doing that if they're not in the middle of a trillion dollar fraud investigation is ridiculous. They also have to worry about people taking deals. There'll be some people that squeal. So you don't know who's your enemy and who's your friend and you go to lunch with someone and they're wearing some button camera and now you're f**ked. So they're not united right now. This is why it's working and they're able to release...

Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) has renewed his call to repeal a little-known section of the 2021 Infrastructure and Investment Jobs Act (IIJA) containing a federal mandate that all vehicles sold after 2026 must have a kill switch. In a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Wednesday, Massie questioned Michael Hanson who was representing the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) over the requirement for a kill switch that can disable vehicles based on a driver’s performance. Hanson affirmed that section 24220 the IIJA directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require advanced impaired driving detection...

The Islamic Republic of Iran hacked former President Donald Trump’s campaign and turned over the stolen materials to the Biden-Harris campaign, federal officials said in a statement. Federal officials from ODNI, FBI, and CISA said in a joint statement that Iranian hackers sent the stolen materials to then-Biden-Harris campaign officials in June and July. Information that the hackers sent to the then-Biden-Harris campaign “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails.” “This is further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden...