Free Republic

The new White House task force will withhold government funding for state and local benefits programs if their anti-fraud controls are viewed as lacking. IT MODERNIZATION The White House is kicking off President Donald Trump’s “war on fraud” with a focus on federally-funded benefits like housing, food and cash assistance programs. Among the tactics that a new anti-fraud task force will be pursuing is withholding government funding to state and local jurisdictions whose anti-fraud controls for benefits are deemed inadequate and increasing data-sharing between states and the federal government, according to the Monday executive order establishing the task force. Both...

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order forming a national task force to combat public fraud and placed Vice President JD Vance in charge of the effort. "If we found half the fraud in this country... we would have a balanced budget," Trump insisted. He further joked that he expected Vance to take the role seriously and not merely accept a nominal post, pointing to his predecessor. "This will not be like a Kamala," he said, referring to former Vice President Kamala Harris's tenure as border czar. "I promise, sir," Vance replied. Trump previously announced that Vance would...

WASHINGTON — President Trump will sign an executive order Monday afternoon formally creating a benefits fraud task force chaired by Vice President JD Vance — the president’s designee to lead a nationwide “war on fraud.” Vance will join Trump in the Oval Office for the signing, underscoring the president’s continued emphasis on the project after highlighting a social-services scam scandal in Minnesota that has led to dozens of indictments, including for phony nutrition and autism care programs. A document describing the looming order says “there is strong reason to believe similar vulnerabilities exist in California, Illinois, New York, Maine, and...

After Saturday's highly successful Israeli and U.S.-led decapitation strike on Iran's Islamist regime, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a statement letting the remaining mullahs know that we're not done.Hegseth started by briefly laying out the regime's offenses and pointing out that President Trump is finally doing what others before him would not."Overnight, on President Trump’s orders, the Department of War commenced OPERATION EPIC FURY — the most lethal, most complex, and most-precision aerial operation in history."The Iranian regime had their chance, yet refused to make a deal — and now they are suffering the consequences. For almost fifty years,...

Zohran Mamdani’s father, the radical Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani, savaged the school’s anti-Semitism task force during a Dec. 12 meeting of the University Senate. Mamdani described the task force as a “prosecutorial agency” and likened its work to imperial British colonizers, who used racial divisions to maintain power, according to an unofficial transcript obtained by our Jessica Schwalb. “It became very clear that [the task force] saw itself not as representing the community, but as a prosecutorial agency,” Professor Mamdani said. He was speaking from a place of ignorance: He told colleagues that he had not read the task...

President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of new federal and military “specialized units,” framed as a move to ensure public safety in Washington, D.C., and beyond. In the order signed on Monday, he directed federal agencies and the Pentagon to hire, train, and equip rapid-response forces for deployment in the capital, “other cities,” and, potentially, “nationwide.”The order, titled “Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia,” builds on Executive Order 14333 of August 11, which first declared a “crime emergency.”Trump justified the latest move by claiming that “rampant violence and disorder” threaten the federal government...

Dr. Tom Shimabukuro heads the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office... Records from a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are missing, the CDC’s parent agency has informed a U.S. senator. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in March that “they are having difficulty locating records,” Johnson said on April 9. More recently, HHS officials said that Dr. Tom Shimabukuro’s records “remain lost and, potentially, removed from HHS’s email system altogether,” Johnson added.

AG Bondi announces there is now a DOJ task force investigating and prosecuting anyone involved in fraud that DOGE uncovers

amid reports suggesting these carriers, namely USS Carl Vinson, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, and USS Abraham Lincoln, might be heading towards Iran. This movement is part of broader strategic military positioning in the region, possibly in response to heightened tensions involving Iran and its allies, like the Houthis in Yemen. No official statement has confirmed Iran as the specific target, but the deployment signals an increase in military readiness.

Today, the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism notified the local leaders of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston that it wanted to meet soon to discuss their responses to incidents of antisemitism at schools and on college campuses in their cities over the last two years. The Task Force, created pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order on Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism, told the cities it wanted to engage with local leadership, including the mayors, district or city attorneys, and local law enforcement.Leading Task Force member and Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights...

House Democrats launched a “Rapid Response Task Force” and a “Litigation Working Group” on Monday to combat President Donald Trump’s popular America First agenda. Trump, who holds a positive approval rating, has enacted many policies that are popular among Americans, a Sunday CBS News poll found. Some of his policies that hold majority support include: Deporting illegal aliens Sending troops to the border Handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict Placing tariffs on Chinese goods Seventy percent said Trump is following through on his campaign promises, the poll also found. Democrats, nevertheless, are trying to block Trump and his plans to restore...

New York’s City Council is set to vote Thursday to authorize a controversial a task force to study reparations for black residents — a move that could lead to a call for billions in tax payer spending, as it has in other cities. The city legislation would charge a nine-member task force with examining the “impact of slavery and past injustices for African Americans in New York City” and determining what, if any, monetary or nonmonetary reparations are necessary. Minority Leader Joseph Borelli (R) told The Post he would leave the city before he paid reparations. “I’ll move before I’ll...

CHICAGO - Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced an executive order Monday to establish a reparations task force and agenda aimed at addressing historical injustices against the African American community. The task force will develop a definition and framework for reparations, identifying areas for restorative action such as housing, education, jobs, and criminal justice. It is also responsible for conducting a comprehensive study to catalog policies that have harmed African Americans in Chicago, including controversial real estate practices like redlining and restrictive covenants. Johnson made the announcement during a Juneteenth flag-raising ceremony at Daley Plaza. "Reparations will be an investment in...

California’s reparations task force met Friday and was told by one speaker that the suggested $223,000 per resident is not enough. Rev. Tony Pierce criticized the idea of limiting the cash payouts to Californians, saying there should be no residency requirements, Fox News reported Saturday. He said, “We have to encourage our people to come back to California! What better way to encourage our people to come back to California if we have no requirements? How will reparations be paid? Immediately!”

President Biden will establish a task force to coordinate government efforts to address antisemitism and other forms of religious bigotry, the White House said Monday, in the wake of a rise in antisemitic rhetoric from high-profile public figures. Biden is creating an interagency group led by the staff at the Domestic Policy Council and the National Security Council, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement. The group’s first order of business will be to formulate a national strategy to counter antisemitism.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a good idea with his budget proposal to create an “election crimes agency” that would “investigate election crimes and irregularities and make referrals for further legal action directly to a statewide prosecutor.” Florida should implement it, and other states should follow. In fact, state legislators should make sure that a statewide prosecutor’s office has jurisdiction to prosecute all such election cases, especially when local prosecutors fail to act. Ensuring the integrity of elections and protecting voters from fraud is simply too important to leave the investigation and prosecution of crimes that subvert elections to the...

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Sunday that her office’s newly formed task force targeting illegal guns will meet for the first time Wednesday — days after a rookie NYPD cop was killed and another officer critically wounded with a stolen firearm. “We have a moral obligation to do everything we can to fight the scourge of illegal guns on our streets,” Hochul said in a statement. “Too many lives have been lost because of illegal firearms that should never have been on our streets.”

Cracks are appearing in the vaccination frenzy that has gripped medical authorities and politicians here and elsewhere. Despite the admission by the CEO of Pfizer that "two doses of the vaccine offer very limited protection, if any," fanatics in and out of medicine, government, and journalism persist in urging draconian measures to eliminate the unvaccinated from society. The propaganda and fear porn blitz has convinced about half of Democrats to want to vitiate the Constitution to persecute vax refusers and even questioners:If you are unvaccinated, 55% of Democrats want to fine you, 59% want you confined to your home, 48%...

A Minneapolis community is looking for answers tonight after another person is murdered, and young people want a seat at the table when discussing solutions. Officers were called to the scene on Aldrich Avenue Friday night after reports of gunfire. They found a man shot outside of a home who was taken to a hospital and later died. On Saturday the Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo turned to the community to help stop the violence. “The truth is we got too many people dying in our city,” said Arradondo. The police chief talked to a group of young people to...

Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs said he has disbanded a task force of scientists probing the origins of Covid-19 in favor of wider biosafety research. Dr. Sachs, chairman of a Covid-19 commission affiliated with the Lancet scientific journals, said he closed the task force because he was concerned about its links to EcoHealth Alliance. The New York-based nonprofit has been under scrutiny from some scientists, members of Congress and other officials since 2020 for using U.S. funds for studies on bat coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility in the Chinese city where the first Covid-19 outbreak...