Free Republic

Budget deficits are something we’ve come to expect from Uncle Sam. After all, without years of overspending, the federal government wouldn’t be sitting on trillions of dollars in debt. But, the latest monthly Treasury statement delivered a rare — and welcome — surprise. In April 2025, the U.S. government collected $850.2 billion in receipts while spending $591.8 billion, resulting in a monthly budget surplus of $258.4 billion. That’s not just any surplus — it’s the first monthly surplus of fiscal year 2025 (which began in October 2024), and the second-largest monthly surplus in U.S. history, behind only April 2022’s $308.2...

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is being accused of lying to Congress after he denied that a $2.5 billion revamp of the central bank’s Washington headquarters will load the facility with lavish amenities — and some are demanding that he be punished, The Post has learned. Powell called The Post’s exclusive report in April about the bloated renovation project — which led Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) to liken it to the “Palace of Versailles” during a grilling by the Senate Banking Committee last week — “misleading and inaccurate.” “There’s no VIP dining room, there’s no new marble. There are no...

Crews are putting up large anti-scale barricades around the White House and the Treasury tonight.. Big news coming this weekend? ... Any guesses? ... Lisa Murkowski, who had a high chance of voting NO, just voted YES to advance the Big Beautiful Bill after she spoke with Vance 3 to go! ... JD Vance is on the Senate floor lobbying Republican holdouts to vote YES on the Big Beautiful Deal

A team from the Department of Government Efficiency can now access a sensitive Treasury Department system that controls trillions of dollars in federal payments, a judge ruled late Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Jeannette Vargas gave permission for four DOGE employees to access the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which essentially serves as the checkbook for the federal government. Vargas said she would no longer require the Trump administration to get permission from the court before expanding access to other DOGE representatives.

With so much going on these days — on multiple fronts — it's difficult to keep up with it all. On Tuesday alone, there were multiple cabinet secretaries testifying before Congress, President Donald Trump made multiple appearances, commenting on everything from trade to FIFA, the Houthis cried "Uncle!", and India and Pakistan appear primed to bust out into an all-out war. All of which is to say: I didn't have an opportunity to watch Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's testimony before the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee oversight hearing live. But looking back over some of the key...

After back and forth between two federal agencies, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have reached a deal to aid in the deportation efforts of illegal immigrants.The agreement will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to access taxpayer information to locate illegal immigrants subject to deportation.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem signed the agreement, which allows the IRS to turn over information about undocumented immigrants already facing deportation orders and are under federal criminal investigation.Under the agreement, ICE can submit names and request address confirmations for illegals who have been...

A divided federal appeals court on Monday put on hold an injunction that blocked Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Americans' private data at the Treasury and Education departments and the Office of Personnel Management.

In a stunning revelation, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced the discovery of nearly $5 trillion in unaccounted-for government spending. The massive government oversights are due to a previously optional financial tracking field linking US Treasury payments to specific budget line items. For reference, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE aggressively pursues the elimination of government waste and promotes transparency in federal spending, a key priority of President Donald Trump’s administration. The executive order signed on President Trump’s first day in office is a temporary White House initiative with an 18-month mission; the department has already uncovered massive...

He’s pulling the mask off, and it’s wild. 1]. IRS’ Massive IT Dept. Outstrips Midsize Banks by 175x Budget and 40x Staff “A typical midsize bank will have somewhere between 1 and 200 people in IT and they have an operations and maintenance budget in like the $20 million a year range. We have 8,000 people in IT, and our operations and maintenance budget is $3.5 billion a year. I don’t really know why yet.” 2]. Contractors Eat Up 80% of IRS’ Massive Operations Budget “I will tell that you 80% of that budget goes to contractors and licenses——We cannot...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Tuesday that two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) whistleblowers who faced political persecution over their roles in the tax evasion investigation of Hunter Biden will return to the agency as advisers. Bessent said that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler will join the Treasury Department as senior advisers after they were wrongfully targeted for their role in the investigation. Shapley was a senior supervisory special agent at the IRS, while Ziegler was a special agent. "I went and decided I would bring them into Treasury, give them a year to investigate the wrongdoing that's going on at...

The Biden administration failed to fully comply with a demand to allow Congress to review Suspicious Activity Reports involving the massive Democrat online fundraising platform ActBlue, prompting a fresh request Monday to the Trump Treasury Department, according to correspondence obtained by Just the News. House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., made the joint request to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant seeking access to the SARs, which are required by federal law when banks suspect money laundering or other suspicious activity. The committees first sought the reports last fall, and Comer...

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on a Hungary-based bank linked to Russia, marking a new low point in Hungary’s relationship with Washington. The U.S. Treasury Department announced the penalties, which will target the International Investment Bank (IIB), a controversial institution located in Budapest with ties to the Russian state. The bank’s presence in Hungary has drawn the ire of Western officials, who fear it could be used for Russian intelligence operations inside Europe. Speaking to reporters in Budapest on Wednesday afternoon, U.S. Ambassador to Hungary David Pressman said Washington had repeatedly shared information with Hungarian counterparts about how...

A few decades ago the movement for concealed carry began. Anti-liberty/gun cracktivists were outraged. There would be wild west gunfights everywhere! The streets would run with blood! Of course, none of that happened. More recently, the Constitutional Carry movement caught fire, and the same predictions of blazing gunplay were made and failed to materialize. More than half the states allow constitutional carry and every state allows concealed carry of some sort. No state that has adopted concealed or constitutional carry has repealed either. Constitutional Carry means any citizen not otherwise disqualified by law—adjudicated mental illness, felony convictions, etc.--can carry concealed...

Scott Bessent on CNBC: “The market and the economy have become hooked, become addicted, to excessive government spending and there’s going to be a detox period.”

Held: Bat-guano crazy speculation does not a case for judicial intervention make.A group of plaintiffs had attempted to block the US DOGE Service from access at Treasury on that very basis. They had claimed that the administration had the intent to expose personal information under cover of their mission to identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. And if the plaintiffs had any evidence of such, they might have prevailed.Instead, the federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and told them to come back when evidence of wrongdoing actually emerged:In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly...

A federal judge on Friday denied a request to block the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) staff from accessing sensitive data from the Treasury Department. The Alliance for Retired Americans and several employee unions sued the federal government over the staff's access to the data from the Fiscal Service. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected the lawsuit, stating that the plaintiffs failed to show how they would face irreparable harm if the DOGE staff gained access.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were a “one-time price adjustment.” Bessent said, “I don’t think it’s a radical change. It’s just a much needed course adjustment. And when we go back and look at what’s happened, there’s a new paper out called the China Shock and it talks about what happened post 2004, that some of the communities recovered, but the workers never recovered and that it was much more devastating on a human level. And what we are trying to do is make free trade fair trade, because the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in Washington refused Friday to block employees of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury systems containing sensitive personal data for millions of Americans. She acknowledged, however, privacy concerns about their work. DOGE is still limited by a different court order in New York. In Washington, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly previously restricted DOGE’s work at Treasury to two employees with read-only access, with the Trump administration’s cooperation. One of those workers later resigned after being linked with social media posts that espoused racism; Musk said he would be rehired. Kollar-Kotelly, who...

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...

A former senior policy adviser to the Obama administration has appeared in court in Britain charged with child sex offences. Rahamim 'Rami' Shy, 46, who co-ordinated the US government's strategy to combat terrorists from Al Qaeda and the Taliban, is accused of arranging the commission of a child sex offence, court documents reveal. He is also charged with possession of two category C indecent images of children and possessing a prohibited image of a child. Shy, a US citizen, who lives in New Jersey, worked for the White House under president Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, was...