Free Republic

The Brief Jonathan Dupiton was sentenced to seven years in prison for a $3.8 million unemployment fraud scheme. The Atlanta podcaster used stolen identities to file hundreds of false claims during the pandemic. Dupiton was living in a halfway house for a previous fraud conviction when the new crimes began. An Atlanta podcaster has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison after being convicted of using stolen identities to obtain millions of dollars in unemployment insurance benefits. [snip] Prosecutors say that in 2020, Dupiton was completing a federal sentence at a halfway house for a previous fraud conviction targeting...

Journalists Nick Shirley and Jon Fetherston join 'Saturday in America' to discuss Democratic efforts to criminalize investigative journalism and allegations of fraud across the country.

A poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Deep Root Analytics found that 87% of those responding were concerned about fraud that misuses taxpayer money. Eighty three percent saw fraud as a factor driving up the cost of living. One respondent pointed out "if crooks are stealing the money the government intended for those in need, taxes will be increased to replace what's what's been illegally taken." Asked what issues the government ought to focus on, 89% said lowering the cost of living, 84% said making communities safer, 80% said protecting the country from foreign threats, and 65% said enforcing...

A federal spending watchdog has found the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) faced "challenges" in understanding the correct number of licenses it should hold for the top five vendors in its $985 million annual software expenditure. In a report [PDF] published last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that "while the VA identified its five most widely used software vendors with the highest quantity of licenses installed, it faced challenges in determining whether it was purchasing too many or too few of these software licenses." The GAO said that for fiscal 2025, the VA planned to spend about $985...

Yesterday I had some figures from the NYC vs LA deathmatch over who can spend more on the homeless population. Los Angeles was looking pretty good with $650,000 per housing unit for the homeless, but don’t count NYC out yet. These numbers come from the NY comptroller’s annual report via Mike Bird of the Economist. New York City’s unsheltered population increased from 3,588 in FY 2019 to 4,504 in FY 2025 — a 26 percent increase from pre-pandemic levels In that time, spending on services for this population has more than tripled, growing from $102 million in FY 2019...

It turns out that in addition to fraudulent payments of federal aid in Minnesota meant for feeding children and providing daycare to children of working parents it has been revealed that fraudulent payments for autism therapy must now be added to the list. In testimony given in Congress it was pointed out to Gov. Tim Walz, that in 2017 about $1 million in federal funds was paid to help fight autism. In 2024, $343 million was paid. Walz admitted being totally ignorant and unembarrassed by this revelation, saying "I'm not a financial genius. I am only a governor. I can't...

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has declared a local emergency and asked the federal government for help cleaning up hundreds of millions of gallons of spilled human waste in the Potomac River. On Jan. 19, a 72-inch diameter sewer pipe collapsed near the Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland. It dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of human waste into the River, according to the D.C. Water utility, which manages the sewer line called the Potomac Intercepter. Before it collapsed, that sewer line carried up to 60 million gallons of waste daily from Virginia and Maryland to a water treatment plant...

https://x.com/wcdispatch/status/2023987491007521081 Walter Curt@wcdispatchAlright!! Finally everything is working!Right now, the live Medicaid intelligence map covers all 50 states and includes 208 discovered billing codes, with 11 high-priority codes currently enabled for focused monitoring.The national map view currently includes 4,167 unique provider lead points and 350 hotspot tracts, with deeper investigative views tracking 3,530 high-risk entities, 1,797 T1019-focused leads, and 2,874 critical address clusters.Each lead is ranked with a confidence score and priority tier so teams can triage faster and focus on the highest-impact signals first.The scoring is based on a multi-signal model that looks at payment scale, utilization intensity, concentration patterns,...

The United States has played a central role in shaping the international order. From the Monroe Doctrine which allowed nations in our region to flourish free from interference outside of our hemisphere, to our pivotal role in the establishment of the United Nations, to serving as the primary security guarantor under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and as the world’s largest humanitarian donor, America’s leadership has been unquestionable. Leadership requires difficult choices, and the ability to recognize when the institutions created to promote peace, prosperity and liberty have become obstacles to those goals. What we term the “international system” is...

House Republicans brought the receipts to this week's "USAID Betrayal" hearing exposing the U.S. international aid agency's widespread waste and abuse of American tax dollars. Amid intense examination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s spending spree, Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), a majority member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, listed off more ways USAID has wasted taxpayer money. [snip] According to the congressional committee's findings, USAID spent: $11.75 million on measuring the effectiveness of DEI promotion efforts in Nepal (Award ID #AID367C1500001); $750,000 on Princeton University's DEI survey in the Middle East (Award ID #7200AA21C00087); $859,000 on hiring...

The Small Business Administration on Friday ordered all companies that get preference for government contracts due to their status as “socially disadvantaged” minorities to provide detailed financial information to show they are not defrauding the program, The Daily Wire has learned. The change represents a move to reevaluate a decades-old program that Washington insiders have long recognized as openly corrupt. The 8(a) program is one of the largest and oldest DEI initiatives in the country, affecting contracts at almost all federal agencies. SBA administrator Kelly Loeffler said there is mounting evidence that minority contracts had become “a pass-through vehicle for...

Minnesota once prided itself on its Scandinavian-style safety net – high taxes, generous benefits and a shared belief that no child should ever go hungry. But that image lies in ruins after a billion-dollar fraud spree that siphoned taxpayer money away from the needy and poured it straight into luxury mansions, high-end cars, overseas real estate and designer lifestyles. What authorities first hoped was a one-off pandemic scam has now been exposed as something far bigger – and far uglier. Federal prosecutors say that over the past five years, scores of scammers – many operating inside Minnesota’s Somali diaspora –...

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said Sunday the Trump administration is holding “discussions” on extending subsidies offered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “There are discussions around extending the subsidies, if we deal with the fraud, waste and abuse that, right now, is paralyzing the system,” Oz told host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Kennedy didn’t hold back as he read aloud what Democrats are fighting to restore. “We found that under President Biden, they were spending $3 million for circumcisions and vasectomies in Zambia,” he said. “We took that out. The congresswoman says, ‘We’re gonna shut down government until you put that back in.’” And that was just the beginning. “We found $500,000 of American taxpayer money for electric buses in Rwanda...” “We found $3.6 million for pastry cooking classes and dance focus groups for male prostitutes in Haiti. I kid you not. I’m not making this up. It was in the budget...

As Democrats threaten government shut-down over Medicaid cuts; as Americans are bracing for another increase in their healthcare costs; and as patients wait an average maximum of 132 days to see a primary care doctor, Americans can’t seem to wake up from the nightmare called U.S. healthcare. The rise in insurance premium costs is estimated at 7–10 percent next year. This is on top of already unaffordable family spending with the average American family expending $32,066 on healthcare in 2024 according to Milliman Medical Index. Faced with increasing pressure on their bottom lines, employers are passing these additional expenses on...

Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream. Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but. The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build. Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now, it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy. In 2011, the US Department of Energy under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the Secretary of...

The Obama library — which isn't a library — has ballooned to a construction cost of more than $615 million, up from the original estimate of $300 million when the edifice was proposed in 2019. As 2024, the estimate had soared to $615 million, with the cost adding up to a whopping $615,674,047. But according to the Chicago Tribune, other estimates have already placed construction costs past the $700 million mark. Along with these massive cost overruns, the Barack Obama Presidential Center has had a very troubled history already, and it hasn’t even been completed yet. Originally, the Obama Center...

If you thought the Trump Administration was finished making cuts to government spending, think again. No other institution on earth can spend money like the U.S. government—the effort by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to get spending under control and cut waste has never happened on this level before. On Sunday, the DOGE team announced another round of major cuts, nearly $2B worth: Contracts Update!Over the last 5 days, agencies terminated 163 wasteful contracts with a ceiling value of $1.9B and savings of $647M, including, a $35M USAID contract to “acquire contractor support to establish and manage a flexible,...

A UN conference to boost support for global development aid begins on Monday as US funding cuts jeopardise the fight against poverty. But key player the United States is snubbing the biggest such talks in a decade, underlining the erosion of international cooperation on combating hunger, disease and climate change. UN sustainable development goals set for 2030 are slipping from reach just as the world's wealthiest countries are withdrawing funding for development programmes. President Donald Trump's gutting of the US development agency USAID is the standout example, with Germany, Britain and France among other rich economies making cuts when faced...

Former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel confirmed Wednesday that he is considering a run for president in 2028 on the Democratic ticket, taking advantage of a vacuum in leadership. Crain’s Chicago Business reported: “’Of course’ it’s fair to say he’s considering running for president, declared Rahm Emanuel, hands for the moment neither waving nor pointing but resting on the table. ‘I’m looking at the (Democratic) field and, most importantly, what I have to contribute.’” Emanuel was the architect of Democrats’ victory in the 2006 midterm elections, when they ran socially moderate candidates in swing districts...