Free Republic

A state audit found taxpayers in Gov. JB Pritzker’s (D) Illinois paid out a whopping $1.6 billion for healthcare programs for illegal immigrants since 2020. The news comes after Republican legislators pushed for the audit to be released, Fox News reported on Friday. In regard to the audit, state Senate Republican leader John Curran said it showed there has been rampant overspending. “And it also showed that the governor was unable to manage this program. Thousands of people were allowed to sign up for free healthcare for years on the state taxpayer dime that should not have been eligible under...

The Environmental Protection Agency recently discovered that the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a climate group with ties to former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a fierce supporter of former President Joe Biden. The money was earmarked for Power Forward Communities — a nonprofit partnered with multiple left-wing groups founded by Abrams and which the Georgia Democrat has stated she was “thrilled” to be part of, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday. The funds were set aside at an outside financial institution — Citibank — before Biden left office and part of a larger, $20 billion pot...

Project Veritas released undercover video of Travis Combs, Branch Chief for Applied Innovation and Improvement at the US Department of Education, describing how the agency is hiding secrets from Congress and DOGE by communicating on encrypted app, Signal. “It’s insanity. ‘Democracy Falling’ should be the title of the movie,” Travis Combs, a 5-year veteran at the department said. Travis Combs told the undercover PV reporter that federal employees in the DOE are evading Congress and oversight. “The one nice thing about the program that I work in is that we don’t ask [citizenship] status, and we’ve been able to keep...

What is a good way of reducing plane crashes? Obviously do not fire air safety experts and instil paranoia in those who remain. Yet that is what Elon Musk is doing to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), three weeks after America’s deadliest air collision in years. His team is moving fast to break things, as though Washington were an app. Other than China’s cultural revolution, history offers few parallels to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) assault on the state. Musk’s declared aim is to slash US deficits by rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. His model is the...

In a bombshell revelation, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has exposed a shocking level of federal spending abuse, revealing that the U.S. government has over 4.6 million active credit cards in circulation, processing a staggering 90 million transactions worth nearly $40 billion in Fiscal Year 2024 alone. “The US government currently has ~4.6M active credit cards/accounts, which processed ~90M unique transactions for ~$40B of spend in FY24. DOGE is working w/ the agencies to simplify the program and reduce admin costs – we will report back in 1 week,” the account wrote.

The U.S. Catholic bishops have lawyered up. And they're out to claw back "their" money -- at last count $65 million in taxpayer cash -- which they use to advance the entry of millions of illegal migrants into the U.S. and leave the taxpayers with the bill for their permanent upkeep.According to Catholic News Agency:The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is suing the Trump administration over what the bishops say is an unlawful suspension of funding for refugee programs in the United States. Upon taking office last month, President Donald Trump issued sweeping executive orders that, among other measures,...

Zoom in on this. If you’re not angry yet, you should be. pic.twitter.com/NRCy766Xg5— Sarah Fields (@SarahisCensored) February 5, 2025 2:32 PM · Feb 5, 2025 11.4M Views

Secret Service agents protecting Hunter Biden at his Malibu mansion spent more than $4.5million in taxpayer funds in a year while they kept round-the-clock watch, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal. More than $2.8 million in transactions were recorded on a government credit card and $1.12 million was spent on a variety of expenses including hotel rooms between 2021 and 2022, according to newly-obtained records. DailyMail.com obtained the list of financial transactions through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In many ways, Speaker Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he did his own Republican members.The outline of the spending agreement House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cut with Democratic leaders sounds bad on its face. But the underlying reasons for that agreement seem far worse.As I wrote last week, “Speaker Johnson and Republican ‘leadership’ … bailed the Democrats out of the predicament they put themselves in last May.” To which I should make an important addition: In many ways, Johnson didn’t bail out Democrats from a tough political predicament as much as he...

Assistant U. S. Attorney Valerie Chu (619) 546-6750NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY – September 30, 2020SAN DIEGO – Federal officials today announced a historic nationwide enforcement action involving 345 charged defendants across 51 federal districts, including more than 100 doctors, nurses and other licensed medical professionals located in San Diego and across the country.These defendants have been charged with submitting more than $6 billion in false and fraudulent claims to federal health care programs and private insurers, including more than $4.5 billion connected to telemedicine, more than $845 million connected to substance abuse treatment facilities, or “sober homes,” and more than...

Friday, California's High-Speed Rail Authority published its draft 2018 Business Plan. Its 800-mile bullet-train project's estimated cost is now $77.3 billion, up from $64 billion two years ago, and its final completion has been pushed out another four years to 2033. The current estimate is now more than 70 percent above the $45 billion presented to voters in 2008. The related Associated Press story failed to disclose that original cost estimate, as did three leading California newspapers. The Authority's draft discloses that "More than $3 billion has been expended to date on construction in the Central Valley and planning for...

The mission for the Federal Emergency Management Agency was clear: Hurricane Maria had torn through Puerto Rico, and hungry people needed food. Thirty million meals needed to be delivered as soon as possible.

The Pentagon failed to account for $6.5 trillion in its financial statement, a recently-recovered Inspector General’s report on the 2015 fiscal year said. It reveals the audit of the Department of Defense was “materially misstated.” The army failed to provide “accurate, complete, timely and well-supported” documents that could have explained the use of trillions of dollars in quarterly and yearend adjustments. The US military made $2.8 trillion in wrongful adjustments in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year, but could not provide anything that would detail what it spent the money on. There were a total...

The former executive director of a former Head Start program in Jersey City Tuesday admitted that he diverted more than $250,000 from programs for underprivileged children and used the money for personal expenses, including a Maserati and a mink coat, prosecutors said. Robert E. Mays, 38, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton in federal court to one count of wire fraud. According to court papers charging him, Mays in 2013 forged records and duped employees at the Jersey City Child Development Centers into believing that its board of directors had raised his salary 61 percent to $155,000...

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced $125 million in new spending Monday to fund 41 green energy projects ahead of the United Nations global warming summit set to take place next week. DOE is funding dozens of green technologies through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, program to find technological solutions to fighting global warming. ARPA-E projects are ones the government thinks show promise, but aren’t yet commercially viable. “As we look beyond COP21, the energy technologies the Department of Energy invests in today will provide the solutions needed to combat climate change and develop a global low-carbon economy...

Although the Pentagon has been required by law to pass an audit every year for almost 20 years, it has been unable to do so. The Pentagon is by far the largest government bureaucracy in the country, with a proposed 2015 budget request of $585 billion. With a budget that large, the Pentagon should be able to tell us how our tax dollars are spent – especially when its leaders keep asking for more money. But a news report in 2013 revealed that the Pentagon had been doctoring its books for years to conceal “epic” amounts of wasteful spending. The...

It’s the fault of those mean Republican budget cuts. The CDC had the cash to pay out $25 million in bonuses, but it just couldn’t put the money together to write up guidelines telling hospitals that nurses should have no exposed skin when treating Ebola patients. Will the Republican budget cutting madness never stop? "U.S. taxpayers gave $6 billion in salaries and $25 million in bonuses to an elite corps of health care specialists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention since 2007, according to data compiled by American Transparency’s OpenTheBooks.com, an online portal aggregating 1.3 billion lines of...

(CNSNews.com) -- The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) plans to spend up to $10.4 million in taxpayer dollars to “empower” young girls in Malawi to use birth control. The grant is aimed at preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, particularly HIV - which disproportionately infects young females in Malawi - even though such efforts have failed in the past. As part of USAID’s “Girls’ Empowerment through Education and Health Activity” initiative, the grant will fund Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) and Family Planning (FP) education for girls ages 10-19. Sexual and Reproductive Health Services are defined in the...

When you work in Washington (and assuming you haven’t been corrupted), you run the risk of being endlessly outraged about all the waste. But not all waste is created equal. Some examples are so absurd that they deserve special attention. Forcing taxpayers to pay millions of dollars for pro-Obamacare and pro-IRS propaganda.Doing interviews – at a per-person cost of $6,000 – about erectile dysfunction and sticking the tab on us.Hiring bureaucrats to monitor school lunches and replace healthy turkey sandwiches with processed chicken nuggets.Giving disability benefits to a grown man who wants to wear diapers and live as an “adult...

Three leading House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats are calling for an oversight hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program, a phone subsidy for the poor that has been disparagingly referred to as the "Obama phone" program. The program, which began long before President Obama took office, has been notorious for waste and abuse. The FCC enacted reforms last year aimed at trimming billions of dollars from the program, but recent reports indicate that people who are ineligible for the program are still receiving subsidies. The program gained more attention last year when conservatives seized on a viral video...