Free Republic

Three men carrying false identification were denied access to the federal courthouse in downtown Miami Thursday. They attempted to enter at multiple vehicle check-points until security guards recognized one of the men and immediately contacted deputies from the U.S. Marshals Service. The men used badges that resembled those from three different federal agencies, including a U.S. Marshal badge, but within seconds of examining the badges, security guards knew they were fraudulent. Once the men were detained, officers searched their vehicle and discovered other fraudulent law enforcement clothing. One man was arrested and could face charges by the U.S. Attorney’s Office,...

An intern was caught downloading child pornography at NASA, but officials let him continue working until he was arrested in an agency office a month later, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s (TheDCNF) Investigative Group. Federal attorneys decided not to prosecute Arthemuel Panes Hernaez, despite his possessing around 1,000 pornographic images of children. Hernaez was later prosecuted in a local court but was only sentenced to four months in county jail after the judge feared a longer stretch could cost Hernaez his NASA internship. (RELATED: The EPA PAID A Child Molester To Retire) A federal investigator...

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri senators voted early Wednesday to give residents the option of whether to get a driver's license that complies with a federal identification requirement, which would allow people to board airplanes and enter military bases. Missouri is one of only five states that doesn't comply or have an extension to comply with a 2005 federal law that established tougher licensing requirements in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Lawmakers have pushed back on the stringent proof-of-identity requirements under the law, known as the Real ID Act, citing privacy issues. But after hours of debate...

On March 13th, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order that will make the Federal government more efficient, effective, and accountable to you, the American people. This Executive Order directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to present the President with a plan that recommends ways to reorganize the executive branch and eliminate unnecessary agencies. President Trump wants to hear your ideas and suggestions on how the government can be better organized to work for the American people. Here is a link to the form to register your suggestion...have at it fellow patriots and tell all...

BI Director James Comey said he let cameras into the New York FBI offices to film a new television series in hopes that he might build trust with the American people. “I worry sometimes that people don’t know us,” Comey said in explaining why he green-lighted “Inside the FBI: New York,” a new television documentary by Dick Wolf of “Law & Order” fame and documentarian Marc Levin. “We have to care what people think of us,” Comey said at a showing of the new series at the Newseum in Washington, DC. “The faith and confidence of the American people is...

Vista is the corporation that owns CCI and Federal brands. They have been increasing production of .22 rimfire ammunition. It was expected to be ramped up 20% this year.Following the election of President Trump, demand for ammunition has dropped. According to an article from Lewiston, Idaho, Vista has laid off employees in both the Lewiston and the Anoka, Minnesota ammunition plant locations.  From the postregister.com: The number of people who work at Vista Outdoor’s ammunition-making operations has been shifting since February. A month-long voluntary, temporary furlough for about 100 Lewiston employees ends Thursday and will bring the number of...

When it comes to President Donald Trump’s threats and executive order to cut federal funding off to so-called “sanctuary cities,” a City Council committee Thursday requested a proactive plan on how to “hit back” with legal action should the order be executed on Los Angeles. “We are on the defensive so much of the time,” said Councilwoman Nury Martinez at a meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee on Immigrant Affairs before requesting the city attorney’s office report back “on how you are going to protect our city and our interests in case the federal government comes after us.” Councilman David...

A federal District Court judge in Maryland is considering whether he should order President Donald Trump to double the annual inflow of refugees up to 100,000 per year.

California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye on Thursday told federal immigration officials to stop “stalking undocumented immigrants” at California courthouses. Cantil-Sakauye said she was “deeply concerned” that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are apparently seeking out undocumented immigrants for deportation at courthouses and courtrooms from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

President Trump signed a new executive order Monday instructing federal government agencies to cut duplicative and unnecessary programs across the board. The order is intended to "improve the efficiency, effectiveness and accountability of the executive branch." “This order requires a thorough examination of every executive department and agency to see where money is being wasted, how services can be improved and whether programs are truly serving American citizens,” Trump said at the White House. “Based on this input, we will develop a detailed plan to make the federal government work better, reorganizing, consolidating and eliminating where necessary. In other words,...

As hard as it will be to pass health insurance reform, tax reform, and infrastructure legislation, President Trump's toughest challenge will come in trying to cut the numbers of federal workers. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but budget and government experts are calling the planned reductions in the federal workforce a "historic contraction" not seen since the drawdown after World War II.  Cabinet secretaries will have some leeway in how they reduce their departments' workforces.  Some may rely on the normal attrition that occurs in any workforce with retirements and vacancies created by promotions being responsible for...

Di Leo: The Deep State -- an Institutional Barrier Against Draining the Swamp By John F. Di Leo - As the Trump Administration began, two terms took over our discourse, from keyboard warriors on social media to the formal political theorists of the mainstream media. These two terms are not exactly antonyms, as one is a verb and the other is a gerund, but they certainly are diametrically opposed to each other: Draining the Swamp on the one hand, and the Deep State on the other. Draining the Swamp was easy to say, easy to understand, easy to cheer for....

Bill de Blasio met with federal prosecutors in a Manhattan law office on Friday where he faced questions related to a criminal probe of his fundraising, the mayor’s office said. Prosecutors have been investigating whether or not donors to de Blasio’s 2013 campaign or his former nonprofit, Campaign for One New York, were rewarded with favors. De Blasio, who agreed to speak voluntarily and without immunity to prosecutors, arrived at Kramer Lefin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, the firm of his defense lawyer Barry Berke, just after 9 a.m.

MEXICO CITY –  Mexican authorities say an alleged regional leader of the Beltran Leyva drug cartel has been killed in a shootout with federal forces.   The Interior Department says via Twitter that Juan Francisco Patron Sanchez headed up the cartel's operations in the state of Nayarit and in the southern part of Jalisco state.   The Mexican navy reports late Thursday that seven "accomplices" were also killed.   The Interior Department said more details would be released Friday.        

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) announced he is withdrawing a bill that would have sold off 3.3 million acres of public lands across 10 states following backlash from the sporting community. The Disposal of Excess Federal Lans Act of 2017 (or H.R. 621) would have directed “the Secretary of the Interior to sell certain Federal lands in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming, previously identified as suitable for disposal, and for other purposes.” This would have encompassed 3.5 million acres– roughly the same size as the state of Connecticut. Many saw this as a threat...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has cut funding to Travis County, the home of the city of Austin, following through on a threat to block state grants over a new sheriff’s refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. Abbott’s office said Monday it would cancel $1.8 million in grants to law enforcement programs in the county, the state capital and the University of Texas’s flagship campus. The governor said he is asking state agencies to identify other grants to the county that he could also block.

Sessions Promises to ‘Properly Enforce’ Current Gun Laws, Endorses NRA-Backed Project Exile Stephen Gutowski January 10, 2017 Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.) said Tuesday he would prosecute gun crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction during his confirmation hearing for attorney general. Sessions’ views on gun crime prosecutions were made clear during an exchange between him and Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas). Cornyn framed the question in terms of violence against police and gun violence against minority communities. He specifically focused on gun crimes committed by felons who were already prohibited from possessing firearms. “We ought to hold our police and...

It was one of the promises Donald Trump made on the campaign trail which drew widespread approbation from conservatives while spurring varying degrees of either anger or depression among the beltway crowd. Trump said that it would be more of an ax than a new broom when it comes to the size of the federal workforce and he would freeze hiring if elected. The pledge led as many as a third of federal workers to say they might walk off the job if he was elected. So would he really do it? Well… that didn’t take long. (Government Executive)...

Take Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson’s recent designation of the nation’s state and local election systems as “critical infrastructure.” Chances are, you didn’t hear about it. And even if you did, you may have shrugged. Sounds pretty unremarkable, right? Surely our election systems deserve to be well-protected, so why complain? Dig a bit, though, and it starts to look fishy. Go a little deeper, and it starts to look dangerous. There are 9,000 jurisdictions responsible for vote-counting nationwide. But this decentralization is a good thing. We’ve all heard the rumors of election hacking, either by Russia or others, and one...

Making good on a promise to slash government, President-elect Trump has asked his incoming team to pursue spending and staffing cuts. Insiders said that the spending reductions in some departments could go as high as 10 percent and staff cuts to 20 percent, numbers that would rock Washington if he follows through. At least two so-called "landing teams" in Cabinet agencies have relayed the call for cuts as part of their marching orders to shrink the flab in government. The cuts would target discretionary spending, not mandated programs such as Medicare or Social Security, the sources said. The spending reductions...