Free Republic

The federal government won an 8.7 percent profit of $37.5 billion from the resident population of 2.9 million refugees and asylum seekers in the 15 years before 2020, says a celebratory report by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The report also notes that the imported refugees also inflicted a 7.3 percent loss of $21.4 billion on the taxpayers who fund state and local governments. The report calculated the costs by comparing the $739 billion in taxes paid by migrants and their families to their $723.4 billion in government aid.

Those claiming they are subject to unconstitutional agency proceedings need not suffer through agency proceedings before bringing their claims to federal court. Yesterday a unanimous Supreme Court held that those subject to federal agency adjudicaiton can challenge the constitutionality of such adjudication in federal court before such adjudication concludes. What some had billed as an attack on the viability of the adminstrative state was not viewed that way by the justices, who all agreed the agencies' attempts to insulate themselves from federal judicial review lacked legal basis. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the opinion for the Court in Axon v. Federal...

The D.C. bureaucracy and specifically the intelligence agencies have long become powers unto themselves, and a threat to our democracy.The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s long history of abusing its power is once again prominent amid the continued expose by Special Counsel John Durham. His prosecution is demonstrating the FBI’s use of its power to deploy federal intelligence assets against political opponents of Democrats. The FBI routinely intervenes in politics, such as when the FBI assisted the Hillary Clinton campaign in painting former President Donald Trump as a Russian intelligence asset, as Durham’s investigation is emphasizing with more evidence. By getting...

White House is telling federal agencies they can hold off on suspending or firing federal workers for not complying with the vaccine mandate until after the holidays, according to a memo obtained by ABC News. https://abcn.ws/3rjrN2B

Hawley to Introduce Bill to Move Federal Agencies out of Washington D.C. to Economically Stagnant Areas Days after squaring off online against “elitist” critics of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s relocation of agency jobs, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) will introduce legislation on Wednesday that would move the majority of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington D.C. to economically depressed areas, according to a summary of the bill provided to National Review. The “Helping Infrastructure Restore the Economy (HIRE) Act,” which is cosponsored by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.), would move 90 percent of the positions within ten executive agencies to...

Trump administration officials have put the Office of Personnel Management on the chopping block in an ambitious but controversial bid to reorganize the federal government -- and they are ready to furlough or even lay off workers if Congress stands in their way. According to an internal document obtained by The Washington Post, workers could be sent home on Oct. 1 and laid off 30 days later, if Congress will not agree to their plan to eliminate the agency -- which essentially serves as HR of the federal government. “This is a crisis building for years,” acting OPM Director Margaret...

Office of Management & Budget Director Mick Mulvaney gave an intricate and often eccentric explanation of redundancy and overlap in federal bureaucracy in a presentation that stunned the president and the press. "I call this the 'drain the swamp' cabinet meeting," Mulvaney said, adding that it has been about 100 years since the federal government was reorganized at this scale. He criticized the "Byzantine nature" by which the government regulates, creating headaches for business owners, employees and taxpayers. "If you have a cheese pizza, it's governed by the Food & Drug Administration. If you put a pepperoni on it, it's...

While the discredited FBI lead counter-intelligence agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, discussed forming a “secret society” which they now claim was a joke, there is a Sept. 20, 2017, article in True Pundit which describes how six U.S. intelligence agencies formed a “Stealth Task Force” headed by CIA Director John Brennan to run the unauthorized surveillance on Trump associates and possibly against Mr. Trump himself. According to the article, after being denied two FISA court warrants applications, this group used the British spy element, headed by Robert Hannigan, embedded at NSA, Ft. George Meade, Md....

The Trump administration is clamping down on public communications by agencies as it seeks to assert control over the federal bureaucracy. New restrictions on social media use and interaction with press and lawmakers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Agriculture and the Interior have sparked concerns of a President Trump-backed effort to silence dissenting views. The Trump administration’s newly imposed communications rules vary at different agencies. At the EPA, staffers were ordered to stop issuing press releases, blog updates and social media posts, according to a memo to employees. The Agriculture...

U.S. EPA employees were in tears. Worried Energy Department staffers were offered counseling. Some federal employees were so depressed, they took time off. Others might retire early. And some employees are in downright panic mode in the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory. "People are upset. Some people took the day off because they were depressed," said John O'Grady, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, a union that represents thousands of EPA employees. After Election Day, "people were crying," added O'Grady, who works in EPA's Region 5 office in Chicago. "They were recommending that people take sick leave...

Last year she was on top of the world, but now Elizabeth Holmes has a net worth of zero. Holmes, who is the founder of blood-testing company Theranos, was at the top of Forbes' list of the richest self-made women in America with a net worth of $4.5billion last year. However, Forbes has lowered their estimate of her net worth to nothing, amid allegations that the blood-testing company she founded in 2003 has inaccurate tests and is being investigated by federal agencies. Theranos Inc was sued on Thursday, accused of endangering customer health through 'massive failures' that misrepresented the accuracy...

Just 30 minutes ahead of the fourth GOP presidential primary debate in Milwaukee, Senator Ted Cruz dropped a plan over at National Review to eliminate five major federal government agencies. "We will sharply reduce the alphabet soup of government entities, beginning with the ABCs that should not exist in the first place: The Agencies, Bureaus, Commissions, and other programs that are constitutionally illegitimate and harmful to American households and businesses. It's time to return to a federal government that abides by our constitutional framework and strips power from unelected bureaucrats," Cruz writes. First Cruz proposes the elimination of the IRS, which...

The Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars over the last decade on military-style weapons to arm its 200 “special agents” to fight environmental crime. Among the weapons purchased are guns, body armor, camouflage equipment, unmanned aircraft, amphibious assault ships, radar and night-vision gear and other military-style weaponry and surveillance activities, according to a new report by the watchdog group Open the Books. “Protecting the environment just got real. With millions of dollars spent on military style weaponry, the EPA is now literally ensconced with all institutional force,” said Adam Andrzejewski, founder of Open the Books and the author...

African Americans make up 17.4 percent of the federal workforce, as compared to 10.1 percent of the civilian labor force. But the percentage of African Americans drops dramatically with each rise in job grade. They hold 27.6 percent of the lowest positions (GS 1-4), 25.8 percent of GS 5-8, 15.7 percent of GS 9-12, 10.9 percent of GS 13-15 and just 6.9 percent of Senior Pay levels. Advance Your Career Hispanics make up just 7.3 percent of the federal workforce versus 12.6 percent of the civilian labor force. They hold about 9 percent of the GS 1-4 and 5-8 job...

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sure does want to shut down a lot of the federal agencies he hopes to one day run.The firebrand conservative and GOP presidential candidate has defined his young Senate career by almost reflexively opposing increased government spending and programs . . ."I think we should shrink the size and power of the federal government by every and any means possible," he told the Daily Caller in 2012. -- snip -- The State DepartmentMost recently, Cruz threatened in a letter to President Obama to hold up State Department nominees and hold all bills that fund...

President Barack Obama wants to create a new government agency dedicated to keeping the nation’s food safe. The proposal in the president’s budget released Monday comes after outbreaks of illnesses linked to chicken, eggs, peanuts and cantaloupe in recent years. More than a dozen federal agencies oversee food safety, and consumer advocates have long called for bringing all those functions together in a single home. […] The budget proposes consolidating the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and all of FDA’s food safety oversight into one new agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. The new agency...

SAN FRANCISCO — As a Mexican-American woman who started her own consulting firm in Los Angeles, accountant Sonia Luna has taken advantage of programs aimed at helping minority- and female-owned businesses compete for government and corporate contracts. But increasingly, the fact that Luna is a lesbian entrepreneur hasn't hurt, either. Federal agencies, organizations such as the National Football League and more than one-third of Fortune 500 companies are trying to expand their vendor pools by explicitly encouraging bids from gay, lesbian and transgender contractors. The little-known outreach efforts mirror longstanding “supplier diversity” initiatives aimed at developing economic opportunities for businesses...

Early in the morning, two hundred thirty eight years ago, George Washington and the Continental Army reached the outskirts of Trenton, New Jersey. Much like today, no-one really wanted to go to New Jersey, but they were forced by circumstances to make the arduous trek. Washington’s force of 2,400 men surprised, and ultimately defeated, the 1,400 Hessian mercenaries who were fighting on behalf of the British Crown. A much needed win was tallied under the Patriot’s side of the scoreboard, emboldening the Continental Army and our quest for freedom. Washington had lead his men through the icy waters of the...

WASHINGTON — The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show. At the Supreme Court, small teams of undercover officers dress as students at large demonstrations outside the courthouse and join the protests to look for suspicious activity, according to officials familiar with the practice. At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers, accountants drug dealers or yacht buyers...

https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=9fc3a01217d03b0354e1e18b69aa7bad&tab=core&_cview=0Firearms Solicitation Number: USDAOIGWEA-5-7-14 Agency: Department of Agriculture Office: Office of the Inspector General Location: Procurement Branch Original Synopsis May 07, 2014 2:03 pm Solicitation Number: USDAOIGWEA-5-7-14 Notice Type: Sources Sought Synopsis: Added: May 07, 2014 2:03 pm The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General, located in Washington, DC, pursuant to the authority of FAR Part 13, has a requirement for the commerical acquisition of submachine guns, .40 Cal. S&W, ambidextrous safety, semi-automatic or 2 shot burts trigger group, Tritium night sights for front and rear, rails for attachment of flashlight (front under fore grip) and scope (top...