Free Republic

We’re coming up on three and a half years into the Biden presidency — a presidency which from the outset promised an “all of government” regulatory onslaught to force a transition away from fossil fuels and to “green” energy. And the regulatory onslaught has indeed come forth. But how about the actual transition in energy use? Not so much. Let’s have a round-up of some recent data points. On the regulatory onslaught front, on March 7, 2024 Thomas Pyle of the Institute for Energy Research put out a list of “200 Ways the Biden Administration and Democrats Have Made it...

Kira Enders and her boyfriend Dakota Jones allegedly attempted to trick lottery officials into giving them a $1 million prize with two torn scratch-off tickets spliced together to form a winning ticket, according to authorities. The two tickets were ripped horizontally with the top half of one ticket and the bottom half of the other then “carefully pieced together” to show the $1 million prize winner, according to a police report cited by the Pensacola News Journal.

Santa Monica city officials last week approved a multimillion-dollar apartment unit for the homeless just days after the release of an audit which found California could not account for the $24 billion it spent on the state’s burgeoning homeless crisis. The 122-unit building for the homeless will include a mix of studio, one, two and three-bedroom apartments, along with ground floor retail and residential and commercial parking spaces. A design concept available on the city's website shows that the multi-apartment unit will cost more than $123 million, for a cost of just over $1 million each for the 122 apartments....

Often the Joe Biden administration has claimed that COVID-19 attacked families and workers through no fault of their own, and what was needed was its progressive spending agenda, specifically helping "people of color, immigrants, and low-wage workers." In reality, however, Biden's spending, "billions and counting – has gone to unrelated causes and the administration’s COVID relief program continues to fleece American taxpayers," according to a report from government watchdog Judicial Watch. The organization reported that, "Fraud and corruption are so rampant in the U.S. government’s mammoth pandemic relief program that the Justice Department created a special COVID-19 Fraud Enforcement Task...

It should have been a dead giveaway. The Brazilian woman who took her dead uncle into a bank to sign a loan in her name arrived there by taxi — with video even showing the driver helping her move the corpse from his car. Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes was arrested Tuesday after taking the body of her 68-year-old uncle, Paulo Roberto Braga, into a bank and then moving his hand to sign a key document to get her a $3,400 loan. Newly emerged video now shows Nunes — who reportedly told cops that she didn’t know her uncle...

Planned Parenthood performed over 390,000 abortions while receiving nearly $700 million in government grants and reimbursements, according to its latest annual report for 2022-2023. Pro-life activists say the findings appear consistent with the long-term trend of the nation's largest abortion provider performing more abortions and providing fewer health services. According to Planned Parenthood's 2022-2023 annual report, the corporation performed 392,715 abortions and provided less than 2,000 adoption referrals. The organization also offered over 30,000 fewer Pap tests than recorded for 2021-2022. Additionally, preventative care visits also declined by over 30%. Despite the decline in health services, Planned Parenthood reported receiving...

A woman who accused former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer of sexual assault has been indicted by a grand jury in Arizona on felony charges of fraudulent schemes and theft by extortion. Darcy Adanna Esemonu "knowingly did obtain a benefit from ... Trevor Anthony Bauer by means of fraudulent pretenses, representation, promises, or material omissions," according to an indictment dated March 19 and filed Monday in the Superior Court of Arizona in Maricopa County. Esemonu also "knowingly did obtain or sought to obtain property or services ... by means of a threat to in the future expose a secret or...

An advocacy group based in Northeastern Mexico that lobbies U.S. lawmakers has distributed and posted flyers encouraging illegal immigrants to vote for President Joe Biden in the 2024 election, according to The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. Translated from Spanish, the Oversight Project notes, the flyers posted by the organization Resource Center Matamoros say: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news and commentary outlet.)

City urged to work harder to assess cost, impactOver the past three years, San Jose has failed to consistently track the more than $300 million spent to fight homelessness and cannot adequately ensure that the money is helping to alleviate the crisis, according to a much-anticipated state audit. The financial audit, released this week by the California State Auditor, also found that San Jose lacks clear goals for its homelessness programs and has no cohesive plan for building the affordable housing needed for its estimated 6,340 homeless residents. “The biggest conclusion that the auditors came back with is that there’s...

In 2020, Dr. Scott Atlas was an advisor to the president and a member of the White House COVID-19 Task Force. He was shocked to see how powerful figures in Washington, including Dr. Fauci, were incentivized to politicize and monetize the response to the pandemic. In this candid conversation with PragerU CEO Marissa Streit, Dr. Atlas reveals that many Americans may have died because of censorship, dishonesty, and the demonization of medical dissent. Will Americans allow this to happen again?

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States. Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Real estate tycoon Truong My Lan was sentenced Thursday to death by a court in Ho Chi Minh City in southern Vietnam in the country’s largest financial fraud case ever, state media Vietnam Net said. The 67-year-old chair of the real estate company Van Thinh Phat was formally charged with fraud amounting to $12.5 billion — nearly 3% of the country’s 2022 GDP. Lan illegally controlled Saigon Joint Stock Commercial Bank between 2012 and 2022 and allowed 2,500 loans that resulted in losses of $27 billion to the bank, reported state media VnExpress. The court asked...

@amuse @amuse DEI: In another case of ‘Didn’t Earn It’ Biden-appointed Federal Reserve Board member Lisa DeNell Cook’s entire academic career has been found to be fraudulent. From faking research data, to outright plagiarism, to lying on her resume - Cook is in charge of our monetary policy.

How odd it is that America is wasting billions of dollars hiring DEI czars and electing woke politicians, who so often accuse others of a multitude of sins, largely as a way of enriching themselves. When ideology replaces meritocracy or provides immunity from the consequences of illegal behavior, systemic mediocrity follows. Under toxic National Socialism, Stalinism, and Maoism, millions of cronies and grifters mouthed party lines in hopes that their approved ideology would allow them to advance their careers and excuse their lawbreaking. The same thing has happened with the woke movement and the now-huge Diversity/Equity/Inclusion conglomerate. Grifters and opportunists...

OXFORD, England (AP) — Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world's populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he...

President Joe Biden keeps lecturing corporate America to “pay your fair share” of taxes. It turns out he’s right that some companies really are getting away scot-free from paying taxes.But it isn’t Big Tech companies in Silicon Valley or the Wall Street financial company “fat cats” or big banks or Walmart. They pay billions in taxes.The culprits here are the very companies that President Biden is in bed with: green energy firms.It turns out that despite all the promises over the past decade about how renewable energy is the future of power production in America, by far the biggest tax...

The Senate on Wednesday afternoon voted in favor of passing a bill reversing the Biden administration's actions mandating states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. The chamber approved the resolution in a 53-47 vote in which Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican voting in the affirmative. The bill was introduced in February by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Manchin. "Few things are more frustrating in government than un-elected bureaucrats asserting authority they don’t have and foisting federal...

RON DESANTIS IS BACK TO RUNNING Florida’s government. But he hasn’t really stopped running for president. Next month, DeSantis hosts a two-day presidential-donor gathering at the Hard Rock Hotel in South Florida that’s billed as—don’t call it a “fundraiser”—an “Investor Appreciation Retreat.” It’s the latest phase of an image makeover DeSantis started after he officially dropped out of the 2024 race on January 21 and endorsed Donald Trump. For the past month, DeSantis has hosted one-on-one thank-you calls with donors, small meetings with more of these “investors” in Naples and in Miami, and conference calls with former volunteers. In a...

In New York, Marly Hornik teamed up with election and cybersecurity expert Harry Haury to form the New York Citizens Audit to investigate their state's 2022 voter roll data. They found 1,467,399 illegal duplicate registrations with 449,856 votes cast, 16,623 votes cast by voters with a blank address, and 35,312 more votes counted than voters who voted. "It was clear to me that the premise that our elections are honest and accurate is not substantiated," Hornik said. "So we founded a nationwide group, United Sovereign Americans (USA), to share our expertise with over 25 state groups to help them investigate...