Free Republic

The latest Trustees Report projects the Social Security retirement trust fund will run out of money by 2033. The trust fund has been bleeding cash since 2018, and it's getting worse every year. Congress has several options to mitigate the potential benefit cuts facing 70 million retirees. There might only be enough funds to pay out 79% of retirement benefits unless Congress acts. Retirees could be in for a rude awakening in the near future unless Congress makes some changes to Social Security. The most recent Social Security Trustees Report indicated the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will...

Gavin Newsom proposes a mix of spending cuts and using reserves to balance the state budget. He says that core services will be largely untouched, but some existing programs would be affected.

In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor. At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA...

President Joe Biden accidentally referred to Hispanic illegal immigrants as “voters” in an interview with a Spanish radio show on Thursday while discussing the ongoing crisis at the southern border. "It's even a bigger influx now in terms of Hispanic voters, or Hispanic - Hispanic citizens, who want to become citizens," President Biden said while talking to the host of the radio show Chiquibaby. In the same interview, Biden likened the current immigration levels to the 1840s Irish migration to the United States due to famine and persecution. Biden said that the current crisis is "a little bit like back...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces began a renewed ground assault on Ukraine’s northeast, killing and injuring several and forcing more than 1,700 civilians to evacuate from the Kharkiv region, local officials said Saturday. Artillery, mortar, and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages, leaving at least three people dead and five others injured, said Kharkiv governor, Oleh Syniehubov. Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the Kharkiv region on Friday to hold off a Russian attempt to breach local defenses, authorities said.

President Joe Biden said during a fundraiser Friday in San Francisco, California, that he wished former President Donald Trump had injected himself with bleach. While speaking at the fundraiser on Friday, Biden referenced a false claim that Trump had once suggested people “inject bleach” to help treat the coronavirus, saying he wished the former president “had done a little bit himself,” according to the Jerusalem Post.

Fox News Senior National Correspondent William LaJeunesse joined Special Report Friday to report on increasing radical student recruitment efforts present at anti-Israel protests on college campuses nationwide. "Armed struggle is enshrined in law," showed one confiscated pamphlet. Another, "We are not satisfied with co-existence." Going beyond extremist and violent rhetoric, weapons were discovered. Chains, steel cables and buckets of rocks were found and subsequently confiscated by authorities at UT Austin demonstrations last month. More documents obtained by Fox News purportedly "celebrat[e] the death of innocent Jews and the elimination of Israel." Of 79 arrested at UT Austin, 45 were not...

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced his proposed $288 billion state budget, which would cut thousands of vacant state jobs and funding to more than 200 state programs in order to close the state’s $27.6 billion deficit. Newsom revealed his budget proposal on Friday for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, which starts on July 1, citing the importance of accountability and responsibility, according to ABC7 News. This comes a month after state officials agreed to reduce California’s deficit by $17.3 billion after Newsom announced in January that the state’s deficit was $37.9 billion. The state deficit ended up being closer to $45...

Ford reported losing over $100,000 per electric vehicle sold in the first quarter of 2022, with its electric vehicle division posting a $1.3 billion loss. Electric vehicle sales volumes dropped 20% as Ford was forced to slash prices due to weak industry demand. “Americans don’t want EVs at levels Biden’s climate hysteria require,” businessman Andrew Puzder wrote on X. “Ford’s EV Q1 losses soared to $1.3 billion — a ridiculous $132,000 per EV sold. All Ford’s profits came from combustion engine vehicle sales. Collectivist policies destroy prosperity.” The company expects $5 billion in electric vehicle losses for the year, up...

A powerful solar storm will make the northern lights visible to most of America — including the New York City area — Friday night, but you’ll need to get out of the city if you want a chance at seeing the auroras. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has upgraded the looming geomagnetic solar storm to a level 4, which is capable of disrupting America’s electrical grid and making the northern lights visible as far south as Alabama. The key to witnessing the natural phenomena will depend on the amount of cloud coverage and light population, making upstate New...

The US government says Israel may have breached humanitarian law in Gaza using American weapons. In a delayed report, the state department says it is "reasonable to assess" that US-supplied arms have been used in ways "inconsistent" with Israel's obligations. But it says Israel has had to confront an "extraordinary military challenge" fighting Hamas in Gaza. The report, ordered by the White House, was submitted to Congress on Friday. While the report was a clear rebuke of some Israeli operations in Gaza, it stopped short of definitively saying that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign had breached international law. And...

President Joe Biden’s border chief says the White House’s border plan “is working.” But the plan is not intended to reduce migration into U.S. communities, homes, and jobs, according to May0rkas, who was impeached in February by the House of Representatives. Instead, the border plan is intended to divert the flood of economic migrants from the cartel-run “irregular migration” pipeline into many expanding government-run quasi-legal pipelines, Mayorkas told NPR Morning Edition‘s Steve Inskeep during a May 10 interview: Inskeep: Do you also have a policy goal to cause fewer people to arrive, fewer people to get in, fewer people to...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) praised House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in an interview with Politico, saying that he and the Democrat leader have “more in common than people might think.” Johnson said about Jeffries: I have. Hakeem is a good man. We’ve worked well together. We have a lot more in common than people might think. You know, he’s from New York and I’m from Louisiana. While we have lots of disagreements on policies and the fine points of policy, I think you can appreciate people for who they are as a person. I think that’s what we’re called...

The city of Denver has seen more than 40,000 illegal aliens arrive within the city limits in the last few months, as the city's resources have been stretched to the breaking point. The illegals are grateful, for sure. Well, some of them are grateful. A group of illegals staying in an encampment under a railroad bridge made a list of 13 demands they sent to the mayor. If the mayor doesn't play ball, the illegals are threatening to stay outside. Given that summer will be here in a few weeks, it's not much of a threat. But these illegals have...

Though all eyes have been on former President Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom, some are turning their attention to Trump’s classified documents case as it hits a series of major snags. In a recent court filing, Jay Bratt, the lead Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor now assigned to special counsel Jack Smith’s team, admitted that the FBI brought cover sheets reading “top secret” to its raid of Mar-a-Lago. The cover sheets, Bratt explained, were used as placeholders for the classified documents found at the scene. Now, both Trump’s defense and the special counsel are admitting that the documents seized...

Hamas needs to be understood as a criminal organization with whom negotiations are absurd, and swift action against, is the only reasonable response. Reuters reports that “Hamas says it will not compromise further with Israel to win Gaza ceasefire.” It’s just another headline about the heirs of Yassir Arafat; we know better than to take the statement seriously. Hamas will keep talking as long as they can, for obvious reasons. The people engaged in negotiations, at least, if not their foot-soldiers, are safe while they’re at the negotiating table. But there’s a different question that ought to be inspired by...

Communist organizations are promoting physical revolution and escalation of conflict in pamphlets given out en masse during the pro-Palestinian protests in New York City. Multiple groups met on May 7 at Revolution Books in the Harlem neighborhood of the Manhattan borough of New York City and discussed “gathering forces for revolution.” “Nobody is an outsider, when it comes to fighting injustice, everybody has a right and responsibility to do that. And we need to bring to them the way out of this mess, where it’s coming from, and why it can be ended. And how it can be ended to...

Less than a day before the Biden administration announced its intent to cut off U.S. arms sales to Israel, it issued a sanctions waiver to bypass congressional prohibitions on arms sales to a host of Arab nations that boycott the Jewish state, including Hamas ally Qatar and Iran-controlled Lebanon, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. On Tuesday—just a day before President Joe Biden threatened to withhold key weapons deliveries from Israel if the country moves forward with an incursion in the Gaza Strip's Rafah neighborhood—the State Department informed Congress that it intends to bypass laws that bar the United States...

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 @julie_kelly2 NEW: Judge Cannon preparing to unseal nonpublic defense motions filed by Trump related to Mar a Lago raid, DC Judge Beryl Howell order that pierced atty-client privilege in docs case, and a prosecutorial abuse motion. Keeps getting good...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wasted little time after 163 Democrats voted to save his speakership to announce he would not use Congress’s constitutional power of the purse to stop special counsel Jack Smith’s “lawfare” against Donald Trump. The Speaker, in some of his earliest public comments after Democrats saved his gavel, refused to make any attempt to defund Smith’s office as it continues its prosecutions of Trump. “That’s not something you wave a wand and just eliminate the special counsel as a provision,” Johnson told Politico. “There is a necessity for a function like that, because sometimes the Department of...