Smollett was convicted in December 2021 for lying to police about an alleged episode in Chicago two years before, where he claimed two men beat him, yelled homophobic slurs and placed a noose around his neck while wearing MAGA hats.
The city of Chicago’s Law Department filed a civil lawsuit against him in 2019 to recover over $130,000 in costs incurred investigating his allegedly staged attack, after he failed to meet a city-imposed payment deadline.
The case, which had dragged on for six years, was finally put to rest by both sides through a settlement.
The terms of his settlement require that Smollett pays $50,000 to a charity of his choice, instead of paying the six-figures in restitution for the investigation, as per TMZ.
President Trump’s education boss Linda McMahon has defended the administration’s decision to resume student loan debt collections — insisting that greedy colleges have “profited massively” from Biden-era forgiveness measures.
The Department of Education announced Monday it would start recouping federal student repayments again from May 5 from the roughly 5.3 million borrowers who are currently in default on their loans.
In a fiery Wall Street Journal op-ed addressing the move, the education secretary blamed the Biden administration and universities for making “empty promises to students while pocketing their loan dollars.”
State Auditor Matt Dunlap’s 2024 report shows a total lack of oversight for state spending and routine disregard for the rules pertaining to non-competitive contract awards
In a scathing audit of Maine’s 2024 spending, Maine’s Office of the State Auditor has revealed systemic financial mismanagement, cronyism-friendly contracting practices, and multiple material weaknesses across state agencies—leaving taxpayers exposed to legal risks, unnecessary costs, and outright corruption.
At the center of the audit’s most troubling findings is the state’s rampant abuse of the non-competitive bidding process. Maine’s centralized procurement agency, the Office of State Procurement Services (OSPS), was found to have routinely approved contracts without conducting required cost analyses, bypassing rules meant to safeguard public dollars. This raises serious red flags about favoritism, nepotism, and possible corruption within the process for handing out state and federal cash.
The competitive bidding process, which ensures that potentially large government contracts are awarded according to an open and transparent process, has been regularly circumvented in violation of state and federal law, according to State Auditor Matt Dunlap.
The result?
More than $2.1 billion in FY2024 contract payments were made under a system the audit describes as lacking basic supervisory oversight and controls.
I focus a bit on Maine because it is a microcosm of what happened in California, then Oregon, Washington and so on. In Maine we can watch the same lefty takeover we saw in CA and OR not that long ago — Soros money, rigged elections, wealthy liberals with second or third home in the state; its largest city already a broken and bloody nose, an ominous sign of what’s coming to the rest of the state. ABN
UPDATE: I am bumping this to the top of the page and highly recommend watching it. It’s from a couple of days ago but is not at all outdated. Trump is the only American president to open cabinet meetings to the public in this manner. Trump’s cabinet is the public face of his comitatus, which is an ancient political core formation dating back to 2,000 BCE if not earlier. The comitatus has been used throughout Eurasian history and is still a primary form of governance, central to almost all successful governing bodies today. As you watch this, imagine you are watching Marcus Aurelius, Genghis Kahn or Alexander the Great speaking with their top generals and administrators, their comitatus. In a comitatus all members must be loyal to their leader. In ancient times, a leader’s comitatus would commit suicide upon his death. This was a great honor. In later times, only his innermost people would kill themselves. As you watch the video above, notice how each member of Trump’s cabinet praises him and displays fealty to his leadership. Notice how Trump defers to them in many ways. This is the way it should be and always has been. Put on your anthropologist’s hat or your historian’s hat to fully appreciate what you are seeing. Insofar as Trump and his comitatus are able to act as a single team with a common focus, they will be hugely successful. At some point, they will fight among themselves over who will be the next leader, but for now it will be best for all of them, and for us, for them to cooperate and do their work quickly and efficiently for the good of their country and ours. ABN
HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced he partnered up with DHS Chief Kristi Noem to end taxpayer-funded housing for illegal aliens.
“U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem today signed the “American Housing Programs for American Citizens” Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), to end the wasteful misappropriation of taxpayer dollars to benefit illegal aliens instead of American citizens,” HUD announced on Monday.
“As part of this new agreement, HUD will provide a full-time staff member to assist in operations at the Incident Command Center (ICC), establishing an interagency partnership to facilitate data sharing and ensure taxpayer-funded housing programs are not used to harbor or benefit illegal aliens,” HUD said.
Somalian immigrants moved to Maine, create a quasi-NGO, bilked our welfare programs to the tune of $5 million per year and funded a Somalian militia.
One of them ran for President of Jubaland, Somalia in 2024. He lost and will likely return to the states to continue his mission of bilking American taxpayers to support Somalia.
Meanwhile, Gov J. Mills has created a new Office of New Americans to prioritize Maine taxpayer spending on foreigners who have never paid a dime in taxes. The new office is staffed with immigrants who admit their mission is to take tax money for their home countries while rejecting assimilation. https://x.com/TheMaineWire/status/1891926124319399937…
At the same time, Maine is unable to reimburse hospitals for Mainecare, causing the hospitals to lay off hundreds of workers, and our budget has increased by 57% ($7.2 billion to $11.3 billion) since Mills first invited the immigrants in 2019.
EXC: The daughter of Anti-DOGE judge Beryl Howell works at a British nonprofit belonging to a USAID-funded group.
She’s worked with organization receiving over $1.3 billion from USAID.
She also attended the 2017 Women’s March with her sister.
Alina Rosenfeld is a Principal Consultant for Social Development Direct, a “provider of innovative gender equality and social inclusion consultancy and research.”
It’s part of the Inclusive Futures consortium which states it was “previously funded by USAID until January 2025.”
American Buddhist Net 