Posted by Andrew Kerr

https://freebeacon.com/politics/not-just-california-high-speed-rail-taxpayers-are-on-the-hook-for-163-billion-in-delayed-infrastructure-boondoggles-ernst-report-shows/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055976

California's long-troubled high-speed rail project is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to taxpayer-funded infrastructure boondoggles, according to a new report from Sen. Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) first obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

With an original completion date of 2020, the California High-Speed Rail Project has now gone $95 billion over budget with a revised launch date no earlier than 2030, leading the Trump administration to pull $4 billion in unspent federal funding from the troubled effort in July. But the rail project represents just one of 13 infrastructure projects funded by the Department of Transportation and other federal agencies that are collectively $163 billion over budget, according to the Ernst report.

"Slamming the brakes on the California Crazy Train, that I fought for years to defund, was a strong start but there is a lot more work to do," Ernst told the Free Beacon. "Today, I am exposing more than $160 billion in boondoggles that need to be brought to a squealing halt to claw funds back in a future rescissions package."

Ernst's report, which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy endorsed in a statement Wednesday, underscores the extent to which taxpayer-funded infrastructure projects often turn into money holes that swallow more government dollars than anticipated.

"If you're receiving taxpayer dollars, you should expect to be held accountable by the American people. No more boondoggles!" Duffy told the Free Beacon. "Thank you, Senator Ernst, for your leadership in Congress to ensure federal dollars are being used effectively and efficiently."

Ernst said it's no coincidence that the bulk of the troubled infrastructure projects are located in California, where former speaker of the State Assembly Willie Brown once boasted about deploying bait-and-switch budgeting tactics to secure taxpayer funding for doomed infrastructure projects.

"In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved," Brown wrote in a 2013 op-ed. "The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there's no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in."

Budgeting like that led to a litany of wasteful and bizarre spending on California's High-Speed Rail project, the Free Beacon reported, with the state spending $50,000 of its budget on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, $177,000 for PoliticoPro subscriptions, and $5 million for graffiti removal, just to name a few. All the while, the project has more than tripled in price, but no track has been laid and no stations have been built. President Donald Trump called the California High-Speed Rail project "the worst-managed project I think I've ever seen," and on July 17, Duffy terminated $4 billion in unspent federal funding for the project.

Ernst praised the Trump administration for canceling federal funding to the rail project but said billions more in potential savings remain on the table.

That includes $5.1 billion in unspent federal funds that the Biden administration committed to the Silicon Valley Subway Extension project, which was originally priced at $4.7 billion in 2018 with passenger services promised to begin in 2026. That price tag has since ballooned to $12.8 billion and its completion date delayed by more than a decade to 2039.

"This train hasn't even left the station yet and it's already a boondoggle," Ernst wrote. "The Trump administration should consider canceling the federal support and save taxpayers $5.1 billion."

Federal taxpayers could save another $3.4 billion if the Trump administration cancels a Biden-era commitment to a San Francisco transit project that has doubled in budget from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $8.3 billion, Ernst wrote.

"Taxpayers in the rest of the country shouldn't be forced to bail out Golden State gravy trains because bureaucrats in Washington are so easily bamboozled by California's boondoggle budgeteering," Ernst wrote in her report.

California isn't the only state with long-delayed and over-budgeted infrastructure projects. Ernst flagged the Honolulu Rail Transit project, which is 11 years behind schedule and $4.8 billion over budget, as the nation's second-most costly "boondoggle" aside from the California High-Speed Rail project. Ernst urged the Trump administration to claw back $619 million in unspent federal dollars committed to the Hawaii project.

"More than $200 million has been paid to contractors for sitting idle due to numerous delays resulting from prematurely awarding the contract, incomplete designs, and lawsuits," Ernst wrote. "That's a lot of money for doing nothing!"

The post Not Just California High-Speed Rail: Taxpayers Are on the Hook for $163 Billion in Delayed Infrastructure Boondoggles, Ernst Report Shows appeared first on .

https://freebeacon.com/politics/not-just-california-high-speed-rail-taxpayers-are-on-the-hook-for-163-billion-in-delayed-infrastructure-boondoggles-ernst-report-shows/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055976

Posted by Adam Kredo

https://freebeacon.com/israel/anti-israel-activist-network-finds-new-cash-pipelines-as-longtime-fiscal-sponsor-faces-legal-and-financial-collapse/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055994

A vast network of anti-Israel groups has found "alternative fiscal sponsorships" after a main backer, the Westchester People's Action Coalition (WESPAC), was exposed in a number of lawsuits as the financial powerhouse underwriting the nationwide campus protest movement, a new watchdog report shows.

WESPAC, a nonprofit headquartered in the affluent New York suburb White Plains, served until recently as the official "fiscal sponsor" for many of the organizations orchestrating violent and often anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses across the country. With WESPAC now embroiled in nationwide lawsuits, its partner organizations have been forced to find new benefactors and alternate fundraising channels.

WESPAC's financial relationships with numerous pro-terror groups allowed it to accept tax-deductible donations on behalf of many organizations "directly responsible for targeting Jews with antisemitic rhetoric and creating a hostile environment across the United States," according to a new report by NGO Monitor, which tracks anti-Israel funding networks. Those organizations include National Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Adalah-NY.

WESPAC's support for these groups landed it in hot water, with the organization finding itself in congressional crosshairs over its funding of activists who vandalized Washington, D.C., landmarks when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress in July 2024. It has also been on the receiving end of a torrent of lawsuits over its support for the pro-Hamas contingent in the United States over the past year. One such lawsuit came from survivors of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and families of the terror group's victims who alleged that WESPAC affiliates function as "collaborators and propagandists for Hamas."

In recent months, "almost all the NGOs" once backed by the charity "have secured alternative fiscal sponsorships," the report states. NGO Monitor's findings suggest that, even with increased scrutiny, the organizations driving the anti-Israel movement on campus continue to enjoy a privileged tax status and access to cash.

WESPAC itself admitted in a January 2025 funding email that it is facing "dire fiscal trouble" as a result of what it characterized as "the well-funded forces of darkness" waging "legal warfare." It asked supporters for $90,000 in funds to "protect WESPAC from the precipice," noting that the threat to its "survival is real." Amid these struggles, WESPAC's multiple "fiscal sponsorships have apparently been dissolved, with NGOs switching to new fiscal arrangements."

The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)—which the Israeli government says maintains "close ties" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group—directed its donations through WESPAC until May 2024, when both groups were named in a lawsuit for blockading Washington, D.C., traffic during an anti-Israel demonstration. By June, PYM "began soliciting donations via Honor the Earth, an 'Indigenous-led organization fighting to dismantle settler-colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism,'" according to NGO Monitor.

PYM organizer Nadya Tannous serves as Honor the Earth's deputy director, while one of its board members, Lenna Zahran Nasr, is a lead organizer for PYM. Like WESPAC and other nonprofits bankrolling the anti-Israel movement, "Honor the Earth does not provide details on the donors and amounts disbursed for PYM activities."

The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), which described Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree as "self defense," directed its supporters to WESPAC until June 2024, saying that donations were "tax-deductible" under its financial arrangement. Later that year, USPCN "moved its online donation platform to Venmo, and by April 2025, USPCN began soliciting funds through the fundraising platform Zeffy," the report found.

The Palestinian Feminist Collective, meanwhile, adopted a new fiscal sponsor in April 2025. It ditched WESPAC for Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC), an extremist anti-Israel group.

As lawsuits in California, Chicago, D.C., New York, and Virginia push WESPAC ever closer to financial ruin, its books are still kept behind closed doors. The charity took in $2.4 million in fiscal year 2022–2023, with around $1.8 million in expenses.

"WESPAC's sources of income are mostly unknown," according to NGO Monitor. "Public records reveal a handful of foundational donors, including from large donor-advised charities that further obscure the origins of the funds."

Financial support from more mainstream progressive foundations has helped legitimize WESPAC's operations, regardless of potential concerns that the cash goes to groups that support terrorist organizations.

WESPAC took in more than $110,000 from the Elias Foundation between 2020 and 2023, according to NGO Monitor's findings. Morgan Stanley Global Impact donated $50,000 in 2020 and 2021. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors provided $230,000 from 2021 to 2023, while the Tides Center and Tides Foundation each provided $35,000 and $90,000, respectively, in 2022.

The post Anti-Israel Activist Network Finds New Cash Pipelines as Longtime Fiscal Sponsor Faces Legal and Financial Collapse appeared first on .

https://freebeacon.com/israel/anti-israel-activist-network-finds-new-cash-pipelines-as-longtime-fiscal-sponsor-faces-legal-and-financial-collapse/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055994

Posted by Andrew Stiles

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/even-the-liberal-media-cant-whitewash-jasmine-crocketts-toxic-narcissism/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055769

Jasmine Crockett, the trash-talking Democratic congresswoman from Texas, has become a genuine celebrity among the handful of troubled souls who still watch MSNBC and think Stephen Colbert is actually funny. They love her because she's loud and obnoxious, but rather than disrupting their peaceful Sunday brunch with the girls, Crockett is disrupting a Democratic establishment that is too polite and insufficiently committed to the anti-Trump resistance. She talks like a deranged MSNBC fan—minus the affected "sassy black woman" accent—venting their outrage in a "Liberal Lushes" group chat.

Crockett, 44, has no real accomplishments to speak of, apart from some meaningless awards (and a diploma from an esteemed private high school in St. Louis). She was named "advocate of the year" at the 2025 Webby Awards for using her online platform to amplify her "commitment to social justice." (She went viral after calling her Republican colleague, Nancy Mace, a "child" during a civil rights hearing.) Crockett is also the star of numerous YouTube videos with "CLAPS BACK" in the title, so there's that. Whether she's denouncing Hispanic Trump voters for having a "slave mentality," or deriding the "white tears" of her critics, Crockett knows how to get attention.

It was only a matter of time before the mainstream media offered to help Crockett burnish her reputation by writing a glowing profile of the potty-mouthed Democrat who fights. On Sunday, the Atlantic published an article that might have accomplished this goal. Alas, even the liberal journalist was repulsed by Crockett's toxic narcissism. As a sign of how poorly it went, the congresswoman called the Atlantic reporter, Elaine Godfrey, days before the story came out to complain that the journalist had been contacting her colleagues in the House "without telling her first," and proclaimed that she was "shutting down the profile and revoking all permissions," which isn't a thing.

The article portrays Crockett as a self-infatuated wannabe influencer who "monitors social-media engagement like a day trader checks her portfolio." She brags about having the "largest social-media following" on the House Oversight Committee, and makes sure to notify the reporter that her YouTube rant about ICE agents being "out of control" was approaching 800,000 views. She would often tout her social media metrics while meeting with House Democrats during her failed bid to become ranking member of the Oversight Committee. "The base is thirsty," she told one freshman colleague. Out of the four candidates who wanted the job, Crockett finished last.

"During many of our conversations, Crockett wore acrylic nails painted with the word RESIST, and a set of heavy lashes over her brown eyes," Godfrey writes. "The lock screen on her phone is a headshot of herself." She does not come across as someone who is particularly pleasant to work for. Godfrey notes that Crockett called her office to berate a staffer in the middle of an interview.

At one point, Crockett appears to invent an origin story out of thin air, much like Kamala Harris claiming to have worked at McDonald's. She recalls working with a black female attorney after she and several other black students at Rhodes College in Memphis, a private liberal arts school, received "anonymous letters containing racist threats." This attorney, Crockett alleges, is the reason she went on to pursue a career in law. "The attorney became Crockett's 'shero,' she said, and inspired her to attend law school herself," Godfrey writes. "When I asked for the name of her shero so that I could interview her, Crockett told me that she did not remember." The reporter's subsequent efforts to track down the inspirational attorney were unsuccessful.

Not surprisingly, Crockett's glory-hounding antics have aggravated many of her fellow Democrats. Godfrey notes that 33 House Democrats she contacted for the story "either declined to talk with me on the record or didn't respond to my interview requests." A number of Democratic staffers suggested that Crockett's colleagues were reluctant to criticize her publicly, but have expressed concern privately about her lack of discipline. "She likes to talk," one of the staffers said. "Is she a loose cannon? Sometimes. Does that cause headaches for other members? 100 percent."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) was one of the Democrats who declined to comment. Crockett claims they have a "positive relationship," but it seems clear that she is jealous of AOC's fame and social media presence. For example, though she praised the nationwide "Fighting Oligarchy" tour, during which AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) traveled the country ranting about billionaires, Crockett complained that it "kind of makes people be like, Oh, it’s about them, right? Instead of the team."

Even Crockett's predecessor, former Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D., Texas), who endorsed Crockett after announcing her retirement in 2021, began to have "second thoughts about Jasmine" before her death in 2023, according to a Democratic strategist based in Texas. Johnson apparently felt that Crockett was "dismissive of her experience and advice," Godfrey writes.

Beyond cursing Republicans, raising money, and racking up views on YouTube, it's not entirely clear what Crockett is trying to accomplish on behalf of her party. "For me, I always just say 'the people,'" she says when asked what Democrats should stand for, apart from hating Trump. She appears as clueless as any other Democrat as to why the party is so reviled, describing Joe Biden as a "great president" whose remarkable accomplishments were not adequately explained to voters. "No one knew what the fuck he did," Crockett says. "He's an old man that gets shit done."

Naturally, the congresswoman has not ruled out a run for governor or U.S. Senate in 2026. "I do think that Texas is blue. We are just voter-suppressed," she said in a recent interview with BET. She wouldn't do it for the attention, of course, but because of her passion for public service. Polling suggests she'd be the favorite to win the nomination in either race. Beto O'Rourke, who has run and lost for both offices, has said Crockett would be a "fantastic" candidate.

What does it all mean? Normal Americans should get used to hearing her name. They'll be hearing it a lot in a few years when she's the Democratic nominee... for president.

Enjoy!

The post Even the Liberal Media Can't Whitewash Jasmine Crockett's Toxic Narcissism appeared first on .

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/even-the-liberal-media-cant-whitewash-jasmine-crocketts-toxic-narcissism/

https://freebeacon.com/?p=2055769