Free Republic

Authorities in China were expected on Monday to release a citizen journalist jailed for four years after she documented the early phases of the coronavirus outbreak from the central city of Wuhan in 2020. Zhang Zhan, 40, had travelled to Wuhan in early 2020 from Shanghai where she was based, posting first-hand accounts ... After several months of reporting that included videos.. she was detained in May 2020. She went on hunger strike in late June, court documents seen by Reuters said, prompting police to strap her hands and force-feed her with a tube, her lawyers said at the time....

'Equity' means realizing 'treating everybody the same might not be enough,' VA official Shawn Liu says .. Joe Biden's Department of Veterans Affairs is offering race-based training programs and workshops that exclude white veterans—programs that one legal expert says are "of dubious constitutionality and legality." The programs are taking place in at least four states, a Washington Free Beacon review of online offerings found. In Battle Creek, Mich., for example, the VA offers a "BIPOC Support Group," an "8-week curriculum designed to provide support for Veterans that identify as people of color/BIPOC, or as multiracial or biracial," according to a...

District actively promoted non-religious groups, including a Pride Club and Green Team... A school district that just weeks ago had refused students permission to begin an interfaith prayer club – even though a wide range of other special interest organizations like a Pride club and a Green club were approved – abruptly has reversed itself. "We are very pleased that the Issaquah School District is allowing our clients to start a prayer club at their school this spring," explained Kayla Toney, associate counsel at First Liberty Institute,.. "Schools should always respect the religious beliefs of their students. This is a...

Americans consistently voice their disapproval on the state of the economy in recent polls, largely because of the stratospheric cost of living. But apologists for the Biden administration point to the low unemployment rate of 3.9% in April as proof of the economy’s strength. Yet this is a hollow talking point since the real unemployment rate is likely between 6.5 and 7.7%. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force who don’t have a job. That means the unemployment rate can change if either the number of people unemployed or the total size of the labor...

This raises some serious questions. . World-famous cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough recently revealed startling figures about the immense earnings doctors received for pushing the COVID-19 injections. On the Tommy T Podcast, Dr. McCullough claimed that a typical doctor could make an extra $250,000 if they injected a substantial portion of their patients. More specifically, if a doctor injected 75% of his or her patients at $250 per newly-injected person, that would end up being around $250,000. This revelation was discovered through a leaked Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield document. ... Dr. McCullough explained that a full-time primary care physician typically...

Columbia Law Professor Says Columbia University Violated Federal Laws, Fostered A "Hostile Environment" On Campus .. Professor Joshua Mitts (Columbia Law School) argues that Columbia university violated the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students by fostering and tolerating a hostile educational environment on campus. Mitts writes: Since October 7, Jewish students at Columbia have been subject to appalling episodes of antisemitism both on campus and just outside the campus gates, which intensified with the establishment of the encampment. As documented in an open letter signed by hundreds of faculty and thousands of community members, these included chants like “Go...

Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that Trump’s tax reform expires next year. While many have already pointed out that this will mean a significant tax increase for most Americans, few have noticed that it will also mean a windfall for Biden’s political donors, in the millions of dollars. A key feature of the Trump tax reform, also known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), was to limit the state and local tax (SALT) deduction to $10,000. Previously, ultra-high-income earners in high-tax states could use this unlimited deduction to reduce their taxable income by millions of dollars. This...

The initial rollout will consist of 10,000 cards.. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is eyeing a summer rollout for a controversial ID card pilot program for illegal immigrants being released into the U.S. And the agency hopes it will modernize the documentation process for removal proceedings. The ICE Secure Docket Card program was first reported on in 2022, and Fox Digital obtained images of the card last year. Now, ICE is planning a limited rollout of the program. ICE confirmed to Fox News Digital this week the pilot program is expected to commence this summer with the distribution of approximately...

Biden routinely misrepresents Donald Trump as a dictator, but the evidence shows convincingly that it’s Biden who acts in dictatorial fashion. There’s an old trial lawyers’ saying: “When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, pound the table.” That may be the only thing President Biden learned in law school—from which he was almost expelled for plagiarizing. He said the plagiarizing was due to ignorance; he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. Now, fifty-nine years later, Biden routinely misrepresents...

Meanwhile, fewer than one in 10 are openly conservative, analysis finds Nearly three in four recipients of this year’s prestigious, federally funded Truman Scholarship have clear ties to Democratic politicians or progressive causes, a College Fix analysis found. Approximately 43 of the 60 students have worked for Democratic politicians, advocated for progressive causes, or identify as left-leaning — continuing an annual trend exposed in past Fix analyses. In contrast, only five scholars have worked for Republican politicians, advocated for conservative causes, or identify as right-leaning. The College Fix determined this information based on provided biographies, LinkedIn profiles, and email inquiries....

Millions of middle-class California households are poised to pay an extra $24 per month for electricity, regardless of how much electricity they use. Regulators are hoping this utility billing policy will rescue their agenda to move everyone to electric cars and appliances by redistributing the massive costs of the state’s electric grid so utilities can lower their usage rates. But critics say the income-based premium will likely further hike utility costs for millions of Californians—nearly one-fifth of whom are already behind in paying their bills after household electricity rates almost doubled in the last decade—and likely won’t do much to...

State Election Board calls for a monitor in Fulton for this year’s elections.. The State Election Board reprimanded Fulton County and ordered an independent election monitor Tuesday, finding that the county likely scanned over 3,000 ballots twice during the recount of the 2020 presidential election. The decision, on a 2-1 vote, resolves one of the last remaining investigations of the 2020 election, drawing jeers from a crowd of Republican voters who wanted more severe punishment against the Democrat county. The case exposed errors in Fulton’s 2020 recount but didn’t indicate any fraud in the election, which Democrat Joe Biden won...

Officials tried to use a novel interpretation of tax law to expand the reach of Title IX regulations. This ruling put a stop to that. . A federal court of appeals ruling last month protects nonprofits (including private schools and homeschools) from federal overreach in the context of Title IX regulations. Schools that receive government money have to abide by Title IX, but the court found that having 501(c)(3) status is not enough to put a private school into that category. The ruling means private schools cannot be subject to Title IX solely because of their status with the IRS....

If you want a perfect summary of why people don't trust the media anymore, and in particular CNN, this is it. Back in September 2021 Joe Rogan announced that he had contracted COVID and was taking a "kitchen sink" approach to fighting it off. One of the drugs he took was Ivermectin. Immediately, as in that same day, CNN started in on a campaign to mock Rogan for taking "horse dewormer." *On Sept. 1, CNN host Erin Burnett said: “Controversial podcast host Joe Rogan, who’s railed against vaccine requirements, says he has covid and took a drug intended for livestock.”...

'These heroes were callously tossed aside'.. Multiple times already Colorado, led by homosexual Democrat Gov. Jared Polis, has been cited for its "hostility" to Christianity. It happened in the state's attack on the faith of specialty baker Jack Phillips. Then the same issue arose in a fight involving state censorship of a web designer... Both times the state got slapped hard by the U.S. Supreme Court. Now it's another court, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and a division of the state, the University of Colorado, That court now has ruled that CU's Anshutz School of Medicine's policies that...

...we need to go back to when agriculture was inefficient. Good idea. There are too many proles anyway, right? Time to thin the herd. ... Climate change hysteria is a magic force in the hands of an elite that has been preaching deindustrialization and mass culling of human beings since the early 1960s. What was once a fringe movement led by the truly insane Club of Rome and Paul Ehrlich has gone mainstream, at least among the Leftists who are at the top of the social pyramid these days. The UN, WEF, IPCC, MSM, and of course the EU and...

Contrary to popular conservative opinion, I don’t want this college chaos to end anytime soon. I want it to increase and metastasize and continue right up until these entitled, ugly, mutated communist jerks totally alienate every normal American. It’s already happening. The frat boys have turned. The normals are turning. At one of these colleges, you had the theater major graduation ceremony invaded by Palesimpians and the parents began chanting, “USA! USA!” Will this and the administrations’ feeble response help flush these institutions’ bloated reputations down the crapper? Yes, please! So, keep it up, communist dipwads. I’m loving this. This...

Public confidence in the military has slipped. One major reason is the politicization of senior military officers, who show an increasing propensity to compromise their integrity to gain influence and achieve both budgetary and policy goals. Their willingness to spin carefully parsed and knowingly misleading testimony and advice compromises civilian control of the military. Simply stated, these generals and admirals are not providing full and complete representations of plans, concepts, and assessments to senior civilians in the executive and legislative branches, thereby depriving them of the unbiased information they require to make decisions required by the Constitution. In an era...

Joe Biden’s administration released a finalized rule on Friday that expands Title IX protection to include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.” Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in any public school or university that receives federal funding, and in 2022 the administration unveiled a revised version that would extend prohibitions against “gender identity.” The administration’s new rule is the finalized version after months of review and public comment and will go into effect on August 1, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE). ... The updated regulation prohibits schools from “preventing someone from participating...

President Kornbluth assured us … that the encampment would be removed in time for our Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration,' letter from Jewish group says.. In the run-up to an annual Israeli Independence Day celebration at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, university president Sally Kornbluth assured student organizers that an unauthorized anti-Israel encampment—located in the same area where the Jewish students planned to hold their event—would be cleared in time. It wasn't, prompting school officials to walk back their promise and press the Jewish students to reschedule or relocate the event, messages obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. On April 24,...