Free Republic

The Trump administration is prohibiting officials at the nation’s top public health agency from using a list of seven words or phrases — including “fetus” and “transgender” — in any official documents being prepared for next year’s budget. Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected Evans v. Georgia Regional Hospital, a case about a Georgia security guard who said she was harassed at work because she is a lesbian. Attorneys representing Jameka Evans, the security guard, wanted the high court to overturn an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and decide that sexual orientation discrimination violates the Civil Rights Act.

The government’s efforts to deport 92 Somali nationals — including some who lived in Georgia and Minnesota — did not go as planned this week, when the flight encountered some snags in Senegal and returned to the U.S. with all on board. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released statement Saturday, saying relief flight crew members were “unable to get sufficient rest due to issues with their hotel in Dakar.” “The aircraft, including the detainees and crew on board, remained parked at the airport to allow the relief crew time to rest,” ICE said in its statement. “During this time, the...

Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) announced they will no longer be attending the opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum on Saturday because President Trump will be there. The two African American congressmen issued a joint statement about their decision, arguing Trump’s presence ‘disrespects’ the efforts of Mississippi’s black civil rights leaders. "Trump’s attendance and his hurtful policies are an insult to the people portrayed in this civil rights museum. The struggles represented in this museum exemplify the truth of what really happened in Mississippi. President Trump’s disparaging comments about women, the disabled, immigrants and National Football...

A woman carrying a firearm shot a man who assaulted a police officer in Dawson County, Georgia, on Tuesday. According to Fox 5 Atlanta, 52-year-old Sgt. Randy Harkness gave a homeless man a ride to a local Chevron and planned to give him a little bit of money. However, the homeless man began physically assaulting Harkness and, according to the Dawson County Sheriff, may have even tried to reach for his gun. Luckily, a gun-toting woman sitting in her car at the Chevron witnessed the attack and got out of her car to shoot at the suspect. The sheriff’s office...

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS Congress faces a Dec. 8 deadline to mend a federal flood insurance program that runs chronic imbalances in an era of rising flood risks and densely populated coastal areas. TYBEE ISLAND, GA.—Outwardly, David Satterfield's quiet neighborhood on this barrier island’s southern tip looks pretty much like it always does. But Mr. Satterfield says the veneer is false. In fact, his world was shattered this fall. The hurricane claimed his man cave. The final lashes of hurricane Irma colluded with a full-moon “king tide” to flood large parts of Tybee Island for the second time in less than...

Illegal immigration costs taxpayers in all 50 states a total of $89 billion, and California, where an illegal on Thursday was cleared of murdering Kate Steinle despite admitting to the shooting, pays the most at $23 billion . ... The costs cover added expenditures for education, welfare, law enforcement, and medical care. When federal costs are included, the price tag nationally soars to $135 billion a year. FAIR’s data also includes the offset of taxes paid by illegal immigrants, though the numbers are much lower. In the state and local column, they are $3.5 billion. Nationally they are $15 billion....

SAVANNAH, Ga. (CN) – Three teenage girls, all dressed in onesie pajamas, arrived at a local hospital. At least two of them had been brought there in the back of a police cruiser. One was in handcuffs, a shocking contrast to her fresh face and well-kept hair.This is what human trafficking can look like in Savannah, Ga.“This was the first time we’d ever had three underage girls all at once,” said Brenda Lewis, a victim advocate at of the Rape Crisis Center of the Coastal Empire, a nonprofit serving victims of rape and sexual assault in Southeast Georgia.“You don’t believe it’s...

Republican Brian Kemp waded into a prickly political battle on Monday when he called on lawmakers to pass a measure to modernize Georgia’s adoption laws without a controversial “religious liberty” provision and pledged to quickly sign it into law if elected governor. That’s likely a moot point, since Gov. Nathan Deal and House Speaker David Ralston have said that a “clean” version of the adoption measure is a top priority for next year’s session. But it could put the secretary of state at odds with Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, a rival candidate for governor who led the Senate in a...

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) on Sunday urged Republicans not to succumb to “political tribalism” in backing embattled Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R). “After what we know, for Republicans to support Roy Moore over Doug Jones is political tribalism at its worst," Flake tweeted. Moore is under pressure from numerous Republican lawmakers to step down in the race. He faces allegations of sexual misconduct from multiple women, including claims that he made advances on teenage girls decades ago when he was in his 30s. Moore has been defiant, refusing to drop out of the race and calling the allegations an...

One week after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in August 2005, President George W. Bush consulted with his team of crisis advisers and inundated the Gulf Coast with cheap, illegal alien labor. Bush’s August decision to lift the Davis-Bacon wage law made it very easy for contractors to hire cheap labor. Mike Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), quickly suspended sanctions on the employers who did hire illegal aliens. The result was another flood – this time not of water, but of illegal aliens, 30,000 of which came to the Gulf Coast to take cleanup and blue-collar...

CHAMBLEE, Ga. — Not many notice when the SUVs arrive. Around 5 a.m., when the immigration agents pull into the parking lot of the Chamblee Heights apartments, 16 miles from downtown Atlanta, only one person is on the lookout. Cristina Monteros catches sight of the cars with the telltale tinted windows from her small apartment near the front, where she runs a day care, and calls her downstairs neighbor: ICE is here. The neighbor dials another, who passes it on. It takes less than 15 minutes for everyone in the complex to hear about “la migra,” whereupon they shut their...

In an opinion piece published nearly three years ago by the NY Times Editorial Board, we learned that terminating people of faith from public sector jobs is not only acceptable but demanded if they hold politically incorrect views on LGBT matters. The “tolerant” liberals running the Times shared this little tidbit following the termination of Kelvin Cochran from his position as chief of the Atlanta Fire Department, a position where he was recognized as the 2012 Fire Chief of the Year after declining a Senate-approved appointment by Barack Obama to be FEMA’s US Fire Administrator in 2010. In other words,...

Imagine a major interstate running through Columbus, spurring economic development, prosperity and connecting military installations along the way. That’s the scenario that 19-year-old Frank Lumpkin IV presented to Columbus Council Tuesday, while making a pitch for Columbus to be connected to a major interstate that will run from Meridian, Texas, to Augusta. Lumpkin, a 2017 Columbus High School graduate now enrolled at the University of Georgia, said I-14 Texas already has been designated by Congress and is currently being built in segments. The first 25-mile stretch officially opened on January 26, 2017 near Killeen, Texas and Fort Hood. If built...

The House Ethics Committee said Monday it is reviewing charges lodged against two high-profile Democratic lawmakers and a senior Democratic aide. The lawmakers facing an ethics review are Rep. John Conyers Jr. (Mich), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the longest-serving sitting House member, and Rep. Ben Ray Luján (N.M.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The staffer is Michael E. Collins, chief of staff to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.).Statements released Monday by the Ethics Committee did not detail the allegations against the three men, which were forwarded to the committee by the independent Office of Congressional...

A hidden video from 2014 showed nurses laughing as a World War II veteran repeatedly called for help and died while in their care. The family of James Dempsey, 89, of Woodstock, Ga., hid a camera in the late veteran’s room in the Northeast Atlanta Health and Rehabilitation Center which captured the night he died. The video showed the decorated WWII veteran repeatedly calling for help, saying he could not breathe. It also showed the nurses failing to take life-saving measures and laughing as they tried to start an oxygen machine.

A Georgia family is under fire for allowing a seventh grader to wear a T-shirt that mocked liberal news network CNN on a school field trip to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters -- but the boy's parents think the school violated the First Amendment by making their son take it off. Nancy and Stan Jester, of Dekalb, are both local elected officials, she a county commissioner and he is a member of the local school board. Their son, seventh-grader Jaxon, wore a shirt mocking the CNN logo as “FNN” with the caption, “Fake News Network.”

A Georgia Chick-fil-A restaurant is pleading with the public for information concerning the theft of one of their catering vans. And in return, Chick-fil-A is offering something chicken sandwich enthusiasts can get behind – free Chick-fil-A for a year. But first, you have to solve the case. The chain said the crime was committed Sunday around 9:45 p.m. at the parking lot of a Chick-fil-A in Cartersville at Cherokee Place, according to their Facebook page detailing the event.

November 15, 2017 - It's been two months since Amazon announced they will be searching for a site for their new co-headquarters, resulting in hundreds of applications and endless speculation. Now we have the answer. Trust us - it's going to be Atlanta. So says the collective wisdom of urbanists, researchers, pundits and publications. The team at Sperling's BestPlaces collected 18 of the most reputable lists and rankings of potential Amazon HQ2 locations. Using those rankings, we created one huge super-study which tallied how each location performed and from that, we generated a score for each place. Sperling's Amazon HQ...

Suspects arrested in the 1983 slaying of a black man in Georgia were angry that he was socializing with a white woman, Spalding County District Attorney Benjamin Coker told CNN. Timothy Coggins, 23, was found stabbed to death on October 9, 1983, near a high-tension power line in Sunny Side, a town about 30 miles south of Atlanta. The 34-year-old cold case, which broke in October with the arrest of four men and a woman, was widely believed to be racially motivated, though no suspects or motive had previously been uncovered. Then-investigator Larry Campbell told the local newspaper at the...