Free Republic

President Trump in Thursday's debate responded to Democratic nominee Joe Biden's call for plexiglass at restaurants amid the coronavirus pandemic by saying plexiglass is "not the answer." During a portion of the debate focused on the pandemic, Biden said restaurants will need to have plexiglass dividers, among other resources, "so people cannot infect one another." The president countered, "When you talk about plexiglass, these are restaurants that are dying." "These are businesses with no money," Trump said. "Putting a plexiglass is unbelievably expensive and it's not the answer. I mean, are you gonna sit there in a cubicle wrapped around...

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, came out on Friday against President Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more employees, saying she doesn't think it’s the “correct” or “most effective” move. The Democratic governor, who is up for reelection next year, said she appreciates “the intention to keep people safe” but doesn’t think the administration’s vaccinate-or-test requirements serve as a “solution for Kansas.” “It is too late to impose a federal standard now that we have already developed systems and strategies that are tailored for our specific needs,” she said.

An avalanche of misinformation about the antiparasitic drug ivermectin’s ability to treat COVID-19 has caused a series of national problems, from increased calls to poisoning centers to a shortage of the medicine itself. Patients have become desperate for a treatment that’s most commonly used for livestock and have taken their disputes over ivermectin with hospitals to court. Disinformation has flooded the internet, where dozens of Facebook groups centered around ivermectin remain active despite insufficient evidence that the medicine works in treating people for COVID-19. It’s also gone well beyond the internet to popular podcast hosts like Joe Rogan, who has...

The Arkansas House on Tuesday voted to override Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s (R) veto on the legislation that would ban gender reassignment surgeries and other treatments for transgender youth. The majority Republican state House voted 72 to 25 to approve the controversial bill, called HB1570, now sending the legislation back to the Arkansas Senate for approval to negate the governor’s rejection of the bill, according to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Both chambers require a simple majority to override the veto. Under the bill, physicians are banned from giving gender confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to those younger than 18....

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is being compared by several conservatives to the late Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wis.), known for his communist witch hunt in the 1950s, according to a New York Times article published on Sunday. The Republicans told the news outlet that Johnson’s promotion of false theories on the coronavirus, the COVID-19 vaccination efforts and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot remind them of Wisconsin’s infamous former senator, who in the 1940s and '50s publicly accused a number of government workers of being communists, leading to many losing their jobs. Former Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who retired from Congress this...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Republican National Convention address from Jerusalem "appalling" on Tuesday.  The House Speaker told MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" that Pompeo's convention speech, which was pre-recorded in Israel during official diplomatic travel, violated State Department rules for employees not to participate in partisan activities

President Trump said Thursday that he plans to send law enforcement and U.S. attorneys to the polls in November to prevent voter fraud. When asked by Fox News host Sean Hannity late Thursday night if the president was going to "have an ability" to monitor and avoid fraud during the upcoming November elections, Trump said, “We’re going to have everything.” “We’re going to have sheriffs, and we’re going to have law enforcement. And we’re going to have hopefully U.S. attorneys, and we’re going to have everybody and attorney generals,” the president continued. The president once again criticized the practice of...

A federal judge on Tuesday declined to dismiss the city of Chicago’s lawsuit against former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett. U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall rejected a motion filed by Smollett’s attorneys, The Associated Press reported. The lawyers argued in the motion, filed last month, that Smollett should not have to pay the city $130,000 because the actor did not know how much time and money would be dedicated to investigating his allegations that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack. Smollett told police in January that two men attacked him and used racial and homophobic slurs as...

Former national security adviser John Bolton told a former aide to President Trump on Russia to call White House lawyers to warn them about a pressure campaign on Ukraine, House investigators were reportedly told Monday. Bolton told Fiona Hill, the senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, to contact the lawyer for the National Security Council and say that the president's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was involved in the efforts to pressure Ukraine into investigating Democrats, the New York Times reported Monday night. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill...

The co-founders of political research firm Fusion GPS plan to release a book next month on the "never-before-told inside story" about President Trump's relationship with Russia. The book, entitled "Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump," will tell the story of how Fusion GPS helped put together the infamous "Steele dossier," The Associated Press reported on Monday. Co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch's book, which is due out Nov. 26, is being called an " 'All the President's Men' for the Trump era" by publisher Penguin Random House. "After four years on...