Free Republic

Getting married is better than not getting married. Your health is better. You’re richer. You’re happier. More important, children who are raised by two married parents have an advantage over those who are not. Nothing about these factual statements should be controversial.

Is the Republican race for presidential nominee over before any votes are cast? Some people sure would like it to be. “It’s over!” Trump supporters declare with the assured enthusiasm of a Mets fan at spring training. This is our year! No unforeseen injuries will cripple our chances! We’re going all the way! A closer look at the numbers shows a ballgame very much in progress. There’s no doubt Trump is a unique political phenomenon. He makes people feel something. They vote with their heart for Trump. He’s magnetic. But just as magnets attract, they repel. Yes, Trump is polling...

The rise & fall of Rob DeSantis #Trump2024 #TheDilleyShow pic.twitter.com/3zXkqUFLED— miguelifornia (@miguelifornia) March 26, 2023

I had completely forgotten about this, until someone reminded me today. It is worth revisiting.If you have followed the management and branding efforts of the team around Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the protestations today by campaign official and registered foreign agent Christina Pushaw are quite bizarre.The Daily Beast wrote an article [SEE HERE] about how Ms. Pushaw organized an astroturf campaign of support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, which included the recruitment of several conservative influencers. The substance of the article is generally well known.In late 2021, early 2022, Ms. Pushaw invited a group of “influencers” to spend time with...

Sen. Chuck Schumer made some startling admissions last week about his immigration views: “We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants, the dreamers and all of them, because our ultimate goal is to help the dreamers but to get a path to citizenship for all 11 million or however many undocumented there are here.”

When does the influx of people at our southern border become an emergency? Apparently when it finally affects cities and states far from that border. Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency Friday due to the sharp increase in the number of migrants arriving in his city. “El Paso, the city manager, the mayor, they should stop sending buses to New York,” Adams implored. Last week in these pages, City Councilman Joe Borelli saluted the mayor for declaring the emergency and noted that “17,400 migrants have entered New York City since this spring (more than half of whom were...

It was only June when unvaccinated Canadians were finally allowed to leave the country, for reasons unclear to anyone. The vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission, so how did it make sense to keep the unvaccinated behind the frozen curtain? It didn’t. But that’s Canada. It’s completely lost the plot with COVID and chucked all its previously freedom-loving ideals out the nearest window, eh? America wouldn’t behave like that, right? Except we are. Tennis player Novak Djokovic couldn’t travel to America to compete in the US Open in August because he’s unvaccinated. No foreigner may enter the United States without being fully...

In a surprise to nearly no one, children’s reading and math scores have plummeted. National Assessment of Educational Progress, nicknamed “the nation’s report card,” results show the first-ever drop in math and the largest drop in reading in more than 30 years. Black children had an even bigger collapse in scores. Decades of educational progress undone. Poof. Horrific. Stupid. Unnecessary. We know the school closures did this. It wasn’t the COVID virus. It was the hyper-political reaction, from the left, on reopening schools during the pandemic. The orders came from the top. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued...

Are culture wars bad? Or are they necessary to shape the direction of the country? Last week, former President Barack Obama stumped for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia: “This fake outrage that right-wing media peddles to juice their ratings” and the fact that Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin is “willing to go along with it instead of talking about serious problems that actually affect serious people — that’s a shame.” But what’s a shame is that people like Obama pretend wars over culture are irresponsible or “fake,” all the while engaging in that very same war. The issue propelling Youngkin is...

Florida has the lowest COVID-19 case rate in the country. They did it without vaccine mandates, without mask mandates in school and with no restrictions on businesses. Life simply went on. Over the summer, when Florida was experiencing a spike in cases, the media was wall-to-wall news about the numbers. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis was a frequent target for the blame. His sensible moves, such as not forcing low-risk kids to wear masks, was treated as akin to murder by the media. ... Florida is doing better in per-capita cases and deaths from COVID than states that put in universal...

Are we really doing this again? Are we really talking about returning to masking? Again? Last weekend, Los Angeles County reinstituted its mask mandate for indoor settings. More than 60 percent of the county is fully vaccinated, but the mandate applies to both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The move is absurd in several ways. For starters, it throws shade on the vaccines. If vaccination works, why do the vaccinated need to be masked? And if we do still need to be masked post-vaccine, why would anyone take the jabs? The vaccinated are protected, and the unvaccinated have had enough time...

My fellow New Yorkers, you know what we are doing is crazy: Unmask. It’s time. It’s long past the time. What happened to us? How are we entering summer 2021, with many of us still masked, despite all the evidence suggesting we should stop? There was never any need to wear masks outdoors. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci admits that, yet on every street there are people, often alone, continuing to wear a mask. Some stores continue to require masking, even as nearly 70 percent of New Yorkers are vaccinated. And our kids suffer most of all, as the science-denying teachers...

Last week, the Commack School District on Long Island wanted to do the sane thing and make masks optional for children. The move is long overdue. The state COVID positivity rate is under 1 percent, and deaths and hospitalizations have dropped precipitously. So why are kids, who should have never been masked in the first place, still forced to cover their faces? Why are kindergartners masked at recess outdoors, even after national virus guru Anthony Fauci said “the risk outdoors is very low”? In New York, it turns out it’s because Gov. Cuomo says so. Cuomo has been a disaster...

It's time for news stations to do the responsible thing and stop putting Anthony Fauci on TV. Fauci is the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and advisor to presidents, including President Biden. Few dispute his qualifications. But a year into this pandemic, it's clear that his presence has been a muddling one for the country. For starters, there are the mistakes. There have been many. And they've been disastrous.

This month, someone left an anonymous note on my home, and on several lampposts around my block, telling me to delete a tweet the stalker didn’t like. The printed black-and-white note added the leftist refrain “hate has no place here” and accused me of celebrating the deaths in the explosion in Beirut. Of course I had done no such thing. I had mocked the idea that it was a fireworks factory that had exploded, a lie disproved as more details emerged. The stalker either misunderstood it or willfully misread my tweet. My bet is the latter. She had been waiting for...

Nearly two years after his inauguration, I have concluded that President Trump has made me a better person. For starters, I’m more compassionate. After the election, I was as dazed and confused as anyone in the political-media bubble. To understand what happened, I devoured reporting about Trump voters and sought to understand them. I wasn’t some liberal, mind you. I had worked for years in Republican politics. Yet I hadn’t known any Trump primary voters. I didn’t know his fans, his base. Reading their concerns was eye-opening. They weren’t stupid, and they weren’t hateful. Mainstream politicians had ignored them for...

“The future is female.” It’s a favorite slogan of the identity left that has now gone mainstream. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted it on Wednesday, adding that the future is also “intersectional” and “powered by our belief in one another.” But if the future is female, what happens to our boys? And what message are we sending our present-day girls? Gillibrand is one of about 30 Democrats considering running for president in 2020, and the tweet suggests she’s seizing some strategic left-wing ground (in a primary field crowded with lefties) by appealing to the Dems’ identity-obsessed base. Her mentioning “intersectionality” is...

Full Title: AWFUL! 16 Cruz-Supporting Female Reporters Sought to Destroy Trump Campaign Manager=> APOLOGIZE NOW YOU WERE WRONG — APOLOGIZE NOW! Cruz Supporters Endorsed an Awful Hoax – They Sought to Destroy an Innocent Man. DISGUSTING! On March 30, 2016 a group of self-righteous Ted Cruz supporters released a prepared statement demanding Donald Trump fire Campaign Manager Corey Lewandowski for the media hoax that he assaulted Michelle Fields by walking past her at a Trump event in Jupiter, Florida.The group of “guilty until proven innocent” included S.E. Cupp, Mary Katharine Ham, Dana Loesch, Katie Pavlich and Meghan McCain.These “conservatives” do...