Free Republic

Hello welcome aboard as we consider the "Dictatorship of Covid 19" and some protests like the one in the key battleground political state of Michigan last Wednesday and the one planned in another key battleground political state of Pennsylvania set for Monday. They aim at the Democrats who govern the states President Trump won in 2016 and needs to win this year. But where are the protests against the Republican governors and their house arrest, shut down the economy orders in the battleground states of Florida and Ohio? Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine an early imposer of house arrest and...

<p>ACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Florida’s governor on Friday gave the green light for some beaches and parks to reopen if it can be done safely after being closed because of the coronavirus.</p> <p>Gov. Ron DeSantis’ announcement came as north Florida beaches became among the first to allow allow beach-goers to return since the virus-induced closures.</p>

A federal judge in Florida on Monday shot down an emergency request from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) and fellow beachfront property owners to be exempted from a public health order that cut off beach access during the pandemic. Huckabee, the father of President Trump’s former White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, argued that a county ordinance blocking him from access to the Gulf of Mexico shoreline behind his estimated $3.3 million home violated his constitutional rights. U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson on Monday denied the suit brought by Huckabee and more than a dozen other plaintiffs that...

Why are governments the world over rendering hundreds of millions of their citizens jobless, impoverishing at least a billion people, endangering the family life of millions (straining marriages, increasing child and spousal abuse, and further postponing marriage among young people), bankrupting vast numbers of business owners and workers living paycheck to paycheck, and increasing suicides? The reason given is that we must lock down virtually all human social and economic activity in order to prevent millions of people from dying of the coronavirus and overwhelming hospitals. But is it true? Was this lockdown necessary? In order to answer these questions,...

ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a news conference Tuesday that he believes COVID-19, the novel coronavirus responsible for the current global pandemic, was circulating in the state during this year’s Super Bowl game, which was held in South Florida, the area of the Sunshine State with the most positive cases of the virus. Super Bowl LIV was held Feb. 2 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, but it wasn’t until about one month later, on March 1, that the governor announced Florida’s first positive cases of COVID-19. According to the Sun Sentinel, attendance at Hard...

There now seems to be a magic word that triggers many liberals including those who work at Politico. And that magic word is "hydroxychloroquine." Why? After all the early reports from doctors around the world reveal that it can be an effective treatment for coronavirus. So what's not to like? Well, President Donald Trump, that's who. Since the Orange Man has stated that hydroxychloroquine could be a great aid in treating coronavirus, liberals reflexively reacted that it must be bad. All evidence pointing to the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine must now be written off by them as some sort of Trump...

BAHAM: At The Florida State Line, “Your Papers, Please” March 31st, 2020 Mike Bayham Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order adding people traveling to Florida who are from Louisiana or have stayed a night in the Pelican State to a 14-Day “self-isolate” order, with the highway patrol charged with enforcement along the state line Florida shares with Alabama and Georgia via checkpoints. That a state would set up screening stations along the borders for more than weighing 18-wheelers was hard for me to even conceptualize. And as we are living through an unfortunate historic time, I wanted to see...

Republican governors issue orders to stay home giving them a new and different name but first.... "We discussed with each other whether our rights can be taken by an order from a governor or an agency, and if they can be, what good are our rights?" Ammon Bundy spoke those words Friday following a Thursday night meeting in Emmett, Idaho in response to the "stay at home" order issued by Idaho's Republican Governor Brad Little.... In Iraq the United States has deployed two Patriot missile batteries and is expected to eventually deploy at least four.... The Saudi-led coalition staging air...

ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday announced that he is issuing a stay-at-home order for the southern portion of the state as the number of positive coronavirus cases grows. The order will apply to Broward, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Monroe counties through the middle of May. “The ‘Safer-At-Home’ [order] is the right move for southeast Florida,” DeSantis said at a press conference at the Hard Rock Stadium, just north of Miami. “This is the time to do the right thing. Listen to all of your local officials.” “We will do this through the middle of May,...

According to Tallahassee Reports , a news publication based out of Andrew Gillum’s hometown where he served as Mayor from 2014-2018, bodycam footage of law enforcement officers entering the meth fueled orgy where a self-identified pornstar and Andrew Gillum were found does in fact exist.TGP spent yesterday covering the leak of a police report detailing how Gillum and two other men were found in varying intoxicated states, including Travis Dyson, who appeared to have suffered an overdose from crystal meth.Andrew Gillum was named in a police report that involved baggies of crystal meth and two other men in Miami Beach hotel room...

Seven hundred kids. That’s how many students would have lost their scholarships—and a chance at a better life—if Fifth Third Bank hadn’t come to its senses. Instead, after a week of uncertainty, the company sat down with Florida parents and pastors and decided not to listen to Florida’s cultural bullies. It’s one thing for a company to support LGBT extremism. It’s quite another, the bank agreed, to hurt needy children in the process. Most kids had already left school for the weekend when they got the good news: One of the biggest contributors to the Florida voucher program wasn’t dropping...

The Pensacola attack that killed three US sailors and wounded eight others including two members of law enforcement is still not being called an "act of terrorism" by either President Trump or Defense Secretary Mark Esper. US National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien also not flat out saying there was a terrorist attack but telling CBS..... The attack was called an "act of terrorism" by local Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz.... Information is leaking out of the investigation of the attack now firmly in the hand of the FBI. The FBI is saying it is operating: "with the presumption that this was...

A federal court in Tallahassee struck down a Florida law that listed the governor’s party first on all ballots, which Democrats argued gave Republicans a significant advantage in a state where the two biggest races in 2018 were both within 0.4 percentage points. In his ruling, District Court Judge Mark Walker issued a permanent injunction against the law, stating it violates both the First and 14th amendments of the Constitution. “Florida’s ballot order statute is not neutral; instead, it affects Plaintiffs’ rights in a politically discriminatory way,” Walker wrote. “… It is difficult to imagine what other purpose it could...

TALLAHASSEE — In light of Key West banning the sale of sunscreens that contain chemicals believed to harm coral reefs, Florida lawmakers are fast-tracking proposals that would undo the local regulation. Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said Monday that Key West is sending “mixed signals” to people about the importance of sunscreen and that his bill is meant to send a clear message to the “country and the world” that the use of sunscreen is encouraged in the Sunshine State. “Unfortunately, with all of the wonderful things that come with our beaches and our sunshine, we also rank second in...

Suspended Broward Sheriff Scott Israel should get his job back, a special investigator for the Florida Senate recommended, in a a stunning rebuke to Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis failed to prove the charges in his suspension order, special master Dudley Goodlette wrote in a report released Wednesday.

More than a year after it was authorized by the Legislature, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday gave the state’s 67 elections supervisors their number one priority for 2020 by joining a multi-state compact to share voter roll information. DeSantis said Florida would become the 29th state to join the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, which makes it easier to track voter registrations across state lines, clean up voter polls of deceased voters and — possibly most importantly — reach out via mail to every eligible but unregistered voter in Florida. DeSantis estimated that between 4 million to 5 million...

<p>Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered a state criminal probe into the actions of the Palm Beach sheriff and the former Palm Beach State Attorney, Barry Krischer, for their handling of the Jeffrey Epstein underage sex trafficking case, the Miami Herald reported.</p>

Implementing Occam's Razor: The so-called logic behind keeping and maintaining sanctuary city designations, in defiance of what Trump has been calling for - and his suppport for what Governor Ron Desantis (R) did in signing the bill banning sanctuary cities in the state of Florida - is that sanctuary cities allow law-abiding illegal aliens to report crime(s) committed by non law-abiding illegal aliens with out fear of reprisal. Problem is, illegal aliens (even if they somehow do commit less crimes on average than U.S. citizens do and the jury may be out on that on many crimes) still lead to...

Shortly after the Civil War and the passage of the 14th Amendment, the US Supreme Court decided the Slaughter-House cases.  Historically, many people have looked at these decisions as severely limiting the ability of the federal government and federal courts from interfering with state government functions by using the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment.  Regardless of your position on that debate, this article looks at how the decision by Justice Miller in 1873 actually provides a strong precedent for using the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th Amendment against all sanctuary states, counties, and cities. Privileges...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed into law the toughest sanctuary cities bill ban in the nation, keeping a campaign promise despite apoplectic, snarky media coverage. DeSantis today signed Senate Bill 168 requiring Florida law enforcement officials and governmental entities to honor federal “immigration detainer” requests that ask a law enforcement agency to detain someone on probable cause that they can be removed from the country under federal immigration laws. That is, they are here illegally and will be sent home. Because law enforcement is holding them, that means they either have or are accused of committing crimes beyond illegal...