Free Republic

Her Activities Are ‘Essential’ Through her chief of staff, Mayor Muriel Bowser claimed her trip to a political rally constituted ‘essential travel,’ which therefore exempted her and her staff from her own quarantine order. Talk about the D.C. Swamp: Mere days after issuing a revised order regarding quarantines after travel to coronavirus “hot spots,” the mayor of the nation’s capital openly ignored the rules she established.While many will decry Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) for violating the travel restrictions, they shouldn’t feel surprised by her double standards. After all, Bowser and the Washington City Council have compelled D.C. residents with...

While COVID-19 continues to spread, Americans can’t afford to wait months or even years until a vaccine is developed to try to get back to a greater semblance of normal. The federal government and the American taxpayers do not have the ability or the capacity to support shuttered businesses and laid off employees forever. And the longer people are out of work, away from family and friends, and sheltered at home, the more public health suffers, both physically and mentally.At some point soon, more businesses need to reopen, employees need to be able to go back to work, children need...

This man was given a misdemeanor charge for opening his gym, but then his story took an even different turn. There was a tense exchange with the police, he was given a misdemeanor, and then the police chief came looking for him as their business being raided! The business owner eventually has to temporarily close his business after there's a three strike warning and confusing information coming from the police, the police chief, and one big massive disconnect between the government and local authorities. Dive in even further and we find a police chief who ends up following the constitution...

Do you remember the 1957-58 Asian flu? Or the 1968-69 Hong Kong flu? I do. I was a teenager during the first of these, an adult finishing law school during the second. But even though back then I followed the news much more than the average person my age, I can't dredge up more than the dimmest memory of either. I don't have any memory of schools closing, though apparently, a few did here and there. I have no memories of city or state lockdowns, of closed offices and factories and department stores, of people banned from parks and beaches....

On March 24, President Donald Trump said he wanted the country and the economy "opened up and just raring to go by Easter." Easter came and went. And Trump was mocked for being aspirational and unrealistic. Yet, with Ascension Thursday at hand, 40 days after Easter, the president seems to have been ahead of his time. The country, as a whole, is, and has been, opening up. Sunday's New York Times reports that, for weeks now, more than two-thirds of the states have been relaxing restrictions as Trump had urged. The reasons: weariness with the lockdown and sheltering in place,...

The pandemic has stripped millions of work, community, and hope. As local governments extend quarantine orders, urbanites like me are starting to wonder: what is the point of city life? This week marks just over two months since most states instituted shelter-in-place orders to contain COVID-19, and with this milestone came an apparent turn in the tide of public opinion—or at least, public behavior—on social distancing.Even as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and one of President Trump’s most prominent pandemic advisors, warned against rolling back lockdown orders in his testimony to Congress...

Flexing unearned influence has exposed the thirst for control of their citizens. In Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf caught a whiff of his constituents working up the desire to step out and start living their lives once again. The idea of citizens exerting their freedoms and basking in the normalcy of liberty was too much for him to stand. On Monday he sent out a tweet storm, delivering a series of firm commands of how he intends to clamp down on those who might dare get the idea of doing things. ‘’Today I am announcing consequences for counties that do not...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-14-at-4.58.53-PM-998x725.pngMADISON, Wis. — Declaring that the state’s top health official wrongly bypassed legislative oversight, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the Evers’ administration’s extended lockdown of the state.The 4-3 decision by the conservative-led court declares Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm’s Emergency Order 28 “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable.”“Because Palm did not follow the law in creating Order 28, there can be no criminal penalties for violations of her order,” the ruling notes. “The procedural requirements of Wis. Stat. ch. 227 must be followed because they safeguard all people.”Palm’s extended order, issued before Evers’ first stay-at-home edict...

Protestors in Michigan planning to rally at the state Capitol on Thursday are being warned that if they bring firearms to the event they will be arrested. The warnings come after several members of the groups planning on attending the rally called for the assassination of Governor Gretchen Whitmer which saw one man writing: “Can we please just take up a collection for an assassin to put that woman from Michigan down.” On Monday, Whitmer said she respected people’s rights to protest but was becoming “increasingly concerned about the violent nature of the comments being made” and the “extreme rhetoric...

Poor Elon Musk. COVID-19 has killed nearly 2,700 Californians so far, but he’s the one who’s truly suffering during the coronavirus pandemic. The Tesla founder and billionaire CEO launched a fresh Twitter tantrum on Saturday. He threatened to move his electric car company out of California as a protest against the state’s coronavirus stay-at-home order. “Frankly, this is the final straw,” wrote Musk on Twitter after health officials in Alameda County declined to let Tesla’s factory re-open this week. “Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately.” Musk also insulted Alameda County’s health officer, calling her...

The South Dakota governor rejected the mandatory government-forced shutdown. Now, the media claim her decisions were made out of emotion and naked ambition, not courage. As the Coronavirus spread from Wuhan, China, to the United States, most governors quickly acquiesced to the media’s demand that they force a governmental shutdown of their states in order to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. The media continue to be heavily invested in the shutdown model, even as the country realizes that hospitals are nowhere close to being overwhelmed and, in fact, many hospital systems are furloughing doctors and nurses due to the mandatory...

In a theme that continues to be tragically borne out with each passing day of our government’s overbearing, one-size-fits-all coronavirus pandemic response, few things these days seem to actually make any logical or scientific sense. In case you missed it, last week’s “Part I” column covered the government’s draconian response, bankrupt hospitals, and the government happily hampering any future recovery by paying people more money not to work. Stopping there, however, would have lent short shrift to the seemingly endless insane and infuriating inconsistencies of the past two months. So here are a few more, just to get your...

It was General George Washington who said, "If you want peace, prepare for war." It's time for America's business owners to fight back against a tyrannical government. Some might call that a revolution. But in this case, I'm talking about a war fought in the courts. I'm talking about a legal battle. It's time for lawsuits -- lots of them. It's time to defend our civil rights. It's time to defend our property rights. It's time to make tyrant governors understand this isn't a dictatorship and we're not their serfs. First an important question about the coronavirus. I am impressed...

The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That’s unambiguous. Not “pretty unambiguous,” just unambiguous. Full stop. Yet governors across the country are ignoring or suspending almost every one of those rights enumerated at the top of the Bill of Rights, with little to no pushback from the press, which just happens to be the only part of the...

The country has survived the COVID-19 shutdowns -- so far. But it won't likely survive another major trauma to the system. There are those, like it or not, who anticipate such a result with some relish, as it presents opportunities for them to remake the nation into something they prefer, politically and economically. They get "cover," as it were, from those who call for much longer shutdowns, and who warn that life "will never be the same again." There are people of all persuasions who want to seize the reins of power and purport to shape all policy around the...

Let’s just get something straight, right off the top. The goal of this national shutdown was never about “saving lives.” It was about “flattening the curve” to avoid overwhelming our hospitals. No promises of not getting sick yourself. No guarantee if we all just wait it out COVID-19 would pack up and head back to Wuhan. No. It’s here to stay. We did our part. We bought the medical community time. We’d like to go back to work now. But, no. As New Jersey’s Governor Phil Murphy said this week, …”We’re in here trying to save lives, every single day....

As the spread of COVID-19 begins to slow nationwide, some governors are proving to be more serious than others about what comes next. As the coronavirus spread slows, governors are responding in different, sometimes wildly divergent ways. Many of them, recognizing their states are not likely to see an outbreak on the scale of New York or New Jersey, have in recent days announced plans to loosen lockdown orders and get their residents back to work. Others have taken the opposite tack, extending lockdown orders and keeping businesses shuttered even as jobless claims mount.The first set of governors, generally speaking,...

In the years when the United States fought Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, life became radically different for everyone. Food was rationed. Supply chains were interrupted. Manufacturing plants, that previously made things Americans wanted, were turned into armaments producers. Millions of young men were drafted and sent off to fight. Hundreds of thousands would never return, and many more would be changed forever by the physical and mental toll. Many women who might have previously stayed home went to work to replace the men on the battlefield. Society was altered and life was different in countless...

Wisconsinites are signaling they're done playing political games and aren't buying into the idea that they're 'Safer at Home.' MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin stay-at-home orders were supposed to expire Friday. Instead, thousands of disgruntled Wisconsinites descended upon the capitol in protest after the Evers administration extended the Dairy State’s so-called Safer at Home order another month. Endless blaring honks turned to white noise as vehicles backed up East Washington Avenue before circling the capitol, with many waving signs and flags out of windows and sun roofs. One man drove a Yukon decked out with Trump 2020 gear, pulling a trailer...

Democratic leaders are making quite a name for themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vote for one, and everyday Americans will find themselves disappointed. Especially when a crisis comes knocking. Eight years of former President Barack Obama (body by Esquire and mind by Baby Einstein), taught us that Ivy League educations and sounding smart mean nothing – if you lack common sense and logic. If Obama's years showed us anything, it is that power is always Democrats' end game. They will lie, cheat, and seek advantage during a crisis to get what they want. Never let a crisis go to waste!...