Free Republic

House Democrats argued against diverting funding for the new coronavirus from preparing for the Ebola virus as they said that the $2.5 billion the White House wants for combating the new virus isn’t adequate. The White House submitted an emergency request to Congress on Feb. 24, asking for $2.5 billion to combat the new coronavirus, which causes the COVID-19 disease. The money was meant to help research vaccines, boost the surveillance network, and other efforts, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday. Part of the proposal featured moving $535 million from...

The Washington Post was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, capturing journalism’s most prestigious honor for its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and for its coverage of the 2017 Senate race in Alabama, in which The Post broke the story of sexual misconduct allegations against the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. Both sets of stories exposed secret or undisclosed information and altered America’s political landscape. The Post’s revelations about Russia, including contacts between Russian figures and President Trump’s associates and advisers, helped set the stage for the special counsel’s ongoing investigation of the administration. The Moore stories were...

White House hopeful Mike Bloomberg released a new campaign ad on Wednesday hitting President Trump over his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. The 30-second clip splices together media coverage of the spread of the coronavirus and its related effects on the stock market. The ad argues that Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, effectively dealt with crises during his oversight of America’s biggest city and would be better able to grapple with the outbreak. “Managing a crisis is what Mike Bloomberg does,” says a male narrator. “In the aftermath of 9/11, he steadied and rebuilt America’s largest...

For former Vice President Joe Biden's sinking campaign, a win in South Carolina might be too little, too late just days before the Super Tuesday primaries. Former Vice President Joe Biden has hinged the fate of his campaign on a blow-out win in South Carolina Saturday after losing his frontrunner status with three straight losses in the first Democratic primaries.Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on the other hand, as emerged as the one to beat, now barreling towards the Democratic presidential nomination after having comfortably clinched the popular vote in Iowa, captured a first place finish in New Hampshire, and securing...

The Trump administration is establishing a new section within the Justice Department to deal with the process of removing citizenship from foreign-born individuals who fraudulently obtained citizenship by failing to disclose past convictions for serious crimes -- including terrorism and war crimes. The section, which will be within the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation, will be dedicated to denaturalizing those who had failed to disclose they had been involved in criminal activity on their N-400 form for naturalization. It requires the government to show that citizenship was obtained illegally or "procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful...

ABC News has suspended correspondent David Wright, after he was caught on tape making damning statements about his employer. In a newly-released Project Veritas video, Wright bashed ABC for only caring about profits and ratings instead of the “truth.” He also admitted his network spikes pro-Trump stories and doesn’t care about voters. In another shocking part, the ABC reporter also boasts he is a socialist.

It is timely to look more closely at Senator Bernie Sanders. He is 78, was born and raised in Brooklyn in a Jewish family; his antecedents on both sides came from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now part of Poland). His father emigrated to New York in 1921 some years after Sanders’s mother’s family. An older brother, Larry, lives in England and was a Green Party city councilor in Oxford (he and I were opponents in a debate in 2016 in London about the U.S. election, and he was amiable and soft-spoken — none of Bernie’s arm-waving and shouting). Mr....

The novel coronavirus outbreak in eastern China’s Shandong province is much worse than officially reported, according to a series of internal government documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

VIDEO What we learned from watching the many hilarious meltdowns at the Democrat Debate in Charleston, South Carolina is that NONE of the candidates have a chance to beat President Trump in November.

So much for bipartisanship. Most Republicans are finally happy with the job their representatives in Congress are doing, while Democrats are even happier with theirs than they have been in the past. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 62% of Likely Republican Voters now believe Republicans in Congress have done a good job representing their party’s values over the past several years. Just 29% think they’ve lost touch with Republican voters from throughout the nation instead. (To see survey question wording, click here.) This is a dramatic reversal of GOP voter attitudes. In January 2019,...

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has cancelled four events in south Florida set for Wednesday because of illness. Buttigieg campaign spokesman Chris Meagher says the former mayor is sick with a cold.

The leftist propaganda taught in schools is no accident. It is the logical conclusion of the prevalent educational philosophy that favors skills over content and engagement over rigor. School choice is finally having its moment in the national conversation, to the joy of those interested in school reform. While some states have adopted various school choice initiatives in small doses, most have not. This may change after President Donald Trump publicly brought up school choice in his recent State of the Union address, and Republican lawmakers have introduced a series of bills that would increase federal funding for vouchers.If school...

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO's director general, played down fears of a global COVID-19 pandemic despite the emergence of new outbreaks of the virus in South Korea, Italy and Iran. He said that "using the word pandemic now does not fit the facts, but it may certainly cause fear", though he added that "the sudden increase in new cases is certainly very concerning". South Korea has now confirmed 977 cases, Italy has recorded 283 and Iran has reported 95. Despite the WHO's statement, many experts believe a pandemic is inevitable and that it's only a matter of time until...

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

I am teaching Sunday School this Sunday (filling in for our regular teacher who is on vacation). And I am going to play the following short video (6+ min) and then go to discussion. Would appreciate your comments. Jesus and Our Creed Are Subversive (Carolyn Moore)As a follow-up note, this is a United First Methodist Church (GA). I grew up in this church and have returned to it only recently. I fear it has become, for the most part, a do-gooder social club and perhaps Christian in name only.The people are very nice but the church most certainly isn't on...

Hunter Biden is asking a judge to delay his child support deposition scheduled for next week in Arkansas until April 1—a date when the key early primaries for his father Joe Biden's presidential campaign will be finished—according to a court motion filed by his attorney on Tuesday. Brent M. Langdon, Hunter Biden's attorney, argued in the court filing that his client was unable to appear in Little Rock, Arkansas for the looming deposition next week, calling it "unduly burdensome and oppressive." Lawyers for Lunden Alexis Roberts, who is the mother of Biden's 18-month-old baby and who is fighting him for...

The CDC reports that only 6515 people in the United States died from Influenza. Another chart contained in the pdf here:https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf shows that 55,000 died from influenza AND pneumonia. So I'm assuming out of that 6515 is flu and the rest in pneumonia. The flu can certainly lead to pneumonia which is why they may be grouped together. But not all pneumonia comes from the flu. Question: Is the corona virus more likely or less likely to lead to pneumonia?

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Department of Justice could withhold funding from cities and states that refuse to cooperate with the Trump administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. A three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district court judge's ruling that the department lacked the authority to impose immigration-related conditions on certain funding. A group of seven states and New York City sued the DOJ in 2017 after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the agency would start withholding funding from local governments that refused to share information about undocumented immigrants or provide...

As is well known, Georgia senator Johnny Isakson resigned in December due to health issues. He never should have run for re-election in 2016, but that's another matter. He had three years left in his term, and Governor Brian Kemp solicited applications from Georgians to fill his seat for 2020. Kemp received hundreds of applications, one of which was from Representative Doug Collins, of my congressional district — the Georgia 9th. Collins was President Trump's choice to replace Isakson. The president reportedly asked Governor Kemp on several occasions to appoint Collins to the Senate, but Kemp bucked the president and...

The great fear for establishment Democrats right now is that he’s *not* starting to collapse, merely beginning to fade. Dem leaders can tolerate Mike Bloomberg beating Bernie for the nomination; they can also tolerate Mike Bloomberg quickly imploding, clearing a path for Biden to win on Saturday and emerge as the great centrist hope against Sanders next week on Super Tuesday. What they can’t tolerate is a zombie Bloomberg candidacy, one where Bloomy pulls enough votes away from Biden to hold Joe down but not enough to threaten Sanders himself. More than anything else, they need to resolve the so-called...