Free Republic

Denver Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca is getting major blowback over a controversial tweet sent on Friday. CdeBaca quoted a tweet that said, “For the record, if I do get the coronavirus I’m attending every MAGA rally I can.” CdeBaca responded and quoted the tweet by saying, “#solidarity Yaaaas!!”

Feminist author Jill Filipovic suggested that, after the 2020 presidential election, Democrats might want to commit to not including any white men in its field of candidates. "Whatever happens in November, what if all Democrats pledged that no white guys will run for president next cycle?" she tweeted on Monday. She also pushed back on people who wanted Democrats to choose the "best" candidate. "And yeah we all want the best candidates to run, but if that's your immediate response here, you're kind of telling on yourself that you don't think there are plenty of excellent candidates who aren't white...

From February 24 to 28, a delegation of U.S. Attorneys led by U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna of the Central District of California, U.S. Attorney Robert Brewer of the Southern District of California, U.S. Attorney Mike Bailey of the District of Arizona, U.S. Attorney John Anderson of the District of New Mexico, U.S. Attorney Joseph Brown of the Eastern District of Texas, U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick of the Southern District of Texas, and U.S. Attorney John Bash of the Western District of Texas along with their and the Northern District of Texas criminal chiefs and Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task...

World health officials said Tuesday the case fatality rate for COVID-19 is 3.4% globally, higher than previous estimates of about 2%. “Globally, about 3.4% of reported COVID-19 cases have died,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Geneva. In comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1% of those infected, he said. ...During a press briefing Monday, WHO officials said they don’t know how COVID-19 behaves, saying it’s not like influenza. They added that while much is known about the seasonal flu, such as how it’s transmitted and what treatments work...

Two Chinese nationals were charged with laundering over $100 million worth of cryptocurrency from a hack of a cryptocurrency exchange.  The funds were stolen by North Korean actors in 2018, as detailed in the civil forfeiture complaint also unsealed today.In the two-count indictment unsealed today in the District of Columbia, 田寅寅 aka Tian Yinyin, and 李家东aka Li Jiadong, were charged with money laundering conspiracy and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.“These defendants allegedly laundered over a hundred million dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency to obscure transactions for the benefit of actors based in North Korea,” said Assistant Attorney General...

There’s been a lot going on—I know. But something might be going on with the Federal Judges Association and this aborted meeting about the president over the Roger Stone case. Attorney General William Barr noted that Trump’s tweets make his job more difficult. Then, there was an overreach by the media who suggested Barr could resign. He’s not going anywhere—and notice how that story died within36 hours. It was crap. Do we have another instance of the media getting it wrong with this FJA meeting that reportedly centered on rebuking Trump? The case that supposedly caused the organization to...

accine Research Center National Institutes of Health Bethesda, Maryland 2:48 P.M. EST DR. FAUCI: Mr. President, thank you very much for coming to the NIH today. THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. DR. FAUCI: We really are very pleased — THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Tony. DR. FAUCI: — with your visit. And I want just, again, thank you for your support of everything that we’ve been doing in this obviously very important problem. What I’ve asked is just first to have Francis Collins — THE PRESIDENT: Good. DR. FAUCI: — our director, just make a couple of comments about the NIH in...

South Lawn 2:04 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Hello, folks. So I’m going to the National Institute of Health. We’re having a roundtable. Things are going very well, as you see. It’s been very strong. Mike Pence and the entire group are doing an excellent job. And do you have any questions? Q Mr. President, do you believe it’s inevitable that the coronavirus will spread across the country? And is it possible that we may need to take more stringent measures to contain it? THE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s — anything can happen, but I wouldn’t say inevitable at all. No. I...

Washington Hilton Washington, D.C. 11:27 A.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you. What a nice group. And thank you, Mary Ann. I think you like Mary Ann a lot. I was listening. I said, “Who is out there that they like so much?” It was Mary Ann. (Laughter.) Please sit down. Please. Before I begin, I want to send my warm wishes to the great people of Tennessee in the wake of the horrible and very vicious tornado that killed at least 19 people and injured many more. We’re working with the leaders in Tennessee, including their great governor,...

The number of people in Italy who have died since contracting the new coronavirus has risen to 79, according to the latest official data. Some 400 new cases were reported on Tuesday evening, bringing the total number of people in Italy confirmed to have contracted the virus since the beginning of the outbreak to 2,502. Of these 160 have recovered and 79 have died, leaving Italy with 2,263 active cases, according to official figures from the Italian Health Ministry and Civil Protection department. That means another 27 people passed away since Monday, while 11 were given the all-clear. More than...

On conference stages and at campaign rallies, tech executives and politicians warn of a looming automation crisis — one where workers are gradually, then all at once, replaced by intelligent machines. But their warnings mask the fact that an automation crisis has already arrived. The robots are here, they’re working in management, and they’re grinding workers into the ground. The robots are watching over hotel housekeepers, telling them which room to clean and tracking how quickly they do it. They’re managing software developers, monitoring their clicks and scrolls and docking their pay if they work too slowly. They’re listening to...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) threatened to issue subpoenas for documents related to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1.Delegation of Re-establishment Authority.The Secretary of Health and Human Services is delegated the authority under section 9(a)(1) of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), to re-establish the Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (Council).  In exercising this authority, the Secretary may direct the Council to perform duties consistent with those assigned to the Council in section 505(b) of Public Law 116-22,...

Cabinet Room 3:20 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you very much. Today, we are meeting with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies — the biggest in the world, most prestigious, the ones that get down to the bottom line very quickly — to discuss how the federal government can accelerate the development of vaccines and therapeutic treatments for the coronavirus. We want to welcome Dr. Deborah Birx. And Dr. Birx has been to the White House a lot over her career, and she’s now going to be here working with Mike Pence and everybody full time, and we appreciate it....

A win in California would be an electoral wipeout for Democrats in 2020. Is it possible? The last time a Republican won the state was back in 1988 when Bush walloped Dukakis, but it was by a razor-thin margin. Given the Golden State’s deeply entrenched Democratic bastions, is it even possible that this state is in play? I mean what could cause Democrats to cross the aisle here. What could state Democrats possibly do to create a pathway for a hated man like Trump to a run to flip the state? Oh, could it be their nonsensical freelance law—AB5—that...

March 3 is the feast day of Philadelphia's own Saint Katharine Drexel. Katharine Mary Drexel was quite an unlikely candidate for sainthood. Though brought up in a devoutly Catholic family, Katharine's youth was one of wealth and luxury. Daughter of one of Philadelphia's elite families, she was expected to do what most girls of her age and status did which was marry the scion of another wealthy family. When she first revealed her inclination to the religious life, both her parents and her spiritual director, Father James O'Connor (later the first bishop of Omaha, Nebraska) were opposed. Katharine herself had...

Karma A waitress who attempted to have Milo Yiannopoulos removed from a restaurant in New Jersey for being “racist” was subsequently fired after Milo contacted the owners of the restaurant. Milo said he went for supper at The Fox & Falcon with his black husband and another black friend but that “it turned out our table was insufficiently diverse for the waitress.” The waitress tweeted that she had loudly asked near Milo’s table “why do we allow racist, sexist, antisemitic trash here?” Milo responded by emailing the PR company that represents the restaurant and drawing attention to her tweet while...

Let's stop arguing about Mitt Romney and argue about something else for a couple hours. I'm presently in a discussion with some friends about whether Isla Lund really wanted to end up with Rick Blaine or Victor Laszlo. If you need to Google these names, skip this post. I say she wanted to be with Rick. The explication here begins in the scene where she shows up at Rick's apartment holding a gun at him, and he says, "Go ahead and shoot; you'll be doing me a favor." Got it? Okay. When she got there, she demanded the letters of...

Stocks fell sharply in volatile trading on Tuesday as an emergency rate cut by the Federal Reserve failed to assuage concerns of slower economic growth due to the coronavirus outbreak. The decision to cut rates by half a percentage point came two weeks before the Fed’s scheduled meeting as the central bank felt it was necessary to act quickly to combat the effect of the virus spreading worldwide. It’s the first such emergency action coming in between scheduled meetings since the financial crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 785.91 points lower, or nearly 3%, to 25,917.41; it rose more...

The Trump administration is considering using a national disaster program to pay hospitals and doctors for their care of uninsured people infected with the new coronavirus as concerns rise over costs of treating some of the 27 million Americans without health coverage, a person familiar with the conversations said. In natural disasters such as hurricanes, hospitals and medical facilities can be reimbursed under a federal program that pays them about 110% of Medicare rates for treating patients such as those evacuated from hard-hit areas. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been in discussions about using that program to...