Free Republic

Support for critical market functioning. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will purchase Treasury securities and agency mortgage-backed securities in the amounts needed to support smooth market functioning and effective transmission of monetary policy to broader financial conditions and the economy. The FOMC had previously announced it would purchase at least $500 billion of Treasury securities and at least $200 billion of mortgage-backed securities. In addition, the FOMC will include purchases of agency commercial mortgage-backed securities in its agency mortgage-backed security purchases. Supporting the flow of credit to employers, consumers, and businesses by establishing new programs that, taken together, will...

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE THE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITYSUBJECT:       Providing Federal Support for Governors’ Use of the National Guard to Respond to COVID-19By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. 5121-5207 (the “Stafford Act”), and section 502 of title 32, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to take measures to assist State Governors in their responses to all threats...

NEW ORLEANS — The Louisiana death toll from the coronavirus pandemic rose Sunday but the rate of infection appeared to have slowed dramatically, according to figures released by the Louisiana Department of Health. The state had a total of 3,540 confirmed cases as of noon CDT Sunday, compared to 3,315 on March 28. That increase of 225 cases, or less than 7%, marks a dramatic flattening of the curve Louisiana had experienced last week, when the percentage rise was as high as 28% on some days.

Excerpt: ZURICH, March 29 (Reuters) - Novartis Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said his Sandoz generics unit's malaria, lupus and arthritis drug hydroxychloroquine is the company's biggest hope against the coronavirus, Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported on Sunday. Novartis has pledged to donate 130 million doses and is supporting clinical trials needed before the medicine, which U.S. President Donald Trump also has been promoting, can be approved for use against the coronavirus.

COLUMBUS — After calling the Food and Drug Administration "reckless," Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine talked to President Donald Trump on a phone call early Sunday about mask-sterilizing technology and COVID-19 in Ohio. By: Zach McAuliffe items.[0].image.alt Photo by: Julie Carr Smyth/AP COLUMBUS — After calling the Food and Drug Administration "reckless," Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine talked to President Donald Trump on a phone call early Sunday about mask-sterilizing technology and COVID-19 in Ohio. WATCH LIVE "We had a good conversation," DeWine tweeted Sunday morning. Governor Mike DeWine ✔ @GovMikeDeWine I have just talked with @realDonaldTrump about this issue, and we...

Boko Haram... released another execution video. In it, a masked Muslim child holding a pistol appears standing behind a bound and kneeling hostage, later identified as Ropvil Daciya Dalep, a 22-year-old Christian... kidnapped on January 9 while traveling to his university, where he majored in biology. After chanting in Arabic and launching into an anti-Christian diatribe, the Muslim child proceeds to shoot Ropvil several times in the back of the head. — Independent Catholic News, January 23, 2020; Nigeria.[snip]After Muhammad 'Awad, 32, was arrested and questioned as to why he tried to murder Rafiq Karam, 56, he confessed that he...

PRESENTATION OF PROFESSOR RAOULT Joined Sunday, this infectious disease specialist says he is convinced he has found a cure for the coronavirus. Professor Raoult deems it "immoral" to wait to administer it and says that he does not "care" that a clinical trial has been launched. Didier Raoult is convinced of this: he has found "the" most effective remedy for treating patients with Covid-19. Director of the Mediterranean Infection Marseille University Hospital Institute (Bouches-du-Rhône), this infectiologist, specialist in emerging tropical infectious diseases, says that chloroquine, an antimalarial used for decades and well known to travelers as Nivaquine, has dramatic effects...

Frankfurt Am Main: Thomas Schaefer, the finance minister of Germany's Hesse state, has committed suicide apparently after becoming "deeply worried" over how to cope with the economic fallout from the coronavirus, state premier Volker Bouffier said Sunday (March 29, 2020).

It's time (beyond time, actually) for Trump to be bold and green light the country getting back to work. That will put huge pressure on the cities, counties and states that did their own lockdown. The unemployment and suffering are going to be epic as it is. The time to end this is NOW. This virus is no different than anything else that has come our way and we never shut the government down in the past. The idiot talking heads like Fauci, have been WRONG, just like the Imperial College modelling. All agenda driven. Also, I think cuomo is...

Isn't Trump Fun to Watch against the DemocRATS and their Media? They fume and plot to get him and they race around like Keystone Cops in the old silent movies. They have their billy clubs out and race around in their paddy wagons but they just can't get him. They either fall over with their shoelaces tied together, end up bashing themselves or one another or just run out of gas. The lastest was over ventalators in New York. Cuomo said that Trump was denying them ventalators. Trump fires back that Cuomo had not kept the ones in 2015. Cuomo...

Excerpt: ..... She had to be hospitalized for five days at the V.A. in Long Beach, where her doctor approached her about a trial for hydroxychloroquine, a medication often used to treat auto-immune diseases like lupus. “It’s simple to take. It’s two little pills. They bring it in a little cup,” Paz said....

The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe got a frightening notice from the Trump administration just as residents are grappling with the devastating impact of COVID-19.The U.S. Interior Department is rescinding the reservation status of a Native American tribe whose plan to build a casino on its Massachusetts land was attacked by President Donald Trump last year. The planned gaming operation would have competed for business with nearby Rhode Island casinos with strong ties to Trump, who once owned, then bankrupted, casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The federal Bureau of Indian Affairs informed the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe on Friday that its 321-acre...

Kathy Griffin's Trump Derangement Syndrome has manifested itself in a variety of ways over the past few years, most notably her photoshoot featuring herself holding a bloody severed head of Trump back in 2017. Well, she hasn't learned much from that experience that damaged her career. Last week, she tweeted a photo of herself in the hospital, and criticized President Trump over the availability of coronavirus tests in the United States because she wanted to be tested, but wasn't. "I was sent to the #COVID19 isolation ward room in a major hospital ER from a separate urgent care facility after...

Faith Blooms in Adversity March 28th, 2020 Fear is a powerful force. It can make us anxious, paralyze us, frustrate us, or harden us against our loved ones and neighbors. But on the other hand, it can shake us into action, teach us, motivate us, and give us occasion to pronounce our loyalties. The difference seems a matter of perception and reception of hardship, hinging on our decisions and attitude. Today’s COVID-19 pandemic presents two grave concerns: first, of course, the disease itself; second, an unprecedented disruption of our society. Obviously there is no lack of information for navigating the...

hio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was “reckless” for sharply limiting the number of protective masks Columbus-based research firm Battelle can sterilize using a process it developed. It was a sharp rebuke from a Republican governor who until now has refrained from criticizing the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak. DeWine talked to Trump later in the morning and said the president was willing to help. I have just talked with @realDonaldTrump about this issue, and we had a good conversation. He understands the problem and says he will do everything he...

An old malaria medicine, hydroxychloroquine, has gone viral on the internet. But is it really an antiviral drug? The medicine has been seen as a potential treatment for Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, almost since outbreaks started. This week it made headlines, due in part to tweets from President Trump and in part because of a small French study of 42 patients that seemed to show that hydroxychloroquine, particularly when combined with the antibiotic azithromycin, helped decrease patients’ levels of coronavirus. Unfortunately, the rumors about the drug’s efficacy have also encouraged some to buy and even...

Well worth the read. https://t.co/SfBInpLuoL— Jeb Bush (@JebBush) March 27, 2020 A South Korean Covid-19 Czar Has Some Advice for Trump “We need global cooperation,” says Min Pok-kee, who heads the response in the hard-hit city of Daegu. “Top government leaders don’t seem to get that yet.” "Trump has spoken dismissively about testing because of his ego. As we scientists see it, he’s motivated by pride. The doctors in the US all know that this sort of testing is appropriate."

Who could possibly object to posting flu deaths along side COVID-19 statistics? Stop scaring people now. We get it. The corona virus is bad news.

King Donald the First? Joy Reid is rattled by the prospect that such could actually come to be! On her MSNBC show this morning, Reid warned that President Trump—aided and abetted by that dastardly AG Bill Barr—might be planning to "expand his power under the guise of national security" to achieve the goal he has "always" had: "reigning as a monarch with unlimited power rather than serving as a mere president in a democracy." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

As I watched the Prime Minister order mass house arrest on Monday night, I felt revulsion, anger and grief – as anyone brought up when this was a free and well-governed country would. I also felt terribly alone. You could not have known, from anything broadcast that night or printed the following day, that anyone was unhappy with these events. But they were. So, above all things this week, I would like to thank all the kind, perplexed people who have got in touch with me by so many means, to say they share my doubts about the Government’s handling...