Free Republic

Take heed, America, and remember this when the crisis passes. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times – although right now it just seems like the worst of times, with the world stricken either by the Chinese coronavirus itself (that’s right, I called it Chinese) or by the media-fanned panic about it. But a silver lining of any crisis, perceived or real, is that it swiftly reveals who one’s friends really are – whom you can trust when the chips are down – and that is a vital lesson for Americans to take to heart....

BENI, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo recorded a second Ebola death in days following more than seven weeks without a new case, the World Health Organization said on Sunday. Congo had been due on Sunday to mark an end to the second-deadliest outbreak of the virus on record, until a case was confirmed on Friday in the eastern city of Beni. The outbreak has killed more than 2,200 people since August 2018 in an area of the country where militia violence hobbled efforts to contain it. The latest victim was an 11-month-old girl, who was...

VIDEO The announcement by Bernie Sanders that he is no longer campaigning for the Democrat presidential nomination has caused a wave of very depressed reactions from his supporters. Many of these reactions, as you can see in this video, are quite funny. The only person not depressed is the guy at the end who sees Sanders ending his campaign as a great opportunity to push for Communist revolution.

Stanley I. Chera, who parlayed his father’s Brooklyn department store business into one of New York real estate’s biggest retail empires, reaped huge rewards from the city’s emergence as a global shopping destination and used his wealth and connections to play kingmaker for Donald Trump, has died from complications of the coronavirus, making him the most high-profile industry casualty of the global pandemic. Chera’s death on April 11 was confirmed to The Real Deal by sources who have worked closely with the firm he founded and ran, Crown Acquisitions. Yashar Ali, a journalist and contributor to New York Magazine, reported...

While the US shuts down all commerce for weeks and destroys the economy, other countries like Sweden and Brazil are doing the opposite and allowing the China coronavirus to run its course. Data indicates there no material differences in fatalities between the three countries. In fact it now appears the COVID-19 numbers are dropping significantly in both Brazil and Sweden. This leads the casual observer to question why is the US killing its economy? The US continues to prevent nearly all commerce from occurring to combat the China coronavirus. Many other countries are following suit. But some countries like Sweden...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Speaker Pelosi released a joint statement Monday morning demanding that Republicans stop “political posturing” on COVID-19 small business relief legislation, after the pair of Democratic leaders successfully blocked additional funding for the bipartisan Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) last week: The delay of additional funding, as the original funding runs out as small businesses begin to see relief, is at the hands of Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi, who torpedoed the bill when their list of unrelated demands were not met. Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), proposed a clean bill...

Whether law enforcement officers realize it or not, politicians are using them for tyrannical deeds for the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the country, news articles are coming out reporting police officers are being used to enforce edicts of social distancing, mask-wearing, and dispersing “over-sized” groups. Police departments have policies that protect officers if he or she is commanded to take unconstitutional, illegal, or unethical action. Right now, it is time for law enforcement officials to remember those guidelines and how to use officer discretion. When law enforcement officers swear into a position to enforce laws, part of his or her oath...

The U.S. was given inaccurate information about the coronavirus at the beginning of the crisis Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Saturday. When Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Fauci if he believes China or the World Health Organization "misled" him or if the WHO leader himself could have been "deceived," Fauci noted that while he does not know the details behind the inaccurate information, it was disseminated from the start of the crisis. "You know I don't know where the missteps went, the only thing I know what the end...

If Beijing doesn't change its policies and address corporate fraud immediately, investors might never touch stocks of Chinese companies again. Beijing may pretend it has the coronavirus pandemic under control and insist there are no new infected cases. This week alone, however, the news of notorious accounting scandals in regard to two U.S.-listed Chinese companies surfaced, exposing yet another sickening event that has unraveled in China.Luckin Coffee is a two and a half-year-old startup coffee chain in China founded with the intention to overtake American coffee chain Starbucks. Luckin’s growth speed has been astounding, from nine locations in 2017...

During a daily press conference on the status of the state's coronavirus response, Cuomo pledged to work with the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut to determine when the state could emerge from lockdown safely. "People want to get on with their lives, people want to get out of the house, [they've got] cabin fever," the governor said Sunday. "We need the economy working, people need a paycheck, life has to function. When do we reopen?" Cuomo continued. "Look, the answer is we want to reopen as soon as possible. Everyone does on a societal level; everyone does on a...

Dr. Anthony Fauci said he is hopeful that U.S. citizens will be able to head to the polls in November as they would in any other past election, but with the uncertainty of how the Wuhan coronavirus could “rebound,” the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said he couldn’t “guarantee it.” The answer came after CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Fauci whether people would be able to “physically” vote. “I hope so, Jake,” he responded. “I can’t guarantee it. I believe that if we have a good, measured way of rolling into this, steps towards normality, that...

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has been leading the fight against the new coronavirus as the leader of the World Health Organization, has come under severe criticism, including by President Donald Trump, for not holding China accountable for concealing the truth about the disease. Here are three things about him that have surfaced.Tedros, the first African to become director-general of the United Nations’ health agency and who will be in office for two more years, is being blasted for sounding the alarm too late even as numerous reports point to the responsibility of the Chinese Communist Party in putting...

Last month, the media jumped on the news that the United States had more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any other nation. That was bogus on two fronts. First, U.S. intelligence agencies believe that China is lying about its true numbers, and reports from inside the country tell of crematoriums working around the clock and people being paid off to keep quiet.Second, the United States does not lead the world in coronavirus cases per capita—which is the best way to compare how the pandemic is being contained in each country. For much of the pandemic, Italy has been...

“Travesty” is not a nice word. It usually is applied to gross perversions of justice, and that apparently is the context Attorney General William Barr desired when he dropped it into an interview answer the other day in the breezy courtyard of the Department of Justice (DOJ). His composed, understated delivery almost disguised the weighty magnitude of that disturbing word and the loaded adjective that preceded it. “I think what happened to him,” he said, referring to the president and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, “was one of the greatest travesties in American history.” Okay, it’s important to...

At Christ Hospital in Jersey City, patients hospitalized with coronavirus receive a battery of treatments that doctors hope will ease their suffering and save their lives. They are given oxygen. Steroid inhalers. High doses of vitamin C, thiamine and zinc. Even plain old aspirin, to name a few. Also provided to patients is hydroxychloroquine, a decades-old malaria drug thrust into the spotlight of the coronavirus pandemic by President Donald Trump. It unexpectedly joined the culture wars last month after Trump touted it as a potential “game changer,” though medicine has yet to determine whether it is effective in combating the...

I'm concerned that for 2 days in a row Dr. Birx has been saying "logarithmic" curve instead of "exponential" This could indicate a small issue (her staff's too polite to correct her) or a bigger issue (if she doesn't even know the proper vocabulary what else is she wrong about?)

A sailor from the U.S. aircraft carrier stricken with the novel coronavirus has died from complications related to COVID-19, the Navy said Monday. The sailor from the USS Theodore Roosevelt was declared dead Monday after being taken to an intensive care unit last week, the Navy said in a statement. The sailor’s identification is being withheld until 24 hours after next of kin is notified. The sailor tested positive for the coronavirus March 30 and was in the middle of a 14-day isolation period on Naval Base Guam when he was found unresponsive during a daily medical check Thursday. CPR...

Good news on a national basis, but this offer may be void where numbers are looking more prohibitive. “We are nearing the peak now,” CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield told Savannah Guthrie on NBC’s Today, as the country progresses through its planned 45 day effort to “flatten the curve.” Redfield warns that the only way to know the peak is to see it in the rear-view mirror, but the numbers are “stabilizing” — nationally, anyway.The question isn’t just when we reopen, Redfield warns, but also where: “We are nearing the peak right now.” Watch @CDCDirector’s full interview with @savannahguthrie...

If Joe Biden weren’t such a corrupt, dissolute, politically vicious man, one might feel sorry for him as he simultaneously battles irrelevance and dementia while locked away in his home in Delaware. As it is, watching Biden public decay is the equivalent of watching someone take Dorian Gray’s picture out of the attic and place it in front of a television camera. It doesn’t help Biden when his campaign churns out bland, meaningless bits of political pabulum that are meant to read as profound insights into public policy during a challenging time in America. The latest example is an...

Have you ever been COVID-shamed online? Maybe you posted pictures of you and your family at a park and got reamed by someone for not being at home. Maybe, heaven forbid, you even dared to express a view on social media that strays from the ‘accepted opinion’ of months of mandated quarantine and government-enforced shutdowns until not a single solitary individual is infected with the virus. If the wrong people get wind you’ve expressed such an opinion, you’ll reap the whirlwind, I can promise you that. I’ve been there and done that. Fortunately, however, my work in conservative and right-of-center...