Free Republic

Hawaii Governor David Ige is preparing to slash teacher salaries by 20 percent as the state faces the grim financial realities of the coronavirus pandemic...Inge warned the state’s public sector unions about the possible pay cut on Tuesday, just months after negotiating more than $160 million in raises for the next two years. Those raises were virtually certain to pass the legislature weeks ago, but the pandemic forced lawmakers to reverse course...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Breitbart News on Saturday that he is moving to reopen his state’s economy starting next week because the United States depends on Texas’s success to thrive. Abbott, in an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel, said that Texas is “the economic engine of America” and must reopen now that the coronavirus crisis is in decline. Texas, he noted, is the world’s 10th largest economy on its own. “As you and your listeners probably know, Texas has always been ranked number one in the United States for creating jobs and for...

Thought this was worth sharing! Found it on a friends FB feed: My friend who is a lawyer in Michigan posted this. It addresses constitutional issues people site to disobey the “shelter in place” order. “Liberty gives you the right to act the fool if you so choose; it does not, however, give you the right to do so at the expense of others.” -A sentence I jotted in my Constitutional Law class notes one day in 2009. Because so many of us are focused on the ill-advised and outright dangerous protest against Michigan’s “stay home, stay safe” order that...

The Covid-19 shutdowns have been based on the premise that the disease would kill more than two million Americans absent drastic actions to slow its spread. That model assumed case fatality rates - the share of infected people who die from the disease - of 1% to 3%. The World Health Organization’s estimated case-fatality rate was 3.4%. Some experts - including in these pages - have questioned this assumption. They argue that known cases are likely only a small portion of the true number of infections, and thus high case-fatality rates could be off by orders of magnitude. We don’t...

Sources continued to say that Trump's presidency has left Obama "heartbroken," listing the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic as a reason for a change in leadership. “The coronavirus disaster and the [federal] government’s inability to lead on it is searing in his brain … more than anything else Trump has done,” a second insider told the New York Post. “Obama is generally heartbroken by the Donald Trump presidency.”

A month ago, we interviewed Dr. Jay Bhattacharya just as the COVID-19 crisis was shuttering the economy and governments were ordering citizens to shelter at home. In that interview, Dr. Bhattacharya mentioned that he himself would soon be conducting tests for COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, California, one of the most active hotspots in the country. Today Dr. Bhattacharya returns to discuss the results of that study and one currently under way in partnership with Major League Baseball. We also discuss some signs of hope, and specifics about how the economy can be restarted safely and efficiently. Dr. Bhattacharya also...

An enraged Florida woman who suspected her boyfriend was dishonest stabbed him with surgical scissors whereas he was laid up in a hospital mattress, police mentioned. Taniea Denise Sherrod, 18, was busted Wednesday after her boyfriend reported the alleged stabbing on Nov. 19 at Bayfront Well being St. Petersburg, the Tampa Bay Occasions reported. Sherrod’s boyfriend, who was not recognized, advised police he was mendacity in a hospital mattress with the woman at his facet once they started arguing over “suspected infidelity,” in response to a police report obtained by the newspaper. Sherrod, of St. Petersburg, then grew to become...

As the president of the United States shelters in place with the White House press corps, and Joe Biden gibbers senselessly into the GoPro camera in his Delaware basement, this fall’s national election has been thrown into a cocked tricorn by the coronavirus. Many of Donald Trump’s retail-politicking strengths — the huge rallies, his command of crowds — have been neutralized, and while he still has control of the narrative from his bully pulpit in the West Wing, the national media remains dead set against him, and puts the worst possible spin on every word he speaks. Meanwhile, Biden and...

In the great Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, we hear the golden-mouthed preacher say this about the encounter of Christ with Hades (or Hell): He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to...

An Atlanta police officer has been relieved of her duties after investigators said she attacked a fellow officer and tried to run them over with her car. Investigators said an off-duty APD officer was helping with traffic flow at Wells Fargo bank along Camp Creek Parkway when Lt. Sharonne Steed refused to follow the officer’s directions. “Lt. Steed continued to defy the officer's orders and ultimately bumped her vehicle into him,” Atlanta police said in a news release Tuesday. Police said the off-duty officer tried get Steed out of the car and she resisted, ultimately biting the officer’s hand. Investigators...

As a nation the Wuhan Virus has framed a re-evaluation of priority: faith, family, community and freedom. Seeing totalitarian Blue state governors so easy dispatch liberty and individual rights reminds us to rekindle the flickering flame of freedom. Modern journalists, no more essential to life than scripted narrative engineers dancing as puppets on strings in boxes, are inconsequential. The true American story is not built upon celebrity; but rather grit, callouses and dirty fingernails. Farmers, truck drivers, stock clerks and supermarket cashiers are essential; …dancing puppets, not so much. Facing this reality a generation of pathetically soft and feeble sorts;...

The news media business was shaky before the coronavirus started spreading across the country last month. Since then, the economic downturn that put more than 22 million Americans out of work has led to pay cuts, layoffs and shutdowns at many news outlets, including weeklies like Seven Days in Burlington, Vt., and Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper chain. Finding a sizable audience has not been a problem for publishers. Hunger for news in a time of crisis has sent droves of readers to many publications. But with businesses paused or closed — and no longer willing or able to pay...

The fearsome knock on the door came after nightfall. Outside were two men in hazmat suits who told businessman Fang Bin they had come to take him into medical quarantine. But the textile trader, a gangly man in his early 40s, wasn’t ill and the men outside his Wuhan apartment weren’t doctors. They were police officers confronting a menace the Chinese Communist Party had been grappling with as ferociously as the coronavirus itself – ordinary people who bravely expose the truth about the outbreak and refuse to keep quiet. Mr Fang’s ‘crime’ was to post a video he had filmed...

A group of 44 suspected members of Boko Haram, arrested during a recent operation against the jihadist group, have been found dead in their prison cell, apparently poisoned, Chad’s chief prosecutor announced Saturday. Speaking on national television, Youssouf Tom said the 44 prisoners had been found dead in their cell on Thursday. An autopsy carried out on four of the dead prisoners revealed traces of a lethal substance that had caused heart attacks in some of the victims and severe asphyxiation in the others, he said.

Another offshore vessel attacked in Gulf of Mexico NIKOLAY TORKIN News April 17, 2020 8:16 am Offshore accommodation vessel TELFORD 28 was attacked in the evening Apr 14 at Cuidad Del Carmen Anchorage, Mexico, Gulf of Mexico, according to Offshore Engineer news website oedigital.com. Understood it was a robbery, pirates looting both staff and vessel’s valuable items, and escaped. One crew was injured and taken to hospital, his life is not in danger. Pirates attacks in this area have become regular. Offshore accommodation vessel TELFORD 28, IMO 8769638, GT 13062, built 2007, flag Gibraltar, owner Telford Offshore.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said Friday that President Donald Trump’s comments about “liberating” parts of the country from coronavirus stay-at-home orders put millions of Americans at risk of contracting COVID-19. Trump on Friday via Twitter encouraged demonstrators in the Democratic states of Michigan, Virginia and Minnesota to protest social-distancing rules that experts say can help slow the spread of the virus. Inslee, a Democrat, said in a statement that Trump is encouraging “illegal and dangerous acts.”“His unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before,” Inslee said....

Unusual piracy attack on container ship Mikhail Voytenko News April 16, 2020 6:24 am GISIS reported an unusual piracy attack on container ship FOUMA in Ecuador waters, which took place at 0330 UTC (2230 LT) Apr 9, when the ship was under way, en route from Manta Ecuador to Guayaquil. Eight armed robbers in two speed boats approached a container ship underway. Master raised the alarm and activated the SSAS. The robbers fired warning shots, managed to board the ship, and opened 15 containers. When the search lights were directed towards the robbers, they opened fire towards the bridge. Port...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump warned China on Saturday that it should face consequences if it was “knowingly responsible” for the coronavirus pandemic, as he ratcheted up criticism of Beijing over its handling of the outbreak. “It could have been stopped in China before it started and it wasn’t, and the whole world is suffering because of it,” Trump told a daily White House briefing. It was the latest U.S. volley in a war of words between the world’s two biggest economies, showing increased strains in relations at a time when experts say an unprecedented level of cooperation...

Investigators still don't have access to the area where the fire beganOne year ago today, the world watched in horror as a fire swept through Paris’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral, sending its spire crumbling to the ground, caving in its ceiling, and setting alight its historic interior. And now, with the country on lockdown, restoration efforts on the Gothic building have been put on hold, forcing a team of 100 engineers, scientists, architects, and archeologists to cease their tireless work on the damaged structure. The target date for completing the complex and delicate restoration has always been 2024, in time...

...Trump also offered to Whitsett the use of White House doctors to treat her lyme disease after she said she had difficulty finding treatment for her condition in Detroit. “People don’t know about lyme disease. It’s a very bad thing… It can kill you. If you have a certain type of blood, if you get lyme disease, it’s over,” Trump said. Whitsett explained that she contracted lyme disease in her Detroit home as a five-year-old child, which came as somewhat of a surprise to Trump...