Free Republic

At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, some Democrats opposed lockdowns. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi encouraged visitors to “come to Chinatown” in San Francisco while New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told residents “to go on with your lives” and “get out on the town.” Positions have since aligned politically, though, with Democrats now favoring extended lockdowns with no release dates in sight, while conservatives, Republicans, some libertarian thinkers, and even a few Democrats are demanding we all be freed to make our own decisions. As puzzling as it might seem, there’s an obvious explanation: Democrats realized lockdowns could...

April 25 2020 Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist Reading 1 1 Pt 5:5b-14 Beloved: Clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for:God opposes the proud but bestows favor on the humble.So humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your worries upon him because he cares for you.Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your brothers and sisters throughout the world undergo the same sufferings. The...

Whitmer signaled that she is not going to back down to the protests or the Republican demands, and said that she is going to veto the measures meant to limit her authority. "I'm not going to sign any bill that takes authority away from me or from any future governor," she said. "The powers of the Executive Office are incredibly important, especially in times of crisis where lives are on the line." She went so far as to demand that legislators respect the stay-at-home order and not leave their homes to vote.

The $3 billion firm, which is publicly held, had 26,000 employees in 18 states before the pandemic. AutoNation used separate tax identification numbers assigned to dozens of its more than 300 locations to apply for at least $266 million in funds for separate dealerships, including Jaguar and Land Rover of Bethesda, Porsche Orlando and Lexus of Cerritos, outside Los Angeles, according to the documents.

Pagan-influenced ordination of indigenous deacon shows Church with ‘Amazonian face’ The ordination included indigenous songs, dances, bead necklaces, and traditional headwear, as well as the use of animals’ teeth, shells and snails, and bracelets made of vegetable fibres. April 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — For the first time, a member of the Ticuna tribe in the Brazilian diocese of Alto Solimões in the Western province of Amazonia was ordained a permanent deacon of the Catholic Church on March 15, in a ceremony fraught with indigenous symbols. The event received international attention when the Holy See’s official  news service, Vatican News, published...

Four Indiana men who allegedly broke into a woman's home and confined her for hours to steal her stimulus check have been charged, police said. Paul Blankenship, Phillip Guzman and Jacob Baughman, all of Lake Station, along with Christopher Henderson, of Hobart, were taken into custody Sunday after the woman reported she had been the victim of a crime, Lake Station Police Chief James Richardson said. They were each charged Monday with burglary with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, criminal confinement while armed with a deadly weapon and burglary of a dwelling and residential break and enter, court records show....

Well worth watching if you have some time.

Her post on Weibo since then has been shared widely on social media. There is also a viral image that is being shared that claims to show Kim Jong Un lying dead inside a glass coffin. While these claims cannot be verified independently, the timing of it certainly makes one curious as now China has sent in a medical team. Reuters reported that China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation. At this point, until there is a report from...

With Smithfield Foods' Sioux Falls pork plant closed by a COVID-19 outbreak, Minnesota hog farmer Greg Boerboom may face a grim choice. The South Dakota plant had been scheduled this week to slaughter about 1,400 of Boerboom's pigs. Smithfield directed 25% of that shipment to another Smithfield plant in Illinois — with Boerboom paying the extra $1,500 in freight costs. The remaining 850 hogs are in limbo. Boerboom is seeking a destination for them before they grow too big for market and thus face euthanization. Over 3,000 healthy pigs were put down in Minnesota this week, and 200,000 more could...

A resurfaced clip on "Larry King Live" in 1993 appears to show the mother of Tara Reade -- who has accused Joe Biden of past sexual assault while in the Senate -- alluding to “problems” her daughter faced while working as a staffer for the then-Delaware senator. In a telephone interview with Fox News on Friday night, Reade confirmed that her mother called into the show. Biden's presidential campaign has adamantly denied Reade's allegations but the video could be cited as evidence supporting Reade’s allegation – even though her late mother, in the clip, does not specifically refer to a...

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation. The trip by the Chinese doctors and officials comes amid conflicting reports about the health of the North Korean leader. Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signaled in terms of Kim’s health. A delegation led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department left Beijing for North Korea on Thursday, two of the people said. The department is...

Please, please, wake up. A calamity far worse than coronavirus itself is at hand.Frightening as the death toll from the virus is, a more terrifying consequence looms: a depression, and a major one.If you think that’s exaggeration, it’s because expert opinion and news on the economy is drowned out by “frightening, click-bait headlines” that are “not useful” on meaningless numbers.The assessments from sources of all political stripes are everywhere, though you won’t see them mentioned by politicians or most of the media the general public reads. Here are a few:“We are experiencing an economic contraction that is faster and deeper...

The Supreme Court on Friday denied a request to block the Trump administration's "public charge" rule during the coronavirus health crisis. A group of state attorneys general had asked the court to issue an injunction against the rule, which links a migrant's eligibility for legal status with the likelihood that he or she will rely on public assistance. The court had decided earlier this year to allow the rule to go into effect, but the group of state officials, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), had asked the justices to revisit the decision in light of the...

In a daily report dedicated to news updates and guidance for county employees fighting the coronavirus, an Oregon county in the Portland area said it was creating a safe "grounding space" for minority staff to escape a predominant “whiteness.” The April 5 "situation report" from the Multnomah County Office of Emergency Operations Center announced that the "Emergency Operations Center Equity Officer is hosting a grounding space for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) employees to share, heal, connect, and get grounded in a space that is not dominated by whiteness." Multnomah County dismissed any notion that a government entity...

Naomi Soria, 27, is facing criminal charges after she organized last week's downtown San Diego protest Around 400 people marched on the Hall of Justice demanding an end to California Governor Gavin Newsom's stay-at-home order Police said Soria is the only protester facing charges as she violated the stay-at-home order by organizing the protest and encouraging others to gather Soria slammed the authorities saying they are trying to take away her constitutional rights and said she is planning another protest for this weekend Thousands of Americans have taken taken part in protests around the US over the last two weeks,...

New York health officials were warned in writing that a Brooklyn nursing home where 55 patients have died of coronavirus was overwhelmed — weeks before it began topping the state’s official list of resident COVID-19 deaths, damning emails show. Cobble Hill Health Center CEO Donny Tuchman sent a desperate email to state Health Department officials on April 9, asking if there was “a way for us to send our suspected covid patients” to the hospital built inside the Javits Convention Center or the US Naval hospital ship Comfort — the under-utilized federal medical facilities on Manhattan’s West Side. “We don’t...

New documents filed under seal in federal court include exculpatory information about former White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, an FBI official told The Federalist on Friday. New court documents filed under seal include significant exculpatory information about Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former National Security Adviser, an FBI official familiar with the situation told The Federalist on Friday. The new documents, which were filed under seal by the Department of Justice Friday, allegedly include exonerating evidence about Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his conversations with foreign diplomats as Trump’s top incoming foreign policy...

According to the the report, U.S. government researchers had been conducting “kitten cannibalism” experiments — spending taxpayer dollars to buy cats and other animals from Chinese wet markets and then feeding their tissue to kittens in the U.S. “The currently approved protocol for this project calls for up to 100 kittens to be bred each year at ARS’s Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Beltsville, Maryland. At eight weeks old, the kittens are fed raw meat infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, and their feces is collected for up to 3 weeks so experimenters can harvest oocysts (eggs)...

This thread summarizes the major-media investigative reporting on the TRUMP-CHINA SCANDAL, a bribery scandal involving Trump's hunt for dirt on Joe Biden in China, his debts to the Chinese government, and his decision to ignore life-saving COVID-19 intel. 1/ We begin with the context: Trump's history of viewing his endeavors as entwined and mutually reinforcing. For instance, despite contest-rigging being a felony, Trump has been accused of picking Miss Universe finalists based on where his businesses are. [SNIP] 23/ We don't have to *wonder* what the connection is between Trump's trade war and Biden—Trump told us in October 2019. In...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. shale producers, refiners and pipeline companies are scrambling for cash and face likely restructuring as they struggle under heavy debt loads while engulfed in the worst crisis the oil industry has faced. SNIP About half of the top 60 independent U.S. oil producers are in danger of restructuring and will need to find ways to boost their cash pile, according to energy lawyers at Haynes and Boone. SNIP Demand, however, is down by roughly 25% in the United States, and oversupply is expected to linger for months. An April survey of energy producers by the...