Free Republic

SECONDARY school pupils are told that Winston Churchill was a “war criminal” and “a blundering reactionary” in a teaching tutorial shared by thousands of teachers. It is also claimed the wartime leader’s speeches were “poorly received”, he was “drunk” during his “finest hour” message and Bob Geldof is more important to our history. The lesson plan, Winston Churchill: Hero or War Criminal?” appears on the website of global education company Tes. Using halos and red devils’ horns as bullet points, the lesson contains a potted history of the career of what it calls “an intensely controversial figure”. Part of it...

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by Republicans in the state legislature who claim that State Health Secretary Andrea Palm exceeded her authority in ordering “non-essential” businesses to close in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As the arguments unfolded via video conference, several on the court’s conservative majority appeared skeptical of the order’s legality. Among them was Justice Rebecca Bradley, a staunch conservative and Federalist Society member. Bradley referred to the order as “tyranny” and later compared it to the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II. Though Wisconsin Supreme...

California grocery and retail stores won’t be required to charge 10 cents per bag, and they can again hand out thinner, single-use plastic bags under an executive order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. It’s a change that retailers have wanted for weeks, as many major grocery chains have stopped letting customers bring in reusable bags over fears of spreading the coronavirus. California, which has some of the nation's strictest laws aimed at reducing plastic waste, banned stores from handing out single-use plastic bags and required them to charge 10 cents for all paper and plastic bags several years ago. Newsom's...

The Iowa Department of Public Health is releasing new information on confirmed outbreaks of COVID-19 at five Iowa workplaces, including one where more than half of employees tested positive. On Tuesday, Dr. Caitlin Pedati, Medical Director of IDPH, approved the release of testing results of employees at four Iowa meat packing plants and TPI Composites in Newton. Each of the facilities have a confirmed outbreak, meaning 10% or more of the workforce in a single location is sick. At the Tyson plant in Perry, 730 employees tested positive for COVID-19. That is 58% of their workforce. Iowa Premium Beef in...

David Charles needs his $1,200 stimulus payment, but he can’t get a straight answer about where his money went. “I’m starving because I need this money and no one cares,” Charles said. The IRS website shows that his money was paid to his PayPal Mastercard, a prepaid card, on April 29, but the card shows no such payment, and customer service representatives have offered no answers, he said. He says he activated the card for the sole purpose of obtaining his stimulus money faster than through a check. He does not have a bank account because of his low income...

Angelina Jolie is calling on Congress to increase food assistance to families across the United States in the next coronavirus stimulus bill. The Academy Award-winning actress and humanitarian is advocating on behalf of the millions of families across the country who rely on things like free meals for their kids at schools that are no longer available as people lose work and classrooms remain empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shared with USA Today, the 44-year-old...

"The names of the twelve apostles are these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax-gatherer; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Him" (Matt. 10:2-4). Unity in the Spirit is the key to a church’s overall effectiveness. Unity is a crucial element in the life of the church—especially among its leadership. A unified church can accomplish great things for Christ, but disunity can cripple or destroy it. Even...

Police on quarantine containment patrol in Paris, France, came under fire Sunday evening. Video from the chaotic scene in the Noisy-le-Grand suburb shows three policemen entering a plaza on motorcycles before footage cuts to one officer being bombarded with fireworks as he tries to pin down a resident.

A coalition of progressive groups, many funded by billionaire George Soros, is sponsoring a “People’s Bailout” community organizing outfit nudging Congress to use the next stimulus package during the coronavirus crisis to enact reforms that would fundamentally transform American society by achieving longtime progressive aims. In the spirit of the repurposed progressive anthem of never letting a crisis go to waste, the suddenly created People’s Bailout group is demanding that the next stimulus package adhere to “five principles” the group says are endorsed by “nearly 1,000 organizations, unions, and community leaders, and nearly 100 members of Congress.” Those “principals” encompass...

Emily Ratajkowski is making her own fun in quarantine in an unconventional way. The 28-year-old “Lying and Stealing” star married her dog, Colombo, to her friend Joshua “The Fat Jew” Ostrovsky’s pup, Happy. For the dog wedding, Ratajkowski was clad in a slinky minidress that appeared to be fabricated in satin. For footwear, the Inamorata designer went with the Adidas Originals Samba in white. Born on the soccer field, the Samba features a soft leather upper with suede overlays and a rubber sole. The Samba is available (although not in the exact colorway chosen by Ratajkowski) for $90 on Fwrd.com....

Discussions are underway about winding down the work of the Coronavirus Task Force, Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged to reporters Tuesday, even as the number of deaths and new cases continue to mount, generally plateauing but not declining, as states begin to reopen. The administration's work on testing and bolstering the national stockpile will continue, Pence said, with some of that work being moved back to agencies. Pence, who leads the task force and was answering questions about a New York Times report about the likely disbanding of the task force, said in the off-camera briefing that "conversations are being...

A new study from Los Alamos National Laboratory has revealed a new, now-dominant strain of the coronavirus which appears to be more contagious, according to the authors. Meanwhile, doctors in the United States are wondering if the harder-hit East Coast is being hit with a different version of the virus than the West Coast. Emerging in early February, the new strain migrated from Europe to the East Coast of the United States, where it became the dominant strain across the world beginning in mid-March. Wherever the new strain has appeared, it’s quickly infected far more people than earlier strains which...

Jim Gaffigan is preparing to play former Toronto mayor Rob Ford in a scripted series currently in the works at AMC, Variety has learned exclusively. Jesse McKeown will write and executive produce, with Ed Helms and Mike Falbo executive producing under their Pacific Electric Picture Co. banner. Michael Dowse will executive produce and direct. The dark comedy series would detail the rise and fall of the controversial Ford, who served as the mayor of Toronto from 2010 to 2014 after many years as a city councilor. He was infamously caught on video smoking crack cocaine during his reelection campaign and...

"We meet on a regular basis through webinars with doctors at the ICUs at all of the hospitals and we have not seen this to date,” said New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot at a news conference on Wednesday. “To date, we have not heard of ways in which the coronavirus has been affecting children’s cardiovascular systems,” Barbot added. But on Thursday, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker acknowledged the state was aware of a few cases of kids with a toxic shock-like syndrome potentially connected to the coronavirus. He did not say exactly how many or where...

Gene Simmons was shown documents relating to his mother’s release from a Nazi concentration camp 75 years after it happened, including the victim impact statement she wrote. Flora Klein was 19 when American troops liberated the Mauthausen camp on May 5, 1945, three days before the end of World War II in Europe. She and her Jewish family had been subject to Nazi Germany’s attempts to wipe out her race; she was the only member of her family to survive. She died at 93 in 2018. Simmons' reaction to the documents, discovered by Bild, was revealed to mark the anniversary....

There are two things a quarantined European will reliably find when he goes online for news in this age of the coronavirus: first, the clucking of local pundits at how the Trump administration has managed the epidemic in the United States; second, unmistakable evidence that every one of the major countries of Western Europe, with the exception of Angela Merkel’s Germany, is doing worse...

The Chinese government has laid off its entire propaganda arm, cutting thousands of jobs at China Central Television and other state-run media outlets as the American media is already doing their job for them. "It seemed kinda redundant for us to have a state-run media when we have the American press," said President Xi at a press conference Monday. "The American media is carrying water for us. It's pretty incredible. We unleashed a virus on the world and lied about it for months, and the American press can't stop praising us. As long as they make their orange leader look...

The latest report on new unemployment claims was abysmal, coming in at 4.4 million last week, some 100,000 more than surveyed economists had expected. The continuous claims came in at just under 16 million, an all-time record. Mainstream labor economists estimate that, all things considered, the actual unemployment rate now (which is only officially reported with a lag) is above 20 percent—a rate not seen since the darkest days of the Great Depression. Indeed, all of the job gains since the Great Recession have been wiped out in just a matter of weeks. What’s worse, even though the official unemployment...

A new coronavirus mutation discovered by Arizona researchers mirrors a change that occurred as the 2003 SARS virus began to weaken, the researchers announced. Lead study author Dr. Efrem Lim, an assistant professor at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, and his team use a new technology called next-generation sequencing to rapidly read through all 30,000 chemical letters of the SARS-CoV-2 genome, or genetic code. That technology helps researchers determine how the virus is spreading, mutating and adapting over time. Out of the 382 nasal swab samples the researchers examined from coronavirus patients in the state, a single sample was missing...

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