Free Republic

Wall Street elite who flocked to Florida to ride out the COVID-19 crisis now have regrets — and are eyeing a move back to the Big Apple. “The main problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida,” Jason Mudrick, the founder of Mudrick Capital Management, told Bloomberg. Those among the upper crust are being drawn back to New York for its choice selection of private schools, restaurants and cultural institutions — as well as the city’s deep pool for young talent when it comes to finance jobs. “New York has the smartest, most driven people,...

The Border Patrol union chief said Thursday on "America's Newsroom" that in 24 years of service, he has never seen a daily migrant surge like the one underway. The president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents roughly 20,000 Border Patrol agents, said the public should be "very concerned" and asserted that if the increase continues, the Border Patrol will apprehend more people in 2021 than in any previous year in its history. BRANDON JUDD: "I’m going on 24 years as a Border Patrol agent and I can tell you that I’ve never seen a day-to-day, week-over-week increase like...

Antifa protesters have burned American flags and clashed with cops outside the Federal Courthouse in downtown Portland. The ugly scenes occurred Thursday evening, as dozens of the far-left protesters assembled in the area for a demonstration against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Courthouse has already been boarded up with plywood after sustaining damage during destructive protests last summer, but shocking video shared to Twitter shows all remaining uncovered windows were smashed during the latest demonstration. .. ...Several other demonstrators set fire to the plywood outside the building, prompting federal agents to deploy teargas and smoke bombs in a bid...

Washington (CNN) Transgender athletes in Mississippi's public schools and colleges will no longer be allowed to compete in women's sports after the state's Republican governor on Thursday signed the first statewide anti-trans law of 2021. SB 2536 is the first anti-trans legislation to be approved by a governor this year, with similar bills percolating in statehouses across the country and one such bill currently before South Dakota's Republican governor. Advocates of the bills have argued that trans women have a physical advantage over cisgender women in sports, while critics contend that they're discriminatory, including the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's...

"...The piece was on en.news on Gloria TV... Francis spoke at his favorite of all places to put his ideas out to the public, the in-flight dialogue with the press... In this press conference Francis just comes out and says it." ...

An affluent New York prep school reportedly told students to call Newton’s Laws of Motion the “three fundamental laws of physics” in attempts to “decenter whiteness.” Fieldston School in New York City offers elite academic and science programs for high schoolers, journalist Bari Weiss wrote in a Tuesday piece on “miseducation of America’s elites,” but the school reportedly fosters an ideologically charged environment that scares students from speaking out on their own viewpoints with the thought of social shaming. “If you publish my name, it would ruin my life,” one student reportedly told Weiss. “People would attack me for even...

The Dutch engineer credited with inventing the audio cassette has died. Lou Ottens was 94. As head of product development for Philips in 1960, he led a team that developed the initial portable tape recorder; he then introduced the first cassette tape at a Berlin electronics fair three years later. The slogan back then: "Smaller than a pack of cigarettes!" Primis Player Placeholder This portable tape quickly overtook cumbersome reel-to-reel recording methods that had long been the standard. Home decks gave way to boomboxes and in-dash car models – bringing music to the masses. That was, in fact, the goal:...

It can be difficult to discuss unidentified flying objects, especially for a government. While some may dismiss reports as fantasy, others argue that whatever is going on could be a threat to national security. “In the past, pilots were afraid to report these strange things happening—for fear it would affect their advancement in the officer corps,” former Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Nextgov in this episode of Critical Update. While he was in Congress, Reid helped secure funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a quiet, UFO-studying effort that became public in late 2017. That group is now considered...

California has struggled for five years to create a politically palatable “ethnic studies” curriculum that would teach high schoolers how systemic racism, predatory capitalism, heteropatriarchy and other “structures of oppression” are foundational to American society. Now, after more than 82,000 public comments, and four major rewrites, the state Board of Education is expected to approve the latest version next week, clearing the way for lawmakers to make a semester-long course in the material a graduation requirement for all of California’s 1.7 million high school students.

Senator Chuck Schumer claimed on Thursday that money directed toward New York City does not always make it past the state legislature in Albany in an apparent swipe at Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Senate Majority leader made the comment as he announced a massive COVID vaccine push in NYC which will see him hand $32billion allocated for the shots in the COVID relief bill in December straight to the city's Mayor Bill de Blasio. The New York Senator also promised an injection of an extra $6billion in other federal aid through stimulus checks and funding for the MTA as he...

This new political battle does not break down along left v. right lines. This is an information war waged by corporate media to silence any competition or dissent. On Wednesday, I wrote about how corporate journalists, realizing that the public’s increasing contempt for what they do is causing people to turn away in droves, are desperately inventing new tactics to maintain their stranglehold over the dissemination of information and generate captive audiences. That is why journalists have bizarrely transformed from their traditional role as leading free expression defenders into the the most vocal censorship advocates, using their platforms to demand...

“Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight” (Proverbs 12:22).

The House Administration Committee will consider an appeal from Democrats to contest the results of the closest 2020 congressional race after Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks won by just six votes. The Committee will consider the merits of an appeal from Democrat Rita Hart after she lost to Miller-Meeks by a less than 1% margin of more than 400,000 ballots cast in Iowa's Second Congressional District. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during press conference on Thursday that 'of course' the review could overturn the results of the close election.

**SNIP** The letter, which was also signed by Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) did not specify how much any future payments should be, but progressives have voiced support for monthly $2,000 checks. "One more check is not enough during this public health and economic crisis," said the letter signed last month by Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar and the other lawmakers. But this third stimulus check passed because it was part of budget reconciliation, requiring only a straight majority in the upper house, and so avoided the need for Republican support in the...

Ali Rabiei, the spokesperson for the Iranian government, on Tuesday expressed Tehran’s readiness for exchange of all prisoners with the United States. Talking in a regular news briefing, he reiterated the positions already declared by Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about a prisoner swap, saying, “We are ready to exchange all inmates. Such a thing has not happened so far because the U.S. has not been prepared.” “The two sides can make a decision about it,” Tasnim quoted the government spokesman as saying. “There are many Iranians across the world who have been jailed on the U.S. order. Decisions...

PHOENIX (AP) — Paul Penzone took office four years ago as metro Phoenix's new sheriff promising to turn the page on the problems created by his headline-grabbing predecessor, Joe Arpaio — ousted in part after he was found in contempt of court for disobeying a judge's order in a racial profiling case. Now Penzone faces calls for a contempt hearing in the same profiling lawsuit, this time for not complying with a court-ordered overhaul of his agency's much-criticized internal affairs operation, which has a backlog of 2,000 cases. Each one takes 500 days on average to complete... ...the sheriff’s office...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Two U.S. Postal Service employees were arrested Wednesday on charges that they abused their positions to purchase postal money orders with thousands of dollars in California unemployment benefits obtained through false claims of pandemic-related job losses, authorities said. A March 3 criminal complaint unsealed after the arrests alleges conspiracy, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud and fraud in connection with major disaster or emergency benefits, the Los Angeles U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release. Christian Jeremyah James, 31, of South Los Angeles and Armand Caleb Legardy, 32, of Inglewood were expected to make initial...

Ed Buck’s attorneys Tuesday attacked a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy’s declaration that she saw a substance appearing to be methamphetamine along with drug paraphernalia in plain view at the California political donor’s apartment when she was called to the scene of a man’s overdose death. Buck, 66, is accused of giving drugs to the man who died at his West Hollywood apartment after allegedly being lured across state lines for prostitution. He faces nine felony counts in Los Angeles federal court, plus state charges of running a drug den. The federal case will proceed first, on April 20....

Imagine for a moment what it must feel like if, as a mother, you give birth to four children, one after another, each of whom, as infants, dies from natural causes over a 10-year period. Then imagine being wrongly accused of smothering them all and being sentenced to 30 years in jail for four terrible crimes you did not commit. That narrative is emerging as potentially the true story of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian mother from the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales (NSW). Branded at her trial in 2003 as "Australia's worst female serial killer", Folbigg has already...

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