Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey says he’s voting against Dr. Rachel Levine’s nomination to a key post in President Joe Biden’s administration. Biden wants Levine, Pennsylvania’s former health secretary, to serve as the U.S. assistant health secretary. The post requires U.S. Senate confirmation. A Senate panel has advanced Levine’s nomination to the full Senate. The Senate is expected to vote on Levine’s nomination Wednesday. But Toomey, R-Pa., said Wednesday he won’t be supporting Levine’s confirmation. He cited the high number of deaths in Pennsylvania nursing homes to the coronavirus. “In Pennsylvania, the pandemic struck seniors in nursing homes disproportionately hard compared...

So-called “white nationalists” are not attacking Asian- Americans. If we’re being honest, the only ethnic group Asian-Americans should fear being physically assaulted by are blacks. Sadly, there’s nothing new about attacks on Asians in America. What is new is the media’s obsession with the issue. Speaking from my own experience, attacks on Asians are all too common, particularly in the ‘hood. As a black kid and wannabe thug growing up in Los Angeles, I knew some great Asian people. That didn’t stop me or my friends from buying into the stereotypes that they were arrogant and purposefully buying up store...

The historians’ views were very much in sync with his own: It is time to go even bigger and faster than anyone expected. If that means chucking the filibuster and bipartisanship, so be it. Four things are pushing Biden to jam through what could amount to a $5 trillion-plus overhaul of America, and vast changes to voting, immigration and inequality. He has full party control of Congress, and a short window to go big. He has party activists egging him on. He has strong gathering economic winds at his back. And he’s popular in polls. Presidential historian Michael Beschloss told...

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed President Biden for the migrant surge that has erupted into a full-blown border crisis, arguing the “expectations” he set left migrants with the perception that they would be let in the US. López Obrador made the remarks while speaking to reporters Tuesday, the morning after his government met with Biden’s envoys for the region, who were visiting to address the record spikes in illegal border crossings. “Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also...

With most of the votes counted and no decisive outcome as far as who the next Prime Minister will be, or if Israel will be headed to an unprecedented fifth national election in less than three years, one thing is clear, the big winners in Israel’s national election this week were Israeli Arabs. One might have said that a year ago, after Israel’s third national election in (what was then) a year. Then, the “Joint Arab List,” a faction made up of four Arab political parties running together, won a striking 15 seats in Israel’s Knesset (parliament). This made the...

Cassandra Star & her big sister Callahan sing this beautiful & meaningful Easter version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. These Easter lyrics were written by Kelley Mooney, the piano track was arranged by Jeff Buckley of Karaoke Studios & the recording by Maverick Judson of MJ Interactive.An Easter Hallelujah - Cassandra Star & her sister Callahan

The Biden administration is planning to keep U.S. forces in Afghanistan past an agreed-upon May 1 deadline to withdraw, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Wednesday to a panel hosted by Foreign Policy. “It’s a general feeling that May 1 is too soon, just logistically,” Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) claimed, citing conversations with administration officials. “You cannot pull out ten thousand plus troops in any sort of reasonable way in just six weeks.” Under the terms of the Doha Agreement signed with the Taliban in February 2020, the United States is obligated to pull its forces out...

ANKARA, March 24 (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said he told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday that Ankara's purchase of Russian air defences was "a done deal", adding that the NATO allies needed a roadmap to discuss their disagreements. Ankara and Washington have been at odds over issues including Syria policy, human rights and the S-400 air defence acquisition, over which the United States has sanctioned Turkey and removed it from its F-35 fighter jet programme. "On the S-400s, we reminded them once again why Turkey had to buy them, and repeated that Turkey had...

March 19, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) -- Stunning revelations about Hunter Biden and his family’s notorious business dealings came to light in this week’s episode of the John-Henry Westen Show during an interview with Jack Maxey, former co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room and one of the first people to go through the contents of Biden’s alleged laptop last October. Maxey revealed that Hunter Biden may have had business ties to China’s Xi Jinping, based on emails from the laptop. Correspondence also links the Bidens to possible Chinese espionage and illegal Beijing-backed business arrangements. As the Biden family’s China dealings went south,...

Ohio has a lot riding on the success of Lordstown Motors. Last year, Gov. Mike DeWine declared the electric vehicle startup “the future” while visiting the plant, the site of a shuttered General Motors assembly plant near Youngstown, about six months before state officials approved it for $20 million in tax credits. Secretary of State Frank LaRose last week was the latest in a procession of state officials who, after touring the plant, lauded the company’s promise for the economically beleaguered Youngstown area. JobsOhio, the state’s private economic-development arm, has pledged $4.5 million in grants to the company. Former President...

Wednesday marks the 24th anniversary of the Ohio Supreme Court ruling the state’s school funding model is unconstitutional. Twenty-four years later, the Ohio legislature has yet to fix it. Yet less than 24 hours after Gov. Mike DeWine vetoed a bill to allow lawmakers to strike down public health orders, GOP supermajorities mobilized to override this veto. Senate Bill 22 will thereby go into effect three months from now. DeWine has expressed hope that Ohio’s health orders such as the mask mandate will already be removed by then, with COVID-19 cases on the decline and vaccines now eligible for the...

Determined to not let any tragedy go to waste, each of the broadcast networks touted President Biden’s call for gun control on Tuesday following the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado. But NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt went a step further, trying to browbeat viewers with a claim that America had experienced “more than 100” such shooting in “the last 20 years.” But back on November 8, 2018, the network claimed there were 307 mass shootings in the first 10 months of the year alone... As a nation, we have been here so many times before. More than 100 times...

Many progressives today insist that gender is fluid and that American law should abolish any distinctions between the sexes. Yet, ironically, many of these same people point to overly simplistic statistics derived from binary male-female categories to claim that women are the victims of wage discrimination and to demand more regulation, more government monitoring, and many, many more lawsuits. Surely, such a binary approach to categorizing workers and comparing wages is woefully outdated in our new woke world! According to progressive activists, sexism is the reason that the average woman earns only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Wednesday that President Joe Biden’s dogs Champ and Major had returned to the building after the biting incident. “Champ and Major are here at the White House,” she said during the White House press briefing in response to a question about their status.

...Since that debut in mid-September, the show has experienced a loss of audience to the tune of over 1 million viewers. This amounts to a heavy drop of over -40%, more so than all other daytime programs. She has perennially been at, or near the top of the daytime ratings, but this is a significant plunge. Her last year saw Ellen at 2.6 million viewers, challenging Live With Kelly and Ryan (2.7 million) and Dr. Phil (2.5 million). This is a significant hit, and it leads to trouble in a number of areas. As far as a loss in ad...

Royal Caribbean Group today announced that it has commenced a private offering of $1.25 billion aggregate principal amount of senior unsecured notes due 2028 to be issued by the company as it continues its ongoing fundraising. The company intends to use the proceeds from the sale of the Notes to repay principal payments on debt maturing or required to be paid in 2021 and 2022, and the remaining for general corporate purposes (including to pay fees and expenses in connection with such repayments), according to a press release.

A new survey found that 42 million people from Latin America and the Caribbean region want to immigrate to the United States. “There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roughly 450 million adults live in the region. Gallup asked them if they would like to move to another country permanently if they could,” said Gallup’s CEO Jim Clifton, whose company conducted the poll, in an article Wednesday. “A whopping 27 [percent] said ‘yes.’ This means roughly 120 million would like to migrate somewhere.” Then he added: “Of those who want to leave their country permanently, 35 percent—or...

Late Monday, Politico reported that Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of a handful of Republicans in the chamber who can be counted on in close confirmation votes, nixed the Biden administration’s desired nominee for deputy secretary of the Interior Department. The nominee, Elizabeth Klein, the deputy director of the State Energy and Environmental Impact Center at the New York University School of Law, was shot down by Murkowski due to Klein’s progressive policy positions on climate and environmental issues, per Politico, particularly as they relate to the potential for extractive development in Murkowski’s home state of Alaska. The decision arrived less...

Finally, after a nationwide shortage forced fans to begrudgingly slurp bowls of lesser bran cereals, Grape-Nuts has reclaimed its rightful place on grocery store shelves. The fibrous cereal is once again fully stocked nationwide, signaling the official end to the pandemic Grape-Nuts shortage, parent company Post Consumer Brands announced on Wednesday. And to repay Grape-Nuts fanatics for their brand loyalty, Post may reimburse them up to $115 if they overpaid to get their cereal fix during the shortage. Grape-Nuts will be back on shelves in March Grape-Nuts will be back on shelves in March Grape-Nuts, the cereal made of neither...

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JPCA) is a bait-and-switch attempt that claims to help conservative news sources but would instead purge them from the marketplace of ideas, and Congress should reject it for the freedom-killer it is. JCPA would give media companies—broadcast and print—an exemption from federal antitrust laws, so they can operate in a coordinated fashion to negotiate prices that social media companies like Facebook would have to pay them to carry their content. It would ensure that these tech billionaires would have to direct some of their riches into content providers. But that’s a Big Boys’ game...