Free Republic

A report in Vanity Fair details actions by some members of the U.S. State Department to block efforts to investigate the origins of the coronavirus because the inquiry could open “a can of worms.” An internal memo sent to department heads by Thomas DiNanno, former acting assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, warned “not to pursue an investigation into the origin of COVID-19.” The “can of worms” in question was the extensive funding by the U.S. government into the Wuhan Virology Lab’s “gain-of-function” virus research. It’s unclear whether DiNanno was concerned that an...

Once a month Google tells me of all the places I've been in the last 30 days. OK, we all know that our smartphones track us and they know what cities and places we go to. And we know there are (probably) ways to disable this tracking. But most of us don't really care. And even if we did, there are many other ways Google, Alexa, our cars, our government, etc. track us and follow our every movement. This is just everyday life in the 21st century. So anyway, Google's My Timeline has an in-depth review of nearly every place...

And so it happens yet again. A violent serial criminal with 40 previous arrests was not given the jail time that he deserved. Instead of keeping him in jail, New York City Democrats let him roam free, and he sucker-punched a 55-year-old Asian woman.By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)June 3, 2021Here’s the newest example of how Democrats in some U.S. cities are against keeping violent serial criminals in jail, because Democrats in these cities would rather allow them to roam free so they can continue assaulting innocent people.In New York City, a violent serial criminal named Alexander Wright,...

Dr. Anthony Fauci doubled down on claims that the coronavirus likely originated from an animal then was transmitted to humans in a Thursday morning interview on CNN, despite increasing speculation that it leaked from a China lab. Fauci, who served under former President Trump and President Joe Biden, continues to fight the idea that he downplayed theories that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a trove of emails exchange at the beginning of the pandemic revealed he was warned about a potential lab leak. 'I have always said and will say today to you ... that...

Salt Lake City School Board member Joél-Léhi Organista was arrested Wednesday night on eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor over his alleged ownership of child pornography. Police wrote Organista, 29, possessed pornographic images of children. One video reportedly depicted an adult male and five-year-old girl.Officials were led to Organista through a CyberTipLine report provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A Dropbox account owned by Organista and connected to his Salt Lake County address contained at least five images or videos containing child pornography, the probable cause affidavit states.

Dr. Anthony Fauci rushed to China’s defense in two separate interviews — claiming the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan laboratory is “far out” and that Americans should refrain from “pointing fingers” toward the Chinese Communist Party, despite earlier claims he was keeping an “open mind” about the virus’ origin. Fauci repeated his claim that he was keeping “an open mind” that the virus may have been man-made, before throwing cold water on the possibility later in the same CNN interview. “The idea, I think, is quite far-fetched that the Chinese deliberately engineered something so that they could kill...

Border Patrol officials in the Tucson Sector report an increase in the number of arrests of single adult migrants this year. Agents apprehended nearly 90,000 so far this fiscal year. Tucson Sector Chief Patrol Agent John Modlin... said the apprehension of migrant single adults jumped more than 290 percent this fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2020, over the same period in Fiscal Year 2020... Agents frequently find previously deported criminal aliens and sex offenders mixed in with the migrant groups.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks and other members of the largest Republican caucus’ leadership will hold a summit with former President Donald Trump in New Jersey next week, the Indiana Republican confirmed to The Post. “At Republican Study Committee, we’ve been very busy as we develop the consensus conservative agenda for the future of the Republican Party, and that agenda is the Trump agenda,” he said, noting that the June 10 trip to New Jersey will be the first time several of the members have met with Trump since he left office.

Two days ago, the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman reported that Donald Trump “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August.” In response, many figures on the right inserted their fingers into their ears and started screaming about fake news. Instead, they should have listened — because Haberman’s reporting was correct. I can attest, from speaking to an array of different sources, that Donald Trump does indeed believe quite genuinely that he — along with former senators David Perdue and Martha McSally — will be “reinstated” to office...

As Katie and Spencer reported today, Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails were made available thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request from BuzzFeed news. Sure enough, Fauci was alerted that the virus could have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. One person who was particularly vindicated was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who is also a doctor. The senator spoke with Tom Roten of WVHU, a local radio station in Kentucky, that same morning about those exchanges. Paul and Fauci have had many memorable exchanges in the times Fauci has appeared before committee hearings where he is subjected to the...

At Amazon, employees are not allowed to keep one particular medical decision private. Amazon is forcing its employees to brand themselves with stickers indicating they’ve received a COVID-19 vaccination, even if they’d prefer to keep that medical decision private. This move also forces employees to disclose if they have not received a vaccine. The decision, which impacts all U.S. Field Operations employees, suggests Amazon doesn’t trust its own staff to be honest about their vaccination status. Starting early this month, fully vaccinated employees will wear a green sticker on their badge. The sticker indicates the employee can work without a...

EU plans digital ID wallet for bloc’s post-pandemic life FROM THE AP: The European Digital Identity Wallet proposed by the EU’s executive commission is a smartphone app that would let users store electronic forms of identification and other official documents, such as driver’s licenses, prescriptions and school diplomas. The bloc’s 450 million residents would be able to use the wallet to access public or private services both online and offline while maintaining control of their personal data. Officials envision the wallet allowing a customer renting a car at an airport, for example, to complete the necessary ID checks and documents...

So much for the facts. A U.K.-based fact-checking outlet financed by liberal billionaire George Soros tried as early as February 2020, to swat down the idea that COVID-19 had leaked from a laboratory in communist China. Full Fact described itself as a group of “independent fact checkers and campaigners who find, expose and counter the harm [bad information] does.” However, it published a piece in February 2020, headlined “There's no evidence that the 2019 coronavirus originated in a Chinese government laboratory.” Knowledge about the virus was still very rare at the time. Now, over a year later, the lab-leak theory...

President Joe Biden proposed a major concession on paying for an infrastructure bill according to a new report on details of private negotiations between the White House and Senate Republicans. The Washington Post reports that Biden would not raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and instead propose a minimum corporate tax of 15 percent — for companies like Amazon that pay little to nothing in federal taxes.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. will donate 75% of its unused COVID-19 vaccines to the U.N.-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program, acting as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring. Of the first tranche of 25 million doses, the White House said about 19 million will go to COVAX, with approximately 6 million for South and Central America, 7 million for Asia and 5 million for Africa. The doses mark a substantial — and immediate — boost to the lagging COVAX effort, which to date has shared just 76 million...

The carrier announced Thursday it’s buying 15 planes from Boom Supersonic with the option to purchase 35 more at some point. Boom’s first commercial supersonic jet, the Overture, has not been built or certified yet. It is targeting the start of passenger service in 2029 with a plane that could fly at Mach 1.7 and cut some flight times in half. That means a flight from New York to London that typically lasts seven hours would only take 3½ hours. Earlier this year, United took a stake in eVTOL start-up Archer Aviation while partnering with Mesa Airlines to order 200...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is probing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy as part of an investigation into potential campaign finance violations committed by leaders of his former company, the Washington Post reported on Thursday. DeJoy, a prominent GOP donor and logistics executive, was the chief executive of North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics before being selected as postmaster general in mid-2020, joining the beleaguered agency at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The House Oversight Committee had already been investigating allegations that DeJoy and other executives encouraged and gave bonuses to employees who donated money to Republican political candidates during DeJoy's...

"Gender Identity Requires Gender Stereotyping In the prehistoric 1990s, my parents taught me that there was no wrong way to be a girl. Today, if a girl dislikes the color pink and prefers trucks to dolls, she’s told that womanhood is not for her but that we can fix wrong girls at the gender clinic. In just three decades, the vision of womanhood in which girls can be anything has been replaced by a medical protocol to fix girls who are not girly enough. We block their puberty with cancer drugs, flood them with testosterone, and give them hysterectomies and...

VIDEOThe best thing about the Senate filibuster rule besides preventing most of the leftwing agenda promoted by the Democrats is that its very existence now makes the media go hilariously berserk. However, the moment the Republicans regain the Senate, the media will immediately go silent on their desperate pleas to eliminate the filibuster.

A sinkhole measuring about 300 feet in diameter opened in the state of Puebla on Saturday, in Santa Maria Zacatepec, according to local reports. ... They estimated the hole, now filled with groundwater, to be about 60 feet deep. Homeowners Magdalena and Heriberto Sánchez reported hearing a thunderous sound before finding the gigantic pit. “A long time ago there was a jagüey there, but we don’t know why they covered it, but we think that the water struggled to regain its space and that is why it appeared,”