Free Republic

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Even though California has lifted its mask mandate for most businesses, many people are unsure what to do when it comes to ditching their face coverings. Mindy Pfeifer was one of the only people seen walking into a Trader Joes’ in Studio City on Tuesday. “I felt rebellious in Trader Joe’s right now without a mask,” said Mindy Pfeifer. “I feel like everyone was looking at me, and they were, and then I kept looking around…I feel like I had to justify. Even to the checker, they were like ‘You’re good, you’re good.’ I know but...

I’ll bet that in some corner of your toolshed or garage, an old hoe is leaning against a wall. A hoe that hasn’t seen use in a long, long time, having been replaced by, perhaps, a gasoline- or electric-powered tiller, chemical weed killers, or mulches. Hoeing is not much in vogue these days, perhaps because it seems to require what Charles Dudley Warner, in his 19th century classic “My Summer in the Garden,” said every gardener should have: “an iron back with a hinge in it.” But hoeing is, believe it or not, an easy, safe way to control weeds....

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) plans to formally trigger the budget reconciliation process on Wednesday, setting Democrats up to ram the White House's American Jobs and Family Plans through the Senate via a simple majority vote in July. Why it matters: Announcing this strategy now could be dangerous to the group of 20 bipartisan lawmakers trying to hash out a deal on the "hard" infrastructure portion of President Biden's package. Some of the Republicans in the group may be less keen on continuing negotiations knowing they plan to force the more progressive parts of Biden's plan through a partisan...

Texas won’t turn blue anytime soon with next-gen conservatives like @HoustonYR leading the charge. Enjoyed discussing my conservative vision for the TX AG’s Office with this incredible group tonight. We must secure our border, back the blue, & push back against federal overreach. pic.twitter.com/tO2H8z4hXl— George P. Bush (@georgepbush) June 15, 2021

The Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would make Juneteenth, or June 19th, a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. The bill would lead to Juneteenth becoming the 12th federal holiday. It is expected to easily pass the House, which would send it to President Joe Biden for his signature. […] “Making Juneteenth a federal holiday is a major step forward to recognize the wrongs of the past,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “But we must continue to work to ensure equal justice and fulfill the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation and our...

Joel Fishbein stepped down Monday as head of Philadelphia area school board Fishbein gave a graduation speech at Cheltenham High School on June 3 He told majority-black students a story about abolitionist Frederick Douglass Fishbein said Douglass had a 'pretty good position' relative to other black slaves He also said that his escape to freedom in 1838 was 'ridiculously easy' Fishbein quoted a blog post by a historian, Professor Heather Cox Richardson Comments prompted calls by local black activists for Fishbein to be replaced Fishbein released a statement on Monday apologizing for 'diminishing' slavery School district posted disclaimer on YouTube...

Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom held a press conference to mark the June 15 reopening of the state after months of harsh lockdown protocols during the coronavirus pandemic with banners as a backdrop that read: “California Roars Back.”Newsom told reporters that the state is following the most recent guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but there are numerous caveats to the “fully reopened” plan.Here are some of the exceptions, as reported by an NBC affiliate in California.“As of June 15, California no longer requires physical distancing and allows full capacity for businesses. The state’s long-standing county...

On May 28, the Illinois House of Representatives passed the highly controversial “comprehensive” sex education bill (SB 818) over the objections of numerous parents, educators, and representatives. The Illinois Senate passed this proposal back on May 20th. For more information on the deeply troubling nature of Comprehensive Sexuality Education, we highly encourage you to watch the documentary, available HERE. SB 818 is the most recent in a string of legislative efforts to sexualize public education, while removing parents and school boards from the decision-making process. School boards are the intended leaders of public education. Elected by parents in the community,...

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal jury is deciding whether one of the nation's biggest private prison companies must pay minimum wage — instead of $1 a day — to immigration detainees who perform tasks like cooking and cleaning at its jail in Washington state.... ...GEO's response is that the detainees simply aren't employees. Even if they were, the company says, it would be unlawfully discriminatory for Washington to require GEO to pay them minimum wage — now $13.69 an hour — when the state doesn't pay minimum wage to inmates who work at its own prisons or other detention facilities....

U.S-based Novavax (Nasdaq: NVAX) reports today that its COVID-19 vaccine candidate called NVX-CoV2373 or “Coronavax” demonstrated 100% protection against moderate and severe disease and 90.4% overall efficacy, keeping this investigational product competitive with both mRNA-based vaccine products under emergency use authorization (EUA) as well as superior to the Johnson and Johnson Adenovirus-based vaccine, which is also authorized for deployment in the USA on an emergency basis. NVX-CoV2373 is a recombinant nanoparticle protein-based experimental vaccine, and could become the first vaccine available in the USA that does not use a gene therapy-based vaccination method. Meeting its clinical trial endpoints during the...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Buckhead, a portion of Atlanta, Georgia, is looking to break free from the rest of a city in rapid decline. After decades of increased safety that started ahead of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, it took one woman and a single summer to ruin it. Not even New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio can beat Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms time for running a city into the ground. It took de Blasio two terms. Bottoms has been so spectacular she’s announced she won’t even run for a second one.As a result of her rank incomeptence, Buckhead, a wealthier section...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The Southern Baptist Convention tamped down a push from the right at its largest meeting in decades on Tuesday, electing a new president who has worked to bridge racial divides in the church and defeating an effort to make an issue of critical race theory. Ed Litton, a pastor from Alabama, won 52% of the vote in a runoff against Mike Stone, a Georgia pastor backed by a new group called the Conservative Baptist Network that has sought to move the already-conservative denomination further to the right. Litton, who is white, was nominated by Fred Luter,...

The World Health Organization is "highly compromised" and unfit to lead an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, according to former CDC head Robert Redfield."Clearly, they were incapable of compelling China to adhere to the treaty agreements that they have on global health, because they didn’t do that," Redfield told Fox News on Tuesday. "Clearly, they allowed China to define the group of scientists that could come and investigate. That’s not consistent with their role."In March, Redfield told CNN that he doesn't believe the natural origin theory which posits that COVID-19 jumped from a bat to a human through a...

President Joe Biden announced his first political ambassadorships Tuesday, tapping former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to be the U.S. ambassador to Mexico. Biden also tapped Morgan Stanley Vice Chairman Tom Nides to be ambassador to Israel. For representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization, Biden selected C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger, best known for landing a United Airlines flight on the Hudson River in 2009.... ...For the prestigious, ambassador-rank post of U.S. permanent representative to NATO, Biden has chosen Julianne Smith. A former deputy national security advisor to Biden when he was vice president, Smith also directed NATO policy at the Pentagon....

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in a little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours. The attack prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to say Chicago has joined a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: cities with mass shootings.” Lightfoot — as she repeatedly has done — decried lack of federal action aimed at “eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children, to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events,...

Apple late Monday shipped an out-of-band iOS update for older iPhones and iPads alongside a warning that a pair of WebKit security vulnerabilities may have been actively exploited. As is customary, Apple did not provide details on the zero-day attacks, which appear to be aimed at a range of older models of Apple flagship iPhone devices. The latest iOS 12.5.4 patch covers at least three documented security holes that expose unpatched devices to arbitrary code execution attacks. According to Apple, two flaws in the WebKit rendering engine could be exploited via booby-trapped web content to execute code on devices running...

A Louisiana federal judge issued an order lifting President Biden’s moratorium on new oil and gas leases on federal land Tuesday, ruling that the White House did not give any “rational explanation” for implementing the pause. US District Judge Terry Doughty sided with 13 states in granting a preliminary injunction that applies nationwide. The states challenging the moratorium were Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry hailed Doughty’s ruling as “a victory not only for the rule of law, but also for the thousands of workers who...

The U.S. Capitol Police had potentially deadly training deficiencies on one of the force’s most lethal weapons, yet another issue that has come to light since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The Containment Emergency Response Team (CERT) failed to comply with weapons certifications... ...“The report mentions CERT officers failed to complete the required qualifications on their assigned weapons from 2018 to 2020,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said. “Twenty-nine CERT officers are required to meet quarterly qualifications on handguns. Twenty-two of the 29 failed to meet those.” Asked by Aguilar, the vice chairman of the Democratic Conference, if there...

Radio host Alex Jones became the number one trend on Twitter this weekend, almost three years since he was banned from the platform, after a Twitter user claimed that he was responsible for the mostly peaceful occupation of the U.S. Capitol building. However, video clearly shows Jones telling the crowd not to enter the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, and to remain peaceful instead. A Twitter user named Fifty Shades of Whey went viral after posting a 17-second clip of Jones discussing the original plans for January 6 on his radio and TV show. In the clip, Jones says...