Free Republic

A federal judge has blocked a Florida law which sought to prevent social media firms from taking down content from political candidates, saying the measure was "wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles" of free speech. Judge Robert Hinkle, in a ruling late Wednesday, said the law passed by the Florida legislature and signed by Governor Ron DeSantis distorted the idea of free-speech protections by placing restrictions on certain social media platforms for moderating content. The measure was approved by the state in response to the "de-platforming" of former president Donald Trump and others by large social media firms which...

At least nine Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers and one agent of the U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were among those hurt, all suffering minor injuries, the city fire department said in a statement... The collection of more than 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks was seized in a pre-July 4 holiday sweep. The accident occurred as police bomb squad officers were in the process of confiscating the cache in a South Los Angeles neighborhood, the LAPD said on Twitter... “Some of the fireworks were being stored in our bomb squad trailer as a precautionary measure. Unknown at...

I know most of you have given up on or never were a member of Facebook, but I still go there occasionally to participate in a few Close Groups that I enjoy. This morning without notice, a pop up is starting to appear asking you if you know anyone who is becoming a extremist and to report them and that everything is confidential. The reprisals by liberals will be overwhelming, anyone they don't like will get reported....this is a first step towards wholesale reporting of people to law enforcement.....

The US Air Force (USAF) has carried out the flight test of a Skyborg autonomy core system (ACS) on board a General Atomics MQ-20 Avenger tactical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).Skyborg is focused on showcasing an open, modular ACS that can autonomously aviate, navigate, and communicate, and thereby, integrate other advanced capabilities.The two-hour thirty-minute flight test was conducted during the Orange Flag 21-2 Large Force Test Event at Edwards airforce base (AFB) in California.It was part of the Autonomous Attritable Aircraft Experimentation (AAAx) campaign line that aims to test and inform ACS development a sit furthers.The test flight comes just two...

The Supreme Court held that the CDC can continue to impose a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures due to the Covid lockdowns causing millions to not pay rent or mortgages yesterday. It was made possible by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the so-called “conservative” Justice who sided with the four progressives.According to POLITICO [emphasis added]:The association had asked the court to act on an emergency basis to vacate a stay on a lower-court decision overturning the ban, saying the “stay will prolong the severe financial burdens borne by landlords under the moratorium for the past nine months.”The Centers for Disease Control and...

While vaccines are doing a remarkable job of slowing the COVID-19 pandemic, infected people can still die from severe illness and new medications to treat them have been slow to arise. What kills these patients in the end doesn't seem to be the virus itself, but an over-reaction of their immune system that leads to massive inflammation and tissue damage. By studying a type of immune cells called T cells, a team of Gladstone scientists has uncovered fundamental differences between patients who overcome severe COVID-19 and those who succumb to it. The team, working together with researchers from UC San...

It can be all too easy to forget that California, now a Democrat-mismanaged chronic cesspool, used to be a conservative stronghold. The state gave America Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and voted for the GOP in nine out of ten presidential elections between 1952 and 1988.Clearly, a lot has changed. California hasn’t supported a single Republican presidential candidate in any of the eight elections since 1988. What’s more, the margin of support for Republican candidates has consistently shrunk, with Bill Clinton receiving 46 percent of the vote in 1992 (an election with three serious candidates) and 51 percent in 1996.In...

When I appeared on a Heritage Foundation panel discussion in 2019, I said people are manufacturing trans gender kids. They are hurting the most vulnerable members of our society by encouraging children and adolescents to live as the opposite sex, inject hormone blockers and cross-gender hormones, and undergo surgeries that irrevocably alter healthy body parts.These protocols are dangerous and unstudied, and shouldn’t be pushed on children. Yet this madness rages on like an unchecked forest fire.I was a transgender child who “transitioned” to female as an adult. I lived as female for eight years, until I woke up and admitted...

Perovskite promises to be less expensive and more efficient than silicon—and several companies say they’re close to producing it at scale. SAULE TECHNOLOGIES ==================================================================================== Testing perovskite solar cells in the lab used to require a decent pair of running shoes. The materials fell apart so quickly that scientists would bolt from where they made the cells to where they tested them, trying to measure their performance before the cells degraded in their hands—usually within a couple of minutes. Perovskites have long enchanted researchers with the promise of producing inexpensive, ultra-efficient solar cells. And now several companies are making major strides...

650 U.S. banks will soon be able to offer bitcoin purchases to an estimated 24 million total customers. As part of the deal between enterprise payments giant NCR and digital-asset management firm NYDIG, community banks, including North Carolina-based First Citizens Bank, and credit unions, including Bay Federal Credit Union in California, will be able to offer their clients cryptocurrency trading through mobile applications built by the payments provider. Instead of having to deal with the burdensome regulatory requirements related to actually holding the cryptocurrency for their customers, the financial institutions that opt to make the service available will rely on...

Trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have voted to grant tenure to New York Times writer and author of the divisive “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones, amid backlash over her “unfactual and biased” work. The board voted 9-4 in favor of granting tenure to Hannah-Jones after a lengthy closed-session meeting on Wednesday, according to a report by the Washington Post. The vote comes one day before Hannah-Jones had originally been set to start working as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina (UNC)’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The...

“How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? and the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?” (Proverbs 1:22).

Hunter’s laptop keeps on delivering, and today’s bombshell is photos and emails proving that criminal family boss Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business partners in his VP office in 2014, despite Biden’s claim that he had no involvement in Hunter’s commercial activities. Hunter and his partners were working on a “flippin gigantic” business venture that would take them from Ukraine to Mexico. .. Joe Biden entertained his son’s business associates in the vice president’s office, including Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Alemán Velasco. The then-vice president also flew Hunter and his partner Jeff Cooper on Air Force 2 to...

President Biden struck an odd tone during a visit to the scene of the Florida building collapse Thursday, as he talked about finding a good side to the disaster, which has left 18 dead and nearly 150 missing. “You know what’s good about this?” Biden said at a briefing with local leaders. “It lets the nation know we can cooperate and when it’s really important.” Biden added, “I just got back from 12 days in Europe. They wonder whether we can do this. And you’re doing it.” At least 18 people died and 145 others remain missing after the collapse...

Philippine authorities have begun to evacuate thousands of people Thursday after the alert status for Taal volcano, located near capital Manila, was raised following a “magmatic intrusion.” “At 3:16 p.m., the Taal volcano’s main crater generated a short-lived dark phreatomagmatic plume 1 km-high with no accompanying volcanic earthquake,” the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said in a statement. LOOK: Phreatomagmatic eruption of #Taal Volcano from 3:16 PM to 3:21 PM today (July 1, 2021), as viewed from the Main Crater station. | Courtesy of @phivolcs_dost This afternoon, the agency raised Taal’s Alert Level to 3 (magmatic unrest). Stay safe...

First Lady Jill Biden — who is featured on the August cover of Vogue after the fashion magazine broke a decades-long tradition by snubbing former First Lady Melania Trump during her four years in the White House — says people can “breathe again,” now that former President Donald Trump is out of office. Mrs. Biden said President Joe Biden came in and “heal[ed] this nation.” “During the campaign, I felt so much anxiety from people — they were scared,” Jill Biden told Vogue. “When I travel around the country now, I feel as though people can breathe again.”

Former U.S. Senator from Minnesota Al Franken is going back on the road for a national comedy tour. Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis just added a second show in October because of high demand. More than three years ago, Franken resigned from the Senate amid sexual misconduct allegations. Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said as time has passed and other scandals have dominated the headlines, some will look at Franken through a different lens. "People's memories can be long, but they also can be very short," Kirtley said. "There is that kind...

Alberta lifted almost all its remaining COVID-19 restrictions Thursday, but many businesses said they are taking a more cautious approach as things start to return to normal. There are no more limits on indoor and outdoor social gatherings, no more capacity limits on restaurants, stores and places of worship. Weddings and other celebrations are back on. Alberta is also lifting its mask mandate. The exception is in Calgary, where the city has decided to revisit its mandatory mask bylaw on Monday. Shoppers in grocery stores and diners at restaurants are free to go maskless, although it is up to individual...

Who's Next?The Biden Administration's Domestic Terrorism Strategy is an announcement that they're coming for you.The Biden Administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism is, by its own admission, the first of its kind. The authors call it “America’s first government-wide national Strategy” to eradicate internal opponents of the regime—that is, not only to deter “violent extremism,” but even, in the words of Biden’s opening memo, “to root out the hatreds that can too often drive violence.”This unprecedented state intervention into every level of American life is justified, the Administration claims, by the unrest that occurred at the Capitol on January...

Regardless if it is acknowledged or not, everyone is a servant to someone or something in one way or another. Every single person has a driving force in their life. Whether that force is God, strange gods, or a godless belief or an agenda, there is something at the foundation in the heart of every human being that moves that person to action. The innate catalyst of action can even take the form of a selfish nature, in which case, a person becomes a slave to their own natural impulses of body and spirit. When such is the case, one...