Free Republic

The audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, is nearing completion. Late on Thursday, audit volunteers prepared the 2020 election ballots and machines to be transported out of The Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. The auditors, volunteers, and other members are leaving the coliseum after completing both the hand recount and paper evaluation of nearly 2.1 million ballots in the massive county.

Nothing underscores this more dramatically than the mega-fiasco surrounding the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. As the world knows now, some 135,000 non-existent votes were somehow magically injected into the system. The winner of this supposed “ranking system” election (it certainly was “rank” in every sense of the world) is naturally suing and we seem headed for a do-ever. This primary was, needless to say, virtually the city’s mayoral election since New York voters these days seem constitutionally allergic to Republicans, or to civic health, for that matter. They already showed their great intelligence electing Bill De Blasio in...

A cargo plane made an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Hawaii early Friday and both people on board have been rescued. The pilots of the Transair Flight 810 had reported engine trouble and were attempting to return to Honolulu when they were forced to land the Boeing 737 cargo aircraft in the water, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

For twenty years after the handover of power from Britain to the People’s Republic, Hong Kong existed as a bastion of relative openness and liberty in China. Now, it’s all crashing down as Beijing aggressively imposes new controls on the territory. One of the latest dominoes to fall is the Apple Daily, a vocal anti-Beijing newspaper. Hong Kong police arrested a senior journalist from the Apple Daily newspaper at the airport Sunday as he attempted to leave the city, four days after the paper’s forced closure, in the latest crackdown by Beijing under the sweeping new national security law. Police...

US forces have left their main military base in Afghanistan - the hub for a 20-year mission against the Taliban and al Qaeda - in the clearest sign yet America's longest war is ending. The sprawling Bagram airfield, about 40 miles north of Kabul, is being handed over to the Afghan security forces in a symbol of the US military's departure from a battlefield that's still raging, amid warnings of a looming civil war. Sponsored link US President Joe Biden said earlier this year all of between 2,500 to 3,500 US troops in Afghanistan would leave by 11 September, the...

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating after a cargo plane crashed in waters off West Oahu with two people on board. It happened around 1:45 a.m. about two miles off Kalaeloa Airport, according to the state Department of Transportation. Officials said Transair Flight 810, a Boeing 737 cargo aircraft, departed from the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport and was heading to Kahului, Maui. That’s when the two pilots reported engine trouble and were attempting to return to Honolulu when they were forced to make an emergency landing in the water, the FAA...

Over years of studying antibody responses against the flu in the Wilson lab at the University of Chicago, researchers kept coming up with a strange finding: antibodies that seemed to bind not only to the flu virus, but to every virus the lab could throw at them. Since antibodies are usually highly specific to individual pathogens, in order to maximize their targeted protective response, this pattern was extremely unusual. Until finally, they realized: The antibodies weren't responding to the viruses, but rather to something in the biological material in which the viruses had been grown. In every case, the virus...

The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Friday to hear a case from a Christian florist challenging Washington state law which forced her to provide her services for same-sex weddings. Justices Clarence Thomas, Thomas Alito, and Neil Gorsuch declared their willingness to hear the case but other conservative-leaning Justices such as Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett did not join the vote putting the case below the threshold necessary for a ruling. That case is Arlene's Flowers v. Washington. Justices Thomas, Alito & Gorsuch indicate that they voted to hear the case. Because it takes four votes to hear a case,...

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected an appeal from former President Donald Trump to rule against funding used for the wall along the southern border. In an unsigned order, the court sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit with instructions to vacate its judgments. It also instructed a district court in the case to "consider what further proceedings are necessary and appropriate in light of the changed circumstances in this case," namely that Trump is no longer president. SUPREME COURT SUSPENDS TRUMP BORDER WALL CASE The case, Trump v. Sierra Club, frequently made...

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is warning of a possible violent militia rally on July 4 in Washington, D.C., according to a law enforcement document obtained by Yahoo News. The report, dated July 1 and produced by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, says that FBI reporting indicates that suspected violent extremists may be planning to attend a large public gathering for the July 4 holiday on Capitol Hill. As of mid-June, a private social media platform contained a discussion from four suspected militia members about the “Million Man Patriots Gathering,” the DHS report...

The Biden administration has announced that the State Department will allow people to choose their gender identity on passports, even if it contradicts their biological sex. It's also looking to add an X marker for those who identify as nonbinary. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced Wednesday that the State Department will update “our procedures to allow applicants to self-select their gender as ‘M’ or ‘F’ and will no longer require medical certification if an applicant’s self-selected gender does not match the gender on their other citizenship or identity documents.” “The Department has begun moving towards adding a gender marker...

On September 14, 1814, Francis Scott Key penned "The Star-Spangled Banner." Set to the British tune "To Anacreon in Heaven," "The Star-Spangled Banner" is inarguably one of the most difficult national anthems to sing. The backdrop of the song was the British attack on Baltimore during the War of 1812. Key had been sent to negotiate a prisoner release and boarded the British flagship HMS Tonnant. During the negotiations with British Vice Adm. Alexander Cochrane, Key overheard the war plans. Consequently, the British held Key captive until after the assault on Fort McHenry, forcing him to stay on the HMS...

Arkansas on Thursday reported its largest single-day increase in coronavirus cases for the second time in a row in four months amid urging from Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) for residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The state recorded 700 new infections Thursday, up from the 686 new cases the day before, according to a state department of health graphic Hutchinson tweeted Thursday. The state also reported 12 new coronavirus-related hospitalizations Thursday, bringing the total to 337, though Arkansas recorded no new fatalities due to the virus.

A new University of Kentucky College of Medicine study suggests that time-restricted eating may be able to help people with Type 2 diabetes reduce nocturnal hypertension, which is characterized by elevated blood pressure at night. The study found that imposing time-restricted feeding prevented diabetic mice from developing nondipping blood pressure. The practice also effectively restored the disrupted blood pressure circadian rhythm in mice that already had nondipping blood pressure. Normally, blood pressure falls at night and increases upon awakening, in line with the body's circadian rhythm. In some hypertensive patients, the typical nighttime decrease does not occur. This "nondipping" blood...

The trade deficit rose to more than $70 billion in May amid a surge in imported goods and materials. The U.S. trade deficit hit $71.2 billion, rising 3.1 percent from $69.1 billion in April, The Commerce Department said on Friday, according to the Associated Press. Exports went up 0.6 percent to $206 billion while imports rose 1.3 percent to $277.3 billion.

Conservatives have long warned about Big Tech companies censoring speech that strays from the leftist narrative, but on Thursday, Facebook launched a more proactive — and terrifying — campaign against “extremism.” It seems the company is notching up its invasive surveillance to the “Orwellian” level.“Are you concerned that someone you know is becoming an extremist?” one notification asks. “We care about preventing extremism on Facebook. Others in your situation have received confidential support.”The notification includes an “i” for information icon featuring the message “How you can help: Hear stories and get advice from people who escaped violent extremist groups.”Hey has...

3D reconstruction of Triamyxa coprolithica. (Qvarnström et al.) =============================================================================== Way back in the Late Triassic period, in what is now modern day Poland, a long-snouted dinosaur ate a big meal of green algae and then took a poop. It was a day like any other for the animal, but for us, roughly 230-million years later, those very fossilized feces have revealed an entire family of undigested beetles. The insects are the first to be described from fossilized feces and they are unlike anything we've discovered in amber before. Not only are these insects much more ancient, their legs and antennae...

If you wanted to find the group getting the rawest deal in 2021 America, you might start with small-business owners. Many are finding themselves working 60- or 80-hour weeks just to scrape by. During the height of COVID-19, these companies were especially beaten down. Between Jan. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020, about 30 percent of U.S. small businesses closed, while total small-business revenue decreased by 31 percent, according to Economic Tracker. During the same period, the stock market boomed, and multinational corporations continued to thrive. The effects of this economic destruction are apparent in communities all over the country....

Track star Sha’Carri Richardson was suspended from the U.S. Olympic team after failing a test for marijuana use. Richardson’s suspension means she cannot compete in the women’s 100-meter race at the Tokyo Olympics. But it is possible should compete in the 4x-100-meter relay or another event. “I want to take responsibility for my actions,” Richardson said on NBC’s “TODAY” show. Track star Sha’Carri Richardson was suspended from one month “I know what I’m supposed to do.” Marijuana use is legal in Oregon. But it is a banned substance by World Anti-Doping Agency rules.

Host of Meet the Press and NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd lashed out at people questioning the safety and efficacy of coronavirus vaccines, shaming them for unnecessarily putting people's lives in danger. “Nearly 10,000 people died [from the coronavirus] in the month of June. They were needless deaths," Todd said Thursday on MSNBC. "Please get vaccinated. If you know someone who is not vaccinated, find a way to convince them to get vaccinated.” The host grew visibly angry, his voice quivering as he pointed into the camera and directed his ire at politicians, activists and media personalities who have...