Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Macho men are in and effeminate male performers are out as Beijing expands its crackdown on China’s entertainment industry, blaming the rise of unmanly men on U.S. influence in Japan. Male celebrities, even top moneymakers, are changing their images seemingly overnight now that China’s National Radio and TV Administration and other government agencies have made it clear that men who can be described as “niang pao,” a derogatory term for effeminate men, are no longer suitable role models. New government controls call for broadcasters to enforce a “correct beauty standard” and to stop booking male celebrities who fail...

Former President Donald Trump endorsed a former news anchor for Arizona governor just hours after she tweeted at South Dakota’s governor to add him to Mount Rushmore. Kari Lake, a former journalist for Fox 10 News in Phoenix, has risen to prominence by attacking the media, railing against vaccine mandates, and echoing Trump’s false claims of election fraud during the 2020 election — Trump narrowly lost the state to President Joe Biden by just over 10,000 votes. …

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., on Tuesday let loose on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen over the Biden administration's proposal to force banks to report to the Internal Revenue Service on every transaction Americans make that is $600 or more. "There are obvious privacy concerns for all Americans here and this represents a dramatic new regulatory burden for community banks and credit unions in Wyoming and elsewhere," Lummis told Yellen of the proposal, which is one of several aimed at helping to pay for President Biden's multitrillion-dollar plans for expanding social programs and fighting climate change. Lummis said, "Banks will have to...

"The Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine’s Local Reactions, Systemic Reactions, Adverse Events, and Serious Adverse Events" "Fever was more common in participants 18-59 years (12.8%) compared to those ≥60 years (3.1%). The majority of systemic reactions were mild or moderate in severity. The most common grade 3 reactions were fatigue and myalgia." "Among vaccine recipients aged 18-59 years, 26.4% reported using antipyretic or analgesic medications, compared to 6.0% of placebo recipients. Among vaccine recipients aged ≥60 years, 9.8% reported using antipyretic or analgesic medications, compared to 5.1% of placebo recipients." "Reports of embolic and thrombotic events had a slight numerical imbalance with...

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday announced his state has obtained its own supply of monoclonal antibodies, a type of treatment for COVID-19, in a move that bypasses the Biden administration’s limits. “Texas has obtained its own separate allocation of these monoclonal antibody treatments working around the limitations that President Biden has put on us so that we will be able to ensure that anybody in the state of Texas that wants access to these special treatments, that they will be able to get it,” Abbott, a Republican, said during an interview with radio host Dana Loesch. The governor also...

I just sued Facebook. I didn’t want to sue. I hate lawsuits. I tried for a year to reach someone at Facebook to fix things, but Facebook wouldn’t. Here’s the problem: Facebook uses “independent fact-checkers” to try to reduce fake news on their site. That’s a noble goal. Unfortunately, at least one Facebook “fact-checker” is a climate-alarmist group that cleverly uses its Facebook connections to stop debate. Facebook is a private company. It has every right to cut me off. But Facebook does not have the right to just lie about me, yet that’s exactly what Facebook and its “fact-checker”...

In this interview, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses the importance and benefits of regenerative agriculture and a future Regeneration International project that we'll be collaborating on. We're currently facing enormously powerful technocrats who are hell-bent on ushering the Great Reset, a World Economic Forum (WEF) plan, which will complete the ongoingtransfer of wealth and resource ownership from the poor and middle classes to the ultra-rich. Perhaps the most well-known of the individuals pushing for this is Bill Gates who, like John Rockefeller a century before him, rehabilitated his sorely tarnished image by turning to philanthropy. However, Gates' brand of philanthropy, so...

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) today, demanded accountability from the most senior military leaders and defense officials in the Biden administration for the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan that left hundreds of Americans and thousands of America’s Afghan allies stranded, and has resulted in a safe haven for global terrorism in the country once again. Sen. Sullivan first asked each of the witnesses about President Joe Biden’s false claims about the Afghanistan withdrawal, including whether or not they recommended that the president leave a residual force in the country, whether Al...

A pair of state lawmakers and environmentalists are pushing back against a little-publicized plan by the Department of Environmental Conservation they say could allow more products to bear the familiar "chasing arrow" logo that signifies a recyclable item — even though many plastic products that have the sign aren't really able to be recycled. Rather than periodically updating its list of products that should or shouldn't be considered recyclable, "the Department proposed to do away with the specific standards and eliminate the program entirely." Instead, the DEC wants products labeled as recyclable, reusable or recycled to merely conform with the...

Harris said she 'was glad' the student brought up concerns about Israel and nodded as she spoke Vice President Kamala Harris nodded while a student accused Israel of ethnic genocide and then responded by saying the student's "truth should not be suppressed." After speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, to commemorate National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday, Harris took questions from the audience. That's when a female student raised questions about the money the U.S. is providing to Israel and Saudi Arabia. "I see that over the summer there have been, like, protests and demonstrations in astronomical numbers"...

Doctors and nurses should tell their patients to fight climate change, experts have said. Writing in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, they said medics should wield their 'trusted' positions in society to get people to take care of the planet. Academics wrote that health professionals could be 'effective messengers' and help encourage more people to fight climate change.

Democrats on abortion: "Your body, YOUR choice!" Democrats on vaccinations: "Your body, OUR choice!" https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/1443233421761843202

LOUDOUN COUNTY, VIRGINIA — A few hundred protestors gathered Tuesday evening outside of a Loudoun County Public Schools board meeting to push back against what they say are far-left Critical Race Theory and transgender policies. Many of the protestors told the Daily Caller News Foundation that they were inspired to attend the rally by The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who flew in from Tennessee to speak to the the school board of Loudoun County, a battleground for progressive education policies including LGBT issues, Critical Race Theory, and racial reparations. The conservative commentator had amused fans and outraged critics by renting...

Women continue to suffer after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, including negative changes in how women are allowed to give birth. According to a BBC report, the gains made for women in childbirth, which improved maternal mortality and neonatal care, are quickly evaporating. A woman named Rabia spoke to the BBC about her experience giving birth in an Afghanistan hospital both before and after the Taliban takeover. “This is my third child, but the experience was totally different. It was horrible,” she said. Her midwife, Abida, agreed. “We were sweating like we were taking a shower,” Abida said of the...

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) extended the statewide mask mandate on Tuesday yet again, declaring “masks have been proven to help slow the spread” of the Chinese coronavirus. The Democrat governor initially implemented the indoor mask mandate, which applies to those five and older, on August 4. It was originally set to expire on September 1, but the governor extended the rule until September 29. Then, the day before it was set to expire, he extended yet another month. Now it will remain in place until “at least” October 27:

His wife still claimed that unvaccinated people were somehow a threat, even though anybody can transmit the disease. Ted Hartley, a math teacher from Oklahoma, was sent into hospital requiring oxygen for days earlier this month after catching COVID-19. Hartley was judged to be a high risk for infection due to his profession and the fact he is a kidney transplant recipient. “We just felt gutted that after 18 months of focusing on staying well and not catching this that he still caught it,” Regina Hartley, his wife, confirmed. “”They did a chest X-ray and saw that was in double...

The world outside or before the U.S. was and is not a pretty thing. Even in rare consensual societies, factions and inequality under the law persisted—whether the plebs and populares of early Republican Rome, the greens and blues of Justinian’s Constantinople, or the Guelphs and Ghibellines of thirteenth-century Florence. Belonging to the wrong ethnic group or religion or political clique translated into a diminished political existence—or often far worse. Institutionalized persecution required the use of mass violence, in the way that governments today have systematically oppressed Chinese Uyghurs and Tibetans, Iraqi Kurds, Rwandan Tutsis, or Serbian Bosnians. https://victorhanson.com/what-made-us-go-crazy-part-two/

Officials in Moscow have issued a sternly-worded ultimatum to YouTube’s parent company, Google, saying the video streaming site could face restrictions after it took down two channels run by RT’s German-language service. In the statement, released on Wednesday morning, the country’s national media regulator, Roskomnadzor, said that it “demands all restrictions be lifted from the YouTube channels RT DE and Der Fehlende Part (DFP), run by the news outlet RT, as soon as possible.” According to the authorities, failure to do so would be a violation of Russian law and, “for such actions, an internet resource can be designated as...

TSHUNGA! Dance and sing! The lyrics are catchy.

Pelosi leaves room to delay infrastructure vote © Getty Images Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said the stonewalling by Senate centrists has "completely" disrupted the Democrats' timeline for moving President Biden's domestic agenda, leaving open the possibility that the House will punt once again on an infrastructure vote scheduled for Thursday. Pelosi said she still intends to stage the infrastructure vote on Thursday, but acknowledged her power as Speaker to delay it, if need be. "We take it one step at a time," Pelosi told reporters after huddling with members of her caucus in the basement of the Capitol,...