Free Republic

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — North Carolina’s requirement that transgender people undergo sex reassignment surgery as part of establishing their identity is discriminatory and does not align with a majority of states and medical organizations, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court. Three law firms joined to file the lawsuit in North Carolina’s Middle District Court on behalf of an adult and two minors. The lawsuit said the adult plaintiff, Lillith Campos, is incorrectly identified on her birth certificate as male. It added that another plaintiff, a young man only identified as C.B., is incorrectly identified as female on his...

ALBANY, N.Y. — Members of New York’s ethics commission voted overwhelmingly to rescind approval of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $5.1 million book deal Tuesday. The committee’s vote comes over a year since the October 2020 publication of Cuomo’s book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which largely recounts the governor’s once-daily press conferences last spring. Tuesday’s vote means Cuomo will have to apply again for approval for his book deal. McNamara and other commissioners have said they want to claw back at least some of Cuomo’s book deal proceeds. It’s unclear whether the state could go after all...

Whoopi Goldberg told her co-hosts Tuesday on ABC’s “The View” that the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse has sent the message “it’s OK to shoot White people too.” Goldberg said, “All eyes are on Wisconsin after lawyers made closing arguments on whether 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse traveling across state lines to take up arms before killing two men and wounding a third during a night of social justice protests and unrest were acts of self-defense or was it vigilante murder?”

Thirty-third Week in Ordinary Time Luke 19:1-10 Friends, today’s Gospel declares in the story of Zacchaeus how quickly God responds to any sign of faith. Zacchaeus’ climbing the sycamore tree shows he had more than a passing interest in seeing Jesus. He had a deep hunger of the spirit. His principal virtue was his willingness to go to great extremes. But this is what we do when we know that something of great moment is at stake. When our health is endangered, we move, we act; when our job is threatened, we go to almost any extreme to keep it....

The Biden administration is expected to begin the process of expanding the booster authorization to all adults as early as this week, according to a source familiar with internal planning.Why it matters: America's booster campaign got off to an underwhelming start, potentially leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk as the holidays approach.The big picture: The pandemic still isn't over, and the data is clear that vaccine effectiveness has waned over time and with the rise of Delta — but also that a booster dose restores protection against the virus to remarkable levels.Despite disagreement among experts about who needs a...

A “multi-circuit lottery” is expected to be held this week that will determine the fate of the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) which set a Jan. 4 deadline for an estimated 84 million private sector workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or be tested weekly and wear a mask. At least 27 states, as well as private employers, religious organizations, and other groups, have filed lawsuits against the administration’s mandate claiming that it is exceeding its authority in issuing the mandate. As a result, there are now OSHA-related lawsuits pending in the...

Testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed the Biden Administration is encouraging illegal immigrant families "separated from their children" to sign up for taxpayer funded relief checks. "We recently launched a website where families who were indeed separated can register for relief. We are working very closely with counsel for the families. We are working with the government, the nation's of origin to accelerate the provision of passports for parents who do indeed want to come here," Mayorkas said. It’s outrageous to offer massive, taxpayer funded financial payments to...

On Tuesday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) announced that she will not run for reelection in the 2022 midterm elections. She is the ninth Democratic incumbent in the House to announce their retirement from Congress. In a video posted to Twitter, Speier made the announcement and thanked her constituents for their support over the years. “Today, I’m announcing that I will not be a candidate for reelection to Congress in 2022,” she stated in the video. “It’s time for me to come home. Time for me to be more than a weekend wife, mother, and friend. It’s been an extraordinary privilege...

During the pandemic, millions of upper middle class white parents experienced for the first time the high quality education that minority public students had been receiving for generations. The housing values of America’s communities are based on taxing homeowners to subsidize school systems that are radical, corrupt, and wasteful, but that suburban parents keep on funding because they believe it will prepare their children for college and success in life. The administrators and teachers expect high levels of parental involvement in local school systems and understand that the ungodly sums of money being poured into their systems depend on parents...

The group is using a new Wyoming law that legally recognizes them as a corporate entity to help speed along the process. Back in July, Wyoming passed a law legally recognizing Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)—blockchain-based entities in which members vote on the group’s direction with tokens—so long as they are registered as companies in the state. Now, one DAO that has aspirations of founding a blockchain-based city says it has actually purchased land in the state. “Today, CityDAO is officially the first DAO to own land, using the new Wyoming DAO LLC law. This is just the beginning,” CityDAO tweeted,...

Nancy Pelosi Accused Of Concealing $1T In Spending – Chamber Of Commerce Lays Out Democrat “Gimmicks” Democrats have been hell-bent on getting Biden’s massive reconciliation bill passed. This “build back better” spending bill is little

Has anyone else noticed recently that Brandon often has a tightly gripped pen in his left hand? Also while watching footage of him signing the big spending bill, he handed off his pen to someone then Crazy Nan reached down with both hands and pressed another pen into his seemingly disabled left hand. She appeared to close his hand for him - perhaps because he was not able to do so himself? Symptoms of stroke include trouble walking, speaking, and understanding, as well as paralysis or numbness of extremities such as the left hand. Check the box on all of...

Pfizer told the world 15 people who received the vaccine in its trial had died as of mid-March. Turns out the real number then was 21, compared to only 17 deaths in people who hadn't been vaccinated. ======================================================================== On July 28, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech posted a six-month data update from their key Covid vaccine clinical trial, the one that led regulators worldwide to okay the shot. At a time when questions about vaccine effectiveness were rising, the report received worldwide attention. Pfizer said the vaccine’s efficacy remained relatively strong, at 84 percent after six months. It also reported...

The origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian date back some 9,000 years to millet farmers that inhabited northeastern China, a study found after evaluating linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence... Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.This language family's beginnings were traced to...

The enduring mystery of the Kyle Rittenhouse criminal trial, which went to a jury Tuesday, has been the identity of "Jump Kick Man." As Rittenhouse ran away from a crowd of people, he testified that one of the pursuers hit him in the head with his skateboard. When Rittenhouse fell to the ground, Jump Kick Man flew through the air and stomped on his head. Rittenhouse fired two shots at Jump Kick Man, but missed. Almost immediately, the man who had struck Rittenhouse with his skateboard, Anthony Huber, hit him with the skateboard again, and Rittenhouse fired a single round,...

LAST MONDAY, a Democratic firm hosted focus groups with women in Virginia who voted in 2017 for Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, in 2020 for Democratic President Joe Biden, and then this month for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin. It was centered on suburban women: a group that pivoted significantly to the right in the governor’s election. Consultant Danny Barefoot said that Anvil Strategies called roughly 30,000 people in Virginia. Most didn’t answer, but several hundred of them fit the criteria he was looking for: people who voted Democrat, Democrat, Republican in the last three elections. Those people were called back and...

“We must act now to strengthen disease surveillance systems and close immunity gaps, before travel and trade return to pre-pandemic levels, to prevent deadly measles outbreaks and mitigate the risk of other vaccine-preventable diseases,” Kevin Cain, global immunization director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a prepared statement issued Wednesday. Specifically, disease detection and diagnostics diverted to support COVID-19 responses, coupled with large numbers of unvaccinated children and persistent global pockets of measles outbreaks, have increased the “likelihood of measles-related deaths and serious complications in children,” Cain added. According to the CDC, the last widespread...

Cardinal Health will test the use of drones to expedite its delivery of medications and inhalers to pharmacies, The Wall Street Journal reported. Six details: The pharmaceutical distributor partnered with medical product delivery company Zipline International, which will operate the drones. The pilot program will begin in 2022 outside Charlotte, N.C., pending approval from the Federal Aviation Administration. The drones, which look like miniature planes, will be about 6 feet from head to tail and will have 11-foot wingspans, according to the Journal. They will fly 300 to 400 feet above ground and use parachutes to drop shipments into landing...

Does Joe Biden want Kamala Harris to be his vice president anymore? There are rumors that he doesn’t. “Joe Biden’s relationship with Kamala Harris is in crisis, with her staff furious that she is being ‘sidelined,’ while the president’s team are increasingly frustrated by how she is playing with American public,” reports the Daily Mail. “Harris’ approval rating has plunged even further than Biden’s in recent months, with rumors swirling that the president is considering appointing her to the Supreme Court as a backdoor method of selecting a new VP.” Wait, what? Really? Something doesn’t smell right here. The Daily...