Free Republic

White fragility. Equitable math. The invisible knapsack. These critical theory terms and practices are now common in North Carolina’s public K-12 schools. And Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson has collected many more examples with his Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students (F.A.C.T.S.) Task Force. But North Carolina’s public schools didn’t “go woke” spontaneously. Our K-12 schools and classrooms have been slowly transformed by teachers who learned and practiced critical theory in schools of education across the state, including those in the UNC system. The John Locke Foundation’s Terry Stoops documents one example of education schools’ critical pedagogy...

Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told Judicial Watch in a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that it has communications from Pfizer in an investigative file targeting Project Veritas. (In October 2021, Project Veritas, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, published two viral stories [here and here] about the Pfizer covid vaccine.)

James "Orange" Bond encounters Let's Go Brandon.

A poll released Monday finds that more than half of U.S. voters want Dr. Anthony Fauci to keep leading the government’s COVID-19 response, despite President Biden’s continued low approval ratings. The survey by the Trafalgar Group found that 53.7% of respondents from all political affiliations said they do not believe Dr. Fauci should “resign his position and role,” while 46.3% want him to go. Pollster Robert Cahaly said the findings reflect the complexity of an electorate that still trusts Dr. Fauci more than Mr. Biden, whose average job approval rating in a FiveThirtyEight average of polls stood at 42.2% on...

Kramer and Newman play Risk. "The Label Maker," season 6, episode 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teSXcJlpMl8

In a world where many of us are glued to our smartphones, Dulcie Cowling is something of an anomaly - she has ditched hers. The 36-year-old decided at the end of last year that getting rid of her handset would improve her mental health. So, over Christmas she told her family and friends that she was switching to an old Nokia phone that could only make and receive calls and text messages. She recalls that one of the pivotal moments that led to her decision was a day at the park with her two boys, aged six and three: "I...

Isuzu's F-Series medium-duty truck will be modified to accommodate Cummins' PowerDrive6000 electric powertrain. Isuzu Motors and Cummins announced an agreement to create a prototype medium-duty battery electric truck for testing in North America. In a joint press release, the companies said the truck represents the first zero-emissions solution facilitated by the Isuzu Cummins Powertrain Partnership (ICPP) formed in May 2019. More specifically, through the arrangement, the US company best known for its diesel engines will integrate its Cummins PowerDrive6000 into Isuzu’s F-Series truck and will pilot the truck with prominent North American fleets beginning in 2022. If the demonstration and...

The silent-film star's deadpan style combined with his kinetic energy have inspired today's most acclaimed stars, from Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver to Awkwafina. Nicole Davis explores why the actor and filmmaker's style is still a fitting response to modern life. Buster Keaton was something of an enigma to his own era. The silent-film star launched himself between rooftops, battled storms and sand dunes, boarded moving vehicles – and frequently trailed behind them, perfectly horizontal and as suspended as our disbelief – all in the name of comedy, and all while seeming unfazed. Film historian Peter Kramer, in his essay...

Eric Clapton’s career “had almost gone anyway” until his campaign against conventional medicine took off. The 76-year-old musician went on the Real Music Observer YouTube channel to discuss how his life has changed since reluctantly taking AstraZeneca’s therapy in 2021. Clapton has since become outspoken about his anti-vaccination stance. He claimed that he’d been duped into getting the COVID-19 jab by subliminal messaging in pharmaceutical advertising — and urged others not to fall for it. “Whatever the memo was, it hadn’t reached me,” he said, referring to the “mass formation hypnosis” conspiracy theory, which gained traction in 2021 as part...

The Biden administration wants us to believe that Russia is seeking to regain its former greatness by overthrowing the government of Volodymyr Zelensky and replacing it with a puppet government that it would control. The neocon-dominated establishment in both of our political parties wants us to believe that the Soviet Union still exists and is inherently expansionary. Just as the nation was sold a hoax about Russia having elected President Donald Trump in 2016, another illusion now is being sold. Do not believe a word of it! ​Russia has explained repeatedly it has one core concern — Ukraine being admitted...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has issued its first clean energy loan guarantee, reviving an Obama-era program that helped launch the country’s first utility-scale wind and solar farms a decade ago but has largely gone dormant in recent years. Under President Barack Obama, the program boosted Tesla’s efforts to become a behemoth in electric cars, but it stumbled after the California solar company Solyndra failed soon after receiving federal aid a decade ago, costing taxpayers more than $500 million. Republicans and other critics seized on Solyndra as an example of wasteful spending under Obama’s stimulus program. Energy Secretary Jennifer...

Pathetic RINO Governor Mike Parson is reportedly pushing “ranked choice” voting in this Trump +15 state in order to flip several statewide and national seats to Democrats in upcoming elections. This is the latest disgusting move by the weak Republican placeholder governor. Missouri voters resoundingly reject the Marxist totalitarian policies of the modern-day left. But Governor Parson wants to change that by implementing the “ranked choice” voting in the state. The RINOs in Missouri are in a league of their own. A ranked-choice voting system (RCV) is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots....

New research suggests giving extra cash to low-income mothers can change their infants’ brain development. Brain measurements at age 1 showed faster activity in key brain regions in infants whose low-income families received $300-plus monthly for a year, compared with those who got $20 each month, U.S. researchers reported Monday. The same type of brain activity has been linked in older children to learning skills and other development, although it’s unclear whether the differences found will persist or influence the infants’ future. The researchers are investigating whether the payments led to better nutrition, less parent stress or other benefits to...

Just two hours after the PM stood in silence for key workers who'd died in the pandemic, the Cabinet Room's table was laid out with party food and a birthday cake, reports ITV News UK Editor Paul Brand ITV News understands Boris Johnson had a birthday party during the first lockdown in 2020 despite the rules forbidding social gatherings indoors at the time. It's alleged that the prime minister's wife, Carrie Johnson, helped organise a surprise get-together for him on the afternoon of 19 June just after 2pm. ITV News understands that the interior designer, Lulu Lytle - who was...

A quick and pain-free scan of the human eyeball could one day help doctors identify 'fast agers', who are at greater risk of early mortality. Getting older obviously has an impact on everybody's body, but just because two people have the same number of years under their belt doesn't mean they are physically declining at the same rate. Looking deep into a person's eyes could be a far better way to measure their true biological age, and this could provide a glimpse into the future health of patients. A machine learning model has now been taught to predict a person's...

Republicans across the nation are losing the redistricting battle that will shape November’s midterm elections and ultimately Joe Biden’s presidency. With Republican state legislatures in control of reshaping 187 districts while Democrats only control 75, Republican legislatures had an opportunity to wreak havoc on Democrat-leaning districts, splitting them up with district lines that benefit Republican candidates. But in multiple red states, Republicans have not drawn Republican-favoring district maps. In blue states, however, Democrats have been very aggressive. The establishment media have taken note since December of how “weirdly well” Democrats are performing. According to the Associated Press on Monday, Democrats...

BRUSSELS (AP) — The Pentagon said Monday that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has put up to 8,500 troops on heightened alert, so they will be prepared to deploy if needed to reassure NATO allies in the face of ongoing Russian aggression on the border of Ukraine. Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said no final decisions have been made on deployments. He said the order is about ensuring that the U.S. is ready to respond if NATO decides to deploy its response force. “What this is about is reassurance to our NATO allies,” Kirby said.

Studies interlinking the microbiome of the gut and the brain show evidence of changes in emotional health. Recent research in the UK is exploring how the gut-brain axis affects anxiety. The findings indicate that introducing a prebiotic called galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) into the gut microbiome has a positive effect on gut health and greater emotional wellbeing. The Study Aspects Researchers from the University of Surrey examined the food diaries and stool samples of 64 female volunteers between the ages of 18 and 25 over 28 days. The volunteers were given either 7.5g of the GOS Biotis prebiotic or a placebo made...

The “pandemic of the unvaccinated” was caused by a computer glitch. That was the conclusion of the Health Minister of Germany Karl Lauterbach, after months of vilifying the unvaccinated in the nation’s second largest city, Hamburg. In November 2021, news outlets reported on the increasing “incident numbers” in the city – where the figure grew from 111.6 infected people per 100,000 to 160 per 100,000 in a span of few of days. By the end of November, that number shot up from 209.2 to a record of 223.3. The ostensibly drastic increases have been used to legitimize new COVID policy...

COVID tests for fully vaccinated travellers arriving in England are being scrapped from 4am on 11 February, Grant Shapps has confirmed. Making a statement on the coronavirus rule change in the Commons, the transport secretary said those who have had two doses of an approved vaccination or one dose of a Janssen/J+J vaccine will no longer need to take a pre-departure or post-arrival test. The change will be introduced in time for the half-term break. Mr Shapps told MPs 2022 will be "the year in which restrictions on travel, on lockdowns and limits on people's lives are firmly placed in...