Free Republic

In recent months, COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S. has “slowed to a crawl” as an increasingly distrustful public says “no thanks” to primary shots and boosters. Still, U.S. public health agencies continue to authorize, approve and recommend COVID-19 vaccines — even for infants.On Tuesday, advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — perhaps believing they can reverse the slowdown in “vaccine uptake” and without admitting to the ravages caused by the Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shots — unanimously recommended the “Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine, Adjuvanted.”The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week granted Novavax...

Explanation: Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope shows not only Jupiter and its...

One and a half years since President Joe Biden took office, Americans give President Biden a negative 31 - 60 percent job approval rating, the lowest score of his presidency, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea- ack) University national poll of adults released today. Republicans (94 - 2 percent) and independents (67 - 23 percent) disapprove, while Democrats approve (71 - 18 percent). Registered voters give President Biden a negative 33 - 59 percent job approval rating, his lowest approval rating among registered voters in a Quinnipiac University national poll.

How inevitable is a third consecutive nomination of Donald Trump? Partisan commentators, when it suits their purposes, tend to assume it is so. Republicans who remain supporters of the 45th president point to data showing he remains popular among his party’s voters. They also recall how loudly heralded attempts to deprive him of his first nomination, in 2016, foundered. Democrats who regard Trump’s election as an inexplicable black swan event, or even a putsch, have an obvious interest in elevating his chances. So do the cable news channels, which, hungry for ratings, gave him the equivalent of billions of dollars’...

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure Tuesday to codify the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on same-sex and interracial marriages, in which none of West Virginia’s delegates voted for the legislation. The chamber approved House Resolution 8404 — the Respect for Marriage Act — in a 267-157 vote; 47 Republicans joined 220 Democrats in backing the measure. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., voted against the bill, arguing marriage is a union “between a man and a woman.” Reps. David McKinley and Carol Miller were among the seven Republicans who did not vote.

A new study published this month revealed that COVID-19 mask mandates in schools have little to no effect. “Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature which suggests school-based mask mandates have limited to no impact on the case rates of COVID-19 among K-12 students,” researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California–Davis said in a preprint study published on Research Square. Researchers evaluated two school districts in Fargo, North Dakota, in which one had a mask mandate and the other did not during the 2021–2022 academic year. “We observed no significant difference between student...

Siberian ‘Ivan Tea’ is better than the additive-laden soda, the Russian president added Russian President Vladimir Putin has derided Coca-Cola and suggested that ‘Ivan Tea’ – a medicinal brew made from Siberian fireweed – is a more “useful” refreshment. Coca-Cola pulled out of the Russian market in June over Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine. Participating in the ‘Strong Ideas for New Times’ forum in Moscow on Wednesday, Putin was approached by Alexander Khlynov from the Union of Ivan Tea Producers, who proposed the government help boost production of the traditional Russian drink. Putin agreed to bring Khlynov’s proposal to Minister...

Now new research released Wednesday has shed light on this trading frenzy and concluded that a change in how Robinhood and other online brokers report fractional trading data was a culprit. “This volume is due to the interaction of a well-intentioned but misguided FINRA reporting rule, Robinhood trading, and fractional shares,” wrote the authors — Robert Bartlett at University of California, Berkeley, Justin McCrary at Columbia University and Maureen O’Hara at Cornell University. In 2017, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority started requiring brokers to report fractional trades — sometimes just 1/100th of a share — as if they were for...

President Biden said Wednesday that he has cancer, forcing the White House press office to quickly clarify that he was referring to skin cancer treatment that he had before taking office last year.

A day after the mother of two young Black girls called out Sesame Place in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for an incident over the weekend in which a character at the theme park appeared to deny and pass by her girls, an attorney for the family said the event has had a devastating effect on them. "Their hearts were completely shattered by a character," attorney B'Ivory LaMarr told NBC10 in an interview Tuesday. "And tickets are not cheap. This is something these young girls were looking forward to. Words can't describe the type of grief they are going through right now."...

Wake up and smell the coffee! Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz slams woke leaders for 'abdicating their responsibility' to fight crime causing his chain to shutter 16 profitable stores because of assaults on staff - with MORE closures to come CEO Howard Schulz said 'America has become unsafe' after he announced that 16 Starbucks stores will close in left-leaning cities across the country He will close profitable stores in the company's hometown of Seattle as well as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland and D.C. The reported disruptions include drug use by paying customers and, more often than not, members of the public...

European natural gas inventories rose by +97 BCF over past 7 days. EU nat gas storage 65% full. Current inventories at 2493 BCF. 23.8% higher than 1 year ago. EU goal is at least 80% full by Nov 1st for winter.

..."one of the oldest conceptions in the western world: What’s on your land belongs to you. This idea predates the founding of America. If you find gold in your backyard, that resource belongs to you.... A source near San Diego has shared with California Globe a shocking letter that’s quietly being delivered to owners of private wells.The letter is signed by Natalie Stork, the Chief of Groundwater Management Program Unit 1, and was sent in late July on the letterhead of California Water Boards, under the authority of Gov. Newsom and Jared Blumenfeld, Secretary for Environmental Protection. Buried beneath the...

The Oakland International Container Terminal (OICT) management closed operations on Wednesday at the Port of Oakland due to the independent trucker protests over California’s gig worker law, known as AB5. The Port’s other three marine terminals are effectively shut down for trucks as well, the Port of Oakland told CNBC, while there are some vessel labor operations underway. This is the third-day truckers have protested California’s gig worker labor law, which was sparked by the rise of gig economy platforms like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash. A two-year legal stay was recently lifted when the Supreme Court decided not to hear...

CHICAGO — The city violated the civil rights of its residents by playing a “driving role” in the proposed relocation of a scrap metal facility with a history of pollution complaints from a mostly white neighborhood in Chicago’s North Side to a largely Latino and Black community in the Southeast Side, according to the results of a two-year-long federal investigation. In a letter obtained by NBC News outlining its findings and delivered Tuesday to Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it found that the city had a “broader policy of shifting polluting activities from...

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@RepThomasMassie Democrats say they want to ban “weapons of war” but what they really want is to disarm citizens. Clip...

In the letter sent Monday, Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Robert Portman, R-Ohio, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., urged the Pentagon to increase the speed at which it was deploying the defensive aid agreed to in May under the $20 billion "Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations" package. "While the medium- and long-range air defense capabilities and HIMARS included in the June 27, 2022, and July 8, 2022 aid packages are a good start, these systems must be delivered at a pace and in quantity sufficient to impact the outcome of the fighting in the Donbas, Kherson and...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Anti-abortion activists from across the country converged in southern New Mexico on Tuesday to protest relocation plans by the Mississippi clinic at the center of the court battle that overturned Roe v. Wade, but New Mexico’s governor vowed not to back down from her support for access to abortions. Democrat Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is running for reelection, tweeted hours before the protest that access remains legal and safe in her state. “New Mexicans understand the right to make personal decisions about one’s own reproductive health care — and we won’t go back,” she wrote. The...

SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME MATTHEW 13:1–9 Friends, our Gospel for today is the parable of the sower and the seed. It has to do with the growth and development of the kingdom of God. We hear that Jesus “went out of the house and sat down by the sea” and that large crowds gathered around him. This is Jesus speaking to the whole world. Sitting down, he is, again, in the attitude of the ancient teacher and judge, and he speaks the parable of the sower. The sower sows far and wide, some of the seed landing on the...