Free Republic

After fifty years, the Equal Rights Amendment is again rearing its ugly head. After a contentious hearing on the ERA in February, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to bring legislation (S.J. Res. 4) to the floor to remove the seven-year deadline on Thursday, April 27. There are 53 co-sponsors for this revival of the ERA, but because the vote will be on ‘cloture,’ 60 votes are needed to advance the resolution. While proponents claim that this amendment will give women “rights,” it actually does the opposite.

JACKSON (LifeSiteNews) — The abortion facility at the center of a challenge to Mississippi’s pro-life law that ultimately led to the reversal of Roe v. Wade has officially shut down. Jackson Women’s Health Organization challenged the state’s prohibition on abortions at 15 weeks, which ultimately led to the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision that reversed Roe and returned the issue of abortion back to the states. The facility has been shut down for months, but news recently broke that confirmed the building will no longer operate as an abortion facility. “Surreal to see the Pink...

Now that Joe Biden has announced his plans to run for reelection, the question that must be weighing on the minds of Democratic Party officials is “Can he possibly win without COVID?” They must know that without the pandemic, Biden had no chance of defeating Donald Trump in 2020. When he announced his candidacy exactly four years ago, the economy was booming and optimism was rising. Trump’s approval rating was edging upward. The only reason he had for running, he said, was because Trump was a racist. Then COVID happened. And it let the already enfeebled Biden avoid a grueling...

NASHVILLE (LifeSiteNews) — Republican Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed into law last week a ban on sexually explicit drag shows for minors and a ban on transgender surgeries and drugs for minors. The two bills, SB 1 and SB 3, were signed Thursday, March 2, amid growing concerns of parents in the Volunteer State over the sexualizing of children through the obscenities of drag queen events and performances targeting innocent minors in schools and public libraries, as well as the irreversible mutilation of body parts and the chemical castration involved in “trans” surgeries and puberty blockers. The laws go...

Minnesota Democrats want to remove language from the state’s Human Rights Act which clarifies that pedophilia is not included in the protected “sexual orientation” class. “‘Sexual orientation’ does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult,” the Human Rights Act says. HF 1655, a bill carried by Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St.Paul, seeks to remove that language from state statutes.

The fate of five men who supported Trump and protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6 lies in the hands of a biased D.C. jury. A marathon January 6 trial besieged by scandal, controversy, and acrimony is now in the hands of a Washington, D.C. jury. After nearly four months of back and forth, the government and defense attorneys made their final pitch during closing arguments this week in the multi-count case against five members of the Proud Boys. The drama surrounding the trial, both inside and outside the courtroom, is worthy of a Netflix series: shocking revelations of numerous...

Gov. Tate Reeves’ partial veto of five projects totaling $3.9 million in a larger bill containing hundreds of projects costing about $372 million appears to have come with a warning. The warning is that any legal challenge of Reeves’ partial veto of those five projects could jeopardize the entire bill, which provides funding for hundreds of projects throughout the state supported by local governments and others.

From the start of the COVID pandemic, China's government has ruthlessly censored doctors and researchers who tried to tell the truth about the origin and early spread of the novel coronavirus. This has long been known. But a New York Times report suggests Western institutions, particularly medical and scientific journals, also helped the Chinese obscure anything that might lead researchers and scientists to the truth. The Chinese government bullied scientific journals into retracting research papers from within China about "early cases, conditions for medical workers, and how widely the virus had spread." They got the Lancet Global Health to retract...

“If you’re going to lie,” Joseph Goebbels used to say (in German of course), “make it a whopper.” How did that work out for the Third Reich? Today, The New York Times says “Joe Biden” is revving up to run for president again in 2024. Is that so? One DNC strategist, Maria Cardona, was quoted saying, “Democrats complain that he might be too old. But then, when they’re asked, ‘Well, who?’ There is no one else.” There you have the sucking chest wound at the center of the Democratic Party, a malodorous vacuum where, as they like to say, democracy...

“You horrible scolds killed people. You should be forever ashamed.” That was the reaction of a friend on Facebook to a new University of Virginia Health study showing suicide attempts by overdose among children rose sharply during the pandemic. And, of course, he’s right. It was about three years ago that we were told we should lock things down for “two weeks to slow the spread.” The initial argument seemed plausible — shutter for a bit to slow transmission of the Chinese coronavirus now known as COVID-19 just enough that hospitals and other health-care facilities could handle the surge. Would...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wasn’t around for Round 1. It’s understandable that she doesn’t remember how Justice Clarence Thomas stood strong during the Anita Hill smear campaign. But Sen. Ed Markey was around. Like Biden, he’s just forgotten. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Monday called for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to resign amid controversy over the justice’s financial disclosures and ethical concerns about the nation’s highest court. “I will say what needs to be said: Clarence Thomas should resign from the Supreme Court of the United States. His reputation is unsalvageable,” Markey said at an event to advocate for...

ESCAMBIA COUNTY, Fla. (WKRG) — A Pensacola man is behind bars Tuesday after being caught with meth and other drug paraphernalia inside a M&M minis container in a Winn Dixie parking lot, according to an arrest report from the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. Edward Busbee was booked into the Escambia County Jail at around 2:27 a.m. on Tuesday, April 25 on no bond. Busbee is charged with possession of a controlled substance without a prescription, possession of drug paraphernalia and failure to appear. According to the arrest report, a deputy saw a green Ford Ranger parked next to a dumpster...

One of Donald Trump’s gifts is that he drives his enemies so crazy that they do really weird things. The latest evidence came Tuesday morning when Joe Biden released a three-minute video announcing he is seeking re-election. The world’s a mess, America is spiraling downward at a rapid rate and Biden would be older than dirt at the end of a second term, but he wants to “finish the job.” Finish the job? Apparently not satisfied with merely damaging America, he aims to destroy it. The fact that the president made the announcement via a recording reflects White House concerns...

Wasting away again in Bidenville. Nibblin’ on ice cream. Watching the economy boil. Particularly mortgage demand. Mortgage applications increased 3.7 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 21, 2023. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 3.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 5 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 2 percent from the previous week and was 51 percent lower than the same...

For Ruslan, an engineer in the Belarus capital of Minsk, Russia’s war in neighboring Ukraine suddenly seemed closer than ever when a conscription office recently sent him a summons for military training. It’s part of an effort that will see thousands of men in Belarus attend drills amid fears that the staunch Moscow ally could be drawn into the fighting. “They are telling us that Belarus won’t enter the war against Ukraine, but I hear Russian warplanes roar over my house heading to the Machulishchi air base outside Minsk,” the 27-year-old told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. He...

It’s obvious to any person with the faculty of critical thinking that intermittent renewable “green” energy will never work to power a modern economy. So as various U.S. states and foreign countries press forward on their crash programs to go fully “green” with their electricity generation, the next obvious question immediately arises: who will be first to hit the green energy “wall”? That is, which state or country will be the first to find that without enough reliable generation its electricity system no longer works? And how will that impact the population? In previous posts I have examined the progress...

WASHINGTON, Saturday, April 25. The following dispatch from Major-Gen. BURNSIDE has been received at the headquarters of the army here: CINCINNATI, April 23, 1863. Major-Gen. H.W. Halleck, General-in-Chief, Washington: The following dispatch has just been received: HEADQUARTERS, LOUISVILLE, April 22, 1863. The expedition to Celina was entirely successful. Col. GRAHAM reports through Gen. HOBSON that they destroyed the town, 100,000 pounds of bacon, 70,000 bushels of wheat, 10,000 bushels of corn, 100 barrels of whisky, 100 barrels of flour, a considerable quantity of sugar, coffee, tea, malt and other stores, and forty boats, which had been used in transporting from...

With your support in the election, we will defeat Joe Biden in 2024. We will rescue our economy. We will crush inflation. We will stop the invasion on our southern border. We will restore our Nation’s dignity. And we will prevent World War III from happening. Together, we will all Make America Great Again! Thank you. (4 minute video of it below)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXl7B_O1FM4

China, claiming to have been targeted by various espionage activities from the West, is stepping up its anti-spy efforts. According to a pending legal amendment expected to be approved on April 26, the coverage of spying charges will be expanded from theft of “state secrets” to “all data and items related to national security.” Cyber attacks will also be covered. Some commentators say the strengthening of the anti-spy law raises fears of a crackdown on foreign companies and individuals in China. The law change comes after Dong Yuyu, deputy head of the editorial department at Guangming Daily, faced spying charges...

As a practical matter, any modern military offensive launched without air cover is a suicide mission. Ukraine no longer has much of an air force, even with the addition of perhaps a dozen or so old MIG-29s acquired from NATO countries. Some of those are not flyable and others are being disassembled and used for parts. Ukraine’s operational fighter aircraft have to fly against more advanced Russian fighters including the formidable Su-35, and survive in combat against mobile Russian air defenses. Whatever Ukraine has, its air force cannot be expected to last more than a few days in a major...