Free Republic

Imagine a short list of the professions for which it is imperative that the person performing them is highly competent. The list would most likely include such occupations as airline pilot and structural engineer. One profession would almost assuredly be on everybody’s list: “medical doctor.” Without question, we want the people advising us on our health, diagnosing illnesses, prescribing cures, and operating on us to be the very best and brightest.Yet today’s medical schools are no longer choosing faculty and students according to sensible meritocratic principles. Instead, they are often making personnel decisions and changing the curriculum according to principles...

Gold prices reached unprecedented territory on Tuesday, breaking through the $3,500 per ounce barrier and establishing a new all-time high. This milestone comes amid a combination of market factors that have strengthened the precious metal’s position as a preferred investment. The price surge occurred as the U.S. dollar weakened against other major currencies, making gold more affordable for international investors. Simultaneously, financial markets have increasingly priced in expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its September meeting. The dollar’s recent performance has played a significant role in gold’s ascent. As the greenback loses value relative to other...

Florida is set to end all state vaccine mandates, state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced at a news conference Wednesday. For decades, the state has required numerous vaccines for kids attending school, including shots that protect against Measles-mumps-rubella, polio, chickenpox and Hepatitis B. But Ladapo on Wednesday compared these mandates to “slavery,” and promised that they all will soon end. He did not immediately provide specifics. Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organization. The vast majority of the lives saved were infants. This is a breaking news story...

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been overheard discussing organ transplants as a means of prolonging life on the sidelines of a military parade in Beijing. Putin suggested even eternal life could be achievable as a result of innovations in biotechnology, according to a translation of remarks caught on a hot mic. -snip- The exchange was relayed by a Mandarin translator for Putin and a Russian translator for Xi, and has been translated into English by the BBC. "In the past, it used to be rare for someone to be older than 70 and these days...

In the last couple of years, the largest U.S. oil companies gobbled up smaller ones. Now, contending with persistently mediocre oil prices, those giants are laying off many workers in hopes of squeezing more fuel from the ground at lower cost. The latest is ConocoPhillips of Houston, which said on Wednesday that it would cut up to 25 percent of its global staff, or as many as 3,250 people, most of them this year. The company employs around 13,000 people, including contractors. “We are always looking at how we can be more efficient with the resources we have,” a company...

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage warned the U.S. Congress that censorship laws in Britain will have a stifling effect on free speech throughout the West and urged the American government to pressure London to adhere to its values of liberty. Appearing before the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, Brexit boss Nigel Farage likened his native country of Britain to “North Korea” with its increasingly censorious stance towards online speech.

The recent mass-theft of authentication tokens from Salesloft, whose AI chatbot is used by a broad swath of corporate America to convert customer interaction into Salesforce leads, has left many companies racing to invalidate the stolen credentials before hackers can exploit them. Now Google warns the breach goes far beyond access to Salesforce data, noting the hackers responsible also stole valid authentication tokens for hundreds of online services that customers can integrate with Salesloft, including Slack, Google Workspace, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, and OpenAI.

A lawyer for the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, Attorney Brad Edwards, told reporters that there is no such thing as the Epstein list.A reporter asks, "Do you believe Jeffrey Epstein had a list?" To whom Edwards replies: "Yeah, so there is not a list," as the survivors behind him nodded in agreement.So here's what it was. Just like you heard everybody today, Jeffrey Epstein created, through an organization, of enablers, of people that were on his payroll... It was a complicated scheme where others should still be investigated, because they helped to enable him and operate this scheme....

A COVID wave is washing over California, with the state seeing continued increases in the number of newly confirmed cases and hospitalizations as some officials urged the public to take greater precautions.The extent of the recent increases has prompted some county-level health officials to recommend that residents once again consider wearing masks in indoor public settings, at least until transmission has declined. California currently has “high” coronavirus levels in sewage, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And increases are being seen across the Golden State, from Los Angeles County to the San Francisco Bay Area to...

Governors in California, Oregon and Washington said their states would work together on vaccine guidance in a time of turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.California, Oregon and Washington announced plans on Wednesday to form a “health alliance” that would coordinate vaccine recommendations for the three states at a time of unparalleled turmoil at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency responsible for issuing vaccine guidance for the country.The alliance is intended to provide residents with scientific data about vaccine safety and efficacy, and to issue guidance on vaccines for respiratory illnesses like Covid and...

“My observation is that a major driver of white males becoming trans is the relentless propaganda portraying white men as the worst human beings.” “If those lies land, especially during vulnerable teen years, and they are given an option to be a ‘celebrated’ group, some will do it,” Musk added.

Appeals court blocks Trump’s use of 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members, setting stage for Supreme Court fight.A federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump cannot use an 18th-century wartime law to speed the deportations of people his administration accuses of membership in a Venezuelan gang, blocking a signature administration push that is destined for a final showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative federal appeals courts in the country, agreed with immigrant rights lawyers and...

LONDON (AP) — The arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan in Britain over social media posts about transgender people has sparked a debate about freedom of speech and its limits.Supporters of Linehan say U.K. laws are stifling legitimate comment and creating what “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling –- like Linehan, a critic of trans activism — called “totalitarianism.”Others argue that online abuse and hate speech have real-world impact and police have a duty to take it seriously. London’s police chief said ambiguities in the law had left officers “in an impossible position.”Arrested at the airportLinehan, the co-creator of beloved 1990s...

Summary Surgeon General Ladapo says the state should not tell individuals what to do Vaccination rates amongst kindergarteners is on the decline nationally Medical association says move will put children in public schools at risk Sept 3 (Reuters) - Florida plans to end all state vaccine mandates, including for children to attend schools, the state's surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, announced on Wednesday, likening the mandates to "slavery." "Every last one of the them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery," Ladapo said at a press conference in Tampa. "Who am I as a government or anyone else, or who...

Rumors are circulating that Chelsea Clinton may be thinking about running for Congress in New York’s 12th District after longtime Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler announced that he will not seek re-election. As Democratic strategists consider potential candidates who could win over voters in a rapidly expanding field, reports have emerged regarding Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But she has said several times over the years that she does not want to get involved in politics. Nadler’s retirement concludes his 30-year tenure in Congress, during which he chaired the House...

For years, Americans were told their only hope was to roll up their sleeves for Pfizer, Moderna, and the rest of the vaccine cartel. Trillions of dollars flowed into their coffers while dissenting doctors were silenced, families were divided, and countless workers lost their jobs under vaccine mandates. However, a peer-reviewed study out of Germany now shows that a cheap, decades-old nasal spray, azelastine, may do what the so-called ‘miracle’ experimental COVID jabs never accomplished: stop infection. According to new findings published in JAMA Internal Medicine this week, all it may have taken to block infections was a $10 bottle...

Think buying a photo of someone else’s unborn baby is weird? That’s because it is — but it was recently possible on the marketplace app from Japanese e-commerce company, Mercari. Now, Mercari has pulled the plug on selling ultrasound shots (which once sold online for around $14, according to X users), bowing to those worried about how strangers were snapping up prenatal pics. The ban hit after a viral X post exposed Mercari listings hawking ultrasound images and photos of positive pregnancy tests. User @Awakend_Citizen blasted the bizarre trend, writing, “Why are things like pregnancy ultrasound photos or positive pregnancy...

The conversations have also involved Curtis Sliwa with the goal of giving Andrew Cuomo a better chance of defeating Zohran Mamdani in November.Advisers to President Trump have discussed the possibility of giving Mayor Eric Adams of New York City a position in the administration as a way to clear the field in November’s mayoral election and damage the chances of the Democratic front-runner, Zohran Mamdani, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions. The talks have also involved finding a possible place in the administration for the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa. The goal, the people said, would be to...

A House hearing on online speech quickly turned into a transatlantic slap fight.A House Judiciary Committee hearing on free speech and tech regulations Wednesday morning quickly turned into a transatlantic political argument about whether online content rules amount to an attack on Western values.Online safety laws in the European Union and the U.K. have created an “awful, authoritarian situation,” said Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K.’s right-wing Reform Party on Wednesday morning.The hearing, hosted by House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), marks an escalation in Jordan’s war on Europe’s tech regulations — part of a yearslong effort to pressure Europe...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Trump laid rumors of health decline to rest yesterday by inviting doubting Democrats to come forward and touch the hole in his ear. According to eyewitnesses, Trump miraculously appeared in the House Chambers and called for the unbelieving Democrats to step forward and put their fingers to his ear. "Look, you can put your whole finger through it," Trump explained patiently to dozens of doubting Democrats. "Why do you hang back? Why did you doubt my health? Come forward and feel my ear — it's got a really beautiful lobe, just a fantastic lobe, even...