Free Republic

Illinois just gained another data point for its reputation for public corruption. New revelations found that nearly 400 state employees improperly obtained federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans intended to keep small businesses afloat during the pandemic. PPP was created as part of the CARES Act to provide federally backed, forgivable loans to small businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. It was signed into law on March 27, 2020. According to the Illinois Office of the Executive Inspector General, investigators found “reasonable cause” in 378 PPP-fraud cases involving state workers through June 2025 — about three-quarters of all cases reviewed, the...

European government and regulatory bodies have authorized the European Union’s telecom operators and internet service providers to apply exceptional measures, including the throttling of online speeds, to prevent network congestion amid increased demand as millions of Europeans are forced to stay home and use online collaboration and teleworking tools amid the coronavirus. The EU’s governing body, the European Commission, and the Body of the European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) gave the greenlight to telcos to take the necessary measures to ensure there is no disruption in online traffic. The move comes after Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for internal...

Here’s what Congress should be asking health officials about the handling of the Covid pandemic. In March 2020, American politicians orchestrated what would become the greatest assault against their citizens’ civil liberties in the modern era. Under the guise of “public health,” federal and state officials employed the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus to implement disastrous and ineffective lockdown policies, which crushed American jobs and small businesses, shuttered places of worship, and kept low-risk children out of school. Despite a lack of evidence showing such policies were effective at containing the respiratory virus, politicians and government bureaucrats charged ahead, abusing...

A shadowy for-profit company and its nonprofit counterpart provide free services to at least 40 far-left prosecutor offices, raising questions about whether it’s working on behalf of taxpayers or of donors who have essentially bought government. The Wren Collective is a shadowy group that emerged from a Cold War-era initiative aimed at promoting Soviet films in the United States. Its current iteration — funded by a former Enron executive and host of other leftist megadonors — claims that America’s “system of policing and mass incarceration is deeply flawed and intractably racist.” The group has intervened on specific criminal cases, written...

Before starting Rockstar, Weiner followed in the footsteps of his father, right-wing talk-radio star Michael Savage, and ran for California State Assembly in 1998. He lost the race, but his campaign caught the eye of his father's friend, Skyy Vodka founder Maurice Kanbar, who quickly hired him.

A U.S. District Judge has officially dropped key federal charges against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and Former Sgt. Kyle Meany regarding their alleged ‘involvement’ in Breonna Taylor’s death, which occurred back in 2020. This week, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson ruled that the officers in the case were not responsible for Taylor’s death, instead laying the blame at the feet of her criminal boyfriend, who opened fire on police the night of the raid. As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Breonna Taylor was fatally shot in her apartment in March 2020 by officers who were executing a search...

Amador County Sheriff cites ‘misinformation’ that death was suicide; Investigation ongoing Philip Haney, the former Department of Homeland Security whistleblower, found dead in Amador County last month, was not a suicide but a murder, according to Reps. Louis Gohmert (R-Texas) and Steve King (R-Iowa), both friends of the deceased. “I don’t believe that Phil Haney committed suicide.” Rep. King said on the House floor this week, and as Cheryl Chumley reported in the Washington Times, Rep. Gohmert also disbelieved the suicide story. “I’d been concerned about his safety, with all the information he knew and people who could’ve gotten in...

Senators confirmed Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the first black military service chief in American history in a 98-0 vote June 9. Brown, the decorated four-star general in charge of Pacific Air Forces, will begin his four-year term as Air Force Chief of Staff once he is sworn in on Aug. 6. His confirmation comes as the military responds to nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism, spurred by George Floyd’s death in Minnesota last month. “There is no one I know who is better prepared to be Chief of Staff, no one who has the...

"By March 23 many of our largest cities & hospitals are on course to be overrun with cases."

The last time we checked in on Chelsea Manning, she had been in jail on contempt charges for nearly a year and was running up massive fines that the judge ruled would have to be paid. Manning also wasn’t being released without agreeing to testify before the grand jury investigating Julian Assange and the Wikileaks debacle. But now the story has reportedly taken a darker turn. Yesterday, Manning was transported to the hospital after allegedly attempting to commit suicide in her jail cell. (Fox News) Former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning tried to “take her own life” in a...

In 2020, covert actors manipulated the Democratic primary to ensure Joe Biden's nomination and later controlled his presidential agenda, ultimately forcing him to step down in favor of Kamala Harris. In March 2020, all the major Democratic primary candidates abruptly, mysteriously, and in near unison withdrew from the presidential race, ceding the nomination to Joe Biden. Yet Biden had lost the first three races in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada—and only won his first victory in South Carolina. Suddenly, on the eve of the Super Tuesday mega-primaries, the candidacies of front-runner Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, and others simply...

Cruise-goers and industry stakeholders have endured a waiting game since cruising stopped in March of last year, with restart dates being pushed back further and further amid COVID-19. On Wednesday, the world’s second-busiest cruise port announced when it believes cruising will finally be able to resume. At a January 27 port authority meeting, Port Canaveral commissioners approved a revised budget, which assumes that passenger cruise-ship operations won’t resume until at least July. Several major cruise lines at the Florida port have already voluntarily canceled their sailings for the next few months—Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean have postponed sailing until May,...

The State Department has informed Congress that it plans to shutter its last two consulates in Russia over caps set by Moscow on the number of diplomats that are allowed in the country. In a letter to congressional leaders sent Dec. 10 and obtained by The Hill, the administration said it will permanently close its Vladivostok consulate and temporarily halt work at the consulate in Yekaterinburg. The letter confirming the closures was sent three days before news broke of a major hack of U.S. government agencies that is believed to have been conducted by an elite Russian cyber espionage unit....

In an explosive new op-ed, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) claimed that at least 15 separate federal agencies knew that attempts to create a COVID-19-like coronavirus were being undertaken at the Wuhan Institute of Virology as early as January 2018. Yet, heads of these agencies did not reveal this information to the public; for years, they actively refused to release information on the project to lawmakers such as Paul, who were attempting to provide congressional oversight. “For years, I have been fighting to obtain records from dozens of federal agencies relating to the origins of COVID-19 and the DEFUSE project,” wrote...

In a fiery exchange last month, CNN anchorwoman Abby Phillip told GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy that there was “no evidence” to support his claim that federal agents abetted protesters at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Ramaswamy shot back that the FBI conspicuously has never denied that law enforcement agents were on duty in the crowd. He argued that federal officials have repeatedly “lied” to the American people about not only that investigation but one that has gotten much less attention: the alleged failed plot to kidnap and kill Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan in 2020.“It was entrapment,” Ramaswamy...

TACOMA, Wash. — A jury acquitted three Tacoma police officers of all criminal charges in the March 2020 death of Manuel "Manny" Ellis, a 33-year-old Black man who was shocked tased, choked, beaten and hogtied with a spit hood placed over his head. After more than three months and two mandatory restarts of jury deliberations, verdicts were delivered Thursday in the trial of Matthew Collins, 40, Christopher Burbank, 38, and Timothy Rankine, 34. Collins and Burbank, who are white, were facing first-degree manslaughter and second-degree murder charges. Rankine, who is Asian American, was charged with first-degree manslaughter. Judge Bryan Chushcoff...

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that “everybody should vote for” President Joe Biden if they wanted democracy to survive. Partial transcript as follows: HUTCHINSON: Donald Trump isn’t a Republican. And, yes, maybe, by name, he considers himself a Republican, but Donald Trump cares more about authoritarian rule than he does our rule of law. He doesn’t care about preserving our Constitution. He cares about leveraging it for his own power and his own gain. So, when we look at this next election, we need to think about, if we want our democracy to...

Ex-CDC director Robert Redfield said during a CNN interview that he believed the coronavirus was made in a lab and escaped. Since then, he received death by fellow scientists, including some he used to call friends, he told Vanity Fair ... 'I expected it from politicians. I didn't expect it from science,' Redfield said.. The coronavirus origin has been at the forefront of debate since last week when Biden ordered intelligence officials to 'redouble' efforts to establish the origin.. It heated up on Tuesday when Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails were published on the Washington Post and Buzzfeed .. The former...

Evidence continues to point to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) as the origin of SARS-CoV-2. Meanwhile, based on the now publicized emails sent to and from Dr. Fauci, it has become evident that there was a strong push to downplay this theory and convince the world the virus evolved naturally. The story grew thicker on Thursday. According to a report from Vanity Fair, last March, leading scientists aggressively tried to silence former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield after stating his belief on CNN that the virus originated from a lab in Wuhan. Following his public...

I’ve seen a lot of this material before but never in such detail and concentration. This lengthy article walks though the behind the scenes machinations which led to the creation and publication of a scientific paper designed to dismiss the lab leak theory. That paper was then cited by Dr. Fauci and others as proof that COVID-19 had a natural origin (but Fauci didn’t reveal he had helped organize the effort to write the paper). What we’ve known for some time is that the academics who were recruited for this task had significant doubts about it. Again, you’ve probably seen...