Free Republic

Vice President Kamala Harris, who was tapped to lead the administration’s rural broadband expansion, failed to connect one person with high-speed internet despite having $42.5 billion from the so-called infrastructure bill. During his 2021 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden tapped Vice President Harris to lead the effort “because I know it will get done.” Now, in 2024, it appears that the Biden-Harris admin has made little progress getting Americans connected to high-speed internet. ... Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commission Brendan Carr noted in June that Biden and Harris did not connect one American despite having access to...

It is a testament to how utterly extraordinary the past couple weeks have been that the Microsoft-CrowdStrike computer catastrophe was not even the second most important story in the news cycle. On Friday, July 19th, the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike implemented a botched update that crashed Microsoft devices on which it was installed, ultimately inflicting the dreaded “blue screen of death” on over 8.5 million devices worldwide. Banks, businesses, hospitals, and airlines were hit particularly hard, and to this day, some of these institutions are having difficulty restoring functionality to their systems. Video compilations such as the one below offer arresting...

BRIGHTON, N.Y. — A new program in Brighton hopes to help stabilize folks in poverty. The Brighton Landlord Tenant Project will connect pro-bono lawyers with people facing evictions. Forty-two percent of people in Brighton are renters. Town Supervisor Bill Moehle says the goal here is to tackle systemic poverty and stop people who are in a bad situation from making it worse. This program is run by the local nonprofit Just Cause. When you show up in Brighton Town Court a volunteer lawyer will be there, offering to help you with your eviction case. Most of the time they don’t...

Stricter COVID-19 restrictions could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the states that refused to institute them, though efforts to close nursing homes and schools likely caused more harm than good, a new study has found. Between 118,000 and 248,000 more Americans would have survived the pandemic if all states had followed some restrictions practiced in Northeastern states, according to findings published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The most effective responses were mask mandates and vaccine requirements, the JAMA study found. “COVID-19 restrictions saved lives,” the researchers wrote. “The death toll was probably...

A digital security firm got the shock of a lifetime when it came to light that one of its remote workers was actually a North Korean hacker after he infected his new company laptop with malware. "The moment it was received, it immediately started to load malware," security firm KnowBe4 wrote in a blog post about the incident. The company stressed that "no illegal access was gained, and no data was lost, compromised or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 systems." "KnowBe4 needed a software engineer for our internal IT AI team," the company explained. "We posted the job, received resumes, conducted...

On this day in history, July 26, 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), one of the most sweeping affirmation of rights for the disabled in American history, according to History.com. President Bush signed the act into law on the South Lawn of the White House South Lawn in front of an audience of 3,000 people, according to the White House's website. "On that day, America became the first country to adopt a comprehensive civil rights declaration for people with disabilities," the same source cited. The ADA is a civil rights law that...

Convicted and imprisoned former Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein has been hospitalized for a “myriad of health conditions” and has tested positive for Covid-19 and double pneumonia, a representative said. Weinstein was taken to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward, his representative and prison consultant Craig Rothfeld said. New York Corrections Department records also show that Weinstein, 72, is at Bellevue. Weinstein was taken to the hospital to be treated for the "conditions that he is still afflicted with on a daily basis such as diabetes, high blood pressure, spinal stenosis, fluid on his heart and lungs, and various other conditions,"...

The new Labour government professes to have discovered a “huge black hole” in the public purse, widely reckoned to be the crafting of a pretext to raise taxes that had been ruled out at the general election just three weeks ago. Rachel Reeves, the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) claims to have discovered, now she is in power after the Labour Party won the nation’s national elections earlier this month, a £20 billion ($25 billion) black hole in the government’s finances. This she blames on the last government, and a full statement on this claim is expected on...

The Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge of inflation rose slightly in June, according to new data from the Commerce Department released Friday. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 0.1 percent last month and 2.5 percent over the past year. Core PCE, which excludes more volatile food and energy prices, was up 0.2 percent in June and 2.6 percent year-over-year. The latest inflation reading comes as the Fed is set to meet next week. The central bank has held interest rates steady at a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent for the past year, as inflation has remained stubbornly above...

There are now ten confirmed human cases of avian flu in Colorado, making it the largest outbreak of the virus in U.S. history, according to state health officials. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) is reporting three new confirmed bird flu cases at a second farm in Weld County. This latest update brings Colorado's total number of confirmed avian flu cases in humans to ten, with six cases coming from another poultry farm and one case found in a dairy farm worker, also in Colorado. Yesterday, CDPHE launched a data table to track cases of human bird...

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections. The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement. SAG-AFTRA negotiators say...

One of the most under-discussed drivers of illegal immigration is the explosion of remittances, which has created a major economic incentive for foreign nationals to pour into the U.S.Immigrants of both the legal and illegal variety are coming to the U.S., earning money, and sending it back home instead of putting it into the U.S. economy. Take for example, Nicaragua, which received a record $462.4 million in remittances during the month of May, with $385.9 million coming from the U.S., according to a report cited by Breitbart News. As Breitbart points out, not only is this money not going into...

Court documents show Murdoch wants to give more voting rights to his conservative son, and CEO of Fox, Lachlan. Murdoch went to court last year in a bid to increase Lachlan’s voting power at the expense of his three other children, James, Elisabeth, and Prudence, who have grown uncomfortable with the media empire’s rightward shift, the New York Times reported. The billionaire, alongside Lachlan, is arguing a “lack of consensus” will disrupt Fox’s and News Corp.’s strategic direction, according to court documents reviewed by the publication. Murdoch’s three other children, who are said to have been blindsided by the move,...

One of the most damaging impacts of Illinois’ people loss to other states is the destruction of Illinois’ tax base. When people leave in a given year, they take their incomes (adjusted gross incomes, or AGI) with them, and that means the state’s tax base suffers. A smaller tax base, everything else equal, means less tax revenues for safety, education, road repair and every other core government service – or, as is typically the case in Illinois, more debts and more tax hikes.Unfortunately, Illinois’ out-migration problem is much bigger than just a one year loss: the state has lost people...

The super-rich are being advised how to use a loophole in pensions investments to shelter their wealth from Labour’s clampdown on large-scale tax dodging, the Guardian can reveal. Undercover filming by the Guardian suggests multimillionaire UK residents are being pitched offshore products said to legally protect their fortunes from inheritance tax (IHT) and capital gains tax (CGT). At a private event held a week before the general election, the international accounting brand Baker Tilly told advisers to the ultra-wealthy how they could use offshore pension schemes to shield their clients’ fortunes from tens of millions of pounds of inheritance taxes....

We need to stop treating technology and those who know how it works like a commodity. Because when you do that, you're quietly creating an elaborate and expensive mess down the road. ..asking tech to code itself seems like a great idea. On paper. But it's only when you ask AI to code something that's going to generate the revenue needed to pay for itself and the company's future growth that you'll realize that AI doesn't know how to shrug. .. Techies, especially software developers, are terrible at marketing. Especially when marketing themselves. So when the boom cycles in the...

If you thought Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandates were unpopular (and they are) just wait until you see the even more aggressive plans that Kamala Harris has in store if she manages to be elected to the White House. Rather than giving in to a popular lack of demand, Harris intends to double down, accelerating the schedule for converting the American fleet of vehicles at an even more rapid pace wherever possible. The Democrats still aren't quite crazy enough to try to make possession of a gas-powered vehicle illegal, but they will bully the automakers to ensure that a full...

E​arth just had its two warmest days in over 80 years, topping a record set just one year ago. T​he back-to-back records: On Sunday, globally averaged temperatures over the planet's oceans and land masses reached 17.09 degrees Celsius (62.76 degrees Fahrenheit), according to the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). T​hat was 0.01 degrees Celsius above the previous warmest day for the planet set on July 6, 2023, in the ERA5 dataset dating to 1940, according to C3S. T​hen Monday, the planet's average temperature ticked up to 17.15 degrees Celsius, leapfrogging Sunday's record.

The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Proposition 22, the voter initiative that allows Uber, Lyft and other gig economy companies to classify drivers for their ride-hailing and delivery services as independent contractors rather than as employees. In a unanimous decision released Thursday morning, the state’s top court rejected claims brought by a group of drivers and unions that the law is unconstitutional because it interferes with lawmakers’ authority over matters dealing with worker compensation. The ruling, which was expected following a lopsided hearing in the case in May, marks the end of a years-long legal fight over Proposition 22,...

Vice President Kamala Harris was one of the first senators who openly supported Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) Green New Deal — which, a memo noted, aimed to provide economic security to those “unwilling” to work. In February 2019, Harris formally announced that she was proud to cosponsor Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) Green New Deal: I’m proud to co-sponsor @AOC and @EdMarkey's Green New Deal. We must aggressively tackle climate change which poses an existential threat to our nation. — Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 7, 2019 What is particularly notable about this is that Harris, who ran for...