Free Republic

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...

Police officers can and will lie to you. They may claim that an accomplice has already ratted you out. They may claim to have hard evidence against you, such as video footage of you committing the crime. They may give you completely dishonest answers to your questions. Because they're free to lie, it's important to avoid overly trusting their words.

Is California slated to become Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gender transition sanctuary state? Gov. Newsom just signed Assembly Bill 1955 by Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego), the bill to prohibit schools from notifying parents if their child is “gender confused” or “transitioning” to the opposite sex. Horrifyingly, the bill’s title is “Support Academic Futures and Educators for Today’s Youth Act.”

How Did a Small Group Do This?A very interesting study appeared last week by two researchers looking into the pandemic policy response around the world. They are Drs. Eran Bendavid and Chirag Patel of Stanford and Harvard, respectively. Their ambition was straightforward. They wanted to examine the effects of government policy on the virus. In this ambition, after all, researchers have access to an unprecedented amount of information. We have global data on strategies and stringencies. We have global data on infections and mortality. We can look at it all according to the timeline. We have precise dating of stay-at-home...

The FBI Security Division questioned employees about a fellow agent’s views on COVID vaccines, Donald Trump, and a Second Amendment rally, according to whistleblower disclosures made to the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General on Saturday. This revelation raises more concerns that the FBI’s leadership has become hopelessly politicized and seeks to purge itself of agents with certain disfavored views.

Never-before-released details of the behind-the-scenes investigationsHow it Started“Reeeeeeeee.”The noise is coming from my personal Apple desktop computer in the small office adjacent to my bedroom. It’s starting up.On its own.“Reeeeeeeee…chik chik chik chik,” says the computer as it shakes itself awake.The electronic sounds stir me from sleep. I squint my eyes at the clock radio on the table next to the bed. The numbers blink back: “3:14 a.m.”Only a day earlier, my CBS-issued Toshiba laptop, perched at the front of my bed, had whirred to life on its own, untouched by human hands. What time was that?I think it was...

It’s the preeminent civil rights issue of our day: the protection of girls in women’s sports. Last month’s stolen victory by a male runner in the girls’ 400-meter dash at the Washington state championships underscores a heightened sense of urgency for current and future generations of female athletes. Lauren Matthew, West Valley School District’s top-seeded runner, is just the latest young woman to lose a title to a mediocre male claiming to be female. Naturally, the boy secured the championship by one second.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”—Thomas Jefferson If America’s schools are to impart principles of freedom and democracy to future generations, they must start by respecting the constitutional rights of their students Take the case of Lucas Hudson. With all the negative press being written about today’s young people, it’s refreshing to meet a young person who not only knows his rights but is prepared to stand up for them. Lucas is a smart kid, a valedictorian of his graduating class at the...

Fox News host Jesse Watters weighed in on recent reports that the FBI authorized the use of “deadly force” in the raid of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. According to court filings, the Department of Justice authorized “the use of deadly force” when FBI agents swarmed Trump’s home as they searched for classified documents in 2022. According to an operations order revealed in evidence as part of Trump’s criminal case, agents were tasked with seizing “classified information, [National Defense Information], and US Government records.” The filing by lawyers for the former president said authorities also were told to conceal their...

“4 years ago today, we reopened Atilis Gym in direct violation of an unconstitutional order by Governor Philip Murphy to close small businesses in New Jersey,” says gym owner Ian Smith. A New Jersey court has dismissed the case against gym owner Ian Smith over 80 citations and violations of Gov. Phil Murphy's (D) order to close small business during the covid pandemic. Smith, owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, made a statement on X Saturday breaking the good news.

What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes? None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people. These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing...

In December 2022, Reason reported that both state and federal wildlife agents routinely trespass onto private land and plant cameras. Two Tennessee homeowners successfully sued the state over the practice, and a three-judge panel ruled in their favor. The state appealed the decision, and this week the court of appeals ruled in the homeowners' favor. At issue is a state law allowing officers of the Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency (TWRA) to "go upon any property, outside of buildings, posted or otherwise," in order to "enforce all laws relating to wildlife." In the case of Terry Rainwaters and Hunter Hollingsworth, TWRA...

Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras are becoming more and more common on American roads, thanks to one company. Flock Safety is a tech company that provides surveillance products to a wide array of clients. Its largest customer is law enforcement. Namely, governing bodies use the company's ALPR cameras to capture millions of U.S. driver plates all over the country. Many local citizens are unaware of the cameras. Chiefly, this is due to the quiet methods used to install them and utilize recorded data. Eric Fielder works in real estate. He recently noticed something unusual in his community. The resident...

CLAIM: President Joe Biden, 81, recently claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he “got arrested” during the civil rights movement. VERDICT: Likely false There is no evidence authorities arrested Biden while defending civil rights, CNN reported: There is no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as The Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 — and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day. The...

A report in the Daily Mail says that Republicans in Congress are investigating more than ten banks “for colluding with the federal government to spy on Americans after the January 6 protests.” The alleged witch hunt was in search of “‘extremism’ indicators.” You won’t be surprised at all to learn what qualifies as an “extremism indicator.” Fox News reported on January 17: Federal investigators asked banks to search and filter customer transactions by using terms like “MAGA” and “Trump” as part of an investigation into Jan. 6, warning that purchases of “religious texts” could indicate “extremism,” the House Judiciary Committee...

Now We Are Supposed to Cheer Government Surveillance?They are wearing us down with shocking headlines and opinions. They come daily these days, with increasingly implausible claims that leave your jaw on the floor. The rest of the text is perfunctory. The headline is the takeaway, and the part designed to demoralize, deconstruct, and disorient. A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that “As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.” These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected...

One has to wonder from the USSC arguments the other day. Legal experts said the Biden administration was "on the ropes" in Tuesday’s oral arguments at the Supreme Court in a case questioning whether a Jan. 6 rioter can be charged with a federal "obstruction" crime, which carries implications for former President Trump. On Tuesday, Jeffrey Green, lawyer for Joseph Fischer – who is one of more than 300 people charged by the Justice Department with "obstruction of an official proceeding" in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol – argued that the federal statute shouldn’t apply and that...

All hail King Deep State! That is essentially what we have now, is it not? An unelected, all-powerful, mercurial king — and certainly not a binding constitution limiting government’s authority and preserving Americans’ rights. Our First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting an individual’s free speech, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from conspiring with Big Tech to silence every voice deemed offensive to the realm. Our Fourth Amendment forbids nosy officials from poking around in Americans’ private records and communications without first securing particularized warrants establishing probable cause that a crime has been committed, but that hasn’t stopped King...

President Biden signed a bill Saturday extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless surveillance program another two years. The Senate passed the reauthorization bill early Saturday, after hours of intense debate, narrowly avoiding a key national intelligence gathering capability going dark. Senators voted 60-34 to send the bill to Biden’s desk shortly after the midnight deadline. The program looked as if it was headed for a lapse until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced a breakthrough on the Senate floor.

The 9th Circuit determined that forcibly mashing a suspect's thumb into his phone to unlock it was akin to fingerprinting him at the police station. JOE LANCASTER | 4.19.2024 12:50 PM As we keep more and more personal data on our phones, iPhone and Android devices now have some of the most advanced encryption technology in existence to keep that information safe from prying eyes. The easiest way around that, of course, is for someone to gain access to your phone. This week, a federal court decided that police officers can make you unlock your phone, even by physically forcing...