Free Republic

In a major win for religious liberty, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 on Wednesday that employers with moral or religious objections would be exempt from the federal mandate that requires company health insurance to cover birth control. The case was a consolidation of The Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania and Trump v. Pennsylvania, both of which sought to alter the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA). While the bill itself had no requirements for contraceptive access being guaranteed, this became mandatory through interim final rules (IFRs). While Churches have always been exempt...

What happens if COVID death rates plummet to the point of no longer being a pandemic threat? The media will turn it on Trump.> Legacy media became predictably hysterical after President Donald Trump’s speech Friday defending American exceptionalism at one of the nation’s most iconic monuments, Mount Rushmore. “We will state the truth in full, without apology: We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth,” Trump proclaimed from the South Dakota Black Hills. “We are proud of the face that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and...

Black Lives Matter activists cite Douglass’s 1852 speech ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’ as proof America is evil. They utterly miss his point. Last week on CNN, as contributor Angela Rye accused White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnaney and President Trump of failing to understand the history of black America, she referred to the legendary Frederick Douglass. “Frederick Douglass said about Independence Day in this country, what to the slave is the Fourth of July?” she said. “And I would invite them to even start there, as a reading principle, to see how different we see...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Screen-Shot-2020-07-07-at-5.03.12-PM-998x665.png> The Navy last week asked my husband to sign his name to a new restriction broadly “prohibiting,” in bold letters, a multitude of activities “to include indoor religious services” and even to discourage “in-person use” of “drive-in spiritual services.” While we maintain a faint hope that the military doesn’t really mean to restrict religious practices, the latest restrictions preclude nearly all indoor religious services — even those adhering to COVID-19 guidelines. The Catholic Masses my husband and I attend are vastly better spaced than the grocery or liquor stores where he can shop, or even the authorized Chick-fil-A drive-through...

Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin faces murder and manslaughter charges for kneeling on George Floyd's neck until he stopped breathing. But even if Chauvin is convicted, Floyd's family may not be able to pursue claims under a federal statute that authorizes lawsuits against government officials who violate people's constitutional rights. The uncertain prospects for the lawsuit Floyd's relatives plan to file underlines the unjust and irrational consequences of qualified immunity, a doctrine that shields police from liability for outrageous conduct when the rights they violated were not "clearly established" at the time. Congress should seize the opportunity created by...

As I wrote nearly three years ago: "Perhaps the second greatest libel — and certainly the most widespread — is that America is a racist country that oppresses its minorities and women. We can call it the American Libel." (The greatest libel was the infamous blood libel, the fabricated charge spread in Europe for hundreds of years by Christian anti-Semites that Jews kill Christian children to use their blood to bake matzos — unleavened bread — for Passover.) But if America is so racist, why are there so many race hoaxes? Virtually every time we read about a swastika painted...

If you're working in an office or eating in a restaurant and someone 30 feet away exhales tiny particles of coronavirus, those particles can drift across the room and infect you. Picture cigarette smoke wafting across a room. Same thing. The precautions agencies like the World Health Organization and the federal CDC are telling you to take against this virus aren't good enough. Social distancing -- placing desks and restaurant tables six feet apart -- and washing your hands won't protect you from this airborne virus. That's not fear-mongering. It's science. New research from the National Academy of Sciences contends...

In May 2019, Peter Mutharika, incumbent president in the southern African nation of Malawi, claimed a narrow re-election victory over opposition challenger Lazarus Chakwera. Malawians, however, reported "voting irregularities." Investigators found altered vote tallies and evidence of tampering. A majority of the country concluded Chakwera had defeated Mutharika. Incensed Malawians began nationwide nonviolent protests. Despite threats by Mutharika supporters, "stolen election" demonstrations persisted in rural towns as well as cities. Since he retained the title of president, Mutharika believed he controlled the guns and the courts. The protests would fade. He learned otherwise. Malawi's military, the Malawi Defense Force (MDF)...

Charlie Daniels, who passed away Monday, was a great musician, a great man and a great example of what makes this nation great. He should be remembered not only for his contributions to popular music but also as a role model for the American dream. Starting from his high school days in North Carolina -- as he explained in his memoir "Never Look at the Empty Seats" -- he never turned away from his dream or the hard work needed to achieve it. "I wanted to be a professional musician more than anything else in the world, and ever since...

<p>The Grand Canyon is a fitting metaphor for the difference between the uncensored version of President Donald Trump's Independence Day speech gleaned from live television and the feverishly distorted versions of his speech shown by the "reality-based press," as the leftist journo-braggarts call themselves.</p>

<p>In a shocking twist of the ensuing statue crisis ripping this nation apart, Republican senators Ron Johnson (R-WI) and James Langford (R-OK) quietly introduced legislation last week to remove the national Christopher Columbus federal holiday. No doubt they were cowardly kowtowing to the political pressure of the times.  In doing so though they have done a great disservice to this country and have given the rioters, vandals, and revisionist historians an unmerited moral victory.</p>

David Horowitz stresses why Trump should focus on Democrat lawlessness. [Editors' Note: “BLITZ” is available at bookstores everywhere -- and you can get the FREE Offer, call 800-815-2593 and save $28 or Click Here.] Reprinted From One News Now. An author and political activist believes President Donald Trump should focus on the issue of keeping Americans safe to help secure his re-election in the fall. Marauding groups of thugs have taken to streets of Democrat-controlled cities, looting and burning businesses and other buildings and tearing down historic monuments in their wake. At the same time, Democrats continue to hinder efforts...

Of America’s most powerful and prominent cultural institutions, it’s quick work naming those that aren’t entirely left-wing satrapies. TV? Fox News, although things are looking less and less encouraging there. Colleges? Hillsdale, I guess, though how many Ivy League faculty members would ever admit to having heard of it? Newspapers? The New York Post (sometimes), Wall Street Journal (kind of), and perhaps one or two others from sea to shining sea. Silicon Valley? Nothing. Hollywood? ¡Nada! Big business? Hmm: what is there, nowadays, honestly, other than that My Pillow guy? One field in which there’s at least a soupçon...

“A light from the shadows shall spring,” J. R. R. Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring. Hope is a dominant theme in Tolkien’s famous fantasy. Despair threatens to grip each of us in these turbulent times. Thankfully, there are many reasons to avert despair—and run into the arms of Hope:  Experts say—and data shows—the economy is recovering The Silent Majority can—and will—defeat Joe Biden With concrete action steps, you will be part of America’s revival Before expounding on these reasons for optimism, it’s important to know that if you’re feeling down, you’re not alone. Social isolation is proven to exacerbate...

Among the Nobel Prizes awarded each year is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It was first awarded in 1901, and through 2019, 219 have received the award. Of the 219 recipients, 100 have been American, according to Statista. This one piece of information leads me to conclude there is a high likelihood it will be an American who delivers the medicines we seek now in the battle to defeat the coronavirus that plagues us. Am I looking for a reason for pride in America? Not really. I'm looking more to shine light on what it is that makes...

<p>The June blockbuster jobs report is more evidence that the economy is healing, but this remains a brutal period for the some 30 million still unemployed Americans.</p> <p>Nearly every industry -- with very few exceptions -- has been forced to impose layoffs, furloughs or dramatic reductions in hours for its employees. The one major exception has been the United States federal government, which has had virtually no layoffs since the start of the year. Since January, federal employment has risen slightly, in part due to Census workers added. Meanwhile, through May, the construction industry has lost nearly 400,000 workers; manufacturing has lost 750,000 workers; retail trade has lost 1.25 million workers; health care and education have lost 1.75 million workers, and the hospitality industry has lost almost 5 million workers.</p>

The online mob came for Harald Uhlig. What terrible thing had he done? As I show in my new video, he tweeted that Black Lives Matter "torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice." Instead of defunding, Uhlig suggested, "train them better." Hundreds of people then signed a petition to demand that Uhlig, a University of Chicago professor and head of the Journal of Political Economy, resign. Even prominent economists like Janet Yellen and Paul Krugman joined the mob. Krugman called Uhlig "another privileged white man who evidently cannot control his urge to belittle the concerns of those less fortunate."...

<p>Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published "Charter Schools and Their Enemies." He presents actual test scores of students in traditional public schools and charter schools on New York State Education Department's annual English Language Arts test and its Mathematics test. Sowell gives the results of student tests in charter schools such as KIPP, Success Academy, Explore Schools, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First as well as the traditional New York City public schools. On the English Language Arts test, a majority of charter school students, most of whom were black or Hispanic, tested proficient or above. Their achievement ratio was nearly 5 to 1. On the Mathematics test 68 percent of charter schools' 161 grade levels had a majority of students testing proficient. In the traditional public schools, 177 grade levels, just 10 percent had a majority of their student testing proficient.</p>

This week, CNN's Don Lemon, who has spent the last few weeks bashing the supposed thoroughgoing systemic racism of the United States, hosted black actor Terry Crews. He then proceeded to browbeat Crews, who had committed the great sin of tweeting, "#ALLBLACKLIVESMATTER 9 black CHILDREN killed by violence in Chicago since June 20, 2020." Lemon specifically objected to Crews' hashtag. After Lemon humbly informed Crews that he has skin "as tough as an armadillo," he then lectured: "The Black Lives Matter movement was started because it was talking about police brutality. ... But that's not what Black Lives Matter is...

No monument is safe as America undergoes this Kulturkampf, and no statue should be taken for granted or considered less worthy of protection.  First it was Confederate monuments. Low-hanging fruit. For the iconoclastic Left, however, this was merely the appetizer. As of this writing, the main course is being served. The mob is clamoring to gobble up monuments dedicated to the likes of the Founding Fathers and Teddy Roosevelt. Even the abolitionist Matthias Baldwin was not spared from the leftist frenzy after vandals tagged the statue with paint and graffiti that read “colonizer” and “murderer.”It would be a mistake to believe that anti-monument saturnalia...