Free Republic

Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry. For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload. Taboniar is one of millions...

The Supreme Court last week rejected the idea that Congress gave the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the power to stop landlords from evicting tenants who fail to pay their rent. Unfazed by that setback, the Biden administration this week suggested that the CDC has the power to demand that every public school in the country force students to wear face masks. Both incidents show how readily President Joe Biden deploys dubious legal arguments to defend unprecedented power grabs in the name of fighting COVID-19. If successful, those arguments would undermine federalism, the rule of law and the separation...

How three well-educated highly-trained lawyers can achieve appointment and confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States yet believe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – a federal public health agency – has any legal authority whatsoever to cancel or modify a private rental contract governed by state contract law is simply beyond comprehension. If one were a cynic, one might be tempted to think politics has infected the high court. In swiftly striking down this federal overreach, six clear-headed rational jurists laid bare the utter absurdity of the Biden administration's legal argument. The majority point out that...

A national eviction moratorium that protected millions of Americans who have fallen behind on rent payments is unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. In a 6-3 opinion announced late Aug. 26, the court's conservative majority agreed with a coalition of landlords and real estate groups who challenged the extension of a moratorium put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decision raised concerns among advocates of affordable housing. They called for state and local governments to speed up the distribution of $46.5 billion in federal emergency rental assistance funds made available in response to the coronavirus...

Just when you thought she couldn’t possibly do anything dumber, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) wants to cancel Americans’ utility debt, and she totally redeemed herself. No, this is not a joke. This is America in 2021. Tlaib, a founding member of the so-called Squad, has introduced a bill that would literally eliminate Americans’ outstanding debt on water, electricity, internet, etc. According to Tlaib, “Utility shutoffs—from water to electricity to broadband internet—leave our most vulnerable communities without essential life-sustaining services and are especially unacceptable during a deadly pandemic.” She added, “Low-income Michigan families pay more than 30 percent of their household...

A North Carolina landlord says he is out $24,000 in unpaid rent from tenants, while one renter bought three boats over the course of the eviction moratorium just as the CDC announced a new ban that will last until October 3. Buddy Shoup, who owns 35 properties across the state, said that he has been forced to maintain the properties and hemorrhage costs while the federal government slowly dribbles out rental assistance, of which only 7% has been doled out to renters in need. ‘[The money] was used, they went and bought brand new boats, but I mean, you know...

Far-left Congressional Democrats Cori Bush (Missouri), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts) slept in the rough on the Capitol steps over the weekend, surrounded by cases of bottled water, pizza boxes, staffers and fawning press. These Democrats, who are part of a group who call themselves "The Squad," are protesting the end of the federal moratorium on evictions, which expired Saturday night, and warning of soaring homelessness. They should have been shooed away by Capitol Police for their stunt. Camping on public property is against the law in the District of Columbia. It threatens public safety, creates disorder and...