Free Republic

Los Angeles County reached a “high” level of COVID-19 infections on Thursday, according to public health officials, meaning a mask mandate could be imposed in two weeks as the highly transmissible Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 make waves across the country. The health department bases its decision on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s three-tier criteria of community high, medium or low levels of COVID-19 rates. L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer expressed concern to reporters Thursday about the new infections, saying “we have a ton of transmission right now,” and stressed her position on masking up.

Fresh waves of COVID-19 infections show the pandemic is "nowhere near over", the World Health Organization's chief warned Tuesday (Jul 12), voicing concern the virus is "running freely". Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was worried that case numbers were continuing to rise, putting further pressure on stretched health systems and workers. "New waves of the virus demonstrate again that COVID-19 is nowhere near over," he told a news conference, adding: "As the virus pushes at us, we must push back."

A whistleblower has revealed that the FBI investigated concerned parents after Attorney General Merrick Garland directed the agency to combat “threats of violence” against school board administrators last year. In October of 2021, Merrick Garland issued a memorandum that expressed concern about a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.” “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” Garland wrote at the time. “Those who dedicate their time and energy...

Idon’t know about you, but I’ve had it “up to here” with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. For the good of the Republic, we should all chip in and buy them a one-way ticket back to West Virginia and Arizona. And keep them there. In fact, the most insane rumor floating around Washington this week was that Manchin might leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican. Are you kidding? He’s never been a Democrat, and neither has Kyrsten Sinema. They’re not team players. Each of them is in it only for themselves. And each of them is willing to...

The tony, bucolic town of Dublin, Ohio would be one of the last places in America expected to host a convention of white supremacist militiamen. Nestled along the Scioto River, the Columbus suburb’s biggest claim to fame is hosting the PGA’s annual Memorial Golf tournament every summer. But in June 2020, days after the nation was roiled by Black Lives Matter looting and rioting, a man from Wisconsin named Stephen Robeson sponsored a “National Militia Conference” at a Dublin hotel. (Yes, that was the real name of the event.) According to BuzzFeed’s exceptional July 2021 investigative report on the FBI-led...

Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia. That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus... This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status. On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society....

The saga of the illegal renewed eviction moratorium has returned to the Supreme Court. On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to lift the stay that has enabled the moratorium to remain in place since May, when D.C. District Court Judge Friedrich found it unlawful. The circuit court’s ruling entitles the landlords to again apply for relief in the Supreme Court and they did so the same day. Jones Day, the law firm handling the case for the landlords, anticipated the circuit would rule against them and had already prepared the papers for the Supreme Court.It is highly...

President Joe Biden’s budget proposal released Friday would extend rare and extreme levels of deficit spending not only through his term as presidency but halfway into the next term. The budget proposal forecasts budget deficits that are higher than five percent of Gross Domestic Product, a level rarely seen except in a recession or its immediate aftermath, in each year until 2027.

A couple in Homer, Alaska reports the FBI raided their home on Wednesday morning looking for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. Twelve agents, FBI, Capitol Police, and other apparent police agents, broke down the door to their home and told Marilyn and Paul Hueper to put their hands up. Paul counted seven guns trained on him when he came out of the bedroom. The agents cuffed the couple and held them for hours. It was a case of mistaken identity, but the FBI now has possession of Marilyn’s HP Probook laptop. The photo above is on the FBI website as...

A contentious bill that would end Connecticut’s long-standing religious exemption from immunization requirements for schools, beginning with the 2022-23 school year, now awaits action in the state Senate. The legislation passed on a 90-53 vote in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives just before 3 a.m. on Tuesday, following more than 16 hours of sometimes combative debate. No date has been set yet for when the Senate, which is also controlled by Democrats, will vote on the same bill. The House vote marked the furthest the legislation has progressed in Connecticut, where lawmakers have debated the concept over the past several...

U.S. stocks turned lower Thursday on news reports that President Biden is considering nearly doubling capital gains taxes on the wealthy. Bloomberg News reported Thursday afternoon that Mr. Biden is planning a capital gains tax increase to as high as 43.4%, nearly double the current rate for wealthy Americans.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidance to say fully vaccinated people can travel within the U.S. without getting tested for the coronavirus or going into quarantine afterward. Previously, the agency had cautioned against unnecessary travel even for vaccinated people, but noted that it would update its guidance as more people got vaccinated and evidence mounted about the protection the shots provide. According to the CDC, nearly 100 million people in the U.S. — or about 30% of the population — have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. A person is considered fully vaccinated...

Joe Biden’s $2.5 trillion infrastructure spending spree will include $20 billion earmarked for actually destroying highways because they have been deemed to be racist.The administration pointed to the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans and Interstate 81 in Syracuse, New York as two examples of “long-standing and persistent racial injustice,” in infrastructure.The plan set forth by Biden would see billions spent on an effort to “reconnect neighborhoods” by destroying current highways and making sure that new projects “advance racial equity and environmental justice.”A whopping $621 billion has been touted for ‘transportation infrastructure and resilience,’ with the administration promising it will address...

The White House is pushing an infrastructure bill that could reshape the discussion around capitalism as it seems to reestablish the federal government as a primary driver of how the economy should grow and function. In addition to traditional infrastructure projects, Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan would make government investments in broadband, electric vehicles, climate change, elderly care, child benefits, housing and developing future technologies. It would redefine classic infrastructure projects to include investments in workers and families paid for by tax hikes on corporations. The ambitious proposal effectively transforms the relationship between the government and the private sector,...

The White House released a fact sheet of President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.5 trillion infrastructure bill on Wednesday, detailing his multi-billion-dollar spending priorities. (list below in first comment. Not much detailing)

Honolulu Police Department Chief Susan Ballard said she thought thousands of protesters were at Kapiolani Park on Saturday afternoon — dispatching dozens of officers to a peaceful Aloha Freedom Coalition event where 400-500 gathered at a rally in protest of COVID-19 health restrictions. According to Ballard, approximately 40 officers were at the park during the event, where two arrests were made and HPD’s actions have come under scrutiny. Videos posted online show peaceful protesters calling for calm as officers descended. Many became agitated by what appeared to be an unwarranted police presence that escalated to the arrests. In one of...

White House officials are preparing to present President Biden with a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that includes high-profile domestic policy priorities such as free community college and universal prekindergarten, according to three people familiar with internal discussions. After completing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package this month, Biden administration officials are piecing together the next major legislative priority. Although no final announcement has been made, the White House is expected to push a multitrillion-dollar jobs and infrastructure plan as the centerpiece of the president’s “Build Back Better” agenda. That effort is expected to be broken into two...

The $1,400 stimulus included in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief package isn’t the only direct payment families could receive. The American Rescue Plan passed by the House includes changes to the child tax credit. The plan includes $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17 and $3,600 per child under age 6. The payments would last for a year, though Democrats are pushing to make them permanent.

ORLANDO, Florida — Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) denounced the partisan $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill, which the House passed last week and the Senate passed Saturday, as a Democrat “wish list” mostly containing items unrelated to immediate coronavirus relief, providing his remarks in an interview with Breitbart News during the Conservative Political Action Conference. Donalds said at the conference just after the House passed the bill last weekend that Democrats “wanted to get their wish list out of” the bill — which they were able to pack with non-coronavirus-related pursuits through a reconciliation process that allowed them to skirt the...

VALENTINE, Neb. – “Land: see Snatch.” On first look, the Biden Administration’s “30 x 30” plan looks like a scheme cooked up by Hedley Lamarr, the main villain from Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” However, far from the comedic genius of the late Harvey Korman, the new Federal land grab is a serious threat to private property owners in the United States. And it’s moving fast.. Just a few days into office, President Joe Biden released a flurry of executive orders, among them being through Executive Order 14008, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” (86 Fed. Reg. 7,619), which...