Free Republic

You must stay home to save lives. You must socially distance and lock down. Unless you're protesting racism and police brutality. This appears to be the message from some government and health officials, who for months enforced a rigorous and unprecedented economic shutdown in the name of stemming the spread of the coronavirus pandemic -- resulting in millions losing their jobs and students being sent home from schools across the country.

The establishment media and Democrats are encouraging Americans to go out and riot, which proves the coronavirus lockdowns are purely political. Item: You can’t social distance when you riot. Item: You can’t social distance when you protest. So we now know these lockdowns and all this crap about social distancing was a lie, because what you have here are the media encouraging their own viewers to riot and protest, and Democrats encouraging their own voters to riot and protest… And I think it’s safe to assume if the media and Democrats believed the coronavirus would kill their viewers and voters,...

President Donald Trump went to church Monday. That isn’t exactly accurate. There was no chorus of worship, no corporate prayer, no holy reverence, no gathering of believers, and thus no church. Just the leader of the free world and the charred, boarded-up shell of a building, marred with fire at the hands of mutinous rogues. Amid nationwide protests and riots over the needless death of George Floyd at the hands of dishonorable officers, the president stood outside the vandalized historic structure. St. John’s Episcopal Church isn’t the only desolate house of worship today. Church buildings across America stand as empty...

The National Senior Sendoff -- An inspirational virtual event for High School seniors and their families during the Pandemic MAY 28 6:00 – 7:00 pm MDT - (check website for time in local zone) High School Seniors have waited for these special moments for 12 long years. They’ve worked hard and overcome many challenges. This is THEIR TIME to celebrate this significant academic accomplishment. The Class of 2020 will be the first class in all of history prohibited from celebrating the memory-making milestones so many of us have taken for granted. In response, Greg Stier, Founder of Dare 2 Share...

The coronavirus lockdowns are America’s most regressive government actions since the draft. Even as liberals have quickly noted the virus’s disparate incidence, they have ignored the inequities of government responses. Ironically, these responses have been most regressive in states with the most “progressive” governments. In just four months, coronavirus has gone from takeoff to lockdown in the U.S. America’s first Wuhan virus case appeared on Jan. 21, and the first American died Feb. 12. California went into lockdown March 19, followed by New York the next day, and New Jersey on March 21. Two months later, America is only now...

Harvard professor of psychology Steven Pinker tweeted last week: "Belief in an afterlife is a malignant delusion, since it devalues actual lives and discourages action that would make them longer, safer, and happier. Exhibit A: What's really behind Republicans wanting a swift reopening? Evangelicals." Before responding to Pinker's remarkably ignorant tweet, I want to praise him. He is one of the few professors in America to call out the left's destruction of our universities. Most human beings lack courage, but no group is more cowardly than academics. This has been true for 100 years. From the German universities to today,...

Churchgoers across the country are reasserting their fundamental rights of conscience—rights that too many political leaders have forgotten or denied. On Friday, President Trump said churches and houses of worship are “essential” and called on governors nationwide to allow them to open this weekend. If they don’t, Trump said he would “override” governors, citing forthcoming guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In remarks Thursday, the president criticized some governors who have “deemed liquor stores and abortion clinics as essential” but not churches. “It’s not right. So I’m correcting this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.”Trump is right,...

Doctors in Northern California say they have seen more deaths from suicide than they’ve seen from the coronavirus during the pandemic. “The numbers are unprecedented,” Dr. Mike deBoisblanc of John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, told ABC 7 News about the increase of suicide deaths adding that he’s seen a “year’s worth of suicides” in the last four weeks alone.

Addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky argued on Friday that United States governors are falsely justifying stay-at-home orders under the pretense of using scientific reasoning to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. “There is no science of lockdown, there is not. We don’t have that science. It’s all models, conjecture, theory, this isn’t science,” Pinsky told “The Brian Kilmeade Show.” Pinsky said there has been "absolutely" an uptick in mental health issues and substance abuse -- especially alcohol -- as people spend weeks in their homes. He disputed the notion that there is settled science behind implementing mass quarantines of healthy...

California doctors warn a surge in suicides is outspacing deaths from coronavirus as pandemic lockdowns take a far greater toll on American life than the virus itself.Dr. Mike deBoisblank who serves as the head of the trauma department at John Muir Medical Center in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay told ABC 7 his hospital has seen a “year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”“We’ve never seen numbers like this, in such a short period of time,” deBoisblank said, pointing at the state’s stay-home orders as the primary culprit for the spike in crises.Now...

May. 22, 2020 - 14:33 - There is precisely no evidence as of right now that the lockdowns saved lives anywhere in this country. Video at link

A federal judge overturned North Carolina Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s orders Saturday that sought to cap religious services at no more than 10 people while businesses and other organizations in the state were left to accommodate up to 50. The double standard, District Court Judge James C. Dever ruled in the Eastern District of North Carolina, was an overt show of distrust among those gathering to worship and deemed the directive illegal, according to the News and Observer. “The record, at this admittedly early stage of the case, reveals that the Governor appears to trust citizens to perform non-religious activities...

The pandemic has stripped millions of work, community, and hope. As local governments extend quarantine orders, urbanites like me are starting to wonder: what is the point of city life? This week marks just over two months since most states instituted shelter-in-place orders to contain COVID-19, and with this milestone came an apparent turn in the tide of public opinion—or at least, public behavior—on social distancing.Even as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and one of President Trump’s most prominent pandemic advisors, warned against rolling back lockdown orders in his testimony to Congress...

The raging public debate over statewide coronavirus lockdowns is running parallel to a series of legal battles in state capitals - and the lockdown skeptics got a big boost this week. The decision by Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to toss Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order set off a scramble in cities across the state to impose their own local restrictions. Elsewhere, bars and restaurants shut down by the order declared themselves open for business. And legal challenges are continuing to pile-up across the country - even as governors who extend their state’s shelter-in-place orders begin peeling back some...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-14-at-4.58.53-PM-998x725.pngMADISON, Wis. — Declaring that the state’s top health official wrongly bypassed legislative oversight, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the Evers’ administration’s extended lockdown of the state.The 4-3 decision by the conservative-led court declares Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm’s Emergency Order 28 “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable.”“Because Palm did not follow the law in creating Order 28, there can be no criminal penalties for violations of her order,” the ruling notes. “The procedural requirements of Wis. Stat. ch. 227 must be followed because they safeguard all people.”Palm’s extended order, issued before Evers’ first stay-at-home edict...

Emergency Press Conference - When Did Flattening The Curve Turn Into Finding The Cure https://twitter.com/stoolpresidente/status/1260721488241418240   

Gov. Tom Wolf pushed back forcefully - and with some apparent success - Monday on a brushfire of opposition in central and eastern Pennsylvania counties to his ongoing coronavirus pandemic lockdown. In uncharacteristically blunt language, Wolf accused local elected officials proposing to break out of the state’s phased reopening plan of “caving in” to the virus, and starkly warned any business owners temped to open ahead of his schedule that by doing so they are playing with liability issues and their customers and employees’ lives. “We Pennsylvanians are in a fight for our lives. The enemy is a deadly virus,...

Can you feel it? Can you feel the pace quickening? More cars on the road, more people in the stores, more ads crowding your inbox? Activity is picking up, even in my state of New York, where we’re still under lockdown. It’s palpable; Americans everywhere are going back to work. Democrats don’t like that one little bit. The worse things are, the better their chances in November. After all, Joe Biden is blaming President Trump for having helped throw the country into a deep recession; he sure doesn’t want the hard times to end. A recent tweet from the former...

In late April Dr. Tony Fauci made it clear he opposed the decision by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to lift the lockdown orders in his state. “If I were advising the governor, I would tell him he should be careful. Going ahead and leapfrogging into phases where you should not be … I would advise him not to do that.” But Dr. Fauci was wrong again. In fact, it starting to look like this guy is NEVER right about anything? It must be nice having a government job and not have to worry about getting fired! Fauci and the critics...

Tragic accounts and stories of loss make news during the crisis, but not every public voice is willing to accept the sentiment of the day. Prominent California Pastor Rick Warren of the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Saddleback Church has stated that he wants to “help you confront this crisis and turn your fears into faith.” Asked on CNN about where God is amidst the pandemic, Warren gave two answers. First, God is present in the hearts of people. As Warren states to Anderson Cooper, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, people that are “out there helping others, that’s God in the hearts of...