Free Republic

Two service members have been denied religious exemptions to the flu vaccine and are at risk of being forced out of the military after they previously fought the COVID-19 vaccine mandate. A service member in the Marine Corps and another in the Air Force are facing separation from their respective military branches after submitting Religious Accommodation Requests (RARs) for the flu shot. Both men objected to the COVID vaccine mandate under the Biden administration and ultimately kept their jobs, but they may lose them under President Trump despite the routine approval of religious exemptions for vaccines before COVID. Marine First...

"I have grave concerns that not many people are going to be interested in that deal," said attorney R. Davis Younts, who represents military members and veterans. Former military members who left the service over the COVID-19 vaccine mandate have been offered the opportunity to return and receive the same rank and pay as before, but only if they claim their exit wasn’t coerced. Several say they cannot attest to that. While President Trump has said that he wants military members who were forced out of the service over the Biden administration’s COVID vaccine mandate to be reinstated, former service...

Under Joe Biden, approximately 8,000 service members were discharged from the military for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. In January 2025, President Trump ordered a full reinstatement to any service member who was expelled from the armed forces due to the COVID vaccine mandate, restoring them to their former rank with full pay. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth joined Fox News to discuss efforts to welcome back these service members who were discarded and treated so badly by the Biden administration. Hegseth stated, “We’re psyched. This is one of the made promises kept from President Trump. We have followed...

My hope is that this case results in a solid legal repudiation of the tyrannical, extra-legal policy of Gov. Walz, and sets a precedent against future abuses of this kind," Stewart said. ... Russell Stewart, a former professor at Lake Superior College, has filed a federal lawsuit against Gov. Tim Walz and several college administrators, alleging wrongful termination over his refusal to comply with the state’s COVID-19 vaccination or testing mandate. ... Fired after 30 years of teaching.. Stewart, who taught ethics and philosophy at the Duluth-based institution for three decades, was fired in March 2022 after declining to follow...

The legendary former MMA fighter was fired from Disney’s “Mandalorian,” a spinoff of the Star Wars franchise, after an Instagram story comparing the heated political climate to Nazi Germany last year. Carano’s career, however, was not over. She signed on to a starring role in the film “Terror on the Prairie,” which was developed by The Daily Wire. The conservative news outlet is seeking to build a movie business for people who, like Carano, are alienated from Hollywood’s output. “I don’t feel comfortable with mandates,” Carano said in an interview with Libby Emmons in the Post Millenial, adding that vaccine...

A federal appeals court has ruled that a church cannot sue Washington state over a law that requires most employers to have healthcare insurance plans that cover abortions. A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 last Thursday against a lawsuit brought by Cedar Park Assembly of God of Kirkland against former Gov. Jay Inslee and Washington Insurance Commissioner Myron Kreidler over Washington's Reproductive Parity Act. Circuit Judge Susan Graber, a Clinton appointee, authored the majority opinion, writing that the church lacked the standing to sue because "Washington's conscientious objection statute exempts employers like Plaintiff...

The Government Accountability Office announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions waiver request sent last month to Congress for review is not reviewable by them and that the previous Biden Administration’s approval of California’s mandate to ban the sale of all gas-powered vehicles by 2035 still stands.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith appeared on The View on Tuesday, but they may be more careful about which questions they ask him the next time they have him on. Joy Behar queried Smith about the 2024 election, asking a long, leading question in which she sought to downplay President Trump’s sweeping victory and destroy any notion that he had a mandate from the American people. However, Smith was having none of it. He took Behar on a point-by-point journey, refuting her assertion, adding some of his own, and proving that the American people indeed handed Trump a mandate. “He won...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency teamed up with the Department of Government Efficiency to put the kibosh on more than $67 million in grant money once earmarked to push ex-President Joe Biden’s “environmental justice” mandate, The Post has learned. The EPA and the Elon Musk-led DOGE this week flagged 21 grants totaling $77.1 million previously awarded to 20 lefty nonprofits and universities, and the Trump administration will withhold $67.4 million in payments yet to be made, officials said. The biggest loser is Vermont-based Institute of Sustainable Communities, which has yet to receive $12.4 million of the $16 million it was...

When a new Yale University study identified a debilitating syndrome linked to Covid vaccines, Lindy Ayers breathed a sigh of relief. The 31-year-old Army veteran, from Arkansas, has been wheelchair-bound since she took her second Pfizer shot in 2021 as part of the government's military mandate. For years she was told her extreme fatigue, sickness and heart palpitations were anxiety. Then doctors said it was long Covid. She was branded an antivaxxer for suggesting it could have been the vaccine. Thousands of Americans have reported similar stories. After the study news dropped, DailyMail.com spoke to dozens of Americans, including those...

President Trump signed an executive order Friday to defund schools and other education agencies that require COVID-19 vaccines for students and staff. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the head of the Department of Education are directed to create a plan to end these mandates and end federal funding for entities that do not comply. Plans for the executive action were first reported Friday by Breitbart. The order helps Trump fulfill his campaign to end the mandates many schools enacted after the COVID-19 vaccines were developed and as cases were ravaging the country under his first...

The White House's Office of Personnel Management did not mince words when addressing agency heads in a memo outlining the next steps for federal workers' return to office. "Federal office buildings sit mostly empty, particularly Washington, D.C.-area agency headquarters offices, devastating the local economy and serving as a national embarrassment," Charles Ezell, the acting director of the OPM, said in the Wednesday memo. Ezell added that "virtually unrestricted telework" has led to "poorer government services" and also hampered departments' ability to train and supervise workers. The OPM defines telework as an arrangement in which employees are expected to report to...

California regulators withdrew a proposal to mandate the sale of zero-emissions trucks over the next 20 years on Tuesday evening. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) pulled back its request to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver that would have allowed the state to require massive increases in sales of electric or zero-emissions truck models over the coming decades. As of 2023, only 0.3% of all registered heavy-duty vehicles in the U.S. were zero-emissions models, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation. CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets rule would have mandated California’s truck fleet to move to zero-emission...

LA officials say they do not have enough firefighters… they literally TERMINATED firefighters for not taking a COVID vax ... Let me get this straight. • California is burning. • All of its fire chiefs were selected based on their LGBTQ status. • Gavin Newsom spent all of the state’s fire resources on illegals. • He hasn’t called in the National Guard. • The LA Mayor is nowhere to be found. Gross incompetence. Gross mismanagement. ... First rule of Government You do not tell the truth about government ... In 2020 Janice Hahn worked overtime to fire the firefighters that...

A California judge denied BART’s requests to overturn the verdict, saying the agency failed to show an undue hardship for not granting religious exemption.. A federal judge in California has rejected an effort by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) to overturn a jury verdict that awarded $7.8 million to six former employees who were fired for refusing to comply with the agency’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on religious grounds. In a Dec. 30 order, Judge William A. Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California acknowledged minor “imperfections” in the jury trial—including flawed instructions to the jurors—and...

A hospital system in Illinois this week issued a mandate that everyone entering its facilities must wear a mask due to “widespread respiratory illnesses” in the area.“Starting Tuesday, December 31, all employees, patients and visitors at our hospitals are required to wear masks due to the widespread respiratory illnesses in our communities, including COVID-19, influenza and RSV,” said OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, based in Peoria, Illinois, in a statement posted on Facebook.“Additionally, we are implementing a temporary visitor restriction: only two visitors (age 18+) per patient at a time. Thank you for your cooperation in keeping our community safe.”It...

With little time left to force his liberal agenda on the United States, President Joe Biden and his administration have launched a “striking escalation” of rules and regulations that conservative critics hope President-elect Donald Trump can reverse once in office. Over the past month, the administration has broken the record for the number of pages of regulations in Uncle Sam’s book of rules, the Federal Register. And this year, the administration has pushed through a high number of economically impactful rules, those with a hit of $100 million or more. Conservatives are hopeful that the incoming Trump administration is paying...

'I am free, I am no longer suspended. I can prescribe Ivermectin, and most importantly – and this is what AHPRA is most afraid of – I can criticize the vaccines freely ... as a medical practitioner of this country,' said COVID critic Dr. William Bay... A long-awaited decision regarding the suspension of the medical registration of Dr. William Bay by the Medical Board of Australia has been handed down by the Queensland Supreme Court. Justice Thomas Bradley overturned the suspension, finding that Bay had been subject to “bias and failure to afford fair process” over complaints unrelated to his...

A former Laramie High School student who was arrested over a dispute over masking had her lawsuit against the local school district revived Tuesday. It had been dismissed by a lower court in 2023... The former Laramie High School student who sued her school district for having her arrested after she refused to wear a mask has standing and can keep waging her lawsuit, an appeals court ruled Tuesday. Grace Smith and her parents Andy and Erin Smith sued the Albany County School District in August 2023, in federal court, over the district’s 2021 mask mandate. Smith had refused to...

Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President-elect Donald Trump will be misreading “his mandate” if he goes after his political rivals. Kristen Welker said, “I want to play something that President-elect Trump said about you when he was a candidate, he called you, quote, more dangerous than foreign adversaries. Take a listen and I’ll get your reaction on the other side.” On Fox News, Trump said, “The enemy from within in my opinion is more dangerous than China and Russia and all these countries. If you have a smart president, he can handle them...