Free Republic

Even in this oppressive heat, I still see adults wearing face coverings. I was at a laundromat recently where an elderly man was sitting outside at a picnic table (by himself) with a mask on. It’s his business, of course, but he looked ridiculous. President Trump’s would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has been called “nerdy” and a “loner,” but what struck me was that a former classmate who described Mr. Crooks as “a little off” also said he wore a mask after Covid was over. We were all required to wear them years ago, but those who continue to don...

The Tour de France stepped up protective measures, to "limit health risks" in the face of a resurgence of Covid-19, which has affected several riders in recent days. Masks must now be worn by everyone, including organisers, guests and journalists, who may be "in contact with the riders and members of the cycling teams" before and after the stages, said organisers Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO). Several riders, including Britain's Tom Pidcock and Spain's Juan Ayuso, team-mate of yellow jersey Tadej Pogacar, have already retired after testing positive. Pogacar said before the start of the race that he had been affected...

Actor Ben Affleck’s daughter is demanding that the government impose mask mandates in Los Angeles hospitals. “The county must oppose mask bans for any reason,” Violet Affleck said. “Hi, Violet Affleck, Los Angeles resident, first-time voter, I’m 18,” Violet Affleck, the daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, said while introducing herself to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors during a public representation segment. Violet Affleck holding it down at the LA County Board of Supervisors demanding mask availability, mask mandates in hospitals, and clean air in all government buildings including jails and detention centers. Go Violet! 😷🍉 pic.twitter.com/B8PN3jl5F6...

Once seen as a symbol of protection against the spread of a deadly virus, masks are now being blamed for emboldening some people to commit acts of violence amid a rise in clashes at protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Elected officials in New York City and Los Angeles have signaled recently that they’re open to reinstating decades-old mask bans after several tense pro-Palestinian demonstrations, where local officials say masked protesters aimed to conceal their identity. Republicans in North Carolina recently signed a controversial mask restriction into law, sparking an intense debate between supporters who cite safety concerns and critics who...

When OHSA unilaterally mandated that tens of millions of private sector workers take the COVID shot or wear masks, appellate courts cited the Chevron doctrine for allowing it People don’t understand how important it is that Chevron deference is dead

As you likely know, the internet is overflowing with theories about Joe Biden and rubber masks. What does that mean, exactly? Well, many believe that Joe Biden has one or two body doubles who parade around in masks, impersonating him. Truth be told, they’ve certainly come a long way with masks, haven’t they? ... While Biden doubles running around in a mask may sound like the plot of a Hollywood movie, can we truly dismiss anything in these strange times under this bizarre regime? Probably not. And it’s even more difficult to write it off as just another kooky conspiracy,...

State legislators and law enforcement are reinstating dormant laws that criminalize mask-wearing to penalize pro-Palestinian protesters who conceal their faces, raising concerns among covid-cautious Americans. Republican lawmakers in North Carolina are poised to overturn Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) recent veto of legislation to criminalize masking. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said earlier this month she supports legislative efforts to ban masks on the subway, citing an incident where masked protesters on a train shouted, “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.” Student protesters in Ohio, Texas and Florida have been threatened with...

When Rikki Baker Keusch, a disabled New York-based Jewish community organizer, saw that Hochul was seriously thinking about a mask ban, they were livid. Taking Covid precautions has also become the norm in the Jewish community they are a part of in New York City. “We required everyone to test [for Covid] before Seder,” said Baker Keusch, who wears masks to protect themselves from infectious diseases during pro-Palestinian protests. Getting Covid again while at a demonstration would set back “all of the health progress I’ve barely been able to make since my last Covid infection,” Baker Keusch said. People are...

May 17, 1998 – June 16, 2024 310 Threads, 68,946 replies All good things must come to an end. I wish all of you the best. Remember, the national government has not one, but two warrants for its existence. 1) The Constitution 2) The Declaration of Independence The Constitution's purpose is "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" The Declaration states, "[men]are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty...

How Did a Small Group Do This?A very interesting study appeared last week by two researchers looking into the pandemic policy response around the world. They are Drs. Eran Bendavid and Chirag Patel of Stanford and Harvard, respectively. Their ambition was straightforward. They wanted to examine the effects of government policy on the virus. In this ambition, after all, researchers have access to an unprecedented amount of information. We have global data on strategies and stringencies. We have global data on infections and mortality. We can look at it all according to the timeline. We have precise dating of stay-at-home...

Fauci said he does not know where the six foot social distancing rule came fromHe also said that he was unaware of studies recommending masks for kids Bombshell testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci reveals he made up the six foot social distancing rule and other measures to 'protect' Americans from covid.Republicans put out the full transcript of their sit down interview with Fauci from January just days before his highly-anticipated public testimony on Monday. They plan to grill him about covid restrictions he put in place, that he admitted didn't do much to 'slow the spread' of the virus. Kids'...

Dr. Anthony Fauci said in congressional testimony that he reviewed no scientific evidence behind the specific recommendations for masking children or maintaining 6-foot social distancing before advocating these policies during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The revelations come from the full transcript, released Friday, of Fauci’s closed-door transcribed interview session in January before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The publication comes days before the former director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is slated to testify in his first public hearing since his retirement in December 2022.When asked about social distancing recommendations that were...

Singapore is experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, with authorities recording over 25,900 cases from May 5 to 11. Health Minister Ong Ye Kung advised the public to wear masks again on Saturday. “We are at the beginning part of the wave where it is steadily rising,” Kung stated. “So, I would say the wave should peak in the next two to four weeks, which means between mid- and end of June,” he told The Straits Times. The Ministry of Health (MOH) reported that the number of COVID-19 cases increased significantly, from 13,700 the previous week to 25,900 in the...

There was plenty of calculated strategy behind Western governments’ COVID madness. The COVID police state revealed Western governments’ zeal for totalitarianism. Forced masking, forced experimental injections, forced school and business closures, forced isolation, and forced compliance provided Western citizens an opportunity to see the tyrannical inclinations hiding just beneath the surface of their supposedly beneficent “democracies.” None of it was pretty. Mass propaganda disguised as medical expertise (remember when Joe Biden and his CDC army of Goebbels clones demanded that we wear three or more masks outside?) and mass censorship of social media conversations (because, we were frequently told, disinformation...

The first thing you see are the masks — the N-95s, the surgical masks, the patterned cloth masks, the bandanas — which largely vanished from American life over the last two years but are a defining feature of America’s swelling left-wing protest culture. Faculty members at New York University link arms to protect a “Gaza solidarity encampment,” most of them wearing face masks. Activists block travel across the Golden Gate Bridge, all of them in masks. Members of the March on DNC 2024 coalition show up to their Chicago press conference in face masks, removing them only when it’s their...

On Good Friday, March 29, 2024, I I cut my hand and had to go to the nearby Urgent Care her in Phoenix. They stitched up my hand and scheduled me to come back in a couple of weeks to get the stitches removed. When I went back, the Urgent Care center got masky in the meantime. I told them I would wait outside, and "You do know that the studies now show that the masks don't do anything useful." When I came in, I did put the mask on over my mouth, but not my nose. When I was...

Crises have the power to expose tensions within ideologies, and the current pandemic has made some of those in contemporary American conservatism vividly apparent. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas is not only fighting a COVID-19 infection—he’s also on the front lines of a clash within conservatism. The Republican has declared his state “the Freedom Capital of America.” He has consistently prioritized cutting regulations on business, and in a 2018 opinion column boasted, “Innovation and self-reliance are deeply rooted in the Lone Star State, and when freed from the stranglehold of over taxation and overregulation, new ideas flourish. By limiting...

Can I trust you? Wait … can I really trust you? What if you’d given me your word that you’d never betray me, but then you discovered that betraying me could make you really rich, or really successful, or even just a bit happier? A lot of us discover—sometimes too late—that verbal contracts aren’t worth the paper they are printed on. But, what about social contracts? What about the warp and weft of what keeps humans making moral sense to one another? This always matters. But, it matters especially at the moment, when we are all deciding how we should...

Protesters against the American response to the Israel-Hamas war shut down a pair of freeways in the Bay Area during the Monday morning rush hour, including blocking traffic on the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. Southbound U.S. Highway 101 across the bridge and northbound Interstate 880 in nearby Oakland were blocked starting around 7:30 a.m. PDT on Monday, California Highway Patrol said. Protesters carried signs reading “Stop Arming Israel” and “Bay Area Demands No Murder for Profit,” in reference to American military support for Israel.