Free Republic

The $1.9 trillion relief bill that President Joe Biden wants Congress to pass now as his response to the COVID-19 pandemic would cost Americans more than the entire federal government cost in fiscal 1981. That year, according to the historical budget numbers that Biden's own Office of Management and Budget has published on the White House website, the federal government spent approximately $678,241,000,000. When that is adjusted for inflation from September 1981 dollars into December 2020 dollars (using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator), it equals $1.895 trillion. Last March, President Donald Trump signed a $2.3 trillion spending law...

In considering the Trump presidency we must conclude that the reasons why Trump got elected in the first place exist now more than ever...When the nation's two-party system fails to resolve the issues of the day, voters look elsewhere. The Tea Party was a protest movement inside and outside of the Republican Party believed: —Government was no longer responsive to voters. —It also believed that big government was not the solution but, as Reagan so cogently explained, the source of our problems. Those problems included weak economic growth, government overreach, out-of-control spending, political and media elitism, attacks on traditional American...

CIUDAD JUAREZ - As U.S. President Joe Biden took the oath of office last Wednesday, Felipe Ortega sat in a van handcuffed and chained at the waist and feet, headed toward Mexico and the end of his 30-year life in the United States. A day earlier, the 58-year-old grandfather of eight U.S. citizens was on his way to work when immigration agents surrounded his car in Midland, Texas, just blocks from his home. They told Ortega he had an outstanding deportation order from 15 years ago. After one sleepless night in jail and a long ride to the border, Ortega,...

On Thursday, Anthony Fauci informed the World Health Organization that the Biden administration will participate in WHO's vaccine-sharing project. That reverses President Donald Trump's "America First" approach. Fauci says the goal is to ensure "equitable access" to vaccines for all countries in the world, rich and poor alike. Americans scrambling to get vaccinated have a right to know how sharing doses with poor countries will affect their own ability to get vaccinated. Biden is coming under pressure from the public health community to share the vaccine supply the U.S. has prepurchased before all Americans who want shots receive them. The...

With Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s famous quip in 1980, it mattered whether he said Republicans had become “the” or “a” party of ideas. “The” might imply that the mantle of ideas regularly shifts between parties, but history offers little support for this view. Long periods of mental stagnation seem to define both parties. No ideas are present in the climate spasms of the Biden administration, just a doubled helping of patronage handouts to established interest groups. Ideas briefly flourished in the early 2000s, when the debate was between a carbon tax and an inferior carbon tax, known as cap and...

TP Racing LLP, which operates Turf Paradise in Phoenix, Ariz., filed a civil lawsuit against American Home Assurance Company last week for what the racing group says is a failure to pay for COVID-related losses covered under the group's insurance policy. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, seeks a jury trial for the racing group's claim on its American Home policy, which the company denied in July 2020. According to TP Racing, the organization maintained a policy with American Home which promised to pay for business income losses, losses caused by loss of...

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation is partnering with a Miami hospitality investment firm to renovate and reopen a new casino at the historic Fairmont El San Juan hotel in Puerto Rico, the tribe announced this afternoon. The venture is the first casino project outside of the continental United States for the Pequots. The tribe plans to put $12.5 million into revamping the 15,000-square-foot casino on the 15-acre resort property, which is set on a scenic beach near Old San Juan. The hotel first opened in 1958 and became a regional hotspot in the 1960s after Cuban casinos were shut down...

French schoolteachers and university students staged nationwide strikes and protests on Tuesday as they joined forces to demand more government support amid the pandemic. “No virus protocol, no school!” read posters carried by schoolteachers, demanding better virus protections at their schools, which have remained open since September amid concern over learning gaps and to ease the burden on working parents. “Sick of Zoom!” chanted university students, frustrated that they've been barred from campuses since October. Aside from virus fears, the common concern at Tuesday's protests in Paris, Marseille and other cities around France was economic. Teachers unions, who are negotiating...

POLICE have today threatened to dish out £200 Covid fines for people having snowball fights and sledging in the snow. Forces in London, Surrey and Wiltshire sent out warnings urging Brits not to break lockdown while enjoying the snow, saying "Covid regulations still apply." Police forces reminded Brits that 'Covid regulations still apply' in the snow Surrey Police tweeted today: "We are currently receiving lots of calls and reports relating to snowballs being thrown and people outside sledging. "Enjoy the snow today but please don't involve other people, particularly more vulnerable residents. "Please stay safe and remember that Covid regulations...

Many people snickered at the claim made in Texas v. Pennsylvania that there is only a one in a quadrillion chance that Joe Biden won all the swing states as currently claimed. The true meaning beneath the statistic is simple: the vote counts certified in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia are fake, so let's cut through all the noise and decide what to do next. "One in a quadrillion" is a rarified way of saying it just didn't happen. Texas's case was shot down because in the United States both grammar and logic have been overtaken by rhetoric. The old...

The current president has a “D” behind his name, suddenly tyranny is back in style (because for Democrats, authoritarianism has always been their preferred style of governance). Joe Biden has essentially been 'governing by dictate' since taking office President Joe Biden has issued more executive orders in his first week in office — not yet complete, as of this writing — than any of his 45 predecessors. As of January 25, 2021, Biden has ‘issued 33 executive orders, actions, proclamations, memoranda and agency directives,’ according to CNN. Twenty-one of these, according to the White House website, are executive orders. President...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the B.1.1.7 variant of COVID-19 which was said to be 50% to 70% more contagious, has now been discovered to also be 30% deadlier. The CDC warns it could become the dominant strain in the US by March.The UK's chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, broke it down this way, according to CNN. “If you took... a man in their 60s, the average risk is that for 1,000 people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the virus. With the new variant, for 1,000 people infected, roughly 13 or...

There were whispers that the virus had been manufactured in a laboratory in that city and that somehow the little spiky ball that has killed millions and brought the world’s economy to its knees escaped. But nobody much believed it and certainly what’s known as the mainstream press for the most part ignored it. Until now.

Despite the pandemic, almost two thirds of people around the world now view climate change as a global emergency. That's the key finding from the largest opinion poll yet conducted on tackling global warming. More than a million people in 50 countries took part in the survey, with almost half the participants aged between 14 and 18. The poll, called the "People's Climate Vote", has been organised by the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with Oxford University. The organisers distributed poll questions through adverts in mobile gaming apps across 50 countries, between October and December last year. Around 1.22...

THE UK could soon be broken apart as the majority of voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland demand referendums on their future, a new survey has revealed. The survey for the Times found a LucidTalk poll in Northern Ireland revealed a majority of 51 percent to 44 percent wanted a referendum about the border within the next five years. It showed unionists held a lead over supporters of a united Ireland with the figures suggesting a 47 percent to 42 percent split.But it found another 11 percent remained undecided - a high enough figure to threaten the future of the...

resident Joe Biden focused on the theme of unity in his inaugural address. "Today, on this January day, my whole soul is in this: bringing America together, uniting our people and uniting our nation," he said. It sounds so nice. But only a career politician can be this disingenuous and speak the words as if he were so, so sincere. If Biden's top priority were really unity, would he really have allowed a trial of former President Donald Trump to move forward in the Senate? Or immediately signed 30 executive orders in his first three days in the Oval Office,...

Armed and ready to go, Taiwan air force jets screamed into the sky on Tuesday in a drill to simulate a war scenario, showing its fleet’s battle readiness after dozens of Chinese warplanes flew into the island’s air defence zone over the weekend. Taiwan, claimed by China as its territory, has been on edge since the large-scale incursion by Chinese fighters and nuclear-capable bombers into the southwestern part of its air defence identification zone on Saturday and Sunday, which coincided with a U.S. carrier group entering the South China Sea. The base in the southern city of Tainan, home to...

The new White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, came to the briefing room on Tuesday with domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. This came two days after CNN's Brian Stelter celebrated the "refreshing" arrival of "transparency and truth" at the briefings. Rice is best remembered in conservative circles for spewing falsehoods on five Sunday talk shows on Sept. 16, 2012, when she was White House national security adviser: She claimed the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans was a "spontaneous reaction" to an Islamophobic YouTube video, not a terrorist attack. "Protesters" showed up with rocket-propelled...

Republicans are questioning the timing of Democratic governors and mayors easing their coronavirus restrictions. While these state and local officials point to data and pre-set benchmarks to justify their reopening decisions, critics of the lockdowns that have hurt businesses over the past year suspect former President Donald Trump leaving office has something to do with it. Rep. Jim Hagedorn told the Washington Examiner the timeline is suspect given President Biden's inauguration was last week, saying, "It is no coincidence" that Democratic leaders are lifting restrictions now. .... because Democrat politicians put their party’s political interests ahead of ... their constituents,"...

Before shelling out more money for coronavirus vaccinations, the federal government should urge states to claim their share of $200 million doled out by the Trump administration four months ago, on top of $140 million for regular flu vaccines provided in early summer, according to former Trump aides. Sharply disputing, with proof, claims by the Biden administration that there was no vaccine plan in place on Inauguration Day, the officials said the money is there for states to kick-start their vaccination programs if they’d only take it. And one official noted that the $340 million came on top of $3...