Free Republic

The ruling on Wednesday is the first win in appellate court for a restaurant seeking business interruption insurance losses.. Oceana Grill, Bourbon Street’s tourist-centric restaurant loved by New Orleans hotel concierges, has won the country’s first victory in appellate court for an insured business seeking damages related to COVID-19 shutdown losses. A split Louisiana court found the policy’s definition of “direct physical loss or damage” ambiguous, ruling in favor of the restaurant on Wednesday, June 15. Cajun Conti, the company that owns Oceana Grill, among other French Quarter tourist haunts, sued Lloyd’s of London on March 20, 2020 — the...

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) has taken a lead throughout the Covid-19 pandemic to hold public health officials and agencies accountable if they’ve failed to provide accurate and timely information to the public for whom they work. From masks, vaccines, and school shutdowns, to the origination of Covid-19, Johnson has been asking critical questions. However, he says he has received very few answers. According to Johnson, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky is one of the public health officials who has been non-compliant with his requests. To date, Johnson says he has made eight specific requests, directly of Walensky,...

COPENHAGEN: Denmark will remove virtually all Covid restrictions from next Tuesday despite record infections, counting on a high vaccination rate to cope with the milder Omicron variant, the government said. "We are saying farewell to the restrictions and welcome to life as we knew it before corona," Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference on Wednesday. Denmark is set to become the first European Union country to lift domestic curbs [cut] the government decided that coronavirus should no longer be considered a threatening disease for society." That means the de facto lifting of all domestic restrictions, including the use...

Teachers’ unions across the country are demanding that schools shut down in favor of virtual learning amid concerns over the low-risk omicron variant of the coronavirus. Virtual learning has proven detrimental to the educations, social development, and mental health of children.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there could be lockdowns again without widespread “tough” vaccine mandates like the one he implemented in New York City. De Blasio said, “Look, right now, here’s what I fear. Omicron is here. It’s all over the country. This variant moves fast. We have to move faster. I’ll tell you what I hear from our business community that their greatest fear is shutdowns. Their greatest fear is going back to where we were in 2020 to restrictions, to people losing their livelihood. You mentioned unemployment....

SHARE MORE President Biden further detailed his winter plan to combat COVID-19 within the United States in an op-ed Thursday, reiterating his vow that there would not be “shutdowns or lockdowns.” “We are going to fight COVID-19 not with shutdowns or lockdowns – but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing and more. We will beat it back with science and speed, not chaos and confusion – just as we did in the spring and again with the more powerful delta variant in the summer and fall,” Biden wrote in his op-ed published in USA Today

Fatigued from the punishing and arbitrary restrictions, we saw South Dakota like a man dying of thirst sees a glass of water.I shut the car door and sighed. “I don’t want to go back,” I said, stuffing my mask in the cupholder. We were about to get back on the interstate as we wound our way through Montana toward Washington state, our home. It wasn’t a decision, just how I felt. But saying it out loud set us on an unstoppable course. Just a few months later, we were traveling back across the I-90 to the Black Hills of South...

With more than 700,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States, it is now evident that lockdown strategies failed to protect older high-risk Americans.With more than 700,000 reported Covid-19 deaths in the United States, it is now evident that lockdown strategies failed to protect older high-risk Americans. Naively believing that shutting down society would protect everyone, government officials failed to implement focused protection measures for those at the highest risk. While anyone can get infected, there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of death between the old and the young. The failure to exploit this fact about...

For every cloud, there really is a silver lining. And in a time of near-universal madness driving scientifically unjustified vaccine mandates, such a silver lining has made itself plain to me; perhaps it has done the same for you… These mandates have forced our hand. They have forced us to choose sides. I know that their pressure has forced many to choose out of fear–that’s the unfortunate part. But choosing–driven by reason instead–is good. The entities and corporations driving the mandates are shortsighted at best, and downright evil at worst. Consider that we have chosen to work for these entities,...

The Christian cold war will mean an increase in church splits, takeovers, and other power struggles as people choose sides on existential questions, including theology.Along with the rest of the country, American Christianity is in the middle of a cold war. As this war heats up, it will mean church splits, takeovers, fights over denominational resources, and other power struggles as the Donald Trump era has increasingly brought clarity and pushed people to choose sides on existential questions.The Southern Baptist Convention, the United States’ largest Protestant denomination, is one key example of this dynamic affecting American Christianity as a whole....

During his lengthy Sunday appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison was asked about a host of issues. He was briefly asked by host Margaret Brennan about his country's strict lockdowns in the face of the Wuhan coronavirus, which he defended. As Brennan reminded the prime minister, "Australia is one of the few Western democracies that has really put in place some very, very strict COVID protocols. You shut down your borders 18 months ago," before going on to ask him "when will they reopen? Are you going to have vaccine passports? When will Australians be...

COVID shutdowns championed by U.S. governors and D.C. bureaucrats are responsible for destroying nearly 40% of small businesses since the virus was unleashed on the world—and we know now that it was for little to no damned good reason. A study by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences revealed recently that shutdown orders made little to no difference in COVID’s impact. ... While bureaucrats gave Walmart, Costco, Lowe’s, and other big-box stores “essential” status, allowing them to stay open during the COVID pandemic, 38.9% of America’s small businesses, the providers of most of the country’s jobs, were forced...

The question Americans should ask is not just what else may emerge from this cover-up, but what are we prepared to do about what we now know.The past several weeks have witnessed an unraveling of the COVID-19 narrative potentially indicating a massive cover-up of the virus’s origin. Two distinguished researchers released a study that refutes claims by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the virus had a natural origin.The study, to be published in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, indicates the virus that causes COVID-19 was man-made — engineered in a lab by creating unique spike proteins and attaching...

It can feel abstract: A group of organized but faceless criminals hijacking corporate computer systems and demanding millions of dollars in exchange for their safe return. But the impact of these ransomware attacks is increasingly, unavoidably, real for everyday people. These crimes have resulted in missed chemotherapy appointments and delayed ambulances, lost school days, and transportation problems. A ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline in May led to gas shortages and even dangerous situations caused by panic buying. This past week, hackers compromised the JBS meat processing company, leading to worries about meat shortages or other key food providers being at...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In an exclusive interview with The Federalist, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis challenged the right to take a proactive stance on cultural issues, not just a defensive one. “Do you want to be the Harlem Globetrotters or do you want to be the Washington Generals? D.C. Republicans, a lot of them are my friends, but they’re like lovable losers,” he said. “They let the corporate media define the narrative and it’s like trying to fight your way out of a wet paper bag. You have to reject these narratives.”Recognizing Americans who “aren’t captive to the Acela corridor or...

Small businesses shut down during the pandemic while "essential" big-box stores remained open... It’s been over a year since “two weeks to slow the spread,” and the pandemic is finally dragging to a finish. Cases are down, herd immunity has more or less arrived, and even in deep-blue Boston, Stop & Shop has announced it will end mask requirements before the month’s out. The pandemic saw a huge amount of power and money transferred to what Michael Lind calls the “overclass” of politicians, corporate managers and bureaucrats. Small businesses shut down while big-box stores deemed “essential” remained open. The laptop...

Let's shake off the influence of those who would have us shrink back and stay silent. Let’s follow Pastor Pawlowski’s lead and be a bold church unafraid to serve God in a hostile culture.Last weekend the world saw a fearless man of God, Pastor Artur Pawlowski, arrested for leading a church service. This faithful pastor, who escaped the iron fist of communist rule in Poland as a child, was handcuffed on the streets of Canada and thrown in jail for refusing to shutter his church. Not too long ago, this shocking display of repression would be unheard of in the...

While corporations are leading our government by the nose, small business is more often an unwilling victim, pleading for any path they can to survive their rulers.WASHINGTON, D.C. — In big cities across America, we have seen some laugh-out-loud-ridiculous “COVID-prevention” measures in bars and restaurants. No menus allowed. Masks off when you’re at a table. Masks on when you go to the bathroom. Disposable cups only. “Hold a minute while we wipe down the chairs.” Leave your name and your phone number (even though no mythical “contract tracer” would call were you to turn into a literal COVID cyclone). To...

The court’s unsigned order in Tandon v. Newsom signifies the reemergence of religious liberty as a valued jurisprudential principle to the Supreme Court.On Friday, for the fifth time the U.S. Supreme Court slapped down a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding anti-religious COVID restrictions established by California’s embattled Gov. Gavin Newsom. The court’s unsigned order in Tandon v. Newsom represents much more than a victory for the plaintiffs who sought to host Bible studies in their homes on equal footing with analogous commercial activities: It signifies the reemergence of religious liberty as a valued jurisprudential principle to the Supreme...

As with the pushing of anti-Bush forgeries, CBS News continues to push partisan propaganda at the expense of the truth.Rather than cover actual scandals involving Democrat governors and their botched responses to COVID, CBS’ “60 Minutes” tried to invent a scandal involving Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ distribution of vaccines. To push the false narrative and protect its favored governors, “60 Minutes” refused to interview people who disputed its false narrative, selectively edited video to hide facts, and omitted data that debunked its thesis and accurately describe Florida’s success. It’s not that “60 Minutes” couldn’t have reported on real scandals involving...