Free Republic

Promote Democracy: Serve as a Poll Worker Before each statewide election, thousands of Californians sign up to help put on the single most important event we hold in a democracy. County elections officials depend on reliable, dedicated teams of poll workers to make every Election Day run smoothly. Who can be a poll worker? To serve as a poll worker you must be: A United States citizen or legal permanent resident; An eligible high school student What does a poll worker do? Sets up and closes a polling place Helps voters understand their rights Protects ballots and voting equipment Why...

uring a CNN interview on Sunday afternoon, volunteer pilots and relief organizers criticized the federal government's response to Hurricane Helene, saying there's "still no FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], still no military" in North Carolina, which was ravaged by the storm late last month. Hurricane Helene made landfall on Florida's Big Bend region on September 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and then tore through the Southeast region of the United States. It hit parts of Western North Carolina particularly hard, washing away roads, destroying homes, and leaving millions without power. According to the Associated Press, 227 people have died...

Just received this note from a SpaceX engineer helping on the ground in North Carolina. @FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help! “Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives. The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and...

Tech billionaire Elon Musk took to X on Friday afternoon to claim the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is "actively blocking" volunteers who try to help the struggling citizens of western North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. "Just received this note from a SpaceX engineer helping on the ground in North Carolina," Musk wrote. "@FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!" "Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC," Musk said his employee wrote. "We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers...

The Office of Global Michigan is looking for resident volunteers to house migrants in their homes and help integrate them into US society. The Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Development says residents who participate must make a 90-day commitment. As part of the refugee support program, residents are asked to help with relocation needs due to the border crisis, and make a home in the state. Residents are asked to meet the person or family at the airport, helping find housing, enroll children in school, and help with finding employment for adults as part of the Welcome Corps.

Three men in Israel Defense Forces uniforms patrolled on Jan. 8 in Hurfeish, a Druze town of 7,000 in the Galilee, just 1 1/2 miles from the Lebanese border. The trio drove that night not in a military jeep but a Chevy Blazer bearing civilian license plates. They weren’t in active-duty service (18–21 years old) or even in reserves (through age 45), but were far older—the youngest of them being 54. These older Druze men are in another tier of Israeli military service: kitot konenut, first-response teams for security threats. Most Israeli communities have kitot konenut, which are locally run....

Footprints in the snow lead from the sidewalk to a path through the weeds, opening to a field that is almost invisible from the road. North of Interstate 70, in a part of Denver filled mostly with warehouses and gas stations, the tents are flapping relentlessly in the wind. About 10 migrants from South America hunkered down here during four days of subzero temperatures, and the volunteers who brought them heaters and propane, hot meals and fresh water, are prepared to help hundreds more as Denver pushes migrants out of their city-provided hotel rooms in the coming weeks. The dozen...

A group of cowboys and ranchers from Arkansas and Montana arrived in Israel to volunteer to help farmers and ranchers suffering a shortage of workers since October 7; They are not Jewish and all paid for their own...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White and his son recently traveled nearly 6,000 miles to Ukraine for work to dig up landmines. KOAT first told you about the story at the beginning of April Advertisement White has since returned from his 10-day trip to Ukraine, and KOAT’s John Cardinale had the opportunity to sit down with him about his experience. "It's unsettling. It's eye-opening. And at the same time, it's heartbreaking,” White said. “We see the images on TV, but that is nothing until you see it firsthand. It's estimated that because of the war, Ukraine now...

ON THE ROAD The air-raid siren sounded again through the defiant city, but William McNulty refused to be bothered by it. After a long morning of meetings in Kyiv with Ukrainian partners in need of medical tourniquets and cold-weather clothing, the man had earned an afternoon nap. The air flowing through the hotel room’s open window nipped of brittle autumn, and sunlight was leaking through gray clouds; winter, as the Ukrainians liked to quip, was coming. F**k it, McNulty thought. The chances of getting hit by a drone strike in a city of three million people seemed low. A U.S....

Video A former sniper for the Canadian military known as one of the deadliest snipers in the world has travelled to Ukraine to help in the war against Russia, CBC News reported. The sniper – who was given the nickname Wali in Afghanistan – was a soldier with the Royal 22nd Regiment. Several days ago he responded to a call for help from Ukrainian President Wolodymyr Zelensky and during the night crossed the Polish border into Ukrainian territory. Wali told the CBC that he made the trip with three other former Canadian soldiers. He said that the Ukrainians they met...

Even while 1.5 million Ukrainians have fled the country amid the Russian invasion in the past two weeks, more than 100,000 Ukrainians and others have flocked to Ukraine in order to fight Russian President Vladimir Putin's forces, according to Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov. Ukrainians on the ground tell Fox News Digital that volunteers have been turned away from the army because it lacks weapons."More than 140,000 Ukrainians, mostly men, have returned from Europe," Reznikov wrote in a Facebook post Monday. "Tens of thousands joined the Territorial Defense Forces. Of course, there are those who run away. But the whole...

Thousands of U.S. nationals have signed up to join the Ukrainian military as the country attempts to fight off the Russian incursion, reports say.Ukraine has received more than 3,000 applications from people in the United States who want to fight, several of whom are military veterans, a defense official with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., told the Military Times on Thursday."If you are determined to go, be professional, responsible, and realistic in your expectations," a former SEAL-turned-CIA officer who goes by Frumentarius said. "Follow the Ukrainian government's advice about how to officially register, and do not go there telling...

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Philadelphia is home to some of the most venerated medical institutions in the country. Yet when it came time to set up the city’s first and largest coronavirus mass vaccination site, officials turned to the start-up Philly Fighting COVID, a self-described “group of college kids” with minimal health-care experience. Chaos ensued. Seniors were left in tears after finding that appointments they’d made through a bungled sign-up form wouldn’t be honored. The group switched to a for-profit model without publicizing the change and added a privacy policy that would allow it to sell users’ personal data. One volunteer alleged that the...

The Tennessee Vols football season has reached the point, after a 34-7 blowout home loss to the hated Kentucky Wildcats, where windows are being smashed by flying beer bottles and wives are looking for new relationships. Now 2-2 after back-to-back losses with Alabama coming to town Saturday, it’s getting ugly, especially on the Tony Basilio Show where this caller said it’s bad in his home. “I’ve been watching Tennessee football for 30 years and I did something today that I’ve never done,” Vols fan said. “I messed up and threw a beer bottle through a window and my wife left...

About 138,600 Americans have already volunteered to participate in clinical trials for a Covid-19 vaccine less than two weeks after the launch of a national effort to sign up a total of 120,000 participants to help test four vaccines beginning this fall, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. KEY FACTS * In an effort to recruit the vast number of volunteers needed to test potential vaccines, NIAID launched the website for the Covid-19 Prevention Network July 8, where volunteers can sign up. * The Prevention Trials Network was created by combining four already existing clinical trial...

SEATTLE – As Washington state grapples with coronavirus, one Seattle research institute is taking matters into their own hands. Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute got the OK to begin its vaccine trials, the first of its kind. Its research team is enrolling 45 healthy people, ages 18 to 55, from the Seattle-area over the course of 14 months. “[The trial] does not include any form of the live virus, and the trial will not expose participants to the virus,” said Rebecca Hughes, senior media consultant with Kaiser Permanente. The trial is part one of three-phases that will study the...

Hillary Ballantine leaves little to mystery when knocking on doors for Elizabeth Warren. Ballantine, 28, of Keene, is usually swagged out in attire from the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign — from a navy blue Warren hat to a “the best president money CAN’T buy” T-shirt — in addition to toting a clipboard and brochures. Like any door-to-door canvassing, the environmental scientist and Antioch University New England alumna’s volunteering often draws no answer. But on Saturday morning — still four months out from the New Hampshire primary — some residents she met had already been reached by the campaign before. After...

After President Trump pointed out the rat-infested piles of trash strewn around Baltimore, a group of 100 volunteers conducted a massive clean-up effort. Though tons of trash were removed at no cost to the City’s inhabitants, the Baltimore Sun newspaper derided the volunteers. While conceding that Baltimore is cleaner and healthier as a result of the voluntary clean-up, the paper’s editors found fault with the fact that the person who organized the clean-up is a Trump supporter. “If it had been anyone else, we would’ve been okay with it,” the editors wrote. “But having a Trump supporter do a good...