Free Republic

Yuanyuan Zhu was walking to her gym in San Francisco on March 9, thinking the workout could be her last for a while, when she noticed that a man was shouting at her. He was yelling an expletive about China. Then a bus passed, she recalled, and he screamed after it, “Run them over.” She tried to keep her distance, but when the light changed, she was stuck waiting with him at the crosswalk. She could feel him staring at her. And then, suddenly, she felt it: his saliva hitting her face and her favorite sweater. In shock, Ms. Zhu,...

California estimates that more than half of the state — 25.5 million people — will get the new coronavirus over the next eight weeks, according to a letter sent by Gov. Gavin Newsom to U.S. President Donald Trump. “In the last 24 hours, we had 126 new COVID-19 cases, a 21 percent increase. In some parts of our state, our case rate is doubling every four days,” Newsom wrote in a letter dated Wednesday. Newsom asked Trump to dispatch the USNS Mercy Hospital Ship to the Port of Los Angeles through Sept. 1 to help with the influx of expected...

President Trump’s fear of Joe Biden seems well-founded, especially since Biden is now favored to move into the White House in 2021, by some estimates. “With Trump facing an unlikely reelection, this means it is most likely at this point Joe Biden will win the general election in November,” Washington, DC research firm Sandhill Strategies predicted in a March 16 analysis. The coronavirus outbreak has triggered a bear market in stocks and a likely recession, which is a death sentence for presidential reelection hopes. “No U.S. President has won reelection in recent history after a period of economic downturn,” Sandhill...

This follow-up to my March 12 coronavirus piece comes with the same important caveats, important enough that I’m stating them up front: I’m not here to alarm anyone, and I am not here to scoff. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know what our experts are saying, and this is me reporting what the experts are saying. Andrew Slavitt, Barack Obama’s former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), is quoting experts who say more than one million Americans are already doomed because the “virus was not contained.”“Currently experts expect over 1 million deaths...

Thursday night Seema Verma, one of the top members of the White House coronavirus task force and the current head of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, repeatedly dodged when Fox News’ Martha MacCallum grilled her over possible ventilator shortages. Tucker Carlson was so stunned by that exchange he invited Verma on his show Friday night and opened by saying, “I watched that exchange last night, and I must be honest with you, I was really troubled by it. Because you were asked a direct question by Martha MacCallum, ‘do we have enough ventilators in ICU units,’ and you...

(CNN)College students who find themselves out on a date gone wrong at bars in southeastern Florida may be able to turn to the bartender for help. Posters hanging in the restrooms of about a dozen bars and restaurants in Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale and Jupiter give instructions to women about alerting bartenders if they're in danger or uncomfortable. First, order a drink called the "Owl Shot." Then, depending on what's happening, say one of the three coded phrases displayed on the posters. Based on the code, here's how the bartenders will respond: 'Neat': Bar staff will escort you to your...

WASHINGTON - - While Super Tuesday left Democrats with a pair of front-runners President Donald Trump believes he can define and defeat, there are still some private worries in the White House. There is concern that the Democrats’ messy nomination contest may end up producing an emboldened version of the very man who once worried Trump so much as a foe that it led to the president’s impeachment. That would be Joe Biden. Trump and his team have spent the last year trying to lump the Democratic contenders together as left-wing radicals. Biden’s working-class appeal and more pragmatic policy approach...

Keeping the U.S. economy on its feet as coronavirus pervades American borders is up to consumers and how much they’re willing to go out and spend, especially at small and midsize businesses, supply chain management expert Hitendra Chaturvedi says. Chaturvedi, a professor at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, said he’s not worried about major U.S. firms’ resilience to partial, or even full-year profit flatlines, and instead sees protecting smaller companies as key. “Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) that are the heart and soul of this country are the ones that are going to be the hardest hit,”...

In a clear sign that they’re not truly worried about the COVID-19 threat, many Democrats are using it as another club to hit President Trump — facts be damned. At Tuesday’s debate, Mike Bloomberg smugly asserted, “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing.” Trump, he claimed, has “defunded Centers for Disease Control, CDC, so we don’t have the organization we need.” Joe Biden chimed in: “He cut the funding for the entire effort.” It’s a lie that can only sow fear: The CDC budget is higher than when Trump took office. Same for the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic presidential contenders are describing the federal infectious-disease bureaucracy as rudderless and ill-prepared for the coronavirus threat because of budget cuts and ham-handed leadership by President Donald Trump. That’s a distorted picture. For starters, Trump hasn’t succeeded in cutting the budget. He’s proposed cuts but Congress ignored him and increased financing instead. The National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren’t suffering from budget cuts that never took effect. MIKE BLOOMBERG: “There’s nobody here to figure out what the hell we should be doing. And he’s defunded — he’s defunded Centers for...

Japanese and Chinese at highest risk for Coronavirus What is your risk to get infected coronavirus? East Asians, Japanese, and Han Chinese are the most likely people to become severely sick by the coronavirus with a chance of more than 90% when exposed. Europeans only rank in the 50%, Africans in the 60% range, and considered low to medium. It also makes a difference if one is a smoker or non-smoker. The Travel and Tourism industry is in turmoil. Tourism leaders don’t want anyone to panic, but the story doesn’t yet have an end to it. At the same time,...

As Bloomberg’s VP, Hillary Clinton could get revenge against Trump: Goodwin “Watch for smoke signals from Chappaqua,” a Democratic friend said recently. “She wants back in.” She — there is only one political she — might be getting what she wants. The report that Hillary Clinton could become Michael Bloomberg’s running mate is one of those times when it is no exaggeration to use the word bombshell. Earthquake would also work, assuming the political marriage actually happens. For now, it’s a trial balloon, as demonstrated by the timing and the way the idea was leaked. A big red banner on...

Trump’s words, bullied kids, scarred schools The president’s rhetoric has changed the way hundreds of children are harassed in American classrooms, The Post found Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered "Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee, a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl: "This is Trump country."...

In the wake of the Iowa caucuses and heading into the New Hampshire primary, there is a dramatic shift in the Democratic primary race for president as Senator Bernie Sanders claims frontrunner status for the first time, overtaking former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll released today. Sanders gets 25 percent of the vote among Democratic voters and independent voters who lean Democratic, while Biden gets 17 percent, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg receives 15 percent, Senator Elizabeth Warren gets 14 percent, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg receives 10 percent, and...

Voters give the economy its best ratings in nearly two decades in the latest Fox News Poll -- and credit President Trump. And yet as his impeachment trial begins, Trump’s job approval holds steady, while half say the Senate should remove him from office. The poll, released Sunday, finds 55 percent give the economy positive ratings (excellent or good). It’s been 19 years since this many felt as positively (59 percent in January 2001).

There’s no denying that the healthcare system in the United States has been at the forefront of national discourse in the midst of the democratic presidential primaries. Of course, largely due to the fact that Bernie Sanders has made it his mission to draw attention to and change the fundamental brokenness of the current system. Now it should come as no surprise that calls for an overhaul of the way health insurance is provided — such as Bernie’s Medicare For All plan — have been met with staunch resistance not just from the left, but the more moderate, corporate friendly wing of the Democratic...

The Trump administration violated the law by withholding appropriated security assistance to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office said Thursday in a report. The independent watchdog said the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld the appropriated funds last summer. The report said U.S. law “does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.” “Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the [Impound Control Act],” GAO said. The withholding of the aid is central to the ongoing impeachment proceedings against President Trump. --This breaking news report will be updated.

The Trump administration’s decision to freeze the release of security assistance to Ukraine last year violated federal law, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said in a report Thursday. The independent watchdog said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) withheld the appropriated funds last summer, not as a programmatic delay but in order to advance the president’s own agenda. Doing so, the watchdog concluded, violates the Impoundment Control Act, a law that governs Congress's role in the federal budget process. “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted...

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri joined with a host of fellow Republicans Monday to introduce a resolution allowing the chamber to dismiss articles of impeachment against President Trump for lack of prosecution, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delays sending the case for trial. The resolution specifically would update Senate rules to allow the chamber to bring a motion dismissing the articles.

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said President Donald Trump would be forced to resign if the Senate were to call any one of four people to testify in the upcoming impeachment trial. Scaramucci, who served less than two weeks in the Trump administration in 2017, remarked that Trump couldn't "handle the heat of that testimony" Saturday morning as a panelist on MSNBC's AM Joy, hosted by Joy Reid. At the start of the discussion, Scaramucci went after Senate Republicans, whom he accused of "allowing" Trump to break the law. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell previously sparked outrage among...