Free Republic

On May 1, 2020, Democratic congressman Bobby Rush introduced bill H.R. 6666, otherwise known as the “Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone Act” (“TRACE Act”). Ostensibly, the TRACE Act will limit the spread of COVID-19 by creating “mobile health units” that will “conduct diagnostic testing… trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals” and then “support the quarantine of such contacts.” The TRACE Act allocates $100 billion in federal funds to facilitate this project. Rush says "increased testing and contact tracing is the only way we will get back normal and safely reopen our economy." Basically, Rush’s position is that America...

Editors’ note: The photograph above was taken in Minneapolis by Lonny Leitner, Director of Special Programs at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. David Horowitz is the author of Blitz: Trump Will Smash the Left and Win, which will be published tomorrow, June 2, by Humanix Books: Order Here. A black man is arrested and murdered in an act of heinous violence while handcuffed and defenseless. Three fellow officers, in close proximity to the killer cop, watch the crime, listen to the black man plea for his life and do nothing to stop it. For the next several days angry...

Do not, for one moment, make the mistake of believing that the violence and vandalism we are seeing in recent riots area are about the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. This is not to say that there are not protestors among the groups that are genuinely outraged, and who seek to peaceably assemble to petition the government for a meaningful change to police policy and demand justice, all of which is explicitly protected by the First Amendment to our Constitution. But it is to say that any lawful means of protest ends when...

Savagery is spreading with lightning speed across the United States, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state. Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic, one that makes the recent saccharine exhortations to “stay safe” and the deployment of police officers to enforce outdoor mask-wearing seem like decadent bagatelles. This particular form of viral chaos was inevitable, given the failure of Minneapolis’s leaders to quell the city’s growing mayhem. The violence began on Tuesday, May 26, the day after the horrifying arrest and subsequent death of George Floyd. On the...

Senicide is not a new disinfectant or the latest drug touted as a cure for the Chinese coronavirus, but instead is the systematic killing of the elderly. It’s specific to the elderly, as opposed to genocide, the extermination of entire peoples on racial, religious, national, or ethnic grounds. Another term, when used generally and not specific to Nazi atrocities, is holocaust, slaughter on a mass scale. What have we been witnessing? Nursing homes care for the elderly and infirm in our society. These vulnerable citizens have fared poorly during the Wuhan virus pandemic. As Forbes reports, 2.1 million Americans, representing...

I have not watched any of the videos out of Minneapolis or listened to any of the commentary. I have not watched because I resent having to watch only one genre over and over again. This is the genre in which a white antagonist, presumed guilty at the outset, kills or injures a black protagonist, presumed innocent. More than 15,000 Americans were murdered in 2019, but no movies for national release were made about blacks killing blacks, the most common scenario. Nor were any made about blacks killing whites, Hispanics, or Asians. In fact, these movies are generally suppressed. No,...

From the very beginning of our country, faith played a key role in shaping our culture and our country. Unlike many countries, the founders did not want to establish any state religion. Such a commitment would have created an obstacle to the union they were working to create. But the founders never imagined that America would evolve to a point where churches would be closed while pot stores, liquor stores, and abortion clinics would be seen as more essential to be open during our coronavirus lockdown than churches. Since our country’s founding through the World War era, the importance of...

Many in the media are racing to report the story of a Christian singer who has lost his faith. But there’s another, less told story also going around: That of a country singer loving God in the midst of suffering. American Idol star and Grammy-award winning singer Carrie Underwood is appearing in a new video series called “Mike and Carrie: God & Country” with her husband, former professional hockey player Mike Fisher. Released by the Christian nonprofit I Am Second, the four-episode show promises to give “insight as to how they, with two distinct personalities and careers, stay grounded in...

Planned mayhem is for me the accurate way to explain what has gone on across the country this weekend. The Left lost on the phony "Russia" hoax, and on "impeachment", and has been losing on the "pandemic" & the lock downs, is doomed to lose with Biden and had no "burning" agenda to promote. So they HAD to create one, manufacture one. This is supposed to be their new "1968", and we all know how that went for the Left. Today seems a "sober" Monday, but that is not coming from me. It's the mood I see coming from everywhere...

George Floyd should have been alive today. George Floyd would have been alive today if his humanity was recognized, valued and respected. George Floyd should have been protected by those who swore an oath to uphold the law and help the communities they serve. George Floyd is no longer with us because even in the middle of a global pandemic, police brutality has not ceased. COVID-19 is ravaging us, making it difficult to breathe, and yet systemic racism has been tightening its grip on our throats for years. Racism is trauma, passed from generation to generation. Enough is enough. Just...

The partisan divide over mandatory face coverings is one of the more interesting, if sad, twists of the Chinese coronavirus era. On the one hand, the mask police insist that not wearing one is equivalent to being a literal Typhoid Mary and trying to purposefully kill everyone’s grandma. On the other, many conservatives, including this one, see it as yet another unnecessary and overblown reaction to what has been a pandemic defined by unnecessary and overblown reactions, and a particularly unsightly one at that. Regardless of how you come down on the issue, nobody should condemn anyone for their choice...

Watching the Minneapolis Police Department abandon its precinct to the torch and crowbar-wielding peaceful protesters in that Democrat-run state and city, my first thought was that I should disarm. After all, I have been reliably informed by our smart and competent elite betters that I don’t need firearms because the police will protect me, and I am sure that even though they can’t defend their own police station they will absolutely defend me, my family, and our pet unicorn Chet. Confusingly, I have also been reliably informed that the police are evil monsters of racism and badness and that they...

The coronavirus lockdown is seemingly down and out, as many Democrats in charge of big cities -- including several who once insisted on strict quarantine measures -- line up to champion the nationwide mass demonstrations over the in-custody death of George Floyd, sans social distancing. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo lashed out at protesters calling to reopen the state earlier this month, saying at a news conference, "you have no right to jeopardize my health ... and my children's health and your children's health." Cuomo's directives have been enforced throughout the state: A New York City tanning salon owner told...

I know this sounds crazy, but Donald Trump will not be president forever. In fact, he hasn’t been president that long . . . meaning, it was not so long ago that we were dealing with an Obama administration — and its media-Democrat pom-pom squads — that regarded limited-government conservatives, Second Amendment proponents, and many veterans returning from overseas military service as “right-wing extremists” who posed a threat of “domestic terrorism.” Someday, maybe sooner than we’d like to think, Democrats are going to be in power again. Do we really want to give them enhanced federal powers to harass ideological...

I can’t believe they even tried it. On Saturday morning Minnesota officials came out with an audacious and absurd explanation for the looting and arson that struck Minneapolis this week. Apparently it was white supremacists from out of state who pretended to be actual protestors in an attempt to discredit the protest. The evidence? A vague claim and a lie. It turns out that most of those arrested were actually Minnesota residents. The hypocritical mental gymnastics from the liberal media in the past 72 hours were amazing enough to earn a perfect 10 from the stingiest East German judge. First,...

In 1989, District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry, Jr. insisted that his city was basically crime-free except for all the murder. "Except for the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country," he told a luncheon audience at the National Press Club. On May 28, MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi said something just as mind-bogglingly absurd. As violent riots erupted in sections of Minneapolis over the death of George Floyd, Velshi insisted that the protests were basically peaceful. "I wanna be clear on how I characterize this," Velshi said, as buildings literally burned to the ground in...

You’d be forgiven if you hadn’t noticed. His verbal bombshells are louder than ever, but Donald J Trump is no longer president of the United States. By having no constructive response to any of the monumental crises now convulsing America, Trump has abdicated his office. He is not governing. He’s golfing, watching cable TV and tweeting. How has Trump responded to the widespread unrest following the murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for minutes as he was handcuffed on the ground?

President Trump recently made news when he protested the mailing of voting ballots in some states and expressed concerns about the increasing potential for voter fraud as a result. Twitter labeled the tweet in need of fact-checking and set off a media firestorm. The fact of the matter is that we need to look beyond the partisan labels when considering whether we should suddenly alter how we vote and focus our attention on protecting the voice of the American people. For example, a ballot vendor mistakenly shipped ballots intended for South Carolina voters to Maryland recently, reinforcing the risk involved in orchestrating...

“That is not a protest. It is not a statement. It’s people, a handful of people, taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes — and they need to be treated as criminals,” said the commander in chief. “. . . A handful of criminals and thugs who tore up the place.” The president, of course, was Barack Obama, talking about rioting that followed the protests over Freddie Gray’s 2015 death in Baltimore. The difference is that Obama faced a fraction of the backlash from the liberal media as Donald Trump did for tweeting the same word to describe...

COVID-19 has dominated every aspect of our lives, and in fact, it’s even revealing why the upcoming elections matter. At iVoterGuide, we hope these six reasons will encourage you in your passion for our country’s government. Reason #1: COVID-19 reminds us that elected officials can make life and death decisions.In America, “we the people” govern, and we get the government we deserve. Elected officials can make life and death decisions that affect massive numbers of people, the viability of the entire economy and the future of generations. Elections aren’t just about “politics.” They are about life, death and the future....