Free Republic

"Lift Ev'ry Voice And Sing," commonly known as the Black national anthem, is expected to be performed live or played before every Week 1 NFL game, and the NFL is also considering a variety of other measures to recognize victims of police brutality during the upcoming season, a source familiar with the league's discussions told The Undefeated on Thursday.

Socialism has entered the mainstream of American politics, perhaps for the first time in our history. Socialists insist their model isn't the failed socialisms of the past; rather, they claim their model is the one place where socialism seems to work: Scandinavia. "I think that countries like Denmark and Sweden do very well," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has said her proposals "most closely resemble what we see...in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden." But what do we see in Norway, Sweden and other Nordic countries? Lars Lokke Rasmussen, former prime minister of Denmark, insists that those...

The president’s reelection campaign has set a fundraising record. On Wednesday, the campaign announced they had raised more than $266 million in the second quarter of 2020 in a joint effort with the Republican National Committee (RNC). Approximately $131 million from this total came from the month of June alone, which is the most raised in one month since 2016. The campaign raised $155 million in the last quarter, which is an increase of 71 percent from the first to the second quarter. The new record setting number comes as good news to the Trump campaign who has been out...

Seattle saw a staggering 525 percent spike in crime as a result of the violence that swept through the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, according to Mayor Jenny Durkan. Durkan’s emergency order booting protesters from the six-block cop-free zone makes mention of the “narcotics use and violent crime, including rape, robbery, assault, and increased gang activity” within the CHOP since it first emerged in early June. ... The CHOP crime spree includes the deaths of two black teens, ages 19 and 16, who were fatally shot in separate incidents.

July 2 (Reuters) - Florida shattered records on Thursday when it reported over 10,000 new coronavirus cases, the biggest one-day increase in the state since the pandemic started, according to a Reuters tally. Florida, with 21 million residents, has reported more new daily coronavirus cases than any European country had at the height of their outbreaks.

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is advising Pennsylvanians to stay home or stay safe if they do go out ahead of and during the July Fourth weekend. It’s also asking travelers coming from 15 states to quarantine for 14 days upon their arrival in the Keystone State. A news release from Wolf’s office on Thursday said anyone entering Pa. from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah “will need to quarantine for 14 days”. It did not say, however, how that directive would be enforced. More: Kids should wear masks...

Are you tormented by the question, ''Is this the summer I should have bought myself a 200-foot oceangoing motor yacht?'' I ask myself this question every time I sail out of the Belle Haven Marina here on the placid Potomac in my 19-foot rental Flying Scot and snag the centerboard in the muck of the ever-lengthening sand bar south of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. But my answer, which is also invariably the answer of my bank, is always a resounding ''No!'' These enormous, opulent tubs are certainly impressive (a 200-foot coal barge, I might add, is also impressive, especially when...

https://www.scribd.com/document/467746700/Ghislaine-Maxwell-Indictment You know what is very conspicuous…Notice that the government did not accuse, nor did the Grand Jury find anything to do with Pedo Island. Now ask yourself, why???? My guess is, the big guys (Billy Boy, the Prince, maybe the Chief Justice, and who all knows who else) all played there and the government did not want any of that “in scope”. So, by reading the indictment, we see they have a very limited time frame (only a couple years in the late 90’s) and only four locations (NY, FL, NM and England) leaving out the Clinton years and...

Manhattan apartment sales in the second quarter fell by 54%, the largest percentage decline in 30 years, according to a report from Miller Samuel and Douglas Elliman. The median sales price fell 18% to $1 million, which is the biggest decline in a decade. There were only 1,147 sales in the quarter — the lowest number on record, according to Compass. SNIP

The country's top intelligence officials on Thursday held a classified briefing with congressional leaders amid demands for more information on the reports that Russian agents offered Taliban-linked militants in Afghanistan thousands of dollars in bounties for killing American troops. Top intelligence officials, including CIA chief Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, held the briefing Thursday afternoon with members of the so-called “Gang of Eight”: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the top Republicans and Democrats on the two intelligence committees. The Capitol Hill meetings come as President Trump has been...

In a recent interview, Dr. John Ioannidis had a harsh assessment of modelers who predicted as many as 40 million people would die and the US healthcare system would be overrun because of COVID-19. =========================================================================== Dr. John Ioannidis became a world-leading scientist by exposing bad science. But the COVID-19 pandemic could prove to be his biggest challenge yet. Ioannidis, the C.F. Rehnborg Chair in Disease Prevention at Stanford University, has come under fire in recent months for his opposition to state-ordered lockdowns, which he says could cause social harms well beyond their presumed benefits. But he doesn’t appear to be...

Volo Auto Museum director, Brian Grams says the General Lee display is not going anywhere. The display features the last surviving 1969 Dodge Charger from the first season of the "Dukes of Hazzard" television show, The Daily Herald reports. Grams says the vehicle is a symbol of television history. This comes as Confederate flags and statues are being taken down across the country. "We feel the car is part of history, and people love it," Grams said. "We've got people of all races and nationalities that remember the TV show and aren't offended by it whatsoever. It's a piece of...

The thirst among Republican voters isn't even for policy. It's for seeing the politicians they elected join the fray. I’ve been hammering away at conservatives and Republicans for failing to defend the symbols of national pride the woke leftist mob has been tearing at in recent weeks. Yesterday on the “Brian Kilmeade Show,” I admitted to letting my anger get the best of me a bit. Brian said I was speaking not as a publisher but as an American — and that’s fair. But part of my frustration is that this is such an obvious challenge that anti-American leftists and...

President Trump signed an executive order making federal hiring "merit-based," which means skills and competency for a job will take precedence over a college degree for many types of jobs. In making this change, the White House believes it is playing catch-up to the private sector. "An over reliance on college degrees excludes capable candidates," Trump's order stated. It was signed June 26. But the change to merit-based hiring may become a monumental task for federal agencies. It might mean rewriting job ads that emphasize competencies over degrees, as well as adopting technology that can translate an applicant's experience into...

Customs and Border Protection plans to deploy up to 200 autonomous surveillance towers as it expands its work with the portable, off-the-grid systems into a program of record. The towers, supplied by contractor Anduril, are designed as unmanned sentinels along the Southern border with Mexico that operate autonomously in remote areas where grid power is not available. The agency has been testing the technology for a couple of years. CBP tested four of the towers in the San Diego region in early 2018, and has bought 56 additional towers since, it said in its statement. Ultimately, CBP wants to procure...

The USMCA is now in full effect. It replaces the decades old North America Free Trade Agreement. According to the USDA, Canada and Mexico were our top two trading partners in 2019. They also say that the USMCA contains significant improvements to rules of origin, ag market access, and labor issues. The U.S. Treasury Department's Monica Crowley believes that those improvements will have a very positive impact on our farmers and ranchers. "President Trump promised that he would scrap NAFTA, which was a horrendous trade deal, particularly for our nation's farmers... He promised to scrap that and replace it with...

A Florida sheriff says he’ll deputize lawful gun owners in the event BLM protesters overwhelm local police forces, according to WTSP. Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels announced in a Tuesday video that he will “make special deputies out of every lawful gun owner” in the county if he has to. In the three-minute video, the northwest Florida sheriff calls out “the mainstream media” and protesters as godless dissidents. He tells people to not “fall victim to this conversation that law enforcement is bad, that law enforcement is the enemy of the citizens that we’re sworn to protect and serve.” Daniels...

... 75,000 “excess deaths” during that period, 17,000 more than the number officially attributed to covid-19, the disease the virus causes. While several experts said some of the excess deaths in the analysis were almost certainly unrecognized fatalities from covid-19, the review suggests that many patients suffering from serious conditions died as a result of delaying or not seeking care as the outbreak progressed and swamped some hospitals. Normally, heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. But in the early months of the pandemic, some hospital departments were nearly devoid of the heart, cancer, stroke...

Full employment is 4-5% If unemployment keeps dropping by two percentage points per month we'll be at full employment by election day. Even at just one percentage point per month, we'll be at 6%.

I am not opposed to an individual choosing to wear or not wear a mask (there are legitimate arguments and concerns on both sides of the issue) or a business choosing to require or not require them. I am opposed to overreaching “mandates” from unelected bureaucrats who think they should dictate to people and businesses how they live and operate. This is a democracy not a dictatorship. The government answers to you, not the other way around. As such, in these unprecedented times of government abuse of power, I encourage you to make the decisions you feel are appropriate for...