Free Republic

Pressed to clarify the policy, Macenka said that repeat positive cases "are counted as separate cases only if the tests occur on different days. If [a Virginia resident] tested Monday and Tuesday and both are positive, that's two positives." That policy may serve to sharply drive up case numbers, which may in turn significantly delay the re-opening of the state. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has stated that the state will begin its first phase of re-opening only when state officials have logged 14 straight days of declining case numbers and hospitalizations. Last month State Health Commissioner Oliver claimed that the...

This is heartbreaking! "@GovernorVA my son is special needs and lives in a residential facility. We have not seen him in two months due to this hoax. Your order now goes to June 10th, another month without seeing him. He asks us everyday if he did something wrong. Can you answer this?" Remember when the left accused Trump of separating children from their families? Apparently, it doesn't count when the Left does it. Her son's name is Caden Bray. If you're on Twitter, please use the hashtag #CadenBray whenever you have extra space to do so. If you could give...

The Justice Department sided with a church suing Virginia Governor Ralph Northam (D) after the pastor was threatened with a fine and jail time for holding a 16-person service on Palm Sunday. Northam is famous for a posing in KKK-blackface in his college yearbook. Kevin Wilson, the pastor of Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island, was threatened with jail time or a $2,000 fine by police for violating Northam’s unconstitutional Coronavirus lockdown order. A total of 16 people attended the Palm Sunday church service on April 5 and were all spaced far apart from each other in a church that...

VIRGINIA — A solid majority of Virginia residents disapprove of the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, and an even greater majority disapprove of President Donald Trump's performance during the crisis, according to an informal reader survey Patch conducted Friday. About 60 percent of the survey's nearly 1,900 respondents said they are dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the federal response, compared with 31 percent who say they are either satisfied or very satisfied. Almost 67 percent of respondents said they are either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the president's performance, compared with 28 percent saying they are satisfied or...

Capitol Square closed for nearly two hours Friday afternoon while a group of about 20 people protesting Gov. Ralph Northam's "stay-at-home" order and calling for the government to "reopen Virginia" refused to leave after Capitol police asked them to disperse for violating the order that prohibits gatherings of more than 10 people. The group, which at first numbered between three and four dozen, according to Joe Macenka, spokesman for the Division of Capitol Police, arrived around noon Friday at the pedestrian plaza entrance of the Capitol at 10th and Bank streets. Around 1:15 p.m., some of the group broke off...

State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver addressed the media Friday as Gov. Ralph Northam looked on. Oliver said state law defines nursing homes and assisted care facilities as “a person,” shielding data on cases and deaths by facility as personal medical information. DANIEL SANGJIB MIN/TIMES-DISPATCH The number of COVID-19 deaths that Virginia counts in long-term care facilities nearly tripled overnight on Friday, rising to 311. The increase came as the state’s top health official shielded nursing homes and other facilities from disclosing cases and deaths, saying the facilities are defined as “people” under state law. The state’s tally of COVID-19...

On April 10, disgraced Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed five pieces of anti-gun legislation into law. Those measures criminalize the private sale of firearms, ration handgun sales to one a month, create a "red flag" gun confiscation scheme, punish property crime victims who fail to hastily report a firearm as stolen, and restrict how Virginia parents may store and introduce their children to firearms. Northam sent two pieces of anti-gun legislation back, including legislation that erodes the Right-to-Carry and the state firearms preemption statute, to the general assembly with governor's amendments. The General Assembly enacted both items of legislation...

A judge has ruled that a Virginia gun range must be allowed to open to customers despite a statewide executive order requiring nonessential businesses to close to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The order issued Monday by Lynchburg Circuit Judge F. Patrick Yeatts says federal and state protections on the right to bear arms outweigh any emergency authority held by Gov. Ralph Northam to order the gun range closed.

Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s office said Friday that Phase One of reopening the state under federal guidelines could last as long as two years as the state battles the novel Wuhan coronavirus. “I personally think Phase One will be a two year affair,” said State Health Commissioner Norman Oliver, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “There are a lot of people working on this, and I hope they prove me wrong, but I don’t see it happening in less than two years.” Phase One under federal recommendations feature a limited reopening of some businesses with strict safety restrictions, social distancing...

It has highlighted the class divide that globalization produces within countries such as America as well. The highly educated professional classes can work from home, and their jobs are relatively secure; the service class, on the other hand—the waiters and cooks and hotel maids and retail clerks and others — are out of their jobs and shit out of luck. Not to worry: the professional class will write all of them checks for $1,200. Let them eat cake, you know? ​In our nation’s capital region, DC and its suburbs, the divide is especially pronounced. Just before DC’s mayor and Virginia’s...

“We cannot and will not lift restrictions like one turns on a light switch,” Northam said of moving onto the first phase of recovery, which he called “Phase One.” “Easing too much too soon could jeopardize public health and consumer confidence,” he said. Phase One, state officials said Friday, still will involve keeping some businesses closed, while others reopen under “strict safety restrictions.” Phase One also will involve “continued social distancing, continued teleworking [and] face coverings recommended in public,” according to an outline of the plan made public Friday. How long that phase will last is unclear, but State Health...

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s office denied the governor had left the state for the Outer Banks after issuing a stay-at-home order. Rumors circulated social media that the Democratic governor had traveled to his second home in the Outer Banks, N.C., after signing an executive order asking Virginians to “remain at their place of residence,” with the exception of essential travel. Northam’s order was issued March 30 and is set to expire June 10.

Fundamental constitutional liberties at stake. Americans understand the extraordinary circumstances in which we find ourselves as a result of the China coronavirus. But we will not allow ourselves to become infected with the disease of Chinese authoritarianism. We have been willing to radically alter our normal routines and obey strict social distancing guidelines to get past the worst of this pandemic. Indeed, the American people have made extraordinary sacrifices and endured economic hardships unprecedented in our lifetimes to slow the virus’s spread. But it’s one thing to temporarily disrupt the normal pattern of our day-to-day lives and the economy in...

On Monday, 80 million Economic Impact Payment checks go out by mail. While stimulus checks have already gone out through direct deposit, this is the first round of stimulus checks going out by mail. Postal service inspectors and Virginia Coronavirus Task Force will be out in full force. “This is a top priority all the way at the top of our agency down," said Postal Service Inspector Michael Romano.

istrict of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser yesterday ordered a one-month extension of the state of emergency, as cases in the region grow at a rapid pace. Federal officials in the nation's capital expect a New York-like epidemic in the District, Maryland and Virginia, one that could potentially cripple the government.

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing the Commonwealth of Virginia over a law that requires someone to sign the envelope of another person's absentee ballot if that ballot is submitted by mail. Under Virginia law, any voter who submits an absentee ballot by mail must open the envelope containing the ballot in front of another person, fill out the ballot, and then have that other person sign the outside of the ballot envelope before it is mailed back. "In the midst of the pandemic and during a stay-at-home mandate, the witness requirement amounts to an unconstitutional burden on the...

The Communist Democrats, NWO freaks, and the media are trying to kill us. On Wednesday March 25, 2020 I was supposed to have dinner with First Lady Melania Trump and a number of fellow women fundraisers, at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, Florida. On that morning I awoke in Washington, DC with flu symptoms. This is the story of that journey – and I promise you – a truthful report of what is really going on out there with this pandemic and how politics is responsible for the damage to the U.S. economy and for the unnecessary deaths of Americans. Day 2:...

LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege! LIBERATE MICHIGAN! LIBERATE MINNESOTA!

The Spotsylvania Sheriff's Office has announced that five men from Philadelphia have been charged with first-degree murder stemming from a 2019 triple homicide in Spotsylvania. James Christopher Myers, 30, Durward Anthony Allen, 27, Jamal Kelvin Bailey, 30, Hugh Cameron Green, 30, and Montel Jaleek Wilson, 26, have been charged in the deaths of Michael Coleman, 39, Rachel Ozuna, 34, and Ozuna’s son, 14-year-old Kyrrus Ozuna, the Sheriff's Office said in a release Thursday. The release did not include any information about a suspected motive for the slayings. All of the suspects are currently in custody in various locations in Pennsylvania,...

Groups known as ReOpen Virginia, End The Lockdown VA and Virginians Against Excessive Quarantine said they have thousands of people who are gating at Virginia's Capitol Square at 11:30 a.m. There are more than 17,000 members of the REOPEN VIRGINIA group on Facebook. "It’s time to end this lock down, it’s gone on far enough & we are tired of the misinformation & fear mongering...Time to take our power back!!" the group "End The Lockdown" wrote. There were similar protests held in North Carolina and Michigan on Tuesday. In North Carolina, the Raleigh Police Department ordered crowds to disperse since...