Free Republic

No, the president of the United States should not be wearing a mask. Period. Not ever. If it brings you comfort to wear one, I have no beef with you. To each their own. Some feel safer with masks, while others feel safer with a legally concealed firearm. God bless America. You do your thing, and I’ll do mine. Nevertheless, the leader of the free world is an important symbol bigger than our individual comfort zones. The media knows this, and it’s why they’re so desperate to get President Trump behind a mask. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins knows it’s a game....

With the House passage of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's $3 trillion HEROES Act, COVID-19 policy has now officially transformed into presidential politics 2020. Let's recall that prior to the crisis, the nation appeared quite pleased with the leadership that President Donald Trump was providing. The economy was growing at a brisk pace, with job creation robust and unemployment rates at historic lows. In February, Gallup's monthly measure of national satisfaction hit 45 percent, the highest since 2004. During former President Barack Obama's eight years, it hovered between 20 percent and 30 percent. Then the coronavirus hit. The national satisfaction index dropped...

Besides Australia's call for an independent inquiry into the Wuhan virus outbreak, another issue at the center of this week's WHO meeting is Taiwan's membership. The World Health Organization’s decision-making body, the World Health Assembly, holds its annual meeting May 18-19. The meeting comes as coronavirus has infected more than 4.8 million people and killed more than 315,000 worldwide. The WHO faces two key decisions this week that are closely related not only to everyone’s health, but also to its survival.The first is a draft resolution, proposed by Australia, demanding WHO’s Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus initiate an “impartial, independent and comprehensive...

In a crisis, flexibility is king, especially for those in the classroom. But union bureaucracy makes it impossible to innovate. As public school teachers with a combined 33 years of experience, we know we’re supposed to be “union strong” and never air unions’ dirty laundry. But the coronavirus crisis has pitted unions against teachers, students, and administrators who just want to teach and learn.Our fellow teachers have gone above and beyond to ensure students don’t slip through the cracks during quarantine. We’ve seen teachers furiously posting to message boards and offering one-on-one assistance to students via videoconferencing.From unions, however, we’ve...

'You take rehab.com—our website traffic is up 382 percent in the past 30 days with people looking for treatment for either substance abuse or mental health.' This is a “pandemic within a pandemic,” according to addiction expert Tim Ryan, who’s watched the coronavirus outbreak exacerbate the preexistent opioid and mental health crises with devastating effect. Ryan, the star of A&E’s 2017 “Dope Man” special, is the founder of “A Man In Recovery Foundation,” which partners with Rehab.com. A former heroin addict, his mission is to assist others struggling with substance abuse.In a Friday interview, Ryan explained how the stresses of...

President Donald Trump dropped some news this afternoon. He’s taking hydroxychloroquine at the recommendation of the White House physician. He’s been taking it for a week-and-a-half now. He’s not infected with the virus, but he’s taking it as a precaution since he’s the president and sees scores of people every day.   "A lot of good things have come out about the hydroxy." @realDonaldTrump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine.— Howard Arenstein (@HowardArenstein) May 18, 2020 #BREAKING: Pres. @realDonaldTrump says "I'm taking hydroxychloroquine" against COVID-19.— Emily Finn (@EmilyRoseFinn) May 18, 2020 Trump asked what the evidence is that hydroxychloroquine helps re...

Any media discussion of coronavirus deaths typically centers on the ‘official’ raw number, which currently stands at over 90,000. Granted, there are questions about this number, particularly given the fact that someone who dies of a heart attack and has COVID-19 at the time is automatically included in the ever-increasing COVID-count. Would the heart attack victim have survived another day, or another week, had coronavirus not also been present? Maybe, and so apparently goes the rationale for including them in the count. The other, slightly more conspiratorial rationale is that our overlords have a vested interest in ticking the coronavirus...

The only way to learn anything from an experience is to have accurate information about it when you’re through it. It’s called “learning from your mistakes.” People do it all the time. It’s how we get better as human beings. Thomas Edison reportedly said, “I didn’t fail. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work,” about creating the lightbulb. Politicians, on the other hand, are incapable, or at least unwilling, of learning from the mistakes they’re making because they believe they’re benefiting from the disinformation. And we’re all going to suffer because of it. How many people have died from...

Editor's Note: Timothy Craig Allen, MD, JD, contributed to this column.Over 86,500 people have reportedly died in the United States from the Coronavirus, and the fear generated by those deaths is driving the public policy debate. But that number is a dramatic overcount. Our metrics include deaths that have nothing to do with the virus. The problem is even worse as the Centers for Disease Control over counts even some of these cases and the government has created financial incentives for this misreporting. Relying on these flawed numbers is destroying businesses and jobs and costing lives. “The case definition is...

Flexing unearned influence has exposed the thirst for control of their citizens. In Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf caught a whiff of his constituents working up the desire to step out and start living their lives once again. The idea of citizens exerting their freedoms and basking in the normalcy of liberty was too much for him to stand. On Monday he sent out a tweet storm, delivering a series of firm commands of how he intends to clamp down on those who might dare get the idea of doing things. ‘’Today I am announcing consequences for counties that do not...

https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Screen-Shot-2020-05-14-at-4.58.53-PM-998x725.pngMADISON, Wis. — Declaring that the state’s top health official wrongly bypassed legislative oversight, the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the Evers’ administration’s extended lockdown of the state.The 4-3 decision by the conservative-led court declares Wisconsin Department of Health Services Secretary-designee Andrea Palm’s Emergency Order 28 “unlawful, invalid, and unenforceable.”“Because Palm did not follow the law in creating Order 28, there can be no criminal penalties for violations of her order,” the ruling notes. “The procedural requirements of Wis. Stat. ch. 227 must be followed because they safeguard all people.”Palm’s extended order, issued before Evers’ first stay-at-home edict...

By their own standards, the House Democrats’ Round 4 “rescue package” is a flop. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi set herself up to fail by instructing her caucus and surrogates to insist that Congress prioritize testing, testing, and more testing in future rounds of coronavirus response funding. At the end of the day, Democrats scrounged up a budget for those tests amounting to less than 1 percent of the $3 trillion package Pelosi introduced this week. Instead of putting their money where their mouth is, they slapped together a leftist wish list dedicated to causes unrelated to the pandemic. It is...

This just in: Anthony Fauci is just one man. A very consequential man, a very influential man, a historically important man at the moment. But one man, nonetheless. This is worth remembering as he is lofted to the status of Health Policy King in some quarters and condemned as a sinister operative in others. Hypersensitivity is to be expected all around with the stakes so high. There is passion to open America, and countervailing passion to prolong restrictive policies. There is a swell of optimism, met on the daily battlefield by the cold waters of gloom. Amid competing agendas, the...

The racism narrative overshadowed the much more important point reporter Weijia Jiang highlighted, which is the media's consistent defense of China and downplaying of American exceptionalism. The media establishment has become an absolute clown show, with CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang cast as the ringleader during Monday’s press briefing circus. Instead of asking President Donald Trump any relevant question as a means to better inform Americans amid the pandemic, Jiang opted for grandstanding with a question about as frivolous as the infamous “Is Chinese food racist?”“You’ve said many times that the U.S. is doing far better than any...

Because of the coronavirus bailouts, the federal deficit is now expected to be $3.7 trillion for fiscal year 2020. This is a huge drag on Americans' earnings and retirement security. Coronavirus panic is hitting the global economy, and America is no exception. To patch over the shelter-in-place orders and compensate closed businesses, Congress has passed well more than $2.7 trillion in so-called stimulus, including subsidized loans to businesses, increased unemployment insurance, direct payments to Americans, and funding for hospitals and state and local governments.Because of this, the federal deficit is now expected to be $3.7 trillion for fiscal year 2020....

It’s a new day in America, that much is guaranteed. By now you’ve been told repeatedly how we’re living in a time like no other. Schools are empty, roads throughout most of our communities are quieter than normal, and the facemask fashion trends were certainly an unexpected twist to this year’s summer wardrobe. It is certainly a new day, but few would say things are better. Much like America in the days and months following the attacks of September 11th, our friends, family, and neighbors are beginning to ask how far we need to go in order to win the...

Paul Harvey first wrote a commentary with the same title in 1965. I think it is clearly time for me to update it for 2020. I'm a God-fearing and God-loving American patriot. I am a Jew who took Jesus Christ as my savior almost 30 years ago. Today, I feel the devil all around us, like never before in my lifetime ... in any lifetime. This coronavirus crisis has the devil's evil fingerprints all over it. Not certain I'm right? If I were the devil, if evil were my middle name, I'd love the deep state, the corrupt Washington, D.C.,...

The left's position on the nation's proper response to the pandemic, though shrouded in the language of compassion, is incoherent and morally repugnant virtue signaling. Since this calamity began, many national Democratic leaders, the left-wing media and various never-Trumpers have been more interested in smearing President Donald Trump -- no change there -- than helping to solve the myriad problems caused by the coronavirus. They wanted it both ways. President Trump was doing too much, and he wasn't doing enough. Before the outbreak, numerous Democrats were downplaying the virus and condemning Trump as a racist for his China and Europe...

Any tax-funded bailouts for higher ed need to be contingent upon urgent structural reforms, and a new paper from the National Association of Scholars provides the blueprint. Should universities receive taxpayer-funded bailouts? The answer depends on who you ask. According to Universities U.K., the lobby group for British universities, the answer is an unequivocal yes, even when the suggestion has caused some dithering and calls for a further probe into the Conservative-led government.The Russell Group Universities, the British version of the American Ivies, will be the hardest hit due to the latest crisis, according to one study. In the United...

That work, Harris said, has led to the current clinical trial, leveraging insights from research done at high altitude to design a treatment that, should it work, would kill coronavirus directly in the lungs and allow patients to be discharged from the emergency department to home. The key insight, he said, is that the lack of oxygen at high altitude mirrors the effects of COVID-19’s lung dysfunction on the cell’s mitochondria powerhouse. It is also well-known that nitric oxide, which improves blood flow in the lungs, is central to adapting to life at high altitudes and has antiviral benefits. “If...