Free Republic

On Sunday, President Joe Biden made history when he dropped out of the race via a post on X (Twitter) just 107 days before the 2024 Election. In a follow-up post 30 minutes later, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take his place. “Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way,” tweeted Trump vice-presidential hopeful Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH. Joe Biden has been the worst President in my lifetime and Kamala Harris has been right there with him every step of the way....

A former FBI agent convicted of espionage for Russia and serving a life sentence in a Colorado Supermax prison has died at the age of 79. The bureau confirmed Monday that Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive in his supermax federal prison cell at the ADX in Florence, Colorado around 6.55am. A cause of death has not yet been released, but officials say there is no threat to the public. Hannsen became notorious in the United States when he was arrested in 2001 and pleaded guilty to selling highly classified materials to the Soviet Union and later Russia for more than...

At approximately 8 PM on Sunday, February 18, 2001, there was a knock on my front door. At the time I was a Special Agent (SA) with the FBI, so imagine my shock when I opened the door and found the two top officials in the Division on my doorstep. I knew this couldn't possibly be good news, but they quickly sought to reassure me. "Everything is all right, but Bob Hanssen has been arrested." All right? Bob Hanssen was my brother in law, and a longtime counterintelligence (CI) official at FBIHQ, privy to a vast range of sensitive intelligence...

President Biden urged the nation to unite in a rare Oval Office address on Sunday night – a day after a gunman tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally. “My fellow Americans, I want to speak to you tonight about the need for us to lower the temperature in our politics and to remember that while we may disagree, we are not enemies, we are neighbors, we are friends, coworkers, citizens, and most importantly we are fellow Americans,” the 81-year-old president said. “Yesterday’s shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania calls on all of us...

Actor and film director Mel Gibson has written a letter of encouragement to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò after the Vatican announced that the retired papal nuncio has been excommunicated. BeyondWords (LifeSiteNews) — Editor’s note: The following letter from Mel Gibson to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò appeared first at the website of Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli. It has since been promoted by Archbishop Viganò on X. LifeSite has also received direct confirmation from Mel Gibson that he did write the letter. ~~~ Dear Archbishop, I’m sure you expected nothing else from Jorge Bergoglio. I know that you know he has...

Several Catholic organizations have prevailed, at least temporarily, in their efforts to block the Biden administration from enforcing a rule that would require them to provide their employees with accommodations for elective abortions in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. In an opinion released Monday, federal Judge David Joseph granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Biden administration from enforcing a rule interpreting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to require employers to provide their employees with accommodations in order to obtain an abortion against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Roman Catholic Dioceses of Lafayette and Lake Charles...

Pew’s recent report on Catholics in the United States notes that around 20 percent of U.S. adults describe themselves as Catholic. Of this number, only three in ten say they attend Mass weekly or more often, which means that seven in ten Catholics are not practicing their faith. This is necessary context to consider the number of Catholics in the poll, six in ten, who think that abortion should be legal. To illustrate this distinction, consider an earlier Pew report from May 2022, which noted that: Among Catholics who attend Mass at least once a week, about two-thirds (68%) say...

A new law in Hong Kong is raising fears of deteriorating human and religious rights in the special administrative region of China. Under the recently passed legislation — known as Article 23 — members of the clergy could be prosecuted for not reporting "treasonous" acts to the police if they hear subversive words against the government during confession. Before the law passed in March, 16 international religious liberty experts released a joint statement expressing "profound and grave concerns" about the implications of the rule. The group is concerned that Article 23 directly threatens religious freedom, particularly the confidentiality of the...

While a petition calling for the firing of Harrison Butker, one of the greatest placekickers in the NFL, has gained more than 100,000 signatures, sales of his jersey are skyrocketing. Why all the controversy?

A Catholic school in North Carolina was within its legal rights to dismiss a substitute teacher because he was in a same-sex marriage, a federal appeals court ruled.A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday that Charlotte Catholic High School could fire Lonnie Billard for marrying a man.Circuit Judge Pamela Harris, an Obama appointee, authored the majority opinion, concluding that the Catholic school was protected by the "ministerial exception," noting that Billard's employment involved an inherently religious element."We conclude that the school entrusted Billard with 'vital religious duties,' making him a 'messenger' of its...

Less than 1% of American Catholics agree with all three of the Catholic Church's teachings on the sanctity of life issues, showing the widespread existence of what some call "cafeteria Catholics" in the United States, according to an analysis. Researcher Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University who publishes articles on a Substack called "Graphs About Religion," shared data Thursday about the beliefs of Catholics in the U.S., focusing on their views on abortion, capital punishment and euthanasia. Burge attributed the motivation to conduct the research to comments made by Cardinal Wilton Gregory of the...

Catholics in the U.S. have swung dramatically against President Biden in recent years, now boasting a significant statistical break towards his GOP challenger. Pew Research released on Apr. 30 a report exploring support for presidential candidates sorted by religious affiliation. The poll found that 55% of Catholics support or lean towards supporting former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head against Biden. Conversely, only 43% of Catholics support Biden in the same one-on-one pairing. The 12% margin of support in favor of Trump marks a significant shift from 2020, when he held an extremely narrow lead — 50% to 49%. Biden...

The U.S. Department of Justice's Inspector General Michael Horowitz maintains that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing or demonstrate hostility toward religion by circulating an internal document warning about connections between "racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists" and "radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology." Horowitz submitted a report to several committees of U.S. Congress Thursday. The document looks into the "actions and events, including any underlying policy direction" that served as the basis for the FBI Richmond Field Office circulating a memo in January 2023 addressing a purported link between "Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) and 'Radical Traditionalist Catholic (RTC)'...

While the number of Catholics worldwide slightly increased from 2021 to 2022, new statistics show that the number of priests continues to decline. The Vatican released the 2024 Pontifical Yearbook and the 2022 Statistical Yearbook of the Church earlier this month. Edited by the Vatican Secretariat of State's Central Statistical Office, the publications are being distributed in bookstores and published by the Vatican Printing Press.The publications highlight "statistical data to assess the main trends affecting the evolution of the Catholic Church worldwide," reports Vatican News.The latest edition of the Statistical Yearbook shows the number of baptized Catholics in the world...

Catholics in the U.S., one of the country's largest single Christian groups, hold far more diverse views on abortion rights than the official teaching of their church. While the Catholic Church itself holds that abortion is wrong and should not be legal, 6 in 10 U.S. adult Catholics say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a newly released profile of Catholicism by Pew Research.

A video posted by reliable Fox News reporter Matt Finn shows illegal immigrants ravaging a mountain in Sunland Park, New Mexico, while Border Patrol agents apparently won’t defend it, calling the mountain the Cartel’s. Finn wrote in the video post, “Unbelievable. A Border Patrol agent in Sunland Park, NM just told us a mountain in the United States is ‘not ours’ anymore. ‘It’s theirs.’ Referring to Cartels. We literally spent five minutes on Mt. Cristo Rey and a group of illegals breezed by.” Mt. Cristo Rey is adorned by a 29-foot-tall statue of Jesus, which was erected in 1940 after...

Another Ramadan is upon us, and as is always the case, the eager-to-be-fooled infidels are out in force. A Catholic diocese in Italy has just called upon priests and laypeople to seek out opportunities to participate in Ramadan observances, as a gesture of goodwill toward Muslims. When will Muslim leaders tell Muslims to participate in Christian worship to show friendship with Christians? Don’t hold your breath. The Catholic Herald reported Friday that the Italian diocese of Bergamo is “instructing its priests to participate in Islamic rituals, citing Pope Francis’ directives on interreligious dialogue.” Diocesan officials issued a directive “urging priests...

Catholic persecution is still rising around the world, especially in Africa. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) found that 132 of those in the Catholic clergy and nuns were arrested, kidnapped, and murdered in 2023. All of the stats are likely higher. ACN only counts arrests related to persecution. We all know places will trump up charges to avoid persecution accusations. The stats do not include members of the Catholic Church. Terrorists slaughtered almost 200 Catholics across Nigeria and destroyed villages, leaving tens of thousands homeless from December 23-26. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has intensified his war on the...

Congressional lawmakers released an interim report Monday titled, "The FBI's Breach of Religious Freedom: The Weaponization of Law Enforcement Against Catholic Americans," providing a glimpse into the lengths the FBI has gone to cast those with conservative religious beliefs as threats apparently requiring state surveillance and "mitigation." The new report from the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government indicates the FBI: "abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists"; "relied on at least one undercover agent to develop its assessment"; "proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and...

Democrats hit the brakes on plans to subpoena conservative legal scholar Leonard Leo and billionaire Harlan Crow during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday, scoring a win for the integrity of the Supreme Court. The move came after Republican Ranking Member Lindsey Graham warned Chairman Dick Durbin and other Democrats that their efforts to intimidate friends and acquaintances of conservative Supreme Court Justices, specifically Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito under the guise of "ethics reform," would backfire. "I promise you, everything that was working well with the committee is now in jeopardy," Graham warned. "You’re going to...