Free Republic

Spain announced it would temporarily establish border controls for flights and ships from Italy as a row between the two countries over the influx of migrants into Ceuta intensified. Passport, nationality and visa checks would be conducted for visitors and maritime passengers arriving from Italy from midnight on Friday until Sept 7 "amid the persistent irregular migratory pressure" from Rome, the Spanish government declared. Spain said the measures would apply while Italy applied its own measures, which Rome said were motivated by the mass migration rush by 72,000 people to Spain's African exclave of Ceuta on July 30. Hours earlier,...

Eric Swalwell once dated Katie Miller, the woman now married to Trump's top deputy Stephen Miller, and the long-buried romance has reportedly surfaced at the center of the fight over the FBI's 'Fang Fang' files. Lawyers for the disgraced former Democratic lawmaker brought up the relationship as they battled to stop the Justice Department from making public its investigative file on his ties to suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang, according to the Sources Say newsletter. Fang, who fled to China in 2015 as the FBI closed in, spent years cozying up to rising California Democrats, helping bundle donations for Swalwell's...

“. . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” —El Gato Malo on Substack The days might still be long, but this is a dark season in our country’s politics. Everybody’s nervous and many are furious, and yet all that emotion goes nowhere, just eats you up while you watch and wait for signs that help is on the way. What would that help even look like? Maybe a concerted effort to bum-rush a whole lot of bad ideas...

Former NBA Draft first round pick (3rd overall in 2011) Enes Kanter Freedom, who has been an adamant opponent of LeBron James, the Chinese Communist Party, Nike, along with more political activism, which he believes blackballed him from the NBA, has officially declared himself a prospect for the 2027 WNBA Draft. Yes, I’m serious. In the aftermath of Sophie Cuningham making a definitive stance that women’s sports should remain female, many coaches and players have opened up the floodgates for men in their league. Golden State Valkyries forward Gabby Willliams even said, "I would welcome a trans athlete on my...

The NYPD is searching for a masked suspect seen on surveillance video vandalizing a church in Long Island City, Queens. What we know: Video shows the suspect jumping a fence into the courtyard of St. Rita's Roman Catholic Church on 11th Street, then taking a hammer from his pocket and smashing a Mother Mary statue. The statue was knocked off its pedestal and broke during the incident just after 1:30 a.m. on Aug. 1, police said. The suspect jumped back over the fence and fled the scene, police said. Local perspective: According to officials, this marked the fourth time since...

The frontrunner to win the Democrat Primary for Governor in Wisconsin is currently a woman by the name of Francesca Hong and she is completely out of her mind. She is running for governor with a platform of abolishing police and ICE, trashing American holidays, and threatening President Trump. BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales reacts to several videos of Hong as she breaks down this bizarre story.

They board flights from Central America bound for the United States, not to migrate but to source used cars. Operating a cross-border circuit, these drivers transport salvaged vehicles from American scrapyards to their home roads — giving junked cars a second life and fueling the local economy. Julio César Pisquiy Nimatuj was 12 when he first drove on a highway. He discovered that he enjoyed being behind the wheel. Decades later, Mr. Pisquiy, 44, is one of these migrants who drives for a living. Every driver has their own business model. Mr. Pisquiy buys the cars in advance at auctions...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop says Catholic Church must ‘offer refuge’ to ‘queer people in our congregations’The ‘Queer Commissioner of the German Bishops' Conference’ said parishes must become ‘safe places’ for ‘queer people,’ arguing the Church has fostered ‘prejudice, mistrust, and rejection.’ A German bishop has accused the Catholic Church of failing “queer people” by allowing “prejudice, mistrust,” and “rejection,” calling on the Church to “repent.”On August 2, Bishop Ludger Schepers, auxiliary bishop of Essen and the “Queer Commissioner of the German Bishops’ Conference,” made the criticism in a public statement published by German news outlet Kirche+Leben, one week after the attack...

The conflict may have slowed, but not stopped, Iran’s nuclear program, officials and experts said. Chief among President Trump’s reasons for launching the war in Iran was preventing it from building a nuclear weapon. More than five months in, officials and experts say, the conflict may have slowed Iran’s nuclear program but not stopped it. Because Iran has barred U.N. inspections of its most sensitive nuclear sites — a key part of any eventual peace deal — the precise fate of its highly enriched nuclear fuel is unknown. And despite strikes on three key nuclear sites in 2025 and 2026,...

Eric Swalwell leveraged his past romantic relationship with Katie Miller, wife of top Trump official Stephen Miller, to keep potentially embarrassing FBI files behind lock and key, a shocking new report revealed Thursday. The news that the disgraced former Democratic Congressman from California — who resigned after several women claimed sexual assault and rape — once dated the now-wife of a top conservative leader stunned Washington. “I was an intern working on Capitol Hill,” Miller posted on X about the situation. Then Katie Waldman worked as both an intern and communications director on Capitol Hill in her 20s before moving...

[Catholic Caucus] Latest Book by Fr. Claude Barthe Compares & Contrasts the Traditional & New Sacramental RitesIn 1969, A Short Critical Study of the Novus Ordo Missae was published with the signatures of two powerful cardinals, Bacci and Ottaviani. Nicknamed The Ottaviani Intervention, it quickly become a classic, and has never gone out of print. But... where was its companion volume? You know, the one about the other six sacraments? For, indeed, the reform of the Mass was accompanied by a profound overhaul of all the other sacraments—baptism, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, penance, and extreme unction (the last two renamed...

The decision reflects internal findings that the upcoming ‘Astra’ model may possess ‘critical cyber capabilities’ and follows a string of AI-testing incidentsOpenAI is pausing some activities involving an upcoming artificial-intelligence model, Astra, after internal evaluations led the company to conclude it “cannot rule out critical cyber capabilities,” the company said in a blog post on Friday. The announcement of the slowdown, which represents one of the first times an AI developer has publicly held back model development due to security concerns, follows a series of loss-of-control incidents that have raised alarm among cyberdefense professionals and AI-safety researchers. During evaluations over...

For eighteen centuries, Christianity never taught what most American evangelicals now believe about Israel.So where did it come from?In this video I (Olivia Swing) investigated the origins of Christian Zionism — the theology, the money, and the foreign influence operations actively targeting American churches right now. What I found was a paper trail hiding in plain sight, registered with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Ranked choice voting (RCV) fits within the Democratic Party’s presidential delegate selection rules, including proportional delegate allocation and the 15% “threshold.” Ranked choice voting can be used to select multiple winners, and is not inherently a majority-winner or winner-take-all system. As the Democratic National Committee and states consider how RCV might be used in the 2028 presidential primaries, this post explains how votes could be counted and delegates awarded. How are votes counted and delegates awarded in Democratic presidential primaries in general? Democratic Party rules require that candidates receive at least 15% of the vote in a state to earn...

An Islamic center in Westwood is working to rebuild trust after burglars broke in and vandalized its main hall with a hateful message, even as leaders say the center’s mission to serve the neighborhood will continue. The Cincinnati Islamic Community Center is a modest building in the neighborhood that holds a biweekly food pantry and a trauma workshop with young people in the inner city. Members said the break-in was not the first at the center, but the shock this time was not what was taken; it was the damage left behind. An Islamic center in Westwood is working to...

A Southern California nonprofit that runs domestic violence shelters has paid its longtime chief executive officer, a Hawaii resident, more than $1.6 million in salary and vacation over two years — far more than local peers. Experts in nonprofit oversight say 1736 Family Crisis Center CEO Carol Adelkoff’s out-of-state residency and compensation raise questions about board governance and ‘reasonable’ pay. Adelkoff said her compensation grew significantly over the last couple of years because she was paid unused vacation time that had accrued over the 40 years she has worked at the nonprofit. As public spending on homelessness has come under...

Those who first dreamed of artificial intelligence saw it as an instrument for the perfection of modern secular society. The IBM Pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair, where some of the earliest AI applications made their public debut, advertised a streamlined future in which technologically enhanced problem-solving was extended to all areas of life. Things have turned out somewhat differently. The AI era that began with the 2022 launch of ChatGPT often seems more consumed by theological concerns than by technical ones. The technology has given rise to a phantasmagoria of prophecies, heresies and false messiahs of the sort one...

White House officials are mulling an executive order that would target vaccines and autism amid a push by President Donald Trump to take more action on the issue, an administration official familiar with the deliberations told CNN. The potential order is expected to focus on the childhood vaccine schedule and autism research, though the scope and timing of the action have yet to be finalized and could still change. In recent months, Trump has pressed senior officials, including US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to prioritize greater scrutiny of vaccines — even as many of his...

When cisplatin came on the market in 1978, it revolutionized cancer care. Carboplatin, a related chemotherapy drug with fewer side effects, soon followed in 1986. Together, these two drugs have saved countless lives and are prescribed for up to 20% of cancer patients to treat ovarian, bladder, breast, lung, and other types of cancer. “They're the backbone for treatments for a lot of different types of cancer,” says Dr. Jacob Reibel, a medical oncologist at Dartmouth Cancer Center. And yet, in recent years, when some hospital pharmacists have gone to source these chemo drugs for patients, they’ve had difficulty. They’ve...

LA Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, whose sponsorship deal with a now-bankrupt green banking company is at the center of an NBA investigation, also had an undisclosed sponsorship agreement allegedly worth millions of dollars with the company that designed the Clippers' videoboard inside the Intuit Dome, former ESPN contributor Pablo Torre reported on his podcast "Pablo Torre Finds Out" on Thursday. Torre interviewed someone identified as an "anonymous high-level source under contract for Intuit Dome" who alleged that the sponsorship deal "was 1,000% a way to circumvent the salary cap. It was funneling money from the Clippers through Daktronics back to...