Free Republic

In October, two Santa Cruz siblings were violently removed from a relative’s home and forced into a family therapy program with their mother. After that, Maya and Sebastian, now 16 and 12, were not heard from until May 29, when they ran away from their mother’s home and went into hiding. “We finally got away,” Maya says in the first of a series of videos, taken with a shaky camera as the kids were driven away during their 3am escape. Since then, the kids have taken to Instagram to describe their experiences with reunification therapy, a controversial program that ostensibly...

Evegeniy Prigozhin, head of the notorious Wagner mercenary group, appeared to fling down a direct political and, possibly, military challenge to the Kremlin on Friday, June 23. In another video he declared that Russia’s grounds for invading Ukraine were false and accused the country’s senior leaders of systematically lying to President Vladimir Putin about the debacle.In another profanity-laced 30-minute video posted on his personal Telegram channel, Prigozhin effectively declared that Russia’s full-scale invasion and its ongoing war with Ukraine were illegal. Among other statements, which directly contradicted official Russian positions regarding the Ukraine war, Prigozhin flatly denied the Kremlin’s longstanding...

Rep. Lauren Boebert confirmed Thursday that she is now a grandmother and doesn’t have time for “spats” with members of Congress like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called her a “little bitch” on the House floor Wednesday. Boebert (R-Colo.), 36, let slip the joyful news while speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Thursday night about her shouting match with Greene (R-Ga.) over dueling impeachment resolutions targeting President Biden. “Sean, I did not put my life on pause and leave my four boys and my now-grandson to come here and just get in spats with people,” she said. “I came...

Team JAJO had some special –– and terrifying –– visitors while sailing in the Strait of Gibraltar as part of the 2023 Ocean Race on Thursday. A group of orcas, otherwise known as killer whales, surrounded the Dutch crew’s yacht, first circling the boat and then ramming into it. “This was a scary moment,” Jelmer van Beek, Team JAJO skipper, said, according to the Associated Press. “Three orcas came straight at us and started hitting the rudders. Impressive to see the orcas, beautiful animals, but also a dangerous moment for us as a team.” Some of Team JAJO’s crew banged...

The NJ Attorney General says Middletown is putting the physical safety of transgender students at risk by "outing" them to their parents. MIDDLETOWN, NJ — The state of New Jersey has now sued the Middletown school district, plus Marlboro and Manalapan, over their new transgender student policies. In Middletown, teachers are now required to notify parents if their child seeks to officially go by a different name or gender pronoun, or use a different bathroom in school. Marlboro and Manalapan-Englishtown Regional school boards approved similar transgender policies this week. But NJ Attorney General Matt Platkin says the districts are...

Part V: A Pinch of Incense to Modernism -- How Accepting Ecclesia Dei, etc. Poisoned PrinciplesSee all the previous posts in this series on Ecclesia Dei and its aftermath on our Modernism page. I started out this series bringing up principles. If someone calls you a person of principle, what do they mean? The American Heritage Dictionary defines principle as: A basic truth, law, or assumption.A rule or standard, especially of good behavior.The collectivity of moral or ethical standards or judgments.The adjective principled means "characterized by principle." So a person of principle or a principled person is one who holds...

The top two public health agencies in the United States conducted a joint study showing that the risk of developing autoimmune heart disease among the “fully vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) is a shocking 13,200 percent higher than it is among the unvaccinated. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered that compared to the background risk in the general population, the risk of myocarditis is 133 times greater in those who took the mRNA injections from either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna. Genesis Gold Group Researchers from several top universities...

ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “CBS Evening News” on Thursday evening ignored the bombshell IRS whistleblower allegations that Hunter Biden received preferential treatment from the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding probes into tax violations. On Thursday morning, House Republicans released transcripts of two IRS whistleblowers, one of whom provided evidence that Joe Biden was present when Hunter Biden pressured a Chinese business partner to send them millions of dollars, Breitbart News reported. A second whistleblower also said the DOJ interfered in the effort to investigate Hunter Biden for tax crimes, although Joe Biden’s attorney general recently claimed otherwise.

Ever since the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, theories have continuously emerged that questioned the official narrative. Some are ludicrous, such as the one about a cursed mummy onboard that was repeated by the NY Times shortly after the sinking. Some have legs, such as the notion that a German U-Boat sunk her in their quest for WWI sea domination. One theory in particular stands out as not only plausible, but potentially tied to the current tragedy unfolding in the news. According to Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies: Since no one is offering the conspiracy narrative of the submarine...

"The FBI verified its authenticity in November of 2019 by matching the device number against Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud ID," IRS whistleblower Shapley testified. The FBI knew the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware repair shop was authentic back in 2019. IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley Jr revealed in testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee that "in October 2019, the FBI became aware that a repair shop had a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden and that laptop might contain evidence of a crime." This was a full year before the laptop came to light via the New...

Hunter Biden identified himself as “heteroflexible” on a social networking and hook-up site geared towards people interested in the sexual practices of bondage, domination, sadism, masochism (BDSM), and other forms of fetishism. Hunter Biden’s profile on the website FetLife, short for fetish life, which is described as being like “Facebook for kinksters,” reveals his self-described sexual orientation to be “heteroflexible,” meaning that he is interested in having sex not just with women, but with other men. According to a definition of “heteroflexible” available on the FetLife website, “This term refers to people who are mostly attracted to the ‘opposite’ gender...

Medical residents from other states are receiving instruction at the University of New Mexico Center for Reproductive Health in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. One way that the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade last year, has impacted abortion care across the U.S. is in medical training. Obstetrics and gynecology students studying in states where abortion is banned can no longer receive integrated abortion care training into their years of study. Dr. Jody Steinauer, director of the University of California-San Francisco Bixby Center ... said that OB-GYN medical students now have to travel...

An exclusive report from Politico has uncovered former President Barrack Obama has been holding secretive meetings with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and several other Democrats. According to the report Obama has held “informal, but lengthy private meetings with groups of next-generation House Democrats.” The report revealed Obama met with several Democrat lawmakers such as Maxwell Frost of Florida, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Haley Stevens of Michigan and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.

Under a historic water crisis in the desert southwest, the Navajo Nation asked for a court order requiring the federal government to determine the Nation’s water needs and to devise a plan to meet those needs. In a 5-4 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court held that the United States owes no “affirmative duty” to the Navajo Nation to secure water, reversing a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The majority ruled that the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo, known to the Nation as the Old Paper, or Naal Tsoos Sani, established no federal obligation...

You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand the risks that a criminal defendant takes when sitting down for a television interview. And some of President Donald Trump’s critics, like ally-turned-opponent Chris Christie, claimed that Trump had incriminated himself in his interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, or even committed obstruction of justice on the air.But I see it differently: he “boxed in” the Department of Justice, pun intended.The strongest part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment is the transcript of a recoded conversation with a journalist in which Trump appears to refer to a defense-related document that he...

Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign team is expected to announce Friday he’s won the endorsements of more than half of Pennsylvania’s House GOP delegation.The ex-president’s Pennsylvania backing reportedly flows from Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler and John Joyce. Their show of support helps him draw further away from his Republican rivals seeking the party’s official endorsement.As of Thursday evening, Trump had received the backing of 56 of the 63 House Republicans who had so far endorsed a candidate, according to FiveThirtyEight, which is tracking congressional endorsements.Trump continues to declare his innocence in light of the recent...

Former President Donald Trump performs nearly six points better than Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) does in a hypothetical general election race against President Joe Biden, according to an Emerson College Polling survey.The poll, published Thursday, shows that Trump and Biden are neck-and-neck in a rematch of the 2020 election. While 43.5 percent of voters would back Biden, 43.4 percent would support Trump.The margin between the two was decided by one respondent, with 441 choosing Trump to 442 selecting Biden. Another 8.9 percent of voters would back a different candidate, while 4.2 percent are undecided.🇺🇲 2024 Presidential General ElectionJoe Biden: 44%...

Developing commercial fusion energy requires scientists to understand sustained processes that have never before existed on Earth. But with so many unknowns, how do we make sure we're designing a device that can successfully harness fusion power?We can fill gaps in our understanding using computational tools like algorithms and data simulations to knit together experimental data and theory, which allows us to optimize fusion device designs before they're built, saving much time and resources.Currently, classical supercomputers are used to run simulations of plasma physics and fusion energy scenarios, but to address the many design and operating challenges that still remain,...

A former New Hampshire state representative and the nation’s first transgender-identifying state lawmaker was arrested by police this week and charged for allegedly distributing child pornography. Stacie Marie Laughton, a Democrat who previously resigned twice from the New Hampshire state house, is now facing four counts of distributing sexually explicit images of children. Laughton was born Barry Charles Laughton, Jr. Nashua Police Department public information officer Sgt. John Cinelli said that police were called to respond to a juvenile incident on Tuesday and were then told that the former lawmaker had been distributing explicit images. On Thursday, police searched Laughton’s...

[Catholic Caucus] The Sin-Nod For A Sin-Nodal ChurchRedundancy is a great ploy for those who haven't the foggiest idea about which they are blathering, isn't it? The Vatican wonks are getting this tactic down to an art form, wouldn't you say?The Instrumentem Laboris has been released, comic sans font and all. It can be found here, in all its translations and formats. Mind you, these are official translations. For the purposes of this post, I'm going to examine the Word file, as word counts can be done quite efficiently. Word counts are a decent indicator of priorities. So let's jump...