Free Republic

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...

Daily Readings from the USCCB“The lamp of the body is the eye. If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light; but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness. And if the light in you is darkness, how great will the darkness be.” Matthew 6:22–23Every Scripture passage, in a spiritual sense, can teach us many lessons. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, offers one interpretation to the passage quoted above by saying that the “eye” in this passage refers to your intention and “your whole body” refers to...

The California Senate has approved a bill that would prohibit school districts from requiring school officials to share information about a student's sexual orientation and gender identity with the child's parent, drawing concerns from Christian and parental rights groups. On Monday, the Democrat-controlled California Senate passed Assembly Bill 1955 in a 29-8 vote. Support for the legislation fell along party lines, with all votes in favor of it coming from Democrats and all opposition coming from Republicans. The legislation includes a provision declaring that "[a]n employee or a contractor of a school district, county office of education, charter school, or...

A disturbing find on a broken-down bus led to the arrest of one man and the rescue of dozens of abused animals. Pennsylvania’s Eastern Adams Regional Police Department discovered the converted school bus disabled and stuck in traffic Saturday, according to WPMT-TV in York. Officers ran the identification of the driver, Shawn Hirschbine, and arrested him on an outstanding warrant out of West Virginia. Authorities then searched the bus and a trailer it was pulling, uncovering a disgusting situation that nobody expected. According to WPMT, nearly 40 animals were found crammed in squalid living conditions. Dogs, ducks, chickens, turkeys, a...

Accomplice media go all-in on ‘horrible’ Donald Trump story as they run interference for frozen, befuddled Biden.The same dishonest corporate media that want you to believe Joe Biden didn’t freeze up and had to be helped off the stage by a former president has spent an insane amount of time and energy this week reporting on Donald Trump’s thoughts on Milwaukee. “Donald Trump made a brazen bid for support in the vital swing state of Wisconsin on Tuesday by declaring his affection for its biggest population centre, Milwaukee, just days after denigrating it as a horrible city,” the Guardian reported....

Los Angeles just opened a state-of-the-art luxury hotel for the city’s homeless and, unlike voting, will require a photo ID to participate.On Wednesday, city officials opened the brand new 19-story residential high-rise with 278 units that cost as much to build as a five-star resort. To lease an apartment in the downtown luxury tower, however, homeless residents must provide their “photo identification, and social security card.” Repeat Los Angeles voters, however, don’t need any photo ID to turn in their ballots.To lease one of these apartments in the new homeless high rise, you have to show PHOTO ID and SOCIAL...

How much influence, if any, should the Bible have on American public policy? There is a wide divergence in the answer to that question, depending on who is asked. Last week, Pew Research Center reported on such differences. They write about those on the right: “Most Trump supporters (69%) would like the Bible to have at least some influence on the laws of the U.S., including 36% who say it should have ‘a great deal’ of influence.”

... TOPEKA — Attorney General Kris Kobach filed a civil lawsuit Monday against pharmaceutical company Pfizer, alleging that “Pfizer misled the public that it had a ‘safe and effective’ COVID-19 vaccine,” violating the state’s Consumer Protection Act. The state seeks “civil monetary penalties, damages, and injunctive relief from misleading and deceptive statements made in marketing its COVID-19 vaccine,” Kobach said. In the complaint, Kobach alleges that Pfizer willfully concealed, suppressed and omitted material facts relating to the COVID-19 vaccine, the “most egregious” ones regarding safety of the vaccine for pregnant people, in regard to heart conditions, its effectiveness against variants...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Friday that there had been a “great slowdown” in U.S. arms and ammunition shipments, and said he publicly criticized the White House after months of quiet frustration. As Breitbart News reported, Netanyahu posted a video to social media earlier this week in which he thanked the Biden administration for its support, but urged it to stop withholding arms and ammunition. The White House claimed that it did not know what he was talking about, but Republican senators filled in the details: the Biden administration had been using bureaucratic tricks to delay weapons shipments since...

Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that prohibits people who are subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from having firearms, ruling that the measure does not violate the Second Amendment. The court ruled 8-1 that a person who has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. "When a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical...

Two men, initially from Venezuela, are accused of strangling and raping 12-year-old Jocelyn Nungaray and leaving her for dead in a Houston, Texas, creek.

There is a growing exodus from traditionally left-leaning demographics away from Joe Biden toward Donald Trump. In fact, a new analysis shows that Trump is rapidly closing Biden’s slim lead among women voters, with women’s support for Biden the lowest for a Democrat in two decades. As inflation continues to spike and the cost of living becomes ever more unaffordable, many women, including black and Hispanic women, are remembering that they were doing much better under Trump than they are under Sleepy Joe Biden. New data from The New York Times and Siena College polls shows Biden, who led Trump...

A New Mexico woman visiting Zambia was trampled and killed by an elephant on Wednesday, local officials said. It marked the second such attack in the country this year. Officials said Friday that 64-year-old Juliana Gle Tourneau was killed when an elephant that was part of a herd the tourists were watching attacked their vehicle in the Zambian city of Livingstone. Tourneau was thrown from the vehicle and trampled by the elephant. Tourneau was part of a group that had stopped near the Maramba Cultural Bridge due to the traffic caused by the elephant herd near the bridge, officials added....

The Congressional Budget Office revealed on Tuesday that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year is expected to hit $1.9 trillion, marking a 27% increase of $400 billion from their earlier February estimate. "Most of the spike in the fiscal 2024 deficit stems from four factors that are expected to boost projected spending," CNN explains. "The largest is a $145 billion increase due to changes the Biden administration made to student loan repayment plans and a new, proposed forgiveness program that would waive some accrued interest for millions of borrowers. The latter has yet to be finalized but could...

President Trump has focused his 2024 campaign on a number of issues that one would expect, but he shook up the game this summer by issuing a new policy proposal: “No Tax On Tips.”While his campaign hasn’t released the usual detailed policy papers on it yet, the president made it clear what he means: “restaurant workers, hospitality workers, and anybody else who gets tips.”The Left responded immediately with what they see as the downside: by reducing federal taxes on tips, federal revenues would drop by a huge amount of money, or at least, by an amount of money that sounds...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from having firearms, taking a step back from its recent endorsement of a broad right to possess a gun. The court ruled in favor of the Biden administration, which was defending the law — one of several federal gun restrictions currently facing legal challenges. The ruling indicates that some longstanding gun laws are likely to survive despite the court's 2022 decision that expanded gun rights by finding for the first time that there is a right to bear arms outside...

As some Catholics know, Archbishop Viganò is a hero in the eyes of many who do not enjoy the spectacle of Pope Francis’ continual and seemingly ongoing reversal of Catholic teaching and law. The hyperpolitical, leftist Pope has been, by his own words, engaged in irreversibly (he hopes) and increasingly modifying (according to his own predilections) the Catholic Church since he took papal office. Sound like anybody you know? Viganò has been consistently faithful to Canon Law and to the established teachings of the Church, his warnings falling against a wall of thunderous silence from most of the Western bishops...

Next to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon is the leading voice in the MAGA movement. On Thursday, Steve Bannon lost his appeal to delay the July 1 start of his criminal contempt-of-Congress prison sentence starting in July. The far left US DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Bannon. Bannon, the former Chief Strategist to former President Donald Trump, will likely seek the intervention of the Supreme Court. On Friday morning Jeff Clark, the Former US DOJ Double Assistant AG, posted this on Twitter. Steve Bannon has only nine days left until he will be sent to prison for the four...

Cheese is a wonderful thing. Recently linked to healthy aging, it dates back to at least the Ancient Egyptians, has been a symbol of socioeconomic status, and flavoring human lives for thousands of years, in which time we’ve come up with all sort of curious curdled creations, from rainbow colors to 3D sculptures. Where we’ve been arguably less explorative is in our species selection when it comes to cheese production, which is mostly limited to cows, goats, sheep, and buffalo. Could we not, at least theoretically, branch out among the milk-producing mammals? What we’re really trying to ask is… Can...

Ralph Lauren must pay for his crimes against fashion. <snip> You know what comes to mind when I think “American Olympic team”? Blazers. And that’s precisely what Ralph Lauren is serving with the new team uniforms: The opening ceremony’s fit is a striped oxford shirt, a navy blazer with red and white stripes, and light-wash denim jeans. A sea of this country’s finest athletes, dressed like they have private school at 3 p.m. but are subbing in for Springsteen at 9. For the closing ceremony, it gets worse, with a Ballad of Ricky Bobby–ass denim moto jacket paired with matching...