Free Republic

Spanish bishop laments widespread loss of Catholic faith in his countrySpain has seen a dramatic fall in numbers of people identifying as Catholic as part of a wider stagnation of the Catholic faith across Europe.Spain is no longer a de facto Catholic country, the nation’s leading Catholic prelate has stated, with numbers of Catholics falling and the hierarchy also mired in a controversy to sell off Church assets.“The time has passed, settled for centuries, when we said: I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain,” said Archbishop Luis Argüello last week. The Archbishop of Valladolid was speaking at the recent...

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the band, Los Alegres del Barranco, had projected an image of El Mencho onto a screen at a recent concert in Mexico. El Mencho, whose real name is Nemesio Oseguera Ramos, is the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of the most feared transnational drug trafficking gangs. The CJNG is one of eight criminal groups which the Trump administration recently declared "foreign terrorist organisations" as part of its strategy to "ensure the total elimination" of these groups in the US. In a post on X, Landau wrote "in the Trump...

Today, we’re releasing our preliminary findings: ActBlue made its fraud-prevention rules “more lenient” twice in 2024—even though there is extensive fraud on the platform, including from foreign sources. ActBlue admitted that this change led to between 14 and 28 additional fraudulent contributions in the first month alone—potentially totaling thousands of dollars in fraudulent contributions to Democrat campaigns and causes.

A teenage Bloods gang member, a sex offender and an alleged cop assaulter hiding under a bed were nabbed Wednesday in a multi-agency raid in Newark — led by the US Marshals with newly minted Interim New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba in tow. The Post witnessed the arrest of Zakiyy Houser, 18, a gangbanger with a history of weapons charges wanted for aggravated assault after an incident in which he allegedly shot two people in Newark last month. Houser’s lengthy rap sheet includes a string of juvenile offenses across Essex County, New Jersey, among them conspiracy, possession of burglary...

Education Secretary Linda McMahon interrupted a press conference by House Democrats outside the Department of Education to give an impromptu statement after they met in a closed-door meeting earlier Wednesday. With about a minute's notice, the secretary's team told some attendees that McMahon would be making a statement. Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., was speaking at the podium as the secretary appeared at the press conference. "We are extraordinarily grateful that the secretary gave us the space to have these conversations, but with all due respect, madam, I think my biggest concern is that the states will not be able to...

...A staffer for New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker was arrested for carrying a pistol without a license after being escorted into the U.S. Capitol by a member of Congress and allowed to bypass security by Booker himself. According to reports, Booker led the aide around a U.S. Capitol Police security checkpoint on Monday night, later resulting in the arrest....

I just asked Grok what the difference between stamina and endurance was and, in its answer, it drew a link between defining it and my previous question on Digimon.

As part of an investigation into foreign exchange violations involving the Open Society Foundations (OSF), which was founded by American billionaire George Soros, and its impact investment arm, the Soros Economic Development Fund (SEDF), India’s Enforcement Directorate (ED) searched eight locations in Bengaluru on Tuesday. Sources told Indian media the searches were “carried out under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) and involve the OSF along with various international human rights organizations,” The Economic Times reported. The main focus of the investigation is the claim that OSF obtained foreign direct investment (FDI) and that certain recipients embezzled the money against...

إميل غوري Emil Ghuri / Emile Ghouri / Emil Ghoury *** 1934 *** PASSIA - Ghoury Emil.. "... founder and chief-editor of the English weekly Arab Federation in Jerusalem..."The Palestine Post⁩. 16 July 1934>. TROUBLES IN GERMANY. The following paragraph is taken from the Arab Federation, a Jerusalem weekly in English, dated July 7. The people of Palestine have been watching the recent troubles in Germany with great interest and keen. They were astonished by the courageous quick actions of Hitler whom the Arabs admire very much.___________*** 1936 ***Ghouri headed the creation of the "Youth Groups", the party's youth...

I never get tired of videos like this: Flat Earthers, our beautiful blue garden planet looks awfully round! Here's a longer video: The Fram2 expedition launched on Monday using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Here's the crew: Believe it or not, there has never been a manned spaceflight that orbits around the Earth's poles. In other words, all other manned missions have orbited around the Earth, not over and under it. The mission, funded by Chinese cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, is named after the Norwegian exploration ship Fram, the first to complete expeditions to both the North Pole and South...

Three Americans convicted for their role in a failed coup in Democratic Republic of Congo last year have had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment, the presidency has said. They were among 37 people sentenced to death last September by a military court. The three were accused of leading an attack on both the presidential palace and the home of an ally of President Félix Tshisekedi last May. The overturning of the sentences comes ahead of a visit to DR Congo by the newly appointed US senior advisor for Africa, Massad Boulos. Boulos, father-in-law to President Donald Trump's daughter,...

The fight against what Prime Minister Netanyahu has taken to calling Israel’s “deep state” is now in full swing. It reached a climax on Thursday, March 20, late in the evening, when the cabinet unanimously voted to dismiss Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet—the country’s domestic security service. The termination is to take effect on the earlier of two dates: April 10, or when a replacement is found. Bar is not going down without a fight, however, and has retaliated by stepping up an investigation against the prime minister’s staff. Bar’s removal is long overdue. For starters, he...

...California voters told lawmakers last fall that they wanted doctors to get paid more to see low-income patients. But officials for the Newsom administration blew past a federal deadline to make that happen through Medi-Cal Monday, effectively leaving millions of dollars unclaimed... ...The Department of Health Care Services, the agency that oversees Medi-Cal and the implementation of Prop. 35 did not respond by publication deadline to questions from CalMatters about why the state missed the funding deadline. ... Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office refused to respond to questions about why the appointment has not been made.

This “scoop” is garbage.. Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete. ... SCOOP: Pres Trump has told his inner circle & members of his Cabinet that @elonmusk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role ➡️Trump remains pleased w/ Musk & DOGE, but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role. ➡️Musk’s looming exit comes as...

This “scoop” is garbage.. Elon Musk and President Trump have both *publicly* stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete. ... SCOOP: Pres Trump has told his inner circle & members of his Cabinet that @elonmusk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role ➡️Trump remains pleased w/ Musk & DOGE, but both men have decided in recent days that it will soon be time for Musk to return to his businesses and take on a supporting role. ➡️Musk’s looming exit comes as...

A man who physically assaulted two pro-life sidewalk counselors in 2023 was convicted on several charges but will be retried on a first-degree felony assault charge after a jury failed to reach a verdict. Patrick Brice, 28, was convicted on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of reckless endangerment for his attack on Mark Crosby, 84 at the time, and Richard Schaefer, 73 at the time, outside Planned Parenthood in Baltimore, Maryland. According to The Daily Wire, Brice was acquitted of one count of first-degree assault for the attack on Schaefer but avoided a first-degree assault charge due...

Vance warned that shutting down speech destroys democracy. European leaders have apparently taken his statement as an instruction manual. It’s been a banner week for authoritarians in Europe, and it’s only Wednesday. On Monday, a French court banned Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Rally party and the frontrunner in the 2027 presidential election, from seeking public office for the next five years. The same day, The Telegraph reported that a toddler had been booted from a U.K. preschool for being insufficiently supportive of LGBT politics. Over the weekend, a British couple revealed they had been arrested...

The French authorities insist that the conviction of Marine Le Pen, which disqualifies the leader of the National Rally (RN) from standing for election as president of France, is not political. No, they say, it simply reflects the neutral ‘rule of law’ and the ‘independence of the judicial system.’ Really? Strange then, that supposedly ‘independent’ judges and officials across Europe and America have all reached remarkably similar verdicts against right-wing politicians. It looks less like judicial independence and the old-fashioned rule of law than a globalist establishment plot to use the courts as a political weapon against the rising national...

Explanation: Why does Jupiter have rings? Jupiter's main ring was discovered in 1979 by NASA's passing Voyager 1 spacecraft, but its origin was then a mystery. Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003, however, confirmed the hypothesis that this ring was created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons. As a small meteoroid strikes tiny Metis, for example, it will bore into the moon, vaporize, and explode dirt and dust off into a Jovian orbit. The featured image of Jupiter in infrared light by the James Webb Space Telescope shows not only Jupiter and its...

Republicans Randy Fine and Jimmy Patronis secured victories in two special congressional elections in Florida on Tuesday, overcoming significant fundraising disadvantages to maintain GOP control of seats vacated by prominent party members. The wins bolster the Republican Party’s slim majority in the U.S. House, despite a strong financial push from Democratic opponents. Fine, a former state senator, won Florida’s 6th Congressional District, defeating Democrat Josh Weil, an Orlando school teacher who outraised Fine by more than $9 million between January and March, according to Federal Election Commission reports. In the 1st Congressional District, Patronis, Florida’s outgoing chief financial officer, bested...