Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Synod-Preacher Radcliffe pays tribute to homosexual relationsThe Dominican priest and spiritual assistant to the Synod of the World, Timothy Radcliffe, has acknowledged homosexual Catholics in permanent relationships. In a contribution to the Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano", the 79-year-old religious wrote last week that he is on a "synodal path with homosexual Catholics". He stressed that the challenge for homosexuals, as for everyone else, is to learn to express love appropriately, while respecting the dignity of others. "I am convinced of the fundamental wisdom of ecclesiastical doctrine, but I do not yet fully understand how it can be lived...

Summary Republicans hold advantage with control of 23 state legislatures Democrats threaten retaliation with their own redistricting efforts Population shifts favor Republican states, impacting future congressional seats WASHINGTON, Aug 24 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's push for Republican-led states to redraw their U.S. House of Representatives districts to protect their majority in next year's midterm elections could set the stage for Republicans to dominate the chamber in decades to come, political analysts and experts said.Republicans hold a 219-212 House majority and Trump is looking to break the streak of midterm House losses for the sitting president's party -- as happened...

“If they are interacting with a customer and the customer says, this is my preferred name and these are my preferred pronouns, this is the way I want to be addressed, there is a legal obligation to do that. They're compelled to use those pronouns and those surnames under Colorado's law. That's compelled speech, and the real kicker is there criminal penalties for it. You can have prison time, jail time for up to 4 months if you don't abide that.” - Kristen Waggoner, President, CEO & General Counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom

Democrats seem to think they can talk their way out of the political wilderness. Listen closely and you can hear it through the din of their all-caps Trumpian X feeds, their hourslong “manosphere” podcast interviews and their more frequent swearing. Nearly 10 months after the 2024 elections, and the party is still embroiled in self-recriminations over where they’re talking, what they’re talking about and, now, the actual words they’re using. Or, more precisely: which words they shouldn’t utter. In a new memo, shared exclusively with POLITICO, the center-left think tank Third Way is circulating a list of 45 words and...

On Aug 11, Russian soldiers breached Ukraine’s front-line defences and penetrated at least six miles behind enemy lines. Battlefield maps, kept studiously up to date by open-source intelligence groups, showed a red tendril reaching north into Ukraine’s territory through several villages in the contested eastern Donetsk region coveted by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. The advance set off alarm bells among Kyiv’s supporters, who feared it marked the start of an offensive aimed at the stronghold city of Kostiantynivka or the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, both of which could provide Russia with a foothold in Ukraine’s fortress belt. What Russian...

Vice President JD Vance said Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has made several concessions in his discussions with President Trump over the war in Ukraine — including vowing to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine after the fighting ends. “They’ve recognized that they’re not going to be able to install a puppet regime in Kyiv, and importantly, they’ve acknowledged that there is going to be some security guarantee to the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” Vance told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. On the possibility of Ukraine having to give land to a country that forcibly seized it, Vance didn’t appear...

Jackson went ballistic after her colleagues reversed another district court judge who issued a sweeping injunction barring the Trump Administration from canceling roughly $783 million in grants in the National Institutes of Health. Again writing alone, Jackson unleashed a tongue-lashing on her colleagues, who she suggested were unethical, unthinking cutouts for Trump. She denounced her fellow justices, stating, “This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this administration always wins.” For some of us who have followed Jackson’s interestingly controversial tenure on the...

Findings could lead to earlier detection and treatment for those suffering from the serious eye condition. A new discovery could lead to the identification of a biomarker for both earlier detection and treatment of a devastating eye disease. The disease, glaucoma, is one of the leading causes of blindness. Glaucoma leads to damage of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons. When these nerves at the back of the eye—responsible for transmitting visual information to the brain—are damaged, vision loss occurs. While current treatments focus on reducing pressure within the eye, none have successfully protected RGCs from damage. Therefore, neuroprotective...

Ukrainian defenders launched a counterattack and cleared Russian invaders from three villages in Donetsk Oblast, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Oleksandr Syrskyi reported in a Facebook post on Aug. 24. "Our forces successfully counterattacked and cleared the enemy from the villages of Mykhailivka, Zelenyi Hai, and Volodymyrivka in Donetsk Oblast," Syrskyi stated. While working on the Pokrovsk front, he met with defenders holding the line in Pokrovsk, and listened to reports from corps and brigade commanders on the operational situation. "The situation is indeed challenging; the enemy has concentrated its main efforts on this front line. But we must hold...

A cybersecurity expert warns that a scam that has been used to drain entire life savings or retirement accounts has become "devastating" for seniors. FBI Los Angeles on July 15 posted a reminder on X about the Phantom Hacker Scam, which has cost Americans over $1 billion since at least 2024, according to the agency. The FBI said the scam targets senior citizens and warns that victims could lose their "life savings." The scam operates in three phases: a "tech support impostor," "financial institution impostor" and a "US government impostor." In the first phase, a tech support impostor will contact...

More than 215,000 Indians have signed an online petition urging the federal government to free Harjinder Singh, the illegal migrant trucker who killed three Americans by doing an 18-wheeler U-Turn on a Florida turnpike. “We, the undersigned, respectfully petition for clemency or sentence reduction on behalf of a 28-year-old Punjabi man who, in a tragic and unintentional incident, caused a truck accident that resulted in the loss of three lives,” says the petition at Change.org. Instead of a prison sentence, the petition asks their fellow Indian be sentenced to “restorative justice measures, counseling, or community service, aligning with both accountability...

To: All Who Wish to Stop Donald Trump and MAGAFrom: Third WayFor a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying. The intent of this language is to include, broaden, empathize, accept, and embrace. The effect of this language is to sound like the extreme, divisive, elitist, and obfuscatory, enforcers of wokeness. To please the few, we have alienated the many—especially on culture issues, where our language sounds superior, haughty and arrogant.In...

There's dumb, and then there's whatever the Hell this is. We thought that JB Pritzker admitting that Chicago crime was a problem he hadn't been able to tackle was bad, but Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson absolutely out-stupided Pritzker.Not only does Johnson not want help with his violent city, where roughly 78 people are victims of a violent crime EVERY DAY, but he claims he and his people will RIOT if Trump tries to help his citizens. No, really.And Democrats wonder why their approval rating sits at 19%.Honestly, we're shocked it's still that high. Watch:Mayor Brandon Johnson

The German welfare state is no longer financially sustainable, Friedrich Merz said on Saturday. The chancellor argued for a fundamental reassessment of the benefits system as spending continues to soar past last year’s record of €47bn (£40bn). In a state-level party conference meeting on Saturday, Mr Merz said: “The welfare state as we have it today can no longer be financed with what we can economically afford.” Once the export champion of Europe, Germany’s economy has slowed dramatically since 2017, with GDP growing by only 1.6 per cent since then versus 9.5 per cent for the rest of the eurozone....

Her deception began when in July 2023, two years after she received her LLB Law degree at Aston University, Madhar applied to the City of Wolverhampton Council's Homeless Services Team. She said she was 'homeless', claiming she had been asked to leave her parents' property with her two children. The council awarded her emergency priority status on the Homes in the City waiting list after she submitted documentation indicating she had no alternative accommodation. Over the following eight months, Madhar made repeated urgent requests to the council to be rehoused. A young Kiran Madhar beamed with pride as she walked...

White liberal woman films herself at drive throughs asking businesses if they cooperate with ICE and report their illegal employees She tells them she will only give her business to companies who won’t report illegals I have no words to describe how insane these people are

Republicans are plowing forward with plans for redistricting in several other states now that Texas is poised to approve its newly redrawn maps. The Lone Star State kicked off the redistricting arms race when Republicans in the state Legislature agreed to move forward with rewriting their congressional lines at the insistence of President Trump.Now, as Democrats in California look to counter Texas with their own redistricting plan, the GOP is setting its sights on states from Florida to Indiana to Missouri, signaling a new phase of the fight.“There’s not much more Democrats can do at this point, which is kind...

After the Old Line State lost a congressional seat in the 2010 census, Annapolis was tasked with drawing new lines for the now-eight remaining, and then-Gov. Martin O’Malley ultimately testified about his eagerness to box-out the GOP. While overwhelmingly Democratic, Maryland features conservative strongholds at its geographic extremes — the Western Panhandle and Eastern Shore — and a smattering of Republican-majority communities throughout the more densely-populated center of the state. One of the newly-drawn seats — the 3rd District represented by then-Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md., — resembled what Fourth Circuit federal Judge Paul Niemeyer called a "broken-winged pterodactyl, lying prostrate...

It’s moments like this that end campaigns. Terry McAuliffe sealed his fate against Glenn Youngkin after he imploded in the debates, where he went full communist on education and parental rights, saying parents shouldn’t have a say in what schools teach their children. The ‘We own your kids’ attitude killed him. In 2025, Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Sears addressed a meeting of the Arlington County School Board after a sex offender gained access to a girls’ restroom at a local high school, claiming to be transgender. Of course, rich white liberals came out to rally for this insanity to continue....

As a vaccine for broad public use, mRNA technology has failed to earn the public’s trust.The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to wind down its mRNA vaccine development activities marks a necessary pivot in how we steward public health innovations in vaccines. The right path requires us to consider the inherent strengths and weaknesses of a technology as well as any alternatives, along with public attitudes and experience with the technology. The mRNA platform is promising technology. I do not dispute its potential. In the future, it may yet deliver breakthroughs in treating diseases such as cancer,...