Free Republic

Springfield, IL - Tomorrow, attorneys from Thomas More Society will appear in the Fourth District of the Illinois Appellate Court to defend the religious freedom of the Illinois Baptist State Association (IBSA) and challenge the state’s mandate requiring all health insurance providers to include abortion coverage in their plans. When Illinois legislators passed the “Reproductive Health Act” in 2019, they reassured people of faith that religious and moral convictions would be respected, and that no individual or organization would be forced to require abortion coverage in their health care plans. On behalf of the Illinois Baptist State Association, Thomas More...

See the so-called evidence that allegedly proves Bigfoot's existenceA CAMPER believes he's unlocked the secret behind one of the world's most famous cryptids after finding a so-called Bigfoot corpse. Charles “Snake” Stuart, also known as the Bigfoot hunter, presented his stunning findings in a bizarre exhibition on Wednesday. He brought the massive 8-foot-tall hairy body to the New York State Fair in Syracuse and displayed it behind a glass case. The grisly figure was placed on top of a wooden coffin in a dark room with spooky growls playing on speakers. Beside the alleged body is a video of Star...

Explanation: What's hovering above the Sun? A solar prominence. A prominence is a crest of hot gas expelled from the Sun's surface that is held aloft by the Sun's magnetic field. Prominences can last for days, can suddenly explode into space, or just fall back to the Sun. What decides a prominence's fate is how the Sun's complex magnetic field changes -- the field's direction can act like an offramp for trapped solar particles. The 3-second (repeating) time-lapse featured video was captured earlier this month from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It shows the development of a larger-than-Earth prominence as it appears...

*** With less than three months until Election Day, Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial race is becoming increasingly competitive, as Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears closes the gap with her opponent …. A Roanoke College poll released Tuesday shows Sears trailing Spanberger by seven points. In comparison, a previous poll from May had Spanberger leading by 17 points in the 2025 governor’s race. 🚨 NEW AD: Abigail Spanberger is hiding from voters because she’s sold out to extremist nonsense. You have my word I will always stand with you and with common sense. — Winsome Earle-Sears (@winwithwinsome) August 22, 2025As public polls...

Tuesday on CNN’s “News Central,” anti-Trump political commentator George Conway said that during his second term, President Donald Trump was acting like a fascist dictator, including Francisco Franco and Adolf Hitler. Host John Berman said, “So there’s floating this idea of an investigation into Chris Christie. There is the actual federal investigation into former national security advisor John Bolton, the search of his home, which you witnessed firsthand down the street from your home in Bethesda. What do you see as going on here?” Conway said, “This is not America. This is not healthy. This is, and I hate, you...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Rochester City Attorney’s Office has filed a complaint summons related to an April 28 event at Roy Sutherland Playground in Soldier’s Field Park. The complaint charges Shiloh Hendrix with three counts of disorderly conduct, which could lead to a maximum of 90 days in jail and/or a $1,000 fine, according to Minnesota statute. In early May, a Rochester man shared a video online allegedly showing Hendrix calling a child a racial slur at the playground. The draft complaint requires review and approval by a District Court judge. The City Attorney's Office emphasized the complexity of the...

PRESIDENT Donald Trump had a surprising message for Taylor Swift after the superstar announced her engagement to NFL player Travis Kelce. In the middle of a cabinet meeting with the nation's highest government officials, a reporter popped the question that was on everyone's mind: what was his reaction to the celebrity engagement? In September, Trump declared that he hated SwiftCredit: Reuters "I have to tell you the biggest pop culture news of the year broke while we were in this cabinet meeting: Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift are engaged," the reporter asked, as the entire table turned to her. "The...

President Trump is facing outcry from some of his supporters after saying he plans to allow 600,000 students from China into the U.S. “It’s a very important relationship. We’re going to get along good with China,” Trump told reporters Monday during a meeting with the president of South Korea. “I hear so many stories about, ‘We’re not going to allow their students,’” he continued. “We’re going to allow their students to come in. We’re going to allow it. It’s very important — 600,000 students. It’s very important.” Trump’s comments marked a shift from earlier in the year, when Secretary of...

A California school district has enacted a new rule for young girls who are uncomfortable sharing a bathroom with biological males pretending to be girls, requiring the girls to file a mental health accommodation request.The Temecula Valley Unified School District TVUSD has reportedly enacted a rule that tells female students who feel uncomfortable sharing bathroom space with biological males must file a mental health accommodation request under federal law if they want privacy.The move has prompted outrage from parents and others who say that the rule treats those girls who object to sharing private space with biological males as the...

[Catholic Caucus] Leo XIV: Small Signs that Confirm Initial ImpressionsA downsizing of the green magisterium, free from eco-idolatry, and the centrality of Christ in preaching. Mercy is a gift of grace, but not without conditions. Many small signs that give good hope. Meanwhile, Pope Leo receives Cardinal Burke. On the table, also the future of the Mass of Catholic Tradition?More than one hundred days since the beginning of his Pontificate, many small signs seem to confirm what has so far been said, analyzed, and foretold about the figure of Pope Leo XIV—both from the perspective of governance and of the...

In recent years, researchers led by Abel Méndez—lead author of the new study and director of the Planetary Habitability Laboratory at the University of Puerto Rico—have contributed significantly to that evidence through the AWOW project. In August 2024, Méndez and his colleagues published findings that suggest the Wow! Signal stemmed from the sudden brightening of a cold hydrogen cloud due to a transient source of radiation such as a magnetar. These neutron stars have magnetic fields strong enough to excite the atoms in hydrogen clouds and elicit a burst of brightness. Re-evaluating the Wow! Signal Now, Méndez’s team has meticulously...

RICHARDSON, Texas — Three bounty hunters face kidnapping charges after mistaking a man for a suspect with a similar name and taking him into custody at a home in Richardson, police said. Alan Hinton and Devon Allard Carter each face charges of aggravated kidnapping and execution of a capias or arrest warrant, according to a statement from Richardson police. A third suspect also faces charges, but he has not been arrested yet, police said. The incident unfolded on June 1 at a home in the 3800 block of Aberdeen Court in northeast Richardson, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. The...

I went to prison for defending the Constitutional separation of powers. John Bolton (an occasional contributor to The Hill) may well wind up in prison, too if investigators uncover evidence and prosecutors decide to bring charges over his alleged classified disclosures. When Bolton wrote his book, “The Room Where It Happened” — reportedly receiving a $2 million advance — he wasn’t just dishing gossip. He was sharing information about Oval Office conversations and national security that should have stayed secret — either by law or under executive privilege. A federal judge already spelled this out in black and white. In...

Amid Bruce Willis' nearly three-year battle with dementia, the actor's brain is "failing him," and his ability to communicate is fading, according to his wife Emma Heming Willis. "Bruce is still very mobile. Bruce is in really great health overall, you know," Heming Willis told ABC News' Diane Sawyer in the ABC special "Emma & Bruce Willis: The Unexpected Journey," a preview of which aired Tuesday on "Good Morning America." "It's just his brain that is failing him." Willis' family shared publicly in 2023 that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a type of dementia that impacts one's personality...

--SNIP-- Almost 84 percent of SEPTA’s budget comes from taxpayer subsidies, not riders. And they still can’t make it work — and have shown little willingness to embrace reality and change. SEPTA is pretending to be “broke” to cause crises to get more taxpayer money. They have $400 million in reserves and millions more in designated taxpayer funding. The present system cannot be supported without a never-ending, ever-growing annual subsidy from non-riders needed to prop up an outdated, non-customer friendly, bureaucratic, politically operated, unaccountable system. They want money, not reform. Democratic politicians — from Shapiro to the state House, to...

Speaking from the Oval Office Monday morning, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave additional details about how the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department was cooking the books on data in order to make the argument crime was "going down." "When we share the results, it will stun you," Miller said. "There are even accusations that murders and homicides were reported as accidents not murders. This is how severe the manipulation of the crime data has been in this city. It will all be uncovered and it will all be brought to light." The Department of Justice launched an investigation...

ChatGPT gave a 16-year-old California boy a “step-by-step playbook” on how to kill himself before he did so earlier this year — even advising the teen on the type of knots he could use for hanging and offering to write a suicide note for him, new court papers allege. At every turn, the chatbot affirmed and even encouraged Adam Raine’s suicidal intentions — at one point praising his plan as “beautiful,” according to a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court against ChatGPT parent company OpenAI. On April 11, 2025, the day that Raine killed himself, the teenager sent a...

Though the likely 2028 candidates are JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or Ron DeSantis, one can’t help but wish that we might have our own Giorgia Meloni.“I am Giorgia!” she proclaimed in a now-famous speech. “I am a woman. I am a mother. I am Italian. I am a Christian, and you can’t take that away from me.” And three years after this defiant 2019 appearance on the political stage, Giorgia Meloni added yet another powerful proclamation: “I am the Prime Minister of Italy.” In the three years since, she has become perhaps the most consequential of European leaders, the...

The illegal immigrants who streamed into New York City over the past four years led to an increase in crime near the hotels where they were housed, according to a new academic study that lends some credence to President Trump’s claims of a Biden migrant crime surge. William LeRoy, an incoming professor at Charles University in Prague, crunched crime report data around the hotels where the migrants were being placed. He found that arrests of Hispanics — the dominant demographic of the largely Venezuelan newcomers — rose in the immediate areas around the hotels.The big increase came in lower-level thefts.“The...

Last week’s FBI raid targeting former National Security Adviser John Bolton reaches beyond alleged mishandling of classified documents in relation to a book he published in 2020, according to a report from Fox News citing a Trump Administration source. The report has fueled speculation that the former Trump official could face criminal charges. Legal experts have long speculated that Bolton could face legal troubles due to his 2020 book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” in which he trashed his former boss extensively. A lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleged...