Free Republic

A 'pregnant' pickpocket was grabbed by the hair and prevented from running away by an irate husband as she tried to steal his wife's backpack in Italy. The woman, who claimed to be pregnant after being caught, was held by the hair and arms and stopped from 'stealing' the tourist's bag at Piazza di San Lorenzo, a popular square in Florence. Footage of the fracas shows two men, including the husband of the victim, keeping hold of the 'thief' as she tries to wriggle free. One man clutched onto her hair, before she drops the backpack, while another gripped her...

Six Labor Days later, Assembly Bill 5 remains an adversarial law that handcuffs independent professionals’ ability to work as they choose.This Labor Day marks nearly six years since Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, upending the lives of freelancers, independent professionals, contractors, and small business owners across the state. What happened in California is spreading to other states like New Jersey. Policymakers should watch out that anti-“gig workers” laws and regulations, pushed by labor unions, don’t force independent contracting out of their states.Five years after taking effect, Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) remains an...

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Tianjin presented the West with a striking image: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping together, projecting a rare display of camaraderie among the three major world powers.“Always a delight to meet President Putin!” Modi wrote in a social media post.The move was welcomed by Russia and China, who are actively challenging the United States’ position atop the global order.Xi proposed “a multipolar world” with a new SCO development bank, parallel to Western global institutions. This threatens to hurt the influence of the international order based on...

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines. Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well. The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri,...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has just reported a noticeable increase in COVID test positivity rates across the United States in data posted Friday, Aug. 29. The latest numbers arrive just days before Labor Day weekend, a peak period for travel and gatherings. Test positivity climbed to 11.2 percent for the week ending Saturday, Aug. 23, up from 10.2 percent the previous week, according to updated CDC figures. Nearly half the country now faces a test positivity rate of at least 10 percent. Emergency room visits for COVID also rose slightly, with 1.5 percent of visits resulting...

The 2005 Green Wave football team didn't play a home game because of the damage from the devastating hurricaneTulane coach Jon Sumrall said that Northwestern denied his team’s request to wear white jerseys on Saturday to honor the 2005 Green Wave team. Friday was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in the city of New Orleans. The hurricane is one of the worst natural disasters in United States history; a majority of New Orleans was flooded and over 1,000 people died as the city dealt with long-term effects from the storm. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league...

Like a magician’s greatest trick, sometimes the most dramatic illusions happen when the audience desperately wants to believe. This weekend, the left-wing corners of social media convinced themselves they were witnessing the ultimate disappearing act. The frenzy started innocently enough. President Trump hadn’t made a public appearance for two days—a lifetime in the age of 24-hour news cycles. By Friday morning, Reddit threads were buzzing with speculation. Twitter’s algorithm caught the scent of blood in the water, and suddenly #WhereIsTrump was trending nationwide. The Pentagon’s pizza tracker—that peculiar barometer of government crisis—showed an unusual spike in deliveries. Even The Simpsons...

China is not planning to launch one or two missiles at an aircraft carrier; it is planning to launch dozens, if not hundreds. The PLARF possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in the world, with thousands of launchers. In a conflict, they would unleash a massive, coordinated salvo attack designed to overwhelm any defense.

When the shield protecting a city’s children begins to crack, the first signs appear not in statistics or policy papers, but in stained glass windows shattered by gunfire. The fortress we build around our most vulnerable—our children at prayer, our elderly in worship—depends entirely on those sworn to hold the line. But what happens when that line has already broken? This isn’t fiction or dystopian fantasy. This week in Minneapolis, a gunman opened fire on children attending their first Mass of the school year at Annunciation Catholic School. Two young souls, ages 8 and 10, never made it home. Seventeen...

It’s tomato season and Lidia is harvesting on farms in California’s Central Valley. She is also anxious. Attention from U.S. Immigration Control and Enforcement could upend her life more than 23 years after she illegally crossed the U.S.-Mexico border as a teenager. “The worry is they’ll pull you over when you’re driving and ask for your papers,” said Lidia, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only her first name be used because of her fears of deportation. “We need to work. We need to feed our families and pay our rent.” As parades and other events celebrating...

The province of Quebec is planning on banning praying in public, according to a statement from Secularism Minister Jean-François Roberge, who argued that “the proliferation of street prayer is a serious and sensitive issue.” He added: “The premier of Quebec has given me the mandate to strengthen secularism, and I am determined to fulfill this mandate diligently. This fall, we will therefore introduce a bill to strengthen secularism in Quebec, in particular by banning street prayers.” Quebec has a long history of hostility towards Christians. In 2019, the province passed Bill 21, which bans public sector employees, including teachers, police...

Harjinder Singh, the illegal immigrant truck driver who made a left turn across a lane of traffic on the Florida Turnpike in order to use "an official vehicles only" cut through to traffic running in the opposite direction and caused a crash that killed a family of three, was the beneficiary of a petition signed by more than 2.5 million urging Florida officials to show leniency toward him. One of the signers cited the case of Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, an Indian immigrant truck driver who sped through a stop sign at nearly 60 mph and slammed into a bus killing...

DALLAS, TX — The Dallas Cowboys organization has officially moved to invoke the 25th amendment in order to remove owner Jerry Jones from power. Sources within the organization felt that the body of evidence showing Jones to be mentally incapacitated had reached undeniable levels. "It's about time," said long-suffering Cowboys fan Harold Martindale. "We loved Jerry, but the man is clearly no longer capable of coherent thought. As he has proven in so, so many ways, he is no longer capable of serving as the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. This is precisely why the 25th amendment exists in this...

LONDON -- British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday appointed economist and former Columbia University president Minouche Shafik as his chief economic adviser. It's part of a staff shakeup aimed at strengthening the government’s response to a sluggish economy and a heated political debate over immigration. Starmer’s center-left Labour Party government has struggled to boost economic growth and curb inflation, leaving Treasury chief Rachel Reeves facing unpalatable choices about taxes and spending in her budget this fall. Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, has held senior academic and civil service roles in Britain, and served a...

An accused killer allegedly put on his victim’s dress and wig and then forced her boyfriend to also wear her clothing to help dump the body in a Florida swamp, according to court documents. Arnaldo Cintron, 42, allegedly murdered Hiojaira Velez Bonilla, a 41-year-old mom of two teenage boys, after she confronted him for not paying any bills or helping out around the house after he moved into her home in Riverview, according to court documents. He “pushed the victim to the floor of the kitchen, armed himself with a kitchen knife from the counter and began stabbing the victim...

There’s a lot of mint in Strawberry Fields! Top executives at the Central Park Conservancy — a tax-exempt group that famously manages and maintains the world-renowned park under a contractual agreement with the city — are raking in mounds of green, records show. President and CEO Elizabeth Smith’s total compensation was $933,592, including her hefty bonus incentive — and 12 other officers pulled in at least $300,000 apiece, according to the group’s 2024 IRS filing for the 2023 calendar year. The year before, Smith’s salary and benefits package came to a cool $1.178 million, while 15 others scored more than...

“We have to destroy the idea of America in our heads, in our neighbors’ heads, in our comrades’ heads, in everybody’s heads in this country.” The People’s Conference for Palestine, held in Troy, Michigan, this past weekend, was billed as a grassroots gathering of Palestinian activists and their allies. But behind the carefully packaged language of “liberation,” the rhetoric captured in multiple clips from the conference reveals an alarming mix of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism—messaging that seeks to delegitimize the United States itself while demonizing Israel and its supporters. The clips, shared by Twitter/X user @thestustustudio (Stu Smith), expose the raw...

CHICAGO — A surge in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations and the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago could happen as soon as later this week. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Gov. JB Pritzker both appeared in separate interviews on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” over Labor Day weekend. While Pritzker continues to say sending federal troops to Chicago is dangerous, Noem says the governor should be welcoming ideas to better protect the city, rather than opposing them. Pritzker said on “Face the Nation” that the city would indeed welcome federal help to crack...

[Catholic Caucus] The Lie Contained in Article 1 of "Traditionis Custodes"Lex Orandi and Ecclesial Rupture: A Brief Theological and Canonical Critique of Article 1 of Traditionis Custodes(by Simon de Cyrène at the Croce-Via blog; translated for Rorate Caeli)Summary: This short article critically analyzes Article 1 of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (2021), which states that the liturgical books reformed by Paul VI and John Paul II constitute “the only expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.”This statement, if interpreted as exclusive and binding, implies an objective break with the organic liturgical Tradition of the Church, contradicts previous magisterium,...

1 September 2025Monday of week 22 in Ordinary Time Saint Giles Catholic church, Cheadle, Staffordshire, England Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Green. Year: C(I).First reading1 Thessalonians 4:13-18Do not grieve about those who have died in JesusWe want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. We can tell you this from the...