Free Republic

When a radical mob that included former CNN anchor Don Lemon broke into Cities Church in St. Paul to protest ICE, were they upholding or violating the First Amendment?According to everyone from Sen. Patty Murray to the International Press Institute, breaking into a church and interrupting a religious service is “First Amendment activity”. But if preventing other people from praying is “First Amendment activity” then what is the church service itself?First Amendment activity entails expressing your opinion, your belief or your religious practice, but the moment your actions interfere with and prevent someone else from engaging in their expression or...

An Army veteran from Covington, Georgia, who has lived in the U.S. for more than 50 years faces imminent deportation. Godfrey Wade, a Jamaican-born veteran, has been in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody for nearly five months. His attorney says an emergency stay of removal was denied, but an appeal is pending. Loved ones said Wade's years of military service should count for something. He's been missing from the home he shares with fiancée April Watkins, who said, "We've built an amazing life together, and to be separated from that is very challenging, especially since he did not...

The recent decision to expel Mahmoud Khalil from the United States has been treated by much of the media as a narrow immigration matter — a technical ruling about visa status and disclosure failures. That framing misses the larger question his case raises. Khalil’s removal invites a re-examination not just of who he is, but of what followed Hamas’s October 7 massacre — and how quickly the global response was prepared. On October 8, before Israel had mounted any meaningful military response, before troops entered Gaza, before retaliatory operations had even been organized, massive demonstrations erupted across cities, countries, and...

As a historic nurses’ strike enters its fourth week, New York governor Kathy Hochul has protected hospitals from the strike’s impact by making it easier to hire scabs and doing little to stop executives from dragging out a fight over staffing and safety. On Monday morning, with temperatures below freezing, New York City nurses began the fourth week of the largest nursing strike in the city’s history, which has seen some fifteen thousand nurses across multiple Montefiore, Mount Sinai, and NewYork-Presbyterian facilities walk off the job. Hundreds of nurses kicked off the week by gathering near Grand Central Terminal and...

Me, Hillary, and The War on EmpathyA Response to Madam Secretary When I first saw that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had called me “an extremist pastor” in The Atlantic, I immediately thought, “I should probably double my life insurance.” My next thought was “This should be fun to answer.” After all, we have very different worldviews. Probably the only two things we agree on is that 1) Empathy is central to our cultural divide, and 2) Epstein didn’t kill himself.Clinton identifies me and Allie Beth Stuckey as part of a “cadre of hard-right Christian influencers who are...

LYNCH: Financial services firms… BESSENT: Well, the Biden Administration… LYNCH: Sir, please be responsive to my question. BESSENT: I’m trying, sir, and this back-and-forth is just eating your time. The Biden Administration had an extinction policy for crypto… LYNCH: This is when Trump came into office. I’m going to go to the next question…Mr. Chariman, the answers have to be responsive if we are going to have a serious hearing. BESSENT: Well, the questions have to be serious. LYNCH: Those are 100 dismissals of cases the Trump Administration executed in their first weeks in office BESSENT: Well, the questions have...

Illinois will join the World Health Organization’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, or GOARN, to counterbalance the federal government’s withdrawal, Gov. JB Pritzker announced Tuesday. (snip) California also joined GOARN in late January.The withdrawal is complicated because there is no official way to leave WHO and the United States is the only country with the ability to do so. Experts say it’s up to WHO members when the departure is finalized, and they expect the matter to come up in meetings in February and May.

The Super Bowl is in California this week, but a football-related jab at Gov. Gavin Newsom has just touched down in none other than New York City. The billboard, paid for by the California Business and Industrial Alliance, criticizes Newsom by comparing him to the sad-sack New York Jets.

The socialist Spanish government’s amnesty scheme will allow illegal migrants to simply declare that they have no criminal record, rather than providing documentation from their native countries, sparking concern over criminals gaming the system. Last month, the left-wing coalition government of Socialist PM Pedro Sánchez agreed to allow upwards of half a million illegals seek amnesty and obtain residence permits to remain in Spain. While the scheme stipulates that amnesty will not apply to migrants with criminal records — other than the crime of entering Spain illegally — the regularisation decree published by the government this week revealed that Madrid...

Currently, Trump is the only one who can make the SAVE Act happen, yet he seems to have no interest in doing so. Recently, I wrote a piece that received some pushback. I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips: No new taxes” pledge. If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom. It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how...

U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk despaired Thursday his agency is “in survival mode” due to funding shortfalls driven by a lack of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Such is his fear for the future Turk launched a $400 million appeal for cash to help the U.N. Human Rights Office survive 2026, AFP reports. The unelected Austrian’s panicked plea comes after U.N. chief Antonio Guterres warned last Friday the world body is on the brink of financial collapse and could run out of cash by July, as he urged countries to pay their dues, as Breitbart News reported. The U.N.’s largest contributor,...

📉 The Grammys audience declines by ONE MILLION viewers this 2026. It's the second consecutive year that the awards ceremony attracted a smaller audience. According to experts the @RecordingAcad is slowly losing respect among the general public due to their controversial picks.

5 February 2026 Saint Agatha, Virgin, Martyr on Thursday of week 4 in Ordinary TimeSaint Agatha Church, Saint Louis, MissouriReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: Red. Year: A(II).Readings for the feriaReadings for the memorialThese are the readings for the feriaFirst reading1 Kings 2:1-4,10-12David's dying exhortation to SolomonAs David’s life drew to its close he laid this charge on his son Solomon, ‘I am going the way of all the earth. Be strong and show yourself a man. Observe the injunctions of the Lord your God, following his ways and keeping his laws, his commandments, his customs and his decrees, as it stands...

I caught my reflection in a spoon while I was eating my cereal, and I remember thinking "wow, you're ridiculously good looking, maybe you could do that for a career." ---Derek ZoolanderDid the Gavin Newsom campaign think it was a good idea to turn to Vogue magazine for a glowing profile piece as perhaps a desperate attempt to counter the disastrous Atlantic magazine story that recently blasted the California governor who has 2028 presidential aspirations?Whoever that campaign person was could be finding his (or her) job currently at risk due to the hilarious blowback that resulted from the glam paean...

A government lawyer who told a judge that her job “sucks” during a court hearing stemming from the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge in Minnesota has been removed from her Justice Department post, according to a person familiar with the matter. Julie Le had been working for the Justice Department on a detail, but the U.S. attorney in Minnesota ended her assignment after her comments in court on Tuesday, the person said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter. She had been working for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before the temporary assignment. At...

“The world sees you now: not as compassionate warriors, but as spoiled, entitled, reality-denying tyrants in yoga pants, wielding guilt and hysteria like switchblades.” —LHGrey on "X". The political grandstanding started way back in 1973 when the irascible Marlon Brando stayed home from the Academy Awards but sent an Apache princess, one Sacheen Littlefeather, to the podium to decline his award (Best Actor for The Godfather) on account of the 71-day standoff at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota between federal agents and Oglala Lakota activists who had seized the little town of Wounded Knee. After that, political...

Top Democrats House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have sparked backlash after demanding that taxpayer dollars not be used for immigration enforcement operations near "sensitive locations," including polling places. Which, of course, begs the question: Why would there be elevated concerns about the presence of illegal aliens at polling places? Democrats' DHS Demands Spark Outrage: Why Shield Polling Places from ICE Enforcement? Jeffries (NY-8) and Schumer (D-NY) sent a letter to Republican leadership on Wednesday, demanding reforms to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration enforcement as part of ongoing funding negotiations. Their list of...

A 26-year-old man accused of sexually battering an Uber driver and causing her to crash remained behind bars on Tuesday afternoon in Miami-Dade County... [The suspect] was born in El Salvador and...has an active U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold, records show. On Monday, the victim told Local 10 News that the sexual assault was to blame for her losing control and crashing into a car at Southwest Sixth Avenue and Seventh Street. “He covered my mouth and began to grope me,” said the victim, who had bruises on her neck and chest and scrapes on her mouth.

🇺🇸Pray For The Peace of Jerusalem 🇮🇱(2/5/26)[Prayer]A New Study For A New Year: PersonalitiesGenesis 22 22 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. 2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. 3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of...

“Seeing a lot of very powerful old white men outraged about what my 24-year-old sister said during her acceptance speech,” he wrote. “We can literally see your names in the Epstein files.”