Free Republic

Two weeks ago, students in the impoverished Seine-Saint-Denis area of northern Paris decided they were fed up with the conditions they had to endure to get an education in France. The buildings were dilapidated and infested with rats and roaches. The kids had to share textbooks because there weren't enough to go around. There weren't enough chairs for kids to sit. There also weren't enough teachers or support staff. The bathrooms were appalling. And school hours were excruciatingly long. Some readers on this site and others think it matters that the kids complaining are Muslim or immigrants. I don't know...

President Donald Trump on Saturday reiterated his pledge to give every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 if Republicans retain control of both chambers of Congress in next month's midterm elections, while warning of an economic "disaster" if Democrats win."Our country is doing so well under Republican leadership that only I can make you this promise," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. "If Republicans win the House of Representatives and the Senate, I'm going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000.""But Democrat policies won't allow this to happen," Trump said. "In fact, the opposite...

If you want to understand what’s shaping the midterm elections in November, start with voters age 50 and older. They are highly motivated, they make up a substantial share of the country’s swing vote, and they are focused on issues that affect their everyday lives, like affordability and Social Security. There’s no better state that exemplifies this than Alaska, where one of the most compelling Senate races is taking shape in the battle for control of the Senate. AARP’s new bipartisan poll of likely Alaska voters found that 87 percent of voters 50 and older rate themselves a “10” on...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Leo seeks status update of Francis’s divisive look at divorced and remarried CatholicsROME — Ten years after Pope Francis sent shock waves through the Catholic Church with his outreach to divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Pope Leo XIV is inviting church leaders to Rome next week to understand how Francis’s document has been implemented.Vatican officials on Friday stressed that Francis’s 2016 text Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”) isn’t up for rewriting, amending or scrapping. Rather, the weeklong closed-door conference starting Wednesday is meant to understand how bishops have incorporated the document’s teaching into their local communities.Francis’s...

A 15-year-old boy was arrested for firing a makeshift flamethrower at a woman's face during France's latest series of riots.The incident took place in Marseille on Friday, with video showing a hooded teenager using an aerosol can and a lighter to try to burn a woman who was calling for the riots to stop. French police arrested the suspect on Friday night, and the woman suffered first-degree burns, according to Le Parisi

About 20 states have laws that can make it difficult to prosecute sexual assault cases if accusers voluntarily drank or took drugs. As detailed allegations of a 2024 gang rape at Cornell University emerged last month, Summer Willis felt both horror and a sense of recognition. There were fraternity brothers exchanging vulgar messages about the accuser on Snapchat, echoing what Willis says happened after she herself was assaulted in 2014. And there was a district attorney saying on television that state law had made filing charges difficult or impossible, just as Willis had been told years ago. “I almost threw...

Today, Michael Whatley was endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber endorsed Whatley because they know he is the Pro-Job-Creator candidate who will support policies that help create more and better jobs and more and better opportunities for all North Carolinians. Under Roy Cooper’s reign, he was consistently against North Carolina job creators. From vetoing tax relief; forcing an impractical Green New Deal energy agenda that raised costs; to closing businesses during COVID; Cooper stood against our job creators every step of the way. The Chamber endorsement demonstrates that job creators across North Carolina know Michael Whatley is...

When It Comes to Illegal Mass Immigration, a Listening Church Stops Listening The 'Synodal Church' — a so-called listening Church — turns a deaf ear to voices that don't flatter their liberal agenda.One of the buzzwords that dominates the Catholic Church these days is “listening.” In the synodal Church, bishops and clergy are called to pay special attention to what the faithful are saying on all the burning issues of the day. In this way, they will supposedly be better positioned to discern where “the spirit” wants the Church to go.However, “the spirit” does not seem to be speaking clearly...

ITHACA, NY — Immediately following her appointment as a special prosecutor to investigate the alleged sexual assault of a female student, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she was indicting President Donald Trump in the Cornell case. Fierce debate swirled on social media about the case, but James said she determined almost instantly upon joining the investigation that Trump was the one who was ultimately responsible for the incident. "I know he's to blame somehow," James told the media when announcing the indictment. "Though he was not present at the time of the incident, has no connection...

A New Jersey student claims he was branded a “racist” and forced to drop an online course after his woke community college professor spotted a “Trump 2020” flag hanging on his wall during a Zoom call. Justin Caiazzo, 29, is suing Passaic County Community College, business professor Gladys Harris and dean Peter Hynes, arguing his First Amendment rights were violated during a July 2021 online class. Caiazzo, of Lake Hiawatha, was blindsided when Harris allegedly stopped her business statistics class after spotting the Trump banner in his background, according to the Sept. 23 complaint filed in New Jersey Superior Court....

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for years has publicly said he’s a physician — but there’s overwhelming evidence that he’s had no experience as a licensed medical doctor. This April, he gave an interview to a local TV journalist where he talked up his credentials as a physician multiple times. In March, he told a group of Teamsters nurses that he had “been in enough codes to watch who really does the work” and said that same month on a podcast that “I’ve been a doctor my whole career.” His LinkedIn profile currently says he’s a “physician,” and late...

Most MSM is saying these are "student riots", but it is the muslims. Like usual. Video at source link.

Let's check in on our "devout Catholic" former president, and see how well he's Catholic-ing today. Last week at a gala in Delaware, Biden spoke (mumbled) for 20 minutes, telling the abortion fanatics that this is "no time to give up" in the fight to kill as many babies in the womb as possible. Biden delivered remarks at Planned Parenthood of Delaware's 22nd Annual Chocolate & Champagne Gala in Claymont, Delaware, on Thursday. Before the former president spoke, former first lady Jill Biden presented her husband with the Sonia Schorr Sloan Service Award.According to a Facebook post by Delaware Planned...

In the Irkutsk Oblast of Russia, the aggressor country, a death from pneumonic plague—a dangerous airborne infection with a high fatality rate—has been reported. An employee of a local anti-plague institute died from the disease. This is according to reports in the Russian media, Ukrainian News Agency reports. The “People of Lake Baikal” project reported that 28-year-old Daria Shipilova died at a hospital in the city of Shelekhov. A week earlier, she had broken a test tube containing the pathogen responsible for pneumonic plague. Shipilova worked as a lab technician at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute. It is reported that the...

President Trump announced Friday that over 20 million “wonderful seniors” will receive $90 checks this month to help cover Medicare premiums.Eligible Medicare Part B enrollees will receive the one-time payment via direct deposit or check thanks to the Medicare Improvement Fund that was established in 2008*** Trump called the Medicare Improvement Fund, “a pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs. “We are finally using this Fund, along with my Most Favored Nations Deals, to substantially LOWER costs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqA3GzocPzc

The ax required by regulators is intended for emergencies but puts a weapon in reach for attackersDUBAI—A central mystery of this week’s attempted downing of FlyDubai Flight 1073 has been how the co-pilot managed to smuggle a weapon into the plane to carry out his attack. It turns out he didn’t. The weapon he used is a cockpit fixture. United Arab Emirates authorities said Saturday the co-pilot attacked his captain with the plane’s crash ax—a tool that regulators around the world require airplanes to carry.Designed for use as an emergency tool to tear through metal in case of a fire...

An animal welfare group has been administering nasal naloxone to crows that are suspected to have eaten toxic drugs left accessible outside in downtown Prince George, B.C. The Good Caws Crow Rescue Society (GCCRS) has posted multiple videos showing their volunteers giving nasal naloxone to crows that are otherwise unresponsive. The videos then show the crows alert and able to fly again. Naloxone is a medication commonly used to reverse or reduce the impact of an opioid overdose in people, and Dayna Slater of GCCRS says the crows they are helping are centred in an area of town where illicit...

In the aftermath of two devastating hurricanes, then-Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s administration steered some $100 million in disaster funding toward affordable housing projects — despite hundreds of storm victims stuck in temporary homes, according to an analysis. Under Cooper’s watch, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) sent $100 million for affordable housing as the $1 billion agency was suffering from a gaping budget shortfall, an analysis by the John Locke Foundation, a free-market think tank in the state, found. One of the affordable housing projects, Starway Village, was a $9 million 278-unit complex that opened...

A federal judge blocked the Education Department on Thursday from releasing a list of foreign donors to Harvard, Columbia and other top US universities — ruling that the disclosure of the confidential information could “constitute irreparable harm.” DC US District Judge Tanya Chutkan slapped the temporary restraining order on the Trump administration as it was seeking to publish a list of all foreign donors who have given up to $5.2 billion to the universities since 2020. So-called non-natural person entities accounted for the vast majority of the $5.2 billion, officials noted, rather than individual donors. “This would be a foreign...