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First Lady Jill Biden — who is featured on the August cover of Vogue after the fashion magazine broke a decades-long tradition by snubbing former First Lady Melania Trump during her four years in the White House — says people can “breathe again,” now that former President Donald Trump is out of office. Mrs. Biden said President Joe Biden came in and “heal[ed] this nation.” “During the campaign, I felt so much anxiety from people — they were scared,” Jill Biden told Vogue. “When I travel around the country now, I feel as though people can breathe again.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence reiterated at a speech at the Reagan Library on Thursday he did not have the constitutional authority to stop the count of the electoral votes on Jan. 6. “Now there are those in our party who believe that in my position as presiding officer over the joint session that I possess the authority to reject or return electoral votes certified by the states,” Pence said. "The Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority before the joint session of Congress." Some Republicans, including former President Trump, called for Pence to reject electoral votes on...

President Joe Biden signed a presidential memorandum on Thursday, January 28, 2021, reversing the Trump administration rule blocking abortion businesses and centers that refer patients for abortion from receiving federal funding through the Title X family planning program. The 2018 “Protect Life Rule” required abortion businesses to both fiscally and physically separate family planning/birth control services from their abortion-related business. It also stated that family planning centers must stop referring patients for abortions in order to receive Title X funding. Title X states, “None of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a...

Advancing his anti-abortion agenda, President Donald Trump moved Thursday to protect health care workers who object to procedures like abortion on moral or religious grounds. Trump chose the National Day of Prayer to announce the new regulation. “Just today we finalized new protections of conscience rights for physicians, pharmacists, nurses, teachers, students and faith-based charities,” Trump told an interfaith audience in the White House Rose Garden. “They’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.” The conscience rule was a priority for religious conservatives who are a key part of Trump’s political base, but some critics fear it will...

In an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC’s Good Morning America, Biden was asked if he had his own motto for his 2020 run. He said: “Make America moral again. Make America return to the essence of who we are, the dignity of the country, the dignity of people, treating our people with dignity… End this God-awful deliberate division that is being taken in order… separating people to aggrandize his own power.”

Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed legislation making New Jersey the seventh state to enact a law permitting terminally ill patients to end their lives. Murphy, a Democrat, signed the Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act in private. His office would not answer why the signing was not public. The law goes into effect in August. He earlier indicated he would support the bill, but in a personal statement, Murphy — a lifelong Catholic — revealed that he wrestled with whether to sign the legislation. The state’s Catholic Conference testified against the measure. “I have concluded that,...

LEICESTER, United Kingdom - Baptizing babies is a violation of their human rights, according to the former president of Ireland. Mary McAleese, who served in the largely ceremonial role of president from 1997-2011, also said she would not attend the Aug. 22-26 World Meeting of Families taking place in Dublin. She told the Irish Times the event, which Pope Francis will attend Aug. 25-26, will only serve as a “political rally” for the “reinforcement of orthodoxy.” McAleese told the newspaper that by baptizing children before they have reached the age of reason, the Church is creating “infant conscripts who are...

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) said that none of his colleagues ever asked him about his connections with controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as he campaigned to take over as the lead sponsor of a single-payer health care bill, ripping the media for focusing on "this Farrakhan thing." Ellison, who serves as deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, has faced increased scrutiny lately over his prior membership in the Nation of Islam and his reported meetings in recent years with Farrkhan, an outspoken bigot who espouses conspiracy theories about Jews and whites. On Wednesday, Ellison received unanimous...

The very liberal Catholic bishop of San Diego, Robert McElroy, who supports giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, contrary to Church teaching, and embracing “LGBT families,” said that social justice activists must become “disruptors” to counter the efforts of the federal government to apprehend illegal aliens. “Well now, we must all become disruptors,” said Bishop McElroy in a Feb. 18 speech at the U.S. Regional World Meeting of Popular Movements in Modesto, Calif. “We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families,” he...

The Democratic Party has problems. Ever since Democrats suffered major, unexpected losses in the November election, political commentators have been speculating about why. One of the biggest reasons pointed to is the party’s disconnect with rural, religious and pro-life voters. On Friday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough broached the topic with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “How do they reconnect with a middle America who feels like [Democrats] look down on them?” Scarborough asked. Pelosi emphasized that Democrats are people of faith, but she said they may need to work harder to make that clear. Later in the interview, Pelosi accused Republicans,...

Putting convicted criminals to death is an issue Sen. Tim Kaine said he had to “grapple” with when he served as governor of Virginia. Kaine chose the death penalty, not abortion, as the issue that posed the biggest conflict with his Roman Catholic faith. “For me, the hardest struggle in my faith life was, the Catholic Church is against the death penalty and so am I,” Kaine said at Tuesday night’s debate. “But I was governor of a state, and the state law said that there was a death penalty for crimes if the jury determined them to be heinous....

California’s wrenching yearlong legislative debate over the right to die culminated Monday with Gov. Jerry Brown signing into law a bill making California the fifth state to permit physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. As a Democrat and former Catholic seminarian, Mr. Brown was caught between two opposing sides of the right-to-die debate, and had given little indication of whether he would sign the bill before it reached his desk in early September. “In the end, I was left to reflect on what I would want in the face of my own death,” Mr. Brown said in his signing statement....

Gov. Chris Christie said last week that.he is “happy” for same-sex couples who got married in New Jersey after his administration withdrew its appeal of a court order to start issuing them marriage licenses. “I’m happy for them, if they’re happy,” Christie, a Roman Catholic who attended an inaugural Mass in 2010 after being first elected governor, said at a press conference in Union City on Nov. 6th, the day after his historic re-election. When asked if he had an emotional reaction to same-sex couples being able to obtain marriage licenses in New Jersey, Christie replied, “Not really.” … The...

Sarah Murnaghan's situation is a prime example of why we need smaller government involved in our lives and why we do not need Obamacare....

Vice President Joe Biden has a commandment for pastors, rabbis and nuns: He wants them to tell their flocks that enacting gun control is the moral thing to do. But another vote may have to wait until Congress wraps up work on an immigration overhaul. Biden met for two-and-a-half hours Monday with more than a dozen leaders from various faith communities – Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh, to name a few. Both Biden and the faith leaders encouraged each other not to give up on what has been an arduous and thus far fruitless effort by Biden and President Barack...