Free Republic

Drinks can spike blood sugar and increase risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease, doctors say The latest beverage trend is far from clean – and it’s raising red flags with doctors. Known as a "dirty soda," it’s a soft drink that also includes a combination of added ingredients, such as flavored syrups, creamers, fruit juices and other garnishes. The result is a sweet beverage that’s a combination of a soda, mocktail and dessert. Dirty sodas can easily deliver 250-400 calories and 55-70 grams of sugar in a single drink – which is often more than double the American Heart...

Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson, 22, was taken into custody on Friday morning after his father confronted him about the murder. Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood on Wednesday at an event at Utah Valley University after Robinson opened fire from an elevated position from a rooftop. Robinson’s father, a veteran police officer, confronted him after Utah authorities released new photos of the suspect on Thursday. According to The New York Post, Tyler Robinson threatened to take his own life rather than turn himself in. The New York Post reported: Accused Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson threatened to kill...

The 22-year-old accused of murdering Charlie Kirk came from a stable family in a thriving town. But that wasn’t enough… That is the lesson of Tyler Robinson. And lurking behind that lesson: the fear that every teenager in America is a would-be Tyler Robinson, always vulnerable to the forces of death and nihilism. “How had he lost so much of his soul?” Utah governor Spencer Cox asked me about Robinson. We were in his office at the state Capitol. He didn’t know what to make of the “meme culture” that Robinson had been a part of, and the flood of...

The deranged madman who killed at least two people and injured nine others at a Michigan Latter-day Saints church, torching the building and opening fire on fleeing congregants and their families, has been identified as 40-year-old Thomas Jacob Sanford, The Post can confirm

Multiple victims have been injured in a shooting at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, Michigan, on Sunday, according to police. The shooter is down and there is no ongoing threat to the public, according to the Grand Blanc Township Police Department. The church is currently on fire. Police are urging the public to avoid the area as emergency response efforts continue.

live video

A former Republican senator is endorsing Hillary Clinton for president after the mass shooting in Orlando, citing her support for gun control. Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) called for universal background checks on all gun sales and an assault weapons ban Monday in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. "I can't believe I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but I am," said Pressler, who spoke with The Hill on Monday after endorsing Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, in a statement issued over the weekend.... He said he feels disenfranchised by Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican...

Federal agents have arrested Utah oil magnate James Lael Jensen, his wife Kelly Anne Jensen, and two of their sons, Maxwell Sterling Jensen (aka “Max”) and Zachary Golden Jensen, in connection with a sprawling $300 MILLION smuggling and money laundering conspiracy tied to Mexican criminal organizations. Court records reveal that all four members of the Jensen family were arrested on Wednesday, April 23 — with sons Max and Zachary taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley, while James and Kelly Jensen were apprehended at their 26,893-square-foot mansion in Sandy, Utah, reportedly worth over $9.1 million. The arrest was carried...

Lori Vallow Daybell, who is serving three life sentences for murdering her children and conspiring to kill her husband's former wife, is on trial again, this time in Arizona. Prosecutors accuse Vallow Daybell of conspiring with her late brother, Alex Cox, to murder her husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019 to benefit from a $1 million life insurance policy and marry another man, Chad Daybell. Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. The trial is being livestreamed online after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Justin Beresky granted a media request for courtroom coverage. Proceedings are set to resume each day at 10:30...

Netflix series American Primeval has come under fire from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-say Saints (LDS), which has branded the show "dangerously misleading." The Mormon church responded to the series in a release on Friday, calling it "dangerously misleading" and the portrayal of Young "egregiously mischaracterized." "A recently released streaming series presents a fictionalized interpretation of events in mid-19th century Utah. While historical fiction can be illuminating, this drama is dangerously misleading," the church wrote. "Brigham Young, a revered prophet and courageous pioneer, is, by any historical standard, egregiously mischaracterized as a villainous, violent fanatic. Other individuals and...

Small, child-like fingers had been spotted poking out of an enclosed wooden trailer being towed in Arizona. When police pulled over the driver, they found three girls aged between 11 and 14 hidden in the back amid squalid conditions. There was no ventilation, and pictures released by the Coconino County Superior Court later revealed a toilet in the corner made of a bucket, trash bag and plastic seat. There was also a dingy brown couch, camping chairs, stroller and other junk crammed inside. The driver was Samuel Bateman - a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day...

(RNS) — Kellianne Clarke doesn’t really have time for an interview. An active member of her Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation in Chester County, Pennsylvania, she spoke to RNS earlier this month while preparing a lesson she planned to lead for her church’s women’s group the following Sunday. A mother of four with a master’s in strategic communication who regularly serves on various nonprofit boards, Clarke also helps lead the local chapter of the Relief Society, the LDS church’s national women’s group. All that, along with her long history with the church, means she is in constant...

The Mormon Church — officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) — is quietly welcoming thousands of migrants sent to Utah from overcrowded Denver, Colorado, despite public protests by state and local elected officials. Utah has suffered under the arrival of thousands of cast-off border crossers sent its way by officials in Denver, but even as the state has no resources for migrants, the Mormon Church is quietly welcoming them, causing the public burden to magnify. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox voiced his outrage in June after he said he just “learned” that Denver had been sending thousands...

A fascinating documentary has lifted the lid on life inside a fundamentalist Mormon community where families still practice 'plural marriage' - but insist they're nothing like the horrific FLDS cult founded by Warren Jeffs. Peter Santenello, 45, a popular YouTuber who is based in the US, recently spoke to a group of people who are part of what's known as the Righteous Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - and they spilled on everything from why the believe in polygamy to how the women combat 'jealousy' over their husbands spending time with his other wives....

Matthew Gooden had not been born when his father, Shawn, began sexually assaulting two young relatives, aged eight and nine. Matthew spent the first twenty years of his life blissfully unaware of the harrowing truth, leading what he thought was a normal upbringing in the Mormon church, in which his father had risen to the rank of bishop. It was not until Gooden's arrest in September 2022 that he was exposed as the monster he was. But to his son's horror, it transpired that church leaders had known of the abuse allegations almost two years earlier, but 'kept it secret'...

A woman who claims she was sexually abused by her bishop father and was paid $300k by the Mormon church is now speaking out to keep others safe. Chelsea Goodrich said when she was a child her father, John Goodrich, a former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon church, had routinely abused her. She says he climbed into her bed in a state of arousal on multiple occasions during her childhood. She told Mormon church leaders and now says they paid her $300,000 to settle potential claims and to delete...

Peter Jennings, the late anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, once remarked the following as host of a television investigation of unidentified flying objects: “We have a lot of skeptics—I am very skeptical—but we seriously investigated something a lot of people are serious about,” he said. “And when we come to the end, this is wonderfully interesting. “More than 80 million Americans believe intelligent beings from somewhere else have come here,” he said. “Forty million believe they have seen UFOs, so this is of deep interest to people.” Jennings said further in exploring the wide span of those interviewed who...

A few months before her 18th birthday, Katie Wallace hatched a plan to overdose on heroin. She and a male friend who had her hooked on the drug would do it together, ending years of misery to which the 17-year-old saw no way out. It was not the path the Mormon church, in which Katie had been raised, had ordained for her. But it was one that she holds the religion responsible for, after church leaders allegedly covered up years of rampant sexual abuse and incest within her family. For Katie, now 39, it began when she was four. Unbeknown...

Mormon families who tried to expose cases of sexual abuse within their communities have alleged they were 'silenced' and threatened with disciplinary action by church leaders, DailyMail.com can reveal. In one instance, two Idaho members claim they were warned they could be punished after the pair alerted others in their congregation to the fact that their former bishop faced child sex abuse charges dating back 10 years. In another case in Minnesota, a church member and social worker claims he was stripped of his positions within the church after he spoke out about a registered sex offender who had been...

In a world where boundaries and definitions are stretched to unrecognizable limits, a congregation of ex-Mormons has outdone itself in an unprecedented display of spiritual anarchy. Stepping far away from previously blasphemous Mormon roots, they’ve founded a “church” where their sacrament is not the bread and wine symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice, but psychedelic mushrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. They call themselves the “Divine Assembly,” trading in pews and hymnals for bean bags and trip guides. These spiritual “adventurers” claim they are communing directly with the divine while they’re tripping, but the only thing they are communing with is the surreal...