Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate Democratic leader, has spoken out against the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger. In remarks Thursday (July 31, 2025) on the Senate floor, Schumer said approval of the merger “would cut down the industry from four major players to just three, pushing us even further down the road of dangerous consolidation and monopoly power.” Schumer noted the companies are saying the merger will promote competition, improve service, and benefit workers and customers. “History tells us the opposite,” he said. “The last four decades of railroad mergers have led to worse service, worse safety,...

Zarina Wahab married Aditya Pancholi just 15 days after their first meeting. The industry thought that a 'good looking and young' Aditya Pancholi will leave her in a week.Zarina Wahab often talks about her inter-faith wedding with actor Aditya Pancholi, who is five years younger to her. The actors who met on a film set, decided to marry each other within 15 days of their meeting. In a recent interview, the actress recalled what led to this instant connection and a quick wedding. It all started when a good looking Aditya Pancholi couldn’t stop his tears while shooting for a...

Hours of tense negotiations to strike a deal on President Donald Trump’s nominees blew up Saturday night, and now lawmakers are headed home. Senate Republicans and Democrats were quick to point the finger at one another for the deal’s demise, but it was ultimately Trump who nuked the talks. In a lengthy post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., of "demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees." "This demand is egregious and unprecedented, and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party...

Look at the arms of Evyatar David — an Israeli hostage, starved to the edge of collapse. Now look at the arm of his Palestinian Hamas captor — strong, well-fed, offering a can for show. So who’s really being starved in Gaza?

Praying daily since 2015:Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Archaeologists have uncovered ruins in Israel they believe once housed the Ark of the Covenant, a sacred, gold-covered chest described in the Bible. >>> While the fate of the Ark remains a mystery, it vanishes from the biblical record before the Babylonian sack of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Now, a team working at the ancient biblical site of Shiloh has unearthed a stone structure that appears to match the dimensions and orientation of the Tabernacle described in the Bible. >>> Dr Stripling now believes his team may have uncovered the very gate where Eli died, CBN reported.

A Minnesota mechanic made a long lost discovery in an SUV he was working on. He found a wallet belonging to a former employee lost 11 years ago.

NAVIGATION Navigation of a ship at sea is, in principle, a very simple matter: you plot a course between where you are and where you want to be, and let the propeller muscle the ship through the water. As simple as that seems, it won’t happen without another very important element: the rudder! The rudder performs its quiet, steady work, unshaken by the tremendous pressures directed against it. And it must hold the true course without deviation. The navigation of a human life is also, in principle, a very simple matter. As with a ship, there must be motivation...

The left found and crowned their legal avenger: Jack Smith, their remedy in very fine suits to four years of Trump. In secret clubhouse meetings above their parents' garage, the left whispered reverently about Smith's independence, hailed his stoicism, and grasped him as a firewall between democracy and destruction. The right, however, looked at things differently. They saw Smith as a dogged, smirking prosecutor with a habit of filing charges just before primaries and playing a game of chicken with due process. Both sides, however, agreed on one thing: he was relentless. Now, that same man finds himself under federal...

The Senate on Saturday confirmed Jeanine Pirro, President Donald Trump’s pick to serve as Washington D.C.’s top prosecutor, as lawmakers failed to reach a deal to ram through dozens of the president’s nominees. The onetime New York judge and prosecutor and former Fox News host was one of the over 150 still outstanding nominees on the Senate’s calendar as Senate Republicans work to find a path forward to ram through Senate Democrats’ blockade of Trump’s nominees, and part of a slew of picks to get a vote over the weekend. But just ahead of her confirmation vote, the path to...

Former U.S. Rep Mike Rogers(R-MI), the Trump-endorsed Republican Senate candidate for Michigan, told Sirius XM’s Breitbart-News Saturday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs are “absolutely” already having real results as manufacturing opportunities are returning to the Wolverine State. [snip] Rogers keyed in on General Motors’ commitment to invest $4 billion in the United States, part of which will go to a facility in Michigan. He emphasized that it is “huge” that GM is bringing production back to Michigan. “And by the way, when that happens, all these small, little manufacturers get more work. This is really good for a state like...

Bananas vs Firefighters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1BHtJvU-Vk Party Animals vs Tailgaters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1BHtJvU-Vk

For many years I have appreciated and enjoyed the Vision series – a sequence of biographical novels about the lives of the saints and Catholic heroes written especially for younger readers. The series commenced in the hoary antiquity of the 1940s and has continued over the decades, featuring a variety of authors—some of whom, like Louis de Wohl for example, were writers of supreme talent. Several of the books in the series have been reviewed by your humble blogger over the years, among them books on Saint Helena, Blessed Miriam Teresa Demjanovich, and Saints Louis and Zelie Martin. The last...

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Unbelievable. This was created from text prompts. Unfortunately, the image creators hardly ever share their text prompts.

At North Korea’s new beach resort, the white sand glistened against the crystal-clear waters. Ten minutes of Wi-Fi cost $1.70. Food arrived in abundance, albeit with the same three beverage choices: water, tea or beer. The weeklong trip cost roughly $2,000. The catch? All travelers had to be Russian. Welcome to North Korea’s Wonsan Kalma coastal complex, a megaresort built by the regime to portray the country as modern and affluent. It is opening to foreign vacationers for the first time, as part of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s drive to attract more tourism to his cash-strapped country and...

US envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff visited Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday, speaking with families of hostages. During his visit, he stated that Hamas is prepared to disarm as part of a ceasefire agreement. In response, Hamas issued a statement denying Witkoff’s claim and emphasizing that “the resistance and its weapons are a national and legal obligation as long as the occupation continues.” According to Hamas, armed resistance is a right “enshrined in international conventions and custom, and it cannot be relinquished until all our national rights are restored, foremost among them the establishment of an...

[Catholic Caucus] What If “Synodality” Means Nothing?There’s good news and there’s bad news. The problem is that the good news isn’t very good, and we don’t know (yet?) how bad the bad news can be. Yes, you guessed it: I’m talking about “synodality.” The good news is that “synodality” might actually be meaningless. (That raises some questions about why, then, we are spending so much time, energy, and money on the topic; but let’s try to manage one conundrum at a time.) The bad news is that, precisely because “synodality” is a meaningless term (and “meaningless” will be defined below,...

Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican. A viral post on X by the user @time222smoke first claimed that the actor was a registered member of the party. According to publicly available voter registration records that BuzzFeed viewed, Sydney has been registered to the Republican Party of Florida since June 2024. The news comes after Sydney faced backlash for her "great jeans" American Eagle ad, in which she said, "Genes are passed down from parent to offspring, often determining traits like eye color, personality, and even hair color. My jeans are blue."

Utah is planning on taking water away from farmers and ranchers right now”.. They are currently writing new legislation that is going to put new regulations on farmers and ranchers water use — We need your help. We need to save the farmers and ranchers” “The verbiage in the bill is that they are going to require them to use less water, water that has been already granted to them from generations past, or they're going to require them to use more water saving technologies. But who is going to pay for that? It sure as hell isn't going to...