Free Republic

An Arizona grand jury has indicted former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Rudy Giuliani along with 16 others in an election interference case. The indictment released Wednesday names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election. It shows seven other defendants whose names were not immediately released because they had not yet been served with the charges. The Associated Press was able to determine the identities of the unnamed defendants based on their descriptions in the indictment. One is described as...

Don Lemon and Tim Malone were all smiles as they headed home from their glitzy New York City wedding. The newlyweds strolled hand in hand as they exited Ralph Lauren's Polo bar just before midnight on Sunday. Lemon, 58, tied the knot with Malone, 40, in an intimate ceremony at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church before leading guests on foot over to the reception. Disgraced sex pest broadcaster Matt Lauer, fired CNN boss Jeff Zucker and alleged killer Alec Baldwin were among the high-profile attendees. The grooms appeared in good spirits as they exited their venue in the same coordinated velvet...

One of the Catholic Church’s most infamously dissident prelates, Archbishop Thomas Gumbleton, died April 4 at age 94. In many ways, Gumbleton’s life was emblematic of the direction the Catholic Church took after Vatican II. He was born in 1930 and was one of nine children – a Catholic family size now rare outside of Traditional Latin Mass circles. Gumbleton and several of his siblings pursued religious vocations. He was ordained a priest in 1956, shortly before the Second Vatican Council and its use as justification to radically change Catholic worship. In 1968, Pope Paul VI appointed Gumbleton an auxiliary...

On Wednesday, Thailand’s House of Representatives voted 400-10 in favor of same-sex “marriage.” Only 10 lawmakers voted against the bill. Two abstained and three didn’t vote. The country’s Senate “rarely rejects any legislation that passes the lower house,” the Associated Press noted. Once it passes the Senate, it then must be approved by the majority-Buddhist country’s king. In addition to redefining marriage, the bill “extends all rights and protections contained in the Civil and Commercial Code to LGBTI+ persons,” the pro-LGBT group “Fortify Rights” said in a press release. The group’s lobbying to add the “gender-neutral language of ‘parent’ addition...

Students and teachers can discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in Florida classrooms, provided it’s not part of instruction, under a settlement reached Monday between Florida education officials and civil rights attorneys who had challenged a state law which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.” The settlement clarifies what is allowed in Florida classrooms following passage two years ago of the law prohibiting instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in early grades. Opponents said the law had created confusion about whether teachers could identity themselves as LGBTQ+ or if they even could have rainbow stickers in classrooms. Other states used...

In the first signals of how he’ll act on legislation approved by Virginia’s Democratic General Assembly, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed a largely symbolic bill protecting same-sex marriage but took a more adversarial stance to bills dealing with gun control, reproductive rights and marijuana. Youngkin had until Friday night to take action on 84 bills the legislature sent to him on a shorter-than-usual timeline. He vetoed eight, recommended changes to 12 and signed the rest. The General Assembly finished its work Saturday without taking up any of the governor’s initial amendments and vetoes, which means they will be dealt with during...

Oh boy! Meet Elvis, 10 weeks, and his 11-day old brother Ezra, who have made British history along with their mums Emily Patrick and Kerry Osborn. The babies, pictured here for the first time, were born to the lesbian couple via IVF. Elvis was created from Kerry's egg which was fertilised and implanted in Emily so she could be his birth mother. Ezra, meanwhile, was created from Emily's egg and implanted in Kerry so she could carry and deliver him. It's the first time the procedure, known as simultaneous reciprocal IVF, has been attempted in the UK - and it...

Aleksei Navalny has reportedly died in prison, and the timing of this tragic event for the sake of proving the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-American right on the Russia question is absolutely perfect, coming on the heels of a series of humiliating videos of Tucker going to Moscow and declaring it heaven on earth. It’s one thing to just be wrong in normal and understandable ways. It’s completely different to go abroad and declare, “This poor country has food that is affordable in American dollars! They’ve developed technology to stop the shopping carts from rolling away!” Quotes don’t...

A conservative group has told a Georgia judge that it doesn't have evidence to support its claims of illegal ballot stuffing during the the 2020 general election and a runoff two months later. Texas-based True the Vote filed complaints with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in 2021, including one in which it said it had obtained “a detailed account of coordinated efforts to collect and deposit ballots in drop boxes across metro Atlanta” during the November 2020 election and a January 2021 runoff. A Fulton County Superior Court judge in Atlanta signed an order last year requiring True the...

As Florida business owner Joe Mills remembers it, all the questions about whether the 14,000-memberFirst Baptist Church Orlando is now affirming same-sex relationships began after he started a Bible study group on Facebook with two of his gay friends called The Gospel Gathering while actively participating at the church. The group, which describes itself as a gathering “of Christian believers who want to worship God in a safe and nonjudgmental environment where all are welcome,” has 98 members. It was launched in May 2021 by Mills and his friends, Kevin Copley and David Speight. All three men are gay but...

Henry Kissinger, who died on Wednesday night at the age of 100, was the most enduringly influential secretary of state in the history of the United States. He was also the most controversial. But the influence matters far more than the controversy. His critics have wasted no time in ignoring the old injunction that no ill should be spoken of the recently deceased. The scurrilous magazine Rolling Stone led with the repulsive headline 'Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America's Ruling Class, Finally Dies'. At a time when anti-Semitism has again reared its ugly head in the wake of the...

The Church of England will test-run stand-alone services for blessing same-sex couples after its ruling body, the General Synod, voted to move ahead with implementing special prayers of thanks and dedication for gay couples. The vote to go ahead with the pilot program followed hours of emotionally charged debate about the church’s pastoral responsibilities toward gay people. The synod’s vote on Wednesday (Nov. 15) follows the House of Bishops’ agreement last month to commend “Prayers of Love and Faith,” a collection of prayers and readings for same-sex couples, for use in existing church services. The bishops also approved the prayers...

A new report maintains that the wife of House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has deleted her counseling website outlining biblical positions on marriage as a result of the criticism directed at her husband's views. Johnson's Southern Baptist views have become the subject of much media coverage since he was elected last week, with The Huffington Post reporting Friday that his wife, Kelly, operates Onward Christian Counseling Services. The liberal publication included a copy of her company's operating agreement, which includes a statement of faith. The statement of faith includes beliefs about marriage and sexuality, namely that marriage amounts to a...

On April 3, after Bud Light named trans TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney a spokesperson, Kid Rock responded with a video showing him firing an automatic rifle at a stack of Bud Light beer cases. Country star Travis Tritt announced that he was dropping the beer from his tours, and several conservative social media personalities launched a boycott of the brand. In Tennessee, the state legislature recently banned drag queen shows but, after the Covenant Baptist School shooting, expelled two Black legislators for protesting gun violence with demonstrators. And last month, the Republican Party of Texas censured GOP Representative Tony Gonzalez,...

It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too. So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze. Six years ago, groups with ties to the Confederacy had sued to stop the monument from being taken down. Torch-bearing white nationalists descended on the Virginia college town to protest its removal, and one...

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., says the panel has obtained bank records showing James and Sara Biden paid Joe Biden $200,000 in the form of a personal check in March, 2018, claiming the document shows proof of the Biden family's influence-peddling scheme. The document "raises new questions about how President Biden personally benefited from his family's shady influence peddling of his name and their access to him," Comer said in a video released Friday on the Oversight website. James Biden, the brother of Joe Biden, in 2018 received $600,000 in loans from Americore — a financially distressed and...

Five years after decriminalizing sodomy, the justices on India’s Supreme Court unanimously declined to legalize same-sex marriage, leaving the issue for the nation’s Parliament to decide. Tuesday’s ruling came after listening to arguments for and against same-sex “marriage” last spring. During those hearings, “the government argued that a marriage is only between a biological male and a biological woman, adding that same-sex marriages went against religious values and that the petitions reflected only ‘urban elitist views,’” according to an AP report. “Religious groups too had opposed same-sex unions, saying they went against Indian culture.” Attorneys representing those in favor of...

<p>Charlotte County Schools Superintendent Mark Vianello and the school board’s attorney, Michael McKinley, were responding to questions from the district’s librarians at a July meeting asking whether the bill, officially the “Florida Parental Rights in Education Act,” required the removal of any books that simply had a gay character but no explicit sex scenes.</p>

When I was 17, I became a feminist campaigner because I wanted to fight for a future where women feeling safe and being heard were considered everyday norms. I’m 61 now and still fighting as hard as ever for those basic rights, which remain infuriatingly beyond our reach. The fact that, even today — especially today — I would find it incredibly difficult to advise a woman who has been raped to go and report it to the police breaks my heart. My younger self would, rightly, be appalled. But I know that unless a woman fits the profile of...

A federal jury has awarded $100,000 to a same-sex couple who sued a former county clerk in Kentucky who refused to issue them a marriage license, claiming that doing so would violate her religious beliefs. Kim Davis, the former clerk in Rowan County, Ky., was sued by two same-sex couples to whom she refused to grant marriage licenses. The district court found Davis personally liable in both cases, but only awarded damages in one. In the case Ermold v. Davis, the jury awarded $50,000 to each of the plaintiffs, David Ermold and David Moore, according to attorneys for Davis. No...