Free Republic

LOS ANGELES, California, May 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) -- California’s Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra is leading a coalition of 20 attorneys general, representing 19 states plus Washington, D.C., opposing a Trump administration rule change that prioritizes abstinence education over contraception distribution in family planning funds. In February, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that abstinence messages and natural family planning methods would be given priority in distributing $260 million worth of family planning grants. The announcement did not mention artificial birth control. In response, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Ohio, Utah, and Wisconsin, as well as the American...

Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas was rushed to a Ramallah hospital Sunday, after he complained of chest pains and a high fever. Abbas, 82, was hospitalized last week for a “minor surgery”, the PA’s mouthpiece WAFA reported last week. On Sunday, Abbas was rushed to a Ramallah hospital for treatment of “pneumonia and fever” a source close to the PA chief said, Yediot Ahronot reported. According to a source which spoke with AFP, the PA leader also suffered from chest pains. .....

Four-term U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump who first got national notice as a small-city mayor for his attempted crackdown on illegal immigration, on Tuesday won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. Barletta paid little attention to his Republican rival, state Rep. Jim Christiana, during the primary campaign. Instead, he focused his attacks on the candidate he hopes to unseat in the fall, two-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey. With 80 percent of precincts reporting, Barletta led Christiana by nearly 112,000 votes out of more than 495,000 cast. The four-term congressman will face...

Pennsylvania Primary Election Results By THE NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters head to the polls on Tuesday in crucial party primaries in Pennsylvania, a state that has become central to Democrats’ hopes of retaking control of the U.S. House of Representatives. The state offers Democrats the opportunity to pick up as many as five seats from Republicans in congressional elections in November, analysts said. Democrats need a net total of 23 to assume the House majority, which would likely derail Republican President Donald Trump’s policy agenda. Pennsylvania’s politics were thrown into turmoil earlier this year when the state Supreme Court found that the current congressional districts had...

HARRISBURG, Pa. >> Pennsylvania voters have a lot to think about when they hit the polls for Tuesday’s primary, including a hotly contested Republican primary for governor. Also on the card are a five-way race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, a Republican primary to pick who will take on Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in the fall, House races in the wake of the major redistricting case and a host of open seats in the Legislature. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and elections officials emphasize that the redistricting decision did not change the polling...

In 2017, Pennsylvania became the last state to restore the right to hunt game with semiautomatic rifles. On April 24, 2018 the Pennsylvannia Board of Game Commissioners voted to correct a strange twist of the Pennsylvania game laws. In five counties where rifles are not allowed for the hunting of big game, semiautomatic shotguns have been allowed for decades. In the rest of Pennsylvania, semiautomatic shotguns were not legal for hunting big game. Now Pennsylvania hunters will be able to use semiautomatic shotguns to hunt big game in the rest of the state. From fox43.com: Semiautomatic centerfire shotguns that...

Palestinian Authority leaders warned Tuesday they will organize mass protests and hold a “Day of Rage” next Monday in protest of the planned relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem’s Arnona neighborhood. According to a report by the PA-mouthpiece WAFA, Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Ahmad Majdalani listed a number of steps the PA is planning in protest of the Trump administration’s decision to move the US embassy to Israel’s capital city. Among the measures under consideration are pursuing bids to have the PA recognized as a sovereign state by more international agencies, “enhancing popular resistance”...

Dan Meuser, a Republican candidate in Pennsylvania’s District 9 was confronted by Conservative Journalist Laura Loomer Tuesday, April 24, 2018 at the 9th Congressional District Candidates Forum. Loomer confronted Meuser about FEC reports that show he and his company PAC have contributed thousands of dollars to anti-Trump Democratic candidates, even though he’s claiming to run as an “America First” pro-Trump candidate. Loomer also questioned Meuser about why he is running in District 9 while living in District 8.

It may be spring, but it feels like winter for the Northeast this morning as a snowstorm moves through Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and New England. The latest The snowfall rate at New York's LaGuardia Airport reached 2 inches per hour this morning. New York City saw 5.5 inches of snow this morning -- its heaviest April snowfall since 1982 when the city was dumped with 9.6 inches. Kimberly Richardson ✔ @kemrichardson7 Wow! #nyc right now #centralpark Beautiful but enough !!!!! #snow @ABC7NY 8:43 AM - Apr 2, 2018 The New York Yankees canceled today's home opener due to...

A Pennsylvania school district has armed its students with rocks to defend themselves in the event of a school shooting. David Helsel, the superintendent of Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, said at a state House Education Committee hearing on school safety this week that his district's classrooms are equipped with 5-gallon buckets of river rocks. "If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance to any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full of students armed with rocks," he said. "And they will be stoned." Helsel emphasized to Buzzfeed News that the so-called "go buckets" are a...

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Ryan Costello will not seek reelection in 2018 as he faces a difficult midterm race in a district with a growing Democratic voter base, according to City & State Pennsylvania. Despite having filed this week to run in the Republican primary in May, Costello told state and local GOP officials that he plans to drop out in the weeks beforehand, the anonymous sources said.

In a memo to fellow House members, state Rep. Cris Dush (R) said the ruling overriding Pennsylvania’s U.S. House district lines amounted to an overstep of judicial authority under the state Constitution, which lays out the path by which a bill becomes a law — in this case, a bill to delineate the district lines after the decennial Census and reapportionment process. “The five Justices who signed this order that blatantly and clearly contradicts the plain language of the Pennsylvania Constitution engaged in misbehavior in office,” Dush wrote to fellow members... While the legislature is run by Republicans, Democrats hold...

Dan Shapiro, who the US ambassador to Israel during President Obama's term, estimated in an interview with Kol Rama radio that there is no chance for peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority at present time. "The administration is full of problems, and Netanyahu is busy with investigations, and I do not see it happening," Shapiro said....

Heads Up! Trump Rally at 7:00 EST. Carried on FNC. Its in Moon Township outside Pittsburgh. For GOP candidate Saccone. Trump carried the district in 2016.

Republicans are learning an uncomfortable reality about the political environment for 2018: Tax cuts, conservative culture-war staples, and even Nancy Pelosi herself probably won’t be enough to overcome the deep hole that President Trump has put them in. With the White House awash in scandal and struggling to articulate its agenda, the political mood has turned so grim that Republicans are in danger of losing an upcoming special election in the heart of Trump country. That’s the lesson to draw from the surprisingly competitive campaign Democrat Conor Lamb is running in a Pittsburgh-area district Trump easily carried by 20 points,...

The Palestinian Authority said Monday that Greenblatt’s efforts to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel “have no chances of succeeding.” The Palestinians are particularly angered at what they believe is a US effort to replace the current leadership of the PA. Greenblatt, in a speech before the annual conference of the Institute for National Strategic Studies, said that the United States “is as committed as ever to reaching an agreement that guarantees a peaceful, prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians. That’s why this administration continues to work on developing a peace plan that can bring both parties to...

TEL AVIV – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ deputy in his ruling Fatah faction this week dismissed years of American aid amounting to several billion dollars with the declaration that the U.S. has never given anything of “substance” to the Palestinians and added that “nothing good will come from them.” “Recently we were forced to review all of our relations with the American administrations in recent years, and not just the Trump administration. We assessed that nothing good will come from them for the Palestinian people and the nation, and this is completely clear,” said Aloul in an interview with...

The Palestinians rejected US President Donald Trump’s fresh threat to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in aid on Thursday, saying peace talks are “off the table” if the American recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital isn’t reversed. Ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Davos, Trump said the US would no longer provide aid to the Palestinians if they refused to engage in US-brokered peace talks with Israel. He also said he’d taken Jerusalem “off the table” with his December 6 recognition of the city as Israel’s capital — a move that led the Palestinians to...

Senior Palestinian Authority leaders slammed President Donald Trump Thursday, rejecting his demand that they agree to renew final status negotiations with Israel and ‘show respect’ to the United States for the hundreds of millions of dollars a year they receive in aid. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Thursday, President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, touting the planned transfer of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and declaring the issue of Jerusalem “off the table” in terms of final status talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. “The hardest subject they had to...