Per the resignation norms revised by the late Pope Francis in 2014, Cardinal Timothy Dolan was obligated to present his letter of resignation from the pastoral governance of the Archdiocese of New York upon reaching the age of 75.

Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., confirmed on Thursday that Pope Leo XIV has accepted Dolan’s resignation and appointed fellow Illinoisan Bishop Ronald Hicks of the Diocese of Joliet to take over the 4,683 square-mile archdiocese that serves over 1.5 million Catholics.

Cardinal Dolan — who has served as archbishop of New York since his appointment by the late Pope Benedict XVI in February 2009 — will continue to serve as the apostolic administrator until the installation of his 58-year-old replacement at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral on Feb. 6, 2026.

‘Running the New York archdiocese is a daunting task.’

Archbishop-designate Hicks, a native of Harvey, Illinois, will be the 14th bishop and 11th archbishop of the See of New York.

In addition to his time as bishop of Joliet, Hicks previously served in El Salvador as the regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a home dedicated to caring for thousands of orphaned and abandoned children in various Latin American and Caribbean countries; dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary; vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago; and auxiliary bishop of Chicago.

Hicks is no stranger to the pope, having spoken with him at length just last year.

After Pope Leo’s election, Hicks sung the Chicago native’s praises and told WGN-TV, “I recognize a lot of similarities between him and me. So we grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together.”

RELATED: Packed churches, skyrocketing conversions: Is New York undergoing a Catholic renaissance?

Photo by Masrio Tomassetti – Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images

Rev. David Boettner, one of Hicks’ former classmates at Mundelein Seminary, told Faith magazine in 2020, “As a seminarian and as a priest, he has always had a deep love of people and a generosity of his time to serve the needs of others.”

“He has always lived his promise of obedience to the Church, and his first answer when asked to serve is almost always yes,” added Boettner.

Rev. James Presta, a priest who worked with Hicks at Mundelein and at St. Joseph College Seminary, said, “He has been a mentor to young priests. He offers them fraternal support and sound, practical wisdom as a brother priest.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, stressed that Cardinal Dolan will be missed.

“He is a very special man. He always fought for justice, and his amiable character won the applause of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He was certainly very kind to me,” Donohue said in a statement. “His fairness never stood in the way of being outspoken about contemporary issues. He was not tied to the politics of the left or the right.”

While tethered neither to the left nor the right, Dolan called on Catholics to “be very active, very informed, and very involved in politics”; criticized the perverse secular culture that “seems to discover new rights every day”; championed religious liberty; and defended Christian morality, especially as it pertains to marriage and the rights of the unborn.

“Running the New York archdiocese is a daunting task, but it is one that suits the new archbishop,” noted Donohue. “Archbishop Ronald Hicks is young and vibrant and will be able to put his considerable administrative experience to good use. We look forward to working with him.”

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​Faith, Abide, Pope, Pope leo, Cardinal timothy dolan, Dolan, Timothy dolan, Catholic, Vatica, Catholic church, New york, Archdiocese, Ronald hicks, Politics 

The House GOP passed a bill outright banning transgender surgeries for minors, yet some Republicans still objected.

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill Protect Children’s Innocence Act passed in a 216-211 late-night vote on Wednesday. This legislation would make it a felony to perform sex changes or provide puberty blockers and hormone therapy to children.

‘I wish that Republicans were as hell-bent on protecting children as Democrats are when it comes to mutilating them.’

Although the bill was passed largely along party lines, both Democrats and Republicans had some defectors.

On the Republican side, Reps. Mike Lawler of New York, Mike Kennedy of Utah, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Gabe Evans of Colorado voted against criminalizing transgender surgeries for children. Only three Democrats voted in favor of Greene’s bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Donald Davis of North Carolina, and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas.

RELATED: ‘Send in the next guy’: Nicki Minaj savages Newsom over his desire to ‘see trans kids’

Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Greene’s legislation is one of two GOP-led bills on the docket targeting transgender interventions for minors. Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, outlined the key differences between Greene’s Protect Children’s Innocence Act and Texas Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s bill the Do No Harm in Medicaid Act.

“It’s necessary because it bans the procedure outright,” Schilling said of Greene’s bill. “We need this nationwide, because children in California should be protected from these procedures just as much as the kids in Texas or Oklahoma or Alabama or Mississippi or Florida.”

“If we can’t get the full ban done, we should at least make sure the taxpayers aren’t paying for it, right?” Schilling said of Crenshaw’s bill. “If you want a sex-change procedure, you should have to pay for it yourself. These are so expensive. They’re so harmful to the individual. Why are you making us participate in this?”

RELATED: Exclusive: GOP Senate candidate Wesley Hunt pushes bill barring education benefits for illegal aliens

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Both bills are useful because they force lawmakers to go on the record, articulating their degree of support for transgender ideology. Greene’s bill saw near unanimous support from Republicans as well as near unanimous condemnation from Democrats. Crenshaw’s bill puts forward a softer legislative approach, leaving room for moderates on either side to clarify their views on transgender interventions for children.

“I wish that Republicans were as hell-bent on protecting children as Democrats are when it comes to mutilating them,” Schilling told Blaze News. “There’s a difference between the two parties and how fired up they are when it comes to their principles. I think not giving kids sex changes is so commonsense. But these guys will figure out a way to make it controversial and debatable.”

“If Republicans can’t deliver on these things, or at least show that they’re trying to deliver, voters are going to give up on us morally, financially, and politically,” Schilling added. “This is a must-win for Republicans.”

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​Mike lawler, Brian fitzpatrick, Gabe evans, Mike kennedy, Donald davis, Vicente gonzales, Henry cuellar, Protect children’s innocence act, House republicans, House democrats, Marjorie taylor greene, Dan crenshaw, Do no harm in medicaid act, Terry schilling, American principles project, Transgender ideology, Transgender surgery, Hormone replacement, Sex changes for minors, Politics 

After the alleged murder of renowned Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, on December 14, President Trump responded in a Truth Social post that sparked notable pushback from within the MAGA base.

The morning after the couple were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home, President Trump posted the following message.

Glenn Beck says that while the response “made [him] sad,” he understands the context more than most. On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn provides insight that perhaps explains — but doesn’t justify — the vitriol in Trump’s controversial statement.

One thing we have to realize, Glenn says, is that Trump “is a knife fighter.” Even Glenn himself has been on the receiving end of Trump’s infamous fury.

“The president has said all kinds of things about me at times when I disagree with him. He’ll say, ‘Yeah, he’s just a failing, fat blob’ or whatever, and that’s just him,” Glenn laughs.

Second, much of Trump’s vitriol stems from years of the left “going after his family.”

“We showed you the documents. They had a plan: Take him down, take his family down, to stop MAGA at all costs. Put them in jail. I mean, those are their words,” Glenn says.

Glenn remembers talking to Trump back in 2021 shortly after Democrats reclaimed power and were destroying everything he’d built in his first term. “They’re going after my damn children,” he told Glenn.

“He wasn’t Donald Trump. He was a dad. … I saw him really, truly mad for the very first time, and it was righteous indignation,” Glenn says.

Just three years later, Trump escaped an assassin’s bullet by a hair’s breadth.

“He has been kicked in the head over and over and over again,” Glenn says.

But while Trump has every right to be fed up with the Trump derangement syndrome that’s put both him and his family in jeopardy, it doesn’t change the fact that hate only breeds more hate.

“The biggest thing that [Jesus] taught was, love your enemies, don’t hate them. But that’s really, really hard to do,” Glenn says, “and the president isn’t there yet.”

Even if his venom toward Reiner is understandable in light of everything the left has put him through, the Truth Social post was still a “bad move,” he says.

“I’m not excusing it, but I am tempering it with: None of us have gone through what he has gone through with his family, somebody shooting at him, being called fascist Hitler all the time. I mean, that wears on you and changes you,” he adds.

To hear more, watch the video above.

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​The glenn beck program, Glenn beck, Beck, Rob reiner, Rob reinder murder, Donald trump, Truth social, Blazetv, Blaze media 

Liberals in the United Kingdom have worked desperately to paint white Britons uniquely as history’s villains, erase them from British history, and/or programmatically undermine their unique claims to indigeneity in the isles.

The trouble for the institutional proponents of this vilification and revisionism campaign is that facts keep getting in the way.

Case in point: Recent DNA analysis confirms that the second-century skeleton gleefully identified by the BBC as the “first black Briton” was not a sub-Saharan African but rather a white woman.

‘Her story has shifted over time and has sparked important debates about diversity.’

A skeleton was discovered in the 1950s in Beachy Head, England, which belonged to a young woman who lived in the second or third century. Her remains sat in storage for decades until 2012, when Jonathan Seaman, the heritage officer at the Eastbourne Borough council, and his team “came across two boxes, which said ‘Beachy Head, something to do with 1956 or 1959,’ and that was about it.”

As there were virtually no records available about the remains, Seaman and his team worked to identify the Roman-era skeleton, sending it off for facial reconstruction, which was undertaken by Caroline Wilkinson, an academic then at Dundee University.

Seaman recalled, “Straight away on seeing this girl, [Wilkinson] said, ‘Oh my, you realize you’ve got a sub-Saharan African here?’”

Seaman noted further:

Caroline subsequently had it looked at by two more experts who agreed, without being prompted, that this individual showed many traits of being a sub-Saharan African person. They were 100% sure that this was the origin of this lady. There are certain features of the skull that you can tell are Caucasian or African. We didn’t know her carbon date at that stage or anything about her, so again it just deepened the mystery. They reconstructed her, and as they did so, her African origins came out in the features of her face.

While the media made a big deal out of this supposed discovery, the BBC went further than most, hyping it both in its news coverage and in its 2016 “Black and British: A Forgotten History” documentary.

In the documentary, British-Nigerian host David Olusoga — overcome with delight at the sight of a facial reconstruction of the Beachy Head Woman with dark skin, dark eyes, and dark hair — tells Seaman, “So she’s a black Briton? … So she’s the same as me — she’s somebody who is both [British and African] but who spent their life in this country.”

RELATED: No more stiff upper lip: My fellow Brits are fed up with ‘diversity’

Coastline near Beachy Head. Photo by: Bill Allsopp/Loop Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

As part of the documentary series, the BBC installed a plaque where the remains of the Beachy Head Woman were found, stating, “The remains of the ‘BEACHY HEAD WOMAN’ were found near this site. Of African origin, she lived in East Sussex 2nd-3rd century AD.”

The plaque was removed in 2023 after DNA testing by the Crick Institute determined that the Beachy Head Woman’s origin was not Africa but possibly Cyprus.

More recently, a research team led by Drs. Selina Brace and William Marsh of London’s Natural History Museum and Andy Walton of University College London re-examined the skeleton using state-of-the-art DNA analysis techniques. They determined that the Beachy Head Woman was neither an African nor a Cypriot but a white local from the south coast of England.

According to the researchers’ findings, which were published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, “she shows a close affinity to individuals from modern-day England and contemporary Roman-era Iron Age individuals in England and Northern continental Europe.”

DNA results indicate that the Beachy Head Woman had blond hair, blue eyes, and “intermediate skin,” with paleness weighted as more likely.

The researchers noted that “the decade-long investigation into Beachy Head Woman’s origins has centered around how her story has shifted over time and has sparked important debates about diversity and how we portray individuals from our past. The results presented here will no doubt add to this.”

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​Race, Racism, Revisionism, History, Dna, Beachy head woman, Beachy head, England, United kingdom, Bbc, Anthropology, Politics 

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles announced that four members of an anti-capitalist extremist group were arrested on Friday for plotting coordinated bombings in California on New Year’s Eve.

According to the Department of Justice, the suspects planned to detonate explosives concealed in backpacks at various businesses while also targeting ICE agents and vehicles. The attacks were supposed to coincide with midnight celebrations.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed.

The plot was disrupted before any lives were lost. The group behind the plot calls itself the Turtle Island Liberation Front. That name matters more than you might think.

When ideology turns operational

For years, the media has told us that radical, violent rhetoric on the left is mostly symbolic. They explained away the angry slogans, destructive language, and calls for “liberation” as performance or hyperbole.

Bombs are not metaphors, however.

Once explosives enter the picture, framing the issue as harmless expression becomes much more difficult. What makes this case different is the ideological ecosystem behind it.

The Turtle Island Liberation Front was not a single-issue group. It was anti-American, anti-capitalist, and explicitly revolutionary. Its members viewed the United States as an illegitimate occupying force rather than a sovereign nation. America, in their view, is not a nation, not a country; it is a structure that must be dismantled at any cost.

What ‘Turtle Island’ really means

“Turtle Island” is not an innocent cultural reference. In modern activist usage, it is shorthand for the claim that the United States has no moral or legal right to exist. It reframes the country as stolen land, permanently occupied by an illegitimate society.

Once people accept that premise, the use of violence against their perceived enemies becomes not only permissible, but virtuous. That framing is not unique to one movement. It appears again and again across radical networks that otherwise disagree on nearly everything.

Marxists, anarchists, and Islamist movements do not share the same vision for the future. They do not even trust one another. But they share a conviction that the United States, like Israel, is a colonial project that must be destroyed. The alignment of radical, hostile ideologies is anything but a coincidence.

The red-green alliance

For decades, analysts have warned about what is often called the red-green alliance: the convergence of far-left revolutionary politics with Islamist movements. The alliance is not based on shared values, but on shared enemies. Capitalism, national sovereignty, Western culture, and constitutional government all fall into that category.

History has shown us how this process works. Revolutionary coalitions form to tear down an existing order, promising liberation and justice. Once power is seized, the alliance fractures, and the most ruthless faction takes control.

Iran’s 1979 revolution followed this exact pattern. Leftist revolutionaries helped topple the shah. Within a few years, tens of thousands of them were imprisoned, executed, or “disappeared” by the Islamist regime they helped install. Those who do not understand history, the saying goes, are doomed to repeat it.

RELATED: The right must choose: Fight the real war, or cosplay revolution online

Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images

This moment is different

What happened in California was not a foreign conflict bleeding into the United States or a solitary extremist acting on impulse. It was an organized domestic group, steeped in ideological narratives long validated by universities, activist networks, and the media.

The language that once circulated on campuses and social media is now appearing in criminal indictments. “Liberation” has become a justification for explosives. “Resistance” has become a plan with a date and a time. When groups openly call for the destruction of the United States and then prepare bombs to make it happen, the country has entered a new phase. Pretending things have not gotten worse, that we have not crossed a line as a country, is reckless denial.

Every movement like this depends on confusion. Its supporters insist that calls for America’s destruction are symbolic, even as they stockpile weapons. They denounce violence while preparing for it. They cloak criminal intent in the language of justice and morality. That ambiguity is not accidental. It is deliberate.

The California plot should end the debate over whether these red-green alliances exist. They do. The only question left is whether the country will recognize the pattern before more plots advance farther — and succeed.

This is not about one group, one ideology, or one arrest. It is about a growing coalition that has moved past rhetoric and into action. History leaves no doubt where that path leads. The only uncertainty is whether Americans will step in and stop it.

​San diego, Planned terror attack, Radical left, Marxists, Radical islam, Terrorism, Opinion & analysis, Turtle island liberation front, New year’s eve, Fbi