Free Republic

The scale of the electoral challenge facing Labour has been laid bare as the party haemorrhages councillors at the local elections and Reform makes significant gains. Keir Starmer’s party went into Thursday’s local elections expected to lose up to 1,850 councillors, with senior figures describing the contest as “tough”. Initial results overnight painted a bleak picture for the prime minister, with Labour losing councillors in its traditional northern heartlands. Reform took control of its first council at around 6am, gaining overall control of Newcastle-under-Lyme from Labour. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, described the early results as a “historic change in...

Sam Coates looks at the latest seat tallies as it stands, and the wider picture which will bring concern to Starmer's Labour government.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced Thursday he will resign and take a private-sector job with nonproft law firm Alliance Defending Freedom. The “surprise move” was first reported by the Columbus Dispatch. Earlier Thursday, Yost’s spokesperson did not confirm or deny the report when contacted, but half a dozen statehouse sources who wished to remain anonymous said Yost is expected to leave his job ahead of the November election....

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Alberta separatists said Monday they have formally submitted almost 302,000 signatures to try to trigger a referendum on the province leaving Canada. The group needed 178,000 signatures to force the province to consider such a vote. The question of separation could go on a provincewide ballot as early as October, as Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has said she would move forward if enough names are gathered and verified. Smith has said she personally does not support the oil-rich province leaving Canada. A “yes” vote would not trigger independence automatically. Negotiations with the federal government would have...

Antisemitism has reached alarming levels in the United States, and California, which prides itself on tolerance, is no exception. It has reached nearly every major community. A story from Davis, California, illustrates the problem. The first time I visited Davis was in May 2025. I was invited to address Jewish students at UC Davis, and expected a quiet, innocuous visit to a university town. Instead, I walked into something entirely different. The Jewish students I met spoke in hushed tones about how they were afraid to be openly Jewish on campus. Faculty members confided that they were reluctant to speak...

Viewers of the Los Angeles mayoral debate overwhelmingly think Spencer Pratt won after his fiery performance against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and socialist Councilmember Nithya Raman. An online poll from NBC Los Angeles showed that as of Thursday morning, 89% of voters picked Pratt when asked who they thought emerged victorious from the Wednesday night showdown. In a sampling of of responses NBC got, many viewers felt Spencer Pratt appeared to be a formidable mayoral candidate. During the debate, the former reality TV star and Palisades Fire victim channeled months of frustration with the city and the state into an...

"Massie votes against Trump" Trump promised to end the forever wars. Massie votes against them every single time. Trump promised to drain the swamp. Massie votes against the swamp’s spending bills every single time. Trump promised to abolish FISA. Massie voted AGAINST FISA. Trump promised to release the Epstein files. Massie fought for that too. Local news in Kentucky just fact-checked this. Massie’s ads saying he votes for the America First agenda? Rated TRUE. Gallrein’s ads saying Massie votes with Democrats? They Rated FALSE.

Jewish community leaders are blasting California’s Secretary of State for publishing a voter information guide statement from a fringe gubernatorial candidate who espoused anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. Don J. Grundmann, an independent with no party affiliation and no prior political experience, is among dozens of candidates who qualified for the ballot. California residents are receiving their voter guides in the mail this month ahead of the June primary. Grundmann’s statement includes a litany of conspiracies, including claims that conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was killed by an Israeli bomb and that Israeli “art students” brought down the Twin Towers on 9/11. “These...

Many Democrats wish former Vice President Kamala Harris would have run for governor of California rather than potentially making another bid for the presidency in 2028, according to a new report. Amid a hotly contested gubernatorial race in the Golden State in which numerous candidates are splitting the Democratic vote, The New York Times highlighted how Harris could have decisively changed this in a piece headlined, "A California Dream? Some Democrats Fear Harris Picked the Wrong Race." "Maybe, they say, she should have run for governor instead of publicly pondering a third run for president," the Times noted. California has...

Move comes days after supreme court ruling weakened Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymanderingTennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out...

7–9 minutesFrom DJ’ing a wedding on the weekend to manning the White House press podium like a boss, from velvet-gloved diplomacy in Europe to juggling the roles of secretary of state and NSA director in the middle of a war, Marco Rubio is the administration’s secret charm bomb.President Trump rolls him out whenever he has a problem to solve. Whether it’s filling in as national archivist, blowing cartel drug boats out of the water, ­DOGEing USAID to death or sitting as vice chairman of the “Saving College Sports” council, Rubio is Trump’s Mr. Fix-it.His Tuesday stint filling in for White...

We’re four months into Abigail Spanberger’s tenure as governor of Virginia, and things couldn’t be worse for Democrats’ rising star. There’s a civil war in the party apparatus. The referendum to redraw the maps from a 6:5 Dem advantage to a 10:1 Dem advantage, thus giving the party an almost certain majority in the House, seems doomed to fail judicial review. Privately, the parties involved have been sniping each other.It’s beginning to leak into the press.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Tennessee lawmakers in the House of Representatives have passed the bill that will split Memphis along new congressional lines. Memphis will be split into three congressional districts per the new map, which passed in the Tennessee General Assembly’s special session on redistricting Thursday, May 7. Democrats in the state house have railed against the push to redraw congressional lines outside of the decennial census, calling the move a “grave, grave rollback of rights” for Black Tennesseans and especially for Memphians. The proposed new map, only released to the public about 24 hours before they passed the...

Border Czar Tom Homan told CBS News that President Donald Trump is talking to his advisors about offering some form of “legal status” to many illegal migrants. A pro-migration reporter at CBS asked Homan on Wednesday: “Would you support a compromise, sir, that involves giving legal status [amnesty] to the millions of people who are here illegally but are otherwise law-abiding?” “I’m not gonna get ahead of the President on that,” Homan cautiously responded. “I work for the President,” Homan added, as the Colombian-born migrant reporter interrupted him to insist that “Something has to be done to address that [illegal...

A pro-Palestinian professor charged with killing a 69-year-old Jewish dad during an anti-Israel protest in southern California in 2023 will not stand trial after he plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The 54-year-old Moorpark resident Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji pleaded guilty to felony involuntary manslaughter and felony battery causing serious bodily injury related to the death of Paul Kessler, the Ventura County District Attorney’s office said in a press release on Tuesday. Alnaji-who teaches computer science at Moorpark College-and Kessler were both protesting the Israel-Hamas war during dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations in Thousand Oaks in 2023 when Alnaji struck the...

As former Vice President Kamala Harris considers another run for president, she is also signaling that she has no problem with a public airing of what went wrong last time — telling donors she believes the Democratic National Committee should release its buried autopsy of her failed 2024 campaign, according to a person who has heard the conversations. While she indicated to donors that she had no issue with releasing it, Harris has not discussed the postmortem with DNC Chairman Ken Martin and did not know about his decision to keep it under wraps until it happened, this person said.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected a request to order the return of more than 600 boxes of voting material seized earlier this year by the FBI amid an investigation involving a Georgia county at the heart of President Donald Trump’s grievances about his 2020 election loss. U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee described the events surrounding the bureau’s January raid on an election warehouse in Fulton County — where Atlanta is located — as “in many ways unprecedented” and called some aspects of the investigation, including its reliance on previously debunked conspiracy theories, “troubling.” But Boulee concluded county officials had...

A Green Party candidate who has pushed for Britain to pay trillions of pounds in slavery reparations is descended from a Nigerian royal family that traded slaves, it has been claimed. Antoinette Fernandez is the “reparations officer” for the Green Party’s Global Majority Greens group, which works towards “racial and environmental justice”. Ms Fernandez is also the daughter of a billionaire - Antonio Oladeinde Fernandez - who was one of Africa’s richest men. The candidate for Lea Bridge, Hackney, has campaigned for taxpayers to pay reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, and has previously said politicians who oppose it “show...

On Wednesday, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents were seen carrying boxes out of the offices of Democratic Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas, a powerful ally of Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D). A SWAT team also raided a cannabis dispensary located next to the Lucas offices in Portsmouth, according to a Fox News report. Lucas is known for owning several dispensary businesses and had previously been accused of selling illegal marijuana products. The FBI confirmed 10 locations were being served with court-authorized criminal warrants. The federal investigation appears to be related to alleged illegal marijuana sales as well as alleged political corruption....

Federal agents on Wednesday morning raided the Portsmouth office of state Sen. Louise Lucas, one of Virginia’s most powerful Democratic lawmakers, a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigations confirmed Wednesday, after multiple news outlets reported an extensive law enforcement operation that included FBI agents, SWAT teams and court-authorized searches tied to several locations across the commonwealth. FBI spokeswoman Cassandra Temple told The Mercury at the scene: “We are conducting court-authorized law enforcement activity today.” She wouldn’t confirm or answer any other questions, including whether anyone had been arrested. ..... Adjacent to Lucas’ office is The Cannabis Outlet, a hemp-...