Free Republic

Former President Donald Trump mockingly credited Democrat Terry McAuliffe with turning out “MAGA voters” in Virginia for Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin, who held a solid lead Tuesday with 85 percent of precincts reporting. McAuliffe and top backers, including President Biden, sought to make the vote about the Trump, who lost the state by 10 points last year. But the race was widely seen as a referendum on Biden’s performance. “It is looking like Terry McAuliffe’s campaign against a certain person named ‘Trump’ has very much helped Glenn Youngkin,” Trump said in an email blast.

Terry McAuliffe declined to concede defeat in the Virginia gubernatorial race Tuesday night, despite trailing Republican Glenn Youngkin by more than 100,000 votes with most precincts reported. “We still got a lot of votes to count, we got about 18 percent of the vote out, so we’re gonna continue to count the votes because every single Virginian deserves to have their vote counted,” McAuliffe told cheering supporters in the suburban outpost of Tysons Corner, Va. at around 10:20 p.m. Hours earlier, the former Virginia governor had tamped down expectations for his supporters in a brief, sober message.

Virginia Department of Elections Commissioner Chris Piper said Tuesday that the statewide election between former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin ran smoothly. Piper said, "Today was an overwhelmingly good day for Virginia," and that the election was "about as smooth as we could ask for," according to Richmond-based The Virginia Mercury.... ...Piper, who said 88,000 ballots had yet to be returned, said there was no update on that number as of Election Night, but assured that they would be counted if they arrive Friday by noon. ...

Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass. Now, a research team studying the distribution and composition of those glasses has come to a conclusion about what caused the inferno. In a study published in the journal Geology, researchers show that samples of the desert glass contain tiny fragments with minerals often found in rocks of extraterrestrial origin. Those minerals closely match the composition of material returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission, which sampled the particles...

Swiss police were deployed en masse to take brutal action against a non-compliant entrepreneurial family critical of the state’s mandates. On Sunday, October 31, 2021, Swiss police stormed the famed Walliserkanne restaurant in Zermatt after the owners refused to enforce the government’s mandate requiring vaccine passports for indoor dining. Dozens of masked armed officers rushed into the famous family-owned establishment to arrest the restaurant’s owners, Patrik Aufdenblatten, his brother Ivan, and their parents, Nelly and Andreas. According to eyewitnesses, the police physically attacked the family with their “fists and shoes – and without warning.” The family did not fight back....

(CNN)About 9,000 of New York City's 378,000 municipal employees were on leave without pay as of Monday because they haven't complied with a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for city workers, the mayor said Monday... ...The number of city employees on leave appears to be less than 3% of the municipal workforce. About 12,000 other employees, meanwhile, have applied for a religious or medical exemption, and can continue to work at least until their case is decided, de Blasio has said.... ...When the number of employees who have requested exemptions is factored in, the percentage of the department eligible to continue working...

Iran is hosting a meeting of... the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Russia holding talks in the Iranian capital Tehran on Afghanistan's political future and the formation of a new government...Iran's population is majority Shiite but Sunni minorities live predominantly in the areas near the border with Afghanistan. The Sunnis have long complained about discrimination by Iranian authorities.Due to dilapidated infrastructure and a lack of health and educational facilities, the areas near the Afghan border are the poorest and least developed in Iran...But Fatemeh Aman, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI),...

Democrat Ed Gainey became the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh on Tuesday. “Look at the image we are showing our children,” Gainey said to the crowd at the downtown Benedum Center for the Performing Arts. “I want our children to see a city for all of them,” The Associated Press reported. He had consistently made his campaign about equality for Black and poor residents, and accused Peduto of failing to ensure equity in policing, housing and other areas. At one point, he called Pittsburgh “a tale of two cities,” according to The Associated Press.

Look where the votes are still out at this link. We might actually win it!

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding" (Proverbs 3:13).

Somewhere looking down from Heaven, our lovable fuzzball Rush Hudson Limbaugh has to be smiling tonight. CNN is in disarray. The Punk is out. MSNBC is near tears. A sweep in Virginia and possibly so in NJ. Keep on smiling, Brother Limbaugh. We got this one for you!

A slate of conservative challengers fell just shy of securing a majority on the Wichita school board on Tuesday Three of the four challengers edged out incumbents after a partisan race that focused on mask mandates, critical race theory and other national issues. In District 1, Diane Albert finished ahead of incumbent Ben Blankley with 56% of the vote, according to unofficial results. In District 5, challenger Kathy Bond edged Mia Turner with 53% of the vote. Hazel Stabler won the District 6 seat with 44% of the vote, topping incumbent Ron Rosales’ 30% and Holly Terrill’s 25%. Incumbent Julie...

Incumbent Mead School Board member Carmen Green was in a tight race to keep her seat Tuesday night. Green’s challenger, BrieAnne Gray, a nurse practitioner, was leading the race with about 51%. The race brought in more contributions than any race in the Mead School District in recent history. Gray raised more than $42,000 as of Tuesday, more than double Green, who raised about $19,000. Prior to 2019 when one candidate raised $10,500, no Mead School Board candidate raised more than $5,000. Despite the results, Green said she was “super hopeful” with the amount of ballots still left to count......

The GOP has swept the PA Statewide Court races.

Republican Glenn Youngkin has won the race for Virginia governor, NBC News projects, defeating Terry McAuliffe in a race that’s been watched around the nation as a bellwether for the 2022 midterm elections. More than 1.1 million votes were cast early in Virginia in the 2021 race, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. In Fairfax County, there were still about 20,000 votes to be added to a batch of early vote totals as of about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Thumb drives that record the votes malfunctioned in voting machines used at four early voting sites — the county government center,...

Yes!!!!

Rush Limbaugh regularly called Terry McCauliffe "The Punk" for years. Did he ever say why?

WATCH: Booing for VP turns graphic at Carnegie Hall Americans in large numbers recognize – and even approve of – the recently appearing chant criticizing Joe Biden that goes "Let's go Brandon." It's a euphemism for the very graphic "F--- Joe Biden" that first appeared, and it came about more or less because a reporter at a NASCAR event, hearing the original chant while interviewing a driver named Brandon, noted on-air that the crowd was encouraging the driver with "Let's go Brandon."

Glenn Youngkin has clinched the governor's race in Virginia. In fact, the GOP dominated the Old Dominion, sweeping all three major statewide races. Republicans won the lieutenant governor and attorney general races. They're poised to flip the House of Delegates. It's over in Virginia—but up the road on I-95, we have another close race in New Jersey. Yes, you read that right. The state has been a graveyard for Republicans, except for Chris Christie, Tom Kean, and Christine Todd Whitman. No one thought Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was in danger. No one thought this was going to be a competitive...

Claims by Democrats that mentioning political donations by George Soros as anti-Semitic while ignoring problems in their own party is both wrongheaded and hypocritical. It’s never a good sign when George Soros’s name is back in the headlines. The Hungarian-born hedge-fund billionaire has become a touchstone of controversy. Both Republicans and Democrats in Virginian are taking his name in vain this week as the off-year election for governor, as well as various other state and local positions, has become a battleground in an unexpectedly tight race. Each side in the tribal culture war that characterizes contemporary American political discourse views...