Free Republic

Elon Musk’s political gamble is turning into a costly Wall Street headache. Tesla and SpaceX shares plunged nearly 6% in Wednesday’s premarket trading after Democrats swept control of Congress and won major victories in Texas, where Musk has concentrated much of his business empire. The selloff came as broader U.S. stock-market futures recovered from an overnight election shock and turned positive. At their reported premarket lows, Tesla and SpaceX had lost approximately $200 billion in combined market value, although those losses were subject to change when regular trading began.Read Economics Musk spent at least $446 million supporting Republican candidates and...

@JDVance One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told...

Frank Sinatra recorded his iconic D-minor rendition of It Was A Very Good Year in 1965 for his concept album September of My Years, arranged and conducted by Gordon Jenkins. It won the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance, and Gordon Jenkins also won a Grammy for his orchestral arrangement. Frank Sinatra sings "It Was A Very Good Year" in the recording studio (1965, video)

As part of Tuesday’s blue wave, Democrats took control of the Texas House. Even though the Texas Senate will be helmed by Democrat Vicki Goodwin, the chamber itself remains in GOP control. The Republican losses in the House exceed 20 seats, but final results are still pending. When the House convenes in January, the members first action will be to select a new speaker.

Today’s young voters are the most diverse generation in American history, and their choices at the ballot box in the 2026 midterms reflect that diversity... 77% of young women voted for a Democratic U.S. House candidate in the 2026 midterms, compared to 65% of young men. That is a major shift for young men: in 2024, according to that year’s AP VoteCast data, 56% of young men supported President Trump...Across Race and Gender, Strong Vote for Democrats in the 2026 Midterm ElectionsThe national vote choice for U.S. House candidates of young voters (ages 18-29), by race/ethnicity and gender. The youth...

Tuesday’s midterm elections are shaping up to be the “biggest national wipeout for Republicans since 2006, when voters brutally punished the GOP for an ill-advised and poorly planned war in the Middle East,” The Federalist’s CEO and co-founder Sean Davis said in a post on X. In 2006, 56 percent of voters disapproved of the Iraq War, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of a national exit poll. The majority of those voters backed Democrat candidates, 80 percent to 18 percent. Twenty years later, Pew released a survey in October that found 65 percent of Americans disapproved of how...

Asking Google (11/4/26):Did Islamic "eradicate western civilization" won last night?https://www.google.com/search?q=Did+Islamic+%22eradicate+western+civilization%22+won+last+night%3F- Did Islamic "eradicate western civilization" won last night?- The candidate you are referring to- Darializa Avila Chevalier-won her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives last night (November 3, 2026).She won the election for New York's 13th Congressional District, making history as the first Dominican American woman projected to serve in Congress.

From cocktail-party pragmatists to Constitution-abolishing ‘theory bros,’ these groups are steering America’s largest socialist organization in its breakout year Democratic socialists are having a breakout year, including a win in a mayoral primary in Providence, R.I., on Wednesday. Though many of the group’s contenders have fallen short, candidates recommended or endorsed by a chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America have tallied several high-profile congressional primary victories and about 100 state and local primary wins, according to an August Brookings Institution analysis. Yet the public is still trying to learn what the movement believes, how it is organized and the...

In the 2026 midterms, Americans voted on all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 members of the Senate. Before election night, Republicans held the majority in both Congress chambers, if only by a hair. Midterm elections are held every four years. The results will influence US politics for the next few years. Despite the significant executive power delegated to the presidency according to the US Constitution, the majority of federal political decisions have to be approved by Congress before they can be implemented. SNIP

Vandals sent an apparently violent message to Maine Senator Susan Collins, waiting for her on Election Day, by defacing the longtime Republican incumbent's office during the night. Vandals sent an apparently violent message to Maine Senator Susan Collins, waiting for her on Election Day, by defacing the longtime Republican incumbent’s office during the night. On Tuesday morning, staffers found the sidewalk outside Collins’ office in Biddeford, Maine, covered in red paint and splattered on the door with the words “blood on your hands” scrawled at the front entrance, WMTW-TV reported. The senator received the messages hours before polls close in...

An elderly man both verbally and physically assaulted a young Turning Point USA volunteer at the polls, a video posted to X shows. An elderly man both verbally and physically assaulted a young Turning Point USA volunteer at the polls, a video posted to X shows. An 18-year-old man was volunteering with Turning Point Action outside a polling station in New Hampshire on Tuesday when an elderly man approached him and began to raise his voice. The confrontation then escalated, as depicted in a video included in Turning Point Action’s Tuesday afternoon X post. The context of the conflict in...

U.S. President Donald Trump called Greenland the greatest gift the United States had ever received in a call to Fox News on Tuesday. “Remember, [Europe] just gave the United States the greatest gift we were ever given. Do you know what it was? Greenland. We just got Greenland, you know that, right?” he said during a broadcast about Tuesday’s midterm elections, which was reshared on X by the U.S. State Department. Someone else on the call quickly clarified that Trump was referring to “a military deal.” Until September, Trump had repeatedly pushed for the U.S. to take control of the...

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on a staff call Wednesday that he will not run for minority leader, according to two GOP staffers, heading off what will likely be a bitter fight over the party’s future in the next Congress as Republicans reel from a seismic election defeat. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) are both expected to launch bids for minority leader, setting up a potentially contentious contest as Republicans grapple with their diminished standing. Johnson has had a rocky tenure as Speaker, often marked by internal GOP fighting, a razor-thin...

4 November 2026 Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop on Wednesday of week 31 in Ordinary Time St. Charles Borromeo, Pittsfield, MAReadings at MassThis is a preview of Universalis. The Universalis app gives you every day of every year, not just the single week you’re seeing now, and it doesn’t need the Internet. It gives you the official New American Bible version for the readings at Mass. As well as the Mass, it gives you the Liturgy of the Hours. It costs $9.99-12.99 on your phone, or £19.99 (about $26.50) on your computer. Get it now.Liturgical Colour: White. Year: A(II).Readings for...

Initial thoughts of the election - winners and losers

Democrats retook power in Washington on Tuesday, flipping key House and Senate seats to command majorities in both chambers of Congress.The power shift creates a new platform for Democrats to launch investigations of President Trump's economic allies — Elon Musk, to name one — and pass bills that may be unlikely to become law but will mark a sharp change in the political climate for business leaders and economic issues after two years of unified Republican control.The change also appears set to elevate figures like Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others to prominent positions with oversight over economic policy.Democrats are...

President Donald Trump spent two months urging Americans to pretend he was on the ballot. On Tuesday, they did just that. Voters delivered a stunning rebuke to Trump’s party that rivaled anything Republicans had suffered in 50 years, defeats on ruby-red turf that Trump won handily just two years ago, where he has dominated politics for nearly a decade and against candidates he had in some cases handpicked. Not only did Democrats flip Senate and governor seats in red states, but at times by eye-popping margins. “The message is very clear and very simple here. It was a complete repudiation...

Aber Kawas (D) won election to the New York State Senate on Tuesday, becoming the first Palestinian-American to serve in the state legislature after defeating Republican Han-Khon To in the heavily Democratic 12th District. Her victory celebration is an example of why residents of the Empire State are terrified of how quickly the pro-Hamas, pro-terror arm of the Left is infiltrating government. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member, who received the endorsement of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (straight-up Communist), marked the result by posting a campaign graphic declaring her the first Palestinian elected in New York State....

CrowdStrike launched an AI kill switch feature to stop and block internal agents that misbehave. The cybersecurity giant also announced a Claude Cowork integration and two AI acquisitions. ... being able to control and shut down agent activity is vital to the next wave of AI adoption. ... CrowdStrike is betting that it has a solution to rogue artificial intelligence. The cybersecurity vendor on Tuesday launched an AI kill switch designed to let security teams stop internal AI agents that go rogue, block them from relaunching and cut off their enterprise network access. The tool is built into CrowdStrike’s Falcon...

Physicists have found evidence of a particle decay so rare that it is expected to occur only around once in every 10 billion "beauty" particles. The result, from the upgraded LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), follows a search spanning more than 40 years and brings physicists closer to exploring the "Zeptoverse"—an unexplored world that exists at distances of a billionth of a trillionth of a meter, or a "zeptometer," where new particles and forces of nature may be hiding. Researchers from The University of Manchester have played key roles in the LHCb experiment and its major upgrade—which...