Free Republic

As the dust settles from the midterm elections, Democrats are undoubtedly working on their plans for next year, after they have control of the House and Senate. But anyone who’s been paying attention won’t need a crystal ball to predict what Democrats will do when they take power. The nation is in for investigations, fiery hearings, and at least one more impeachment attempt against President Donald Trump and possibly members of his cabinet. Democrats flipped seven Republican Senate seats and about 29 to 32 House seats. Incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman Robert Garcia (CA-42) posted a two-word warning on X:...

Phys.org reports that stenciled rock art has been identified in South Africa, which is known for rock art painted with brushes and fingers. "I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking at for a while," said David Pearce of the University of the Witwatersrand. "Then they popped into focus, a bit like optical illusions do," he explained. The two human-like figures were discovered in the La Rochelle rock shelter in eastern South Africa, where few paintings have been found on the region's steep cliffs. Pearce said that brush-painted images of hartebeest, eland, and humanoid beings had previously been identified in...

SciNews reports that a team of researchers including Philippe Walter and Yohan Boulard of Sorbonne University have examined the 37,000-year-old artworks inside Chauvet Cave with ultraviolet fluorescence spectroscopy. Located in southeastern France, the cave contains more than 1,000 drawings and engravings depicting horses, cave lions, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, bears, and bison. By shining ultraviolet light on the cave paintings from about eight feet away, Walter and his colleagues observed that some materials absorbed the light, while others gave off a visible glow. The color of the glow allowed the researchers to identify the materials on the cave walls and any...

MADISON COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — There is a new sheriff in town, in Madison County, anyway. According to election night returns, Challenger Brett Jones has beaten incumbent Sheriff Kevin Turner. General Election Results — Nov. 3, 2026 With just over 99 percent of the votes in, just before 10 p.m. Jones was ahead of Turner with 81,937 votes to Turner’s 72,345. The former Navy SEAL Jones ran his campaign looking to increase collaboration between towns and the sheriff’s office. He also said that he opposes automated license plate readers. Turner was first elected in 2018. Jones will be the first...

Hi folks. I'm Anti-Opusing, that is to say, I departed FR for a while, and this marks my return. I'm not a big believer in Opusing. I consider it a demonstration of outsized ego. Opuses are routinely mocked, and they should be. So instead of Opusing, I just quietly stopped posting (while contacting everyone on my ping lists so I could stay in touch). Frankly, Anti-Opusing might show outsized ego, too. I mean, who the heck am I? The forum did just fine without me. And another frank admission: I actually enjoyed my time away from the forum. I've been...

"By [faith] the men of old gained approval" (Heb. 11:2). God makes His approval known to those who trust in Him. The book Catch-22 tells of a squadron of World War II fliers stationed on the fictitious island of Pianos in the Mediterranean. Before a flier could transfer off the island, he had to complete 25 extremely dangerous missions over southern Europe. One flier, Yosarian, was especially anxious to leave. After completing his twenty-fifth mission, his commanding officer began raising the number of qualifying missions. Insanity became the only justification for a transfer. But the commander decided that whomever feigned...

My wife, daughter, and I walk through our neighborhood every day. I’ve been monitoring the situation at one house for the last few years—the yard is usually clogged with old furniture, chairs, sofas, lamps, and every other type of regularly discarded household item imaginable. In recent months, a dumpster has been parked in the yard instead. That dumpster contains the contents formerly strewn across the yard. It appears, upon closer inspection, that the mass inside the dumpster continues to grow. The root problem (hoarding) remains unsolved, even as the symptom (the hoard) is slowly managed. There are some, however, who...

𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗡𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗜𝗗𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗠𝗦 𝗖𝗢𝗨𝗟𝗗 𝗕𝗘 𝗗𝗘𝗠𝗢𝗖𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗦’ 𝗕𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗘𝗦𝗧 𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗞𝗘. November 3 will ultimately determine how much outrage and punishment the American people will have to endure over the next two years. However, I see a political trap developing for Democrats, and the irony is that winning on November 3 might be just as damaging to their future as losing. In my view, either outcome could leave them facing defeat in 2028. The difference is what happens to America during the next two years. How much political warfare? How many investigations? How much outrage and congressional gridlock? How much suffering Americans will...

WASHINGTON — A day after Democrats captured the House majority, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told his staff Wednesday morning he will not stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress, according to four sources on the phone call.

Vice President JD Vance, who’s widely expected to be eyeing a 2028 run, pinned the GOP’s massive midterm losses on the Iran war that President Donald Trump started.

STUPID AND ARROGANT: Stephen A. Smith predicts Democrats will mistake a vote against Trump for a mandate, try to impeach Pete Hegseth and investigate Marco Rubio. “And that same kind of chaos is going to cost them the presidency in 2028.”

Man, if you think the Republicans had a rough night, and they 1000% did, just wait until you see the results on AI data centers! So the results are all in. Data center moratoria (various flavors) went 43-1. All hyperscalers must now converge on Harwood, North Dakota, the one outlier. Find out what's in the water or in the air. There is only one precinct and 400 voters, but they alone sided with you!

Washington — President Trump has been asking advisers around him and on the phone whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should stay in his job, following Republicans' catastrophic losses Tuesday night, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News. Some White House aides have predicted some of the blame for GOP midterm losses will be trained on Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who both played big roles in guidance on the Iran war. Still, other sources said the president hasn't decided to replace Hegseth. Before...

Massachusetts voters allowed a restrictive gun-control law to remain in place by a nearly 35-point margin Tuesday as part of a Democratic midterm sweep.Pro-Second Amendment activists, such as the Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL), previously secured nearly 100,000 signatures to put a referendum on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot to ask if Bay State voters supported H.4885, a gun-control law passed in 2024. With 85% of the ballots counted, 67.2% of voters opted to keep the statute in place, according to election totals posted by The New York Times.After the Supreme Court struck down New York’s discretionary system for issuing concealed...

Under the banner of fighting “Islamophobia,” groups like MPAC are quietly gaining direct access to local police departments and municipal power. By embedding hand-pick members of mosques into law enforcement, they are effectively rewriting threat priorities and silencing critics from the inside. During an August 2026 webinar hosted by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)’s Center for Security, Technology, and Policy (CSTP), speakers outlined a practical strategy for Muslims to enter local police forces using hand-picked members from their own mosques. The webinar was presented as an effort to train mosque security against alleged “Islamophobia” perpetuated by the “right-wing” and...

A little-known congressional maneuver could block members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) from being sworn in as members of the House of Representatives next year, even if they win their elections on Tuesday. Members-elect must swear an oath to uphold the Constitution before they can become full members of the House. At the beginning of a new Congress, that oath is typically taken en masse by all 435 members, led by the House speaker. But an argument circulating in conservative circles posits that any member-elect can challenge another member-elect's right to be sworn in, provided they have compiled...

Nov 4 (Reuters) - Iran's government savoured the stinging rebuke delivered to Donald Trump in the midterm elections, declaring voters had rejected the war launched by the US president even as Tehran remained on high alert for the possibility of renewed strikes. "Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and ‌we endorse this message," Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Iran's chief negotiator, posted on X, adding that Washington should not ignore public opinion by attacking his country again. Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written statement that US hostility would persist regardless of which...

Vice President JD Vance offered a postmortem on Wednesday morning explicitly blaming President Donald Trump’s war in Iran for the GOP’s generational wipeout in the midterm elections, losing races from Texas to Kansas in deep red states. Vance, who is widely seen as Trump’s heir apparent, saw his stock drop in prediction markets as Trump administration outsider Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) numbers rose following the disastrous election results. As Vance works to distance himself from the war in Iran, he notably cited Trump himself, writing, “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”...

A small majority of Jews in Michigan backed the Democratic Party’s winning candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, over Republican Mike Rogers in Tuesday’s Senate race*** El-Sayed has been one of the most outspoken critics of Israel this election season, with eliminating aid to Israel being one of his most central campaign messages. Fifty-seven percent of Michigan Jews still backed him — though, tellingly, 78% of them supported the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, according to an exit poll of early voters. El-Sayed’s was likely lifted by less affiliated Jewish voters, who make up about half of the community’s 110,000 members, according to...

Trump hit the network in multiple Truth Social posts, attacking Fox’s polls as “always the worst”; mocking some recent softness in the network’s year-over-year ratings trends and accusing Fox of being “AGAINST” him. Just before midnight, Trump directly placed blame on Fox News for the Republican party’s failure to hold on to the US House and Senate, writing that “FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.” Trump then called into Fox’s election coverage around midnight and directly criticized the network’s polls as “terrible,” telling the network’s employees: “You ought to...