Free Republic

We asked AI to simulate what Texas will be like now that it has become a blue state.

Both parties agreed on this tumultuous midterm election’s essential point. President Trump wanted voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” With his approval at 38%, Democrats happily agreed. The results were catastrophic for Republicans. They lost almost everywhere, including places where defeat was once unimaginable. Republicans dropped from 53 in the Senate to no more than 46, with losses in Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas as well as Georgia, North Carolina and Maine. In the House, Democrats are expected to have around 258 seats, a pickup of at least 43. Many Republicans in supposedly safe districts narrowly escaped...

Fifteen years working as an emergency room nurse has convinced Kim Bogan that the only way to fix the American healthcare system is to tear it down and start over. Her patients arriving for triage are sicker than ever. They can't afford many of the prescriptions they get in the ER. And sometimes when patients die, she wonders if she could have saved them had she not been caring for five or six other people at once. That's why she spent the past year shuttling between 12-hour shifts at this city's Sparrow Hospital and campaigning for Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat...

AN ARMED man has been arrested near the White House after he allegedly said threatened to kill Donald Trump. Secret Service agents found the Venezuelan migrant in a stolen car packed with firearms, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Officers said they approached the suspect after spotting him “acting suspicious in his car while parked on Constitution Avenue in Washington.” He reportedly told police that he heard voices in his head telling him to come to the capital and kill Trump, the DHS said.

A Talk with NRA Director and Chairman of the Finance Committee, Jonathan Goldstein. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Jonathan Goldstein was speaking in his personal capacity, and not on behalf of the NRA.NRA Finance Committee Chairman Jonathan Goldstein discusses financial accountability, the NRA 2.0 reform movement, and rebuilding trust with gun owners. IMG Credit: John Petrolino Jonathan Goldstein has an interesting history of how he came to be on the NRA Board. Goldstein became involved with the NRA shortly after law school. The Heller decision had recently been published by the Supreme Court. Jonathan started...

You are in the emergency room. You have been told you are being admitted. And then, you wait. And wait. Four, 12, maybe even 24 hours, still stuck in the E.R., waiting for a bed to open up. This new normal in American hospitals is about to intensify. The practice of keeping patients in the E.R., called “boarding,” for hours or even days has been increasing over the past decade. One in four patients who were admitted through the E.R. spent at least four hours waiting in the E.R. before getting a bed in September 2024, compared with one in...

Gov. Ron DeSantis is preparing to run for the GOP’s 2028 presidential nomination, according to three people briefed on his plans, after his home state of Florida was one of the few conservative bastions to survive the Democrats’ sweeping midterm victory. “Florida’s walls not being breached by the blue wave gives DeSantis more credibility than nearly anyone in the opening days of the 2028 primary,” said Dan Eberhart, a longtime Republican donor and energy executive, who served as a surrogate for DeSantis’s unsuccessful 2024 presidential campaign. Already, DeSantis has reached out to at least one national political consultant about working...

It’s not the sort of sentiment that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles would likely share publicly, but according to a report from Time, Donald Trump’s longtime aide has expressed private concerns about the information bubble surrounding the president. Two White House sources told the magazine that Wiles shared her fears with officials that White House aides were giving the president “a rose-colored view” of how the war with Iran was being perceived domestically, “telling Trump what he wanted to hear instead of what he needed to hear.” The report added that the chief of staff urged colleagues to...

6 November 2026 Friday of week 31 in Ordinary Time Saint Léonard de Noblat, Romanesque collegiate church of St LéonardReadings 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: Green. Year: A(II).First readingPhilippians...

“The main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.” That was Vice President JD Vance’s diagnosis of why Republicans lost so soundly in the midterm elections. And the data supports it. Nearly every demographic swung heavily toward Democrats, including groups central to Trump’s coalition: young men, working-class voters, and voters in rural counties. The coalition that carried Republicans to victory just two years ago had turned sharply against them. But what explains that shift? According to Caroline Downey at National Review, the answer is horseshoe...

Eight people have been arrested in connection with a large-scale check fraud scheme involving fraudulent activity at least 17 churches in Manatee County between September 2025 and May 2026. The Manatee County Sheriff's Office launched an investigation in December 2025 after a pastor at Harvest United Methodist Church in Lakewood Ranch reported a significant decrease in mail. Parishioners had begun questioning whether their monthly tithe checks had arrived and several later discovered their checks had been stolen and deposited into other individuals' bank accounts. What began as one church's report grew into a multi-month investigation that identified more than 20...

The chances have increased for Ukraine to receive additional U.S. assistance, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, reacting to Democrats’ overwhelming victories in the midterm elections. Ukraine needs to consolidate bipartisan support in the U.S. and “move toward” the new political infrastructure, he added in an interview with a Ukrainian news channel posted on the social platform X. Zelensky said at least $16 billion in assistance was withheld by the U.S. and needs to be disbursed, and he said Ukraine needs a “package” from the U.S. to fortify itself in the face of ongoing Russian attacks. It was not immediately...

With all the shocking reports from the 2026 election to date, California’s may be the worst. Here are the current state results as of Thursday evening, two days after the election. Take a look and see if you notice anything strange. .... Notice that in both the Governor and Lt. Governor races, the Democrats lead 53 to 46. Look at the other top races…

Bike lanes. Housing vouchers. A new police chief and many more new apartments, even in single-family neighborhoods. And above all, data to find out if City Hall programs are working. Mayor-elect Nithya Raman won’t represent a radical ideological break from her opponent, one-term incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. Like Bass, she’s a Democrat who believes in ending homelessness, keeping the city safe and delivering basic services. But Raman is expected to push the city to the left on public safety, while also advancing urbanist policies that favor public transit, greater housing production and the redesign of city streets to improve safety...

Explanation: It is time to say goodbye to NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. After nearly 22 years of service, the satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere on November 4 at 7:39 EST over the North Sumatra region of Indonesia. The featured image is a mosaic created in 2018 using some of the first million images captured by the satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope. Swift had a combination of instruments, including an X-ray telescope and a gamma-ray telescope, that worked together to enable humanity to study, in unprecedented detail, the fastest and most energetic explosions in the universe. The most recent solar maximum accelerated the...

[Catholic Caucus] Marian Theologians Renew Appeal to Cardinal Fernández Over Vatican Doctrinal Note A year after the publication of Mater Populi Fidelis, the International Marian Association says its detailed criticisms remain unanswered.A year after the Vatican published its controversial instruction Mater Populi Fidelis, a group of leading Marian theologians has sent a new letter to Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández noting that he has yet to respond to criticisms they had made of the document last December.The Theological Commission of the International Marian Association (IMA) also mentioned in their Nov. 4 letter to the Vatican’s prefect of the Dicastery for the...

Elon Musk's angular truck appears to be headed for the scrapyard of history, and Jeremy White of Wired is not mourning. He slams the Cybertruck as an overhyped experiment that never lived up to its billing: produced for less than four years, plagued by recalls and design flaws, and now being phased out at Tesla's Texas factory to make room for the company's autonomous Cybercab. Despite Musk's boasts of "off the charts" demand and more than a million reservations, US sales remained modest, with under 50,000 delivered by March of last year and fewer than 12,000 sold in the first...

The Texas midterm elections have wrapped up, but questions about one race in Tarrant County are heating up. A candidate suspended her campaign and still won, but that's not the most controversial part. "Well, there has been an issue, an occurrence with House District 93," Tarrant County Democratic Party Executive Director Reyne Telles said. Telles said the issue centers on Ericka Lomick, the Democratic candidate. Unofficial results show she beat Republican Alan Blaylock, a former Fort Worth City Council member, by one percentage point. The problem? Lomick withdrew from the race in late September when questions about her eligibility to...

Having now read the blame storming, post election data and punditry, I would like to offer my own take, for the little it is worth. I usually do not engage in Vanity posts. Please forgive this one or ignore it. Two storms collided to make a super storm that destroyed the GOP and likely the country. In one corner: Trumpism. The man believes in getting things done. See a problem, solve the problem. And that, in our lifetimes, has been refreshing and amazing to behold. For example, America has been screwed by bad trade deals and partners for years and...

Donald Trump will be blocked from putting a “rightwinger” on the US supreme court, according to Chuck Schumer, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, in remarks that were a preview of how Democrats intend to wield their power come January.In an interview with the Associated Press, Schumer said Democrats would not confirm “any crappy nominees” to the supreme court, lower courts or Trump’s cabinet.“The bottom line is we’re not going to allow a rightwinger on the court,” Schumer said. Four supreme court justices are in their 70s, and its two most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, are the oldest...