Free Republic

A razor-thin North Carolina congressional race swung in both directions as counties counted late provisional ballots. The latest official numbers show Democratic challenger Chuck Hubbard leading Republican incumbent Rep. Virginia Foxx in the Republican-held 5th District. The contest remains active, unofficial, and uncertified. Every remaining ballot and deadline matters with only 335 votes separating the two leading candidates. The North Carolina State Board of Elections live results, checked November 11, 2026, show a stunning nail-biter in District 5 following the November 3 general election, with the numbers leaving virtually no breathing room between the leading candidates on election night. Democrat...

Ukrainian forces struck the Omsk Oil Refinery, Russia’s largest refinery by processing capacity, in a long-range drone attack covering approximately 3,000 kilometers. The strike was reported by Ukrainian open-source intelligence community Exilenova+ on November 11. The facility, located in the Russian city of Omsk, is part of Gazprom Neft and has a designed processing capacity exceeding 21 million metric tons of crude oil annually, accounting for approximately 10% of Russia’s total oil refining output, according to Exilenova+. The refinery produces several types of automotive gasoline, including AI-92, AI-95, and G-Drive 100, alongside Euro-5 diesel fuel, aviation kerosene, lubricants, and a...

The White House fired off a warning shot to incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Robert Garcia (D-CA) on Monday, warning of investigations into the "blatant criminality" of their plans to investigate and weaponize Congress against the Trump Administration. This comes after Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate the Democratic “EXTORTIONISTS” for threatening members of his administration on Saturday, writing, The Democrats are going around threatening a lot of people, including the Attorney General of the United States, and others, with Impeachment and many other forms of punishment, even though they admit they have no reason to do so, and...

Fool's Ball, Week Ten, Pigskin Pickem ThreadYour home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯@japan_nobunaga·14hIn 1944, thousands of Japanese on Saipan hid in caves, sure the Americans would torture them if they came out. Many families chose the cliffs instead.An 18-year-old American Marine from East Los Angeles walked up to those caves at night, alone, and called to them in Japanese.His name was Guy Gabaldon. He was a Mexican American kid who had grown up partly in the home of a Japanese American family, the Nakanos. That is where he picked up his Japanese. When the war came, the Nakanos were sent to internment camps. Their twin sons, Lane and Lyle, joined the U.S....

G BMYRN ORWNRV AGFL ZHHRGKO XWN WJ JGCHF GZ GJ WRFM CHWKJ JPWJ G UMYRN JWFJH CV NHFFHAJ. —NWJW, “FJWA JAHL: JPH KHTJ OHKHAWJGMK”

The Trump administration is cutting off more than $112 million in federal funding to Minnesota over “unallowable claims,” the most recent escalation in the White House’s fight over Medicaid fraud in the state. The administration sought to block hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding to blue states this year, including Minnesota and California over allegations of fraud. It has made Minnesota a focal point in President Trump’s fraud crackdown. In a letter to Minnesota Department of Human Services temporary commissioner John Connolly, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cited dozens of instances where Minnesota allegedly failed to...

California voters have voted to reject a wealth tax on its billionaires. The ballot proposal would have levied a one-time tax on the state's mega wealthy to help fund healthcare. It took nearly a week of counting votes after the midterm election to determine a projection on the measure. There are about 200 billionaires in the state, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, reality television star Kim Kardashian and media mogul Oprah Winfrey.

... Throuples, foursomes and other multi-partner relationships can now register as domestic partners in a Los Angeles County city after its city council unanimously approved new legal protections for polyamorous couples. West Hollywood passed the ordinance Tuesday after it was introduced by Mayor John Heilman. The only surprise to me about this development is that it's taken this long. Official semi-recognition of Islamic polygamy is well established in the UK, Canada, France and elsewhere. Sooner or later, some enterprising non-Muslims would demand a piece of the polyamorous action. As the late Kathy Shaidle liked to say, more KY for the...

Hillsdale professor Kevin Slack says America was founded by settlers, not immigrants. He and Nick trace how the Progressive Era and the New Deal moved power from Congress and the states to an unelected bureaucracy, why the income tax made it possible, and why he says the founders never saw diversity as a strength. Then Nick asks the question hanging over all of it: can the Constitution, as it stands today, still protect the Republic?

Following the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine after a nine-month pause, negotiators agreed to a large-scale prisoner exchange — as they have after nearly every round of talks — but little else to bridge the gap on the major issues dividing them, including a plan for postwar security in the region. There has also been no indication that Moscow has stepped back from its maximalist demands aimed at crushing Ukraine, as the country braces for what is likely to be its toughest winter yet because of relentless Russian strikes. The two-day talks in Abu Dhabi exposed a deepening...

“We will not rest until all of America’s great veterans can receive the care they so richly deserve,” President Trump said — a sentiment echoed by presidents of both parties going back decades. But for many veterans who come home seeking help with chronic pain, blast-wave brain injury, PTSD, depression, toxic burn pit exposure or moral injury, the reality can be a maze of bureaucratic indifference resulting in delayed or disjointed care. Veteran advocates dub it “institutional betrayal,” a term describing a rupture of trust when the institutions charged with caring for veterans leave them feeling dismissed or abandoned… And...

Though it’s been decades since I purchased this 78, it still never fails to move me. The electrically recorded voices of Henry Burr and Billy Murray, two giants of early 20th Century popular music, are heard together in this Al Dubin-Jimmy McHugh tribute to the fighting servicemen of The Great War. Though artist billed as the Peerless Quartet, the label also indicates vocal by a male quintet. Aside from the Murray narrative, the five singers at this session (according to the Victor ledgers) were Burr, Monroe Silver, Carl Mathieu, James Stanley, and Stanley Baughman. Transferred from 78rpm Victor 20098 -...

The agency has already had to increase security after six vandalism incidents in three months. Video and photos from the scene show individuals in tactical gear and fatigues marked “NOT A COP” standing with long guns and “Abolish ICE” banners near the building. Amid unverified reports of an increased ICE presence in Scarborough, several protesters have posted up outside the ICE facility with ARs. Chellie Pingree reacted to the reports of increased ICE presence: "This cruel, chaotic, and out-of-control agency needs to be abolished. And we need ICE out of Maine. Period." The protester pictured below has been stationed outside...

When Michel Houellebecq published Submission a decade ago, while Muslim terrorists were butchering cartoonists, the book’s calm unimpassioned description of France falling under the sway of a Muslim Brotherhood party with the gradual acceptance of the protagonist, a dilettante academic intellectual, who ends the novel by ‘submitting’ and converting to Islam, and the rest of society, French literary circles saw it as both fantastic and unrealistic. It’s a lot less fantastic now as Houellebecq faces a year in prison. During the 2022 interview, Houellebecq quipped that “what the native French population, as they say, wants is not for Muslims to...

Chilling photos reveal disturbing tattoos on the psycho ex-cop charged with fatally stabbing a Brooklyn jogger — but when colleagues at the school where he worked complained to higher-ups, they were told they were being “racist’’ and to simply stop looking at social media. At least 10 people filed complaints with officials at PS 200 in Brooklyn about suspected killer paraprofessional Sayed Mohassib just since September, including over his online tattoo snaps, troubling “blank stare’’ demeanor and him displaying his gun necklace to young students, sources told The Post. But the suspect’s worried colleagues were rebuffed by school administrators and...

NEW YORK — Big Tech is bowing to a bruising midterms that saw Democrats successfully use Silicon Valley as a foil. Nowhere is that hard pivot more on display than with Alex Karp, the CEO and co-founder of secretive tech giant Palantir, which bet massively on Trump 2.0 and became an administration darling in the process.Inside Palantir’s Manhattan lair, in an exclusive sitdown with Playbook, Karp — who once criticized the Democratic Party as “totally irresponsible” — deployed the word “progressive” eight times to describe his philosophy while acknowledging Democrats “absolutely” corrected in 2026 enough to win back his support...

ATLANTA - Georgia's next Secretary of State is turning her attention from the campaign trail to the work ahead. Judge Penny Brown Reynolds met with outgoing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger at the State Capitol Tuesday as she prepares to take over the office in January. What they're saying In an interview with FOX 5's Deidra Dukes, Reynolds outlined her plans for the transition, her priorities for the office and the challenges of implementing a new voting system ahead of the 2028 presidential election. Reynolds says she plans to announce her transition team next week. She wants the group to...

There are reports of AI traffic cameras watching you and your car, but now even cars are being used to track how you drive. From when and how hard you brake and accelerate to showing your geolocation data, car companies have been found to track, collect, and also sell that data. All of which has led to increases in insurance bills and a lot of angry drivers. General Motors was found out to be secretly tracking, collecting, and selling details about driving patterns, behavior, and location. This was all done through the OnStar platform, a service that provides 24/7 support,...

(AP) - Stacy Keach, one of America’s finest stage actors who became best known for playing scruffy private eye Mike Hammer on TV and whose career was nearly derailed after he was imprisoned in 1984 for trying to smuggle cocaine into Britain, died Tuesday. He was 85. Keach died at home in Magdalenka, Poland, “after a long and difficult battle with a serious heart condition and heart failure,” his wife, Malgosia Tomassi Keach, said in a statement. Keach had previously suffered a heart attack onstage in Chicago in June 2017. Though he was considered a preeminent interpreter of Shakespeare and...