Free Republic

Indiana Republicans spent much of fall and winter of 2025 in an open battle over an ultimately unsuccessful effort to redistrict Indiana’s congressional districts to replace the state’s only two Democrat-held seats with Republicans. Had the new map been passed, though, Indiana Republicans — not Democrats — could have seen their delegation in the House of Representatives wiped out after Tuesday’s midterms. The GOP would have found itself with at most just two members in the House, according to an analysis done by The Exponent. The analysis was conducted by taking preliminary precinct-level data from the Indiana secretary of state’s...

The intellectuals date the rise of right-wing populism to Trump’s 2015 descent down the escalator. But it had the 8 p.m. ET time slot on Fox News for the better part of two decades. The network was run by Roger Ailes, the son of a factory foreman from Warren, Ohio, who had figured out how to make Richard Nixon acceptable on television. Republicanism as presented by Fox News was not about asserting ordered liberty against the administrative state; it was the experience of being informed on what pinhead was looking down on you and how you’d show them in the...

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has come out swinging since the Republican wipeout in the midterm elections. I hope this is because he’s laying the groundwork for a 2028 presidential bid, since he is one of the few national Republicans in tune with heartland Americans. Among the topics he is discussing is the problem of “corporatism,” and how the back-scratching, crony capitalism that exists between government and many corporations repels conservative voters, while also fueling the popularity of socialism among non-conservatives. Here are some quotes from Gov. DeSantis, as documented in a NY Post article titled “DeSantis says ‘corporatist Republicans’ drive...

This is an excerpt from an opinion article by former U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. America has crossed the Rubicon with Iran. There is no going back to the world that existed before this war, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. We have attacked Iran’s military infrastructure, inflicted enormous damage on its economy and demonstrated that the United States is prepared to use overwhelming force. Now, at precisely the moment when we have gained the upper hand, Washington seems increasingly preoccupied with how quickly we can declare victory, bring down gasoline prices and move on.

President Trump said Thursday that the United States no longer needs a deal with Iran, declaring that "those days have long since passed." Instead, he's directed Vice President JD Vance to train his sights on the ever-growing crime and corruption taking place in Democrat-run cities and states. Trump singled out Minnesota, California, and Illinois as "poorly run, corrupt disasters" in a Truth Social post earlier this morning, warning that "Billions of Dollars (are) being stolen each and every month." He also claimed the federal budget could be balanced by straightening out the massive corruption alone. Then the president turned to...

As of Wednesday afternoon, state Sen. Danny Britt (R) led his Democratic challenger by 0.4 percentage points, which is within the range for a recount. (Hannah Schoenbaum/AP)Only a couple hundred votes separated the two candidates in North Carolina’s last uncalled race for its state Senate, a seat that will determine whether Democrats take full control of the state government as part of a stunning sweep.As of Wednesday afternoon, state Sen. Danny Britt (R) led Catina Hamm (D) by 228 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, which is within the range for a recount. Britt’s margin has thinned this week as election...

WASHINGTON, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Democrat Scott Colom won a stunning upset in Mississippi's US Senate race on Wednesday after days of counting, US media projected, defeating ​Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith to become the Southern state's first Black ‌senator since the Reconstruction era that followed the US Civil War. It was one of the final outstanding races to be called since Tuesday's elections, in which Democrats overwhelmed Republicans ​to win control of both chambers of the US Congress. Mississippi ​officials took days to count ballots in a race that was ⁠so tight that Colom at times led by only a...

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...

(Excerpted) What the polls told us going into the election was not that Americans were inalterably opposed to war with Iran; they were opposed to NOT WINNING a war with Iran. As General George S. Patton famously said in a speech to his troops during World War II, “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time.” Donald Trump’s entire public persona was built around winning: The Art of the Deal, The Art of the Comeback, and The Apprentice were all about Donald Trump the winner. And right now, despite all the...

House Democrats now have won at least 254 seats, and while some race results are still being counted, they estimate they’ll end up with a majority close to 260. “This is the largest majority that any party has had this century,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said on X. “News of our demise was greatly exaggerated.”

House Republican leaders are bracing for enough GOP defections to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth when the measure comes to a vote this week.

The young male voters who helped propel President Donald Trump back into the White House in 2024 delivered a devastating rebuke to Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections, abandoning the GOP amid mounting frustration over the Iran War, economic struggles, and the growing perception that Washington has betrayed the America First agenda. New exit polling reveals a dramatic political reversal among younger Americans, particularly men under 45, who played a critical role in Trump’s historic comeback just two years ago. The collapse has raised serious questions about whether Republican leaders understood the coalition that elected Trump in the first place,...

Nearly 700 rural hospitals are facing financial pressures that are putting them in danger of shutting down… Many of the states with significant numbers or percentages of rural hospitals at risk are largely rural states. But New York, Pennsylvania, and Georgia are also among the states with the most rural hospitals that are deemed at grave risk of closure. More than 100 rural hospitals have closed nationwide between 2015 and 2026… In addition, 56 rural hospitals have eliminated inpatient services since the beginning of 2023. Lisa Kidder Hrobsky, at the American Hospital Association, said the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation...

President Donald Trump questioned the results of the midterm elections in a jaw-dropping social media post, less than a week after he, his preferred candidates, and GOP control of Congress were smacked down in a brutal rout. Taking to Truth Social on Monday morning, the president said: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting “dumps” were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote.” He added: “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” The...

President Donald Trump took a swipe at Vice President JD Vance Sunday evening for blaming the GOP’s disastrous midterm elections on the Iran War, saying that “a lot of people didn’t like his comments.” Tuesday’s results gave Democrats reasons to celebrate across the country, leaving Republicans grim about seemingly everything except for narrowly winning the gubernatorial and Senate races in Florida. Enough congressional seats flipped blue — despite a Trump-backed gerrymandering effort pushed in multiple red states — to turn over majority control of both the U.S. House and Senate. Many other state and federal races previously assessed as safely...

'Fox & Friends' reports on 'The View' co-hosts' praise of Michigan Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed and Vogue's commentary on what it calls a new generation of 'handsome' politicians

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...

Of course, it was the Iran war—though I don’t think people, including Vice President JD Vance, are fully putting their finger on why.Fairly close to 100% of the electorate, whether they love or hate Donald Trump, understand him not as somebody to follow into a military campaign of his own impulsive choosing, unprovoked by any national emergency.Though in his arrogance and presumption it would have been hard for any underling to put it to him, there was something else: the unique and sequined nature of his legitimacy.His freakish rise in our politics is so much the reciprocal of the illegitimate...

Texas. There is absolutely something rotten in Texas. The vote totals aren’t “off.” They’re literally impossible. They’re a Marxist fantasy. They’re a little child’s fairy tale. Red rural Texas districts turned Democrat blue? For Talafreako? You’re telling me white male Christian hunters, and fishermen, and gun owners decided to vote Democrat for the first time in their lives because they all now hate President Trump? Two years after electing him in a Texas landslide? After he secured the border? After he cut their taxes?

It was epochal and marks a new era in our political history. And for once everyone rushed to name clearly what happened. The morning after the 2026 midterm elections, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was searingly blunt. For the Republican Party it was “close to an extinction level event.” Its effects will “reverberate for the next decade or more.” “It was a Watergate-level repudiation,” said Ted Cruz, soon to be Texas’ lone Republican senator, on a podcast. Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairman in the first Trump term, told Fox News on Wednesday the election wasn’t only a Democratic wave, it...