Free Republic

….Reagan became the dominant political personality of the 1980s, defeating incumbent President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and winning a 49-state landslide reelection in 1984. He was able to carry in a majority for Republicans in the Senate and establish a kind of working majority in the House with the aid of conservative Democrats in that chamber. On the strength of those elections, restrained only marginally by the midterm elections of 1982, Reagan began his second term on top of the world. But he soon learned how hard that height can be to hold. As he neared his second midterm, Democrats...

Registrations are up 2.2% from the last major general election in November 2024, and up 2% from primary elections in March, according to a Friday release from the Texas Secretary of State. The latest figures are also 7.7% higher than the number of voters registered ahead of the last midterm election in November 2022. Fast-growing suburban counties saw some of the biggest growths since the last midterms, including Kaufman (27% more registered voters), Waller (23%), Ellis (21%) and Hays (21%). While state data for Tarrant County, a battleground county, showed a 2.6% drop in voter registrations since November 2022, county...

Democrat Xavier Becerra won the California governor’s race Tuesday, though his Republican opponent, British-born former Fox News host Steve Hilton, is leading in 23 of the state’s 58 counties in preliminary returns on Thursday morning... [...] California hasn’t had a Republican governor since Arnold Schwarzenegger left office in 2011. Becerra built wide leads in Los Angeles County and across the Bay Area, while Hilton found some of his strongest support, by proportion, in rural Northern California, including Lassen and Modoc counties.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vice President J.D. Vance admitted Wednesday on X, explaining the Republicans’ disastrous midterm election loss the day before. He listed the top four things the GOP could do, according to a pollster with whom he spoke, to win back voters who had defected to the Democrats. These were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) replied to Vance’s post, “Thanks for acknowledging these things. Better late than never.” Massie included an image of a red, MAGA-style...

President Donald Trump’s naming of deportation architect as his chief of staff unleashed anger, fear and astonishment among leaders of industries that depend on immigrant labor. Industries that rely heavily on immigrant labor decried President Donald Trump’s promotion of his chief architect of deportations on Friday, just days after millions of Americans signaled anger about such policies. The elevation of Stephen Miller to chief of staff, starting Monday, left some leaders of groups representing the agriculture and construction sectors gobsmacked. “When I got a text message, ‘Hey, have you heard about Stephen Miller?,’ my first thought was: Thank goodness he...

Americans have now delivered on what they’ve been telling pollsters all year: They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. In a stunning rebuke to U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican Party, voters have entrusted Democrats with both the House and the Senate, flipping their control simultaneously for only the fourth time in a midterm election since World War II. The reverses for the GOP include defeats in usually deep-red states such as Kansas, South Carolina, and Texas. Trump is already distancing himself from the results—after encouraging voters to pretend he was on the ballot....

Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) announced Thursday that he is running for House Republican Conference chair, arguing that the party’s election losses stemmed from broken promises and leadership’s unwillingness to pursue conservative policies. “Republicans didn’t lose because we were too conservative. We lost because we failed to deliver on the conservative policies we promised,” Steube wrote in his announcement. “I’m not interested in preserving the status quo. I’m stepping forward to give Members a conservative choice and take our Conference in a new direction.” Steube joins a contest that includes incumbent Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-MI) and Rep. Erin Houchin (R-IN),...

With Democrats soon to control Congress, the loyal consigliere is expected to take a maximalist approach to executive power WASHINGTON—After a brutal election that gutted Republican power in Washington, President Trump has chosen one of his most loyal and divisive advisers as the new White House chief of staff, signaling a combative posture for the final two years of the Trump era.Stephen Miller, a fierce political operative who has been at Trump’s side for more than a decade, has been a vocal advocate of the no-holds-barred style of governing that delighted the president’s most die-hard MAGA supporters—and was repudiated by...

Call it a tale of two states. Both Republican-run. Both prosperous. Both heavily populated states that influence the rest of the nation. Yet in the blue tsunami, the results in Texas and Florida were very different. “In January … of the 10 largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state, the state of Florida,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday. “Last night we witnessed—to call it a wave, I don’t think would be fully accurate—it’s the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States. Blue states, red states, everything...

Democratic Socialist Nithya Raman was spotted for the first time since winning the race for Los Angeles mayor, making her the first mayoral challenger to defeat an incumbent since 2005. Raman made her way from her home to a combined yoga studio and workspace in downtown LA. “Los Angeles, I’m deeply honored to be your next mayor,” Raman said in a video statement. “Thank you to the thousands of people who knocked on doors, sent texts, made phone calls, convinced their neighbors to believe in the promise of this big, beautiful, joyful city that we get to call home.

In every election, there are winners and losers … except in the 2026 LA mayoral election: Everybody lost. Clearly, Nithya Raman didn’t win the election, so much as Karen Bass lost it. And with the inept, stuttering and incompetent Nithya Raman ascending to the top spot at City Hall, we all lose. I had dubbed this the “Dumb and Dumber” election because, ever since I was knocked out of the race, we were essentially left with two sides of the same coin. We’ve lurched from an old-school incompetent communist activist to a new-school incompetent socialist carpetbagger; it’s a distinction without...

Trump fires his chief of staff, as his political universe shrinks.Most Presidents who take a beating in midterm elections acknowledge the trouncing and take responsibility. But Donald Trump isn’t most Presidents, in case you hadn’t noticed. On Friday he sacked his able chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and said he will replace her with domestic policy adviser Stephen Miller. To adapt the famous “Saturday Night Live” skit, what Mr. Trump seems to want is more MAGA cowbell. “I am pleased to announce that Mr. Stephen Miller, the current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Trump Administration, and one of my...

BLACK BOX VOTING BOOK FREE DOWNLOAD! This book was ordered by the White House in 2004. It was reported to have been found on Osama bin Laden’s bookshelf when he was killed. It has been downloaded half a million times. The information in the book is heavily sourced and it has been vetted by editors from several major media outlets. Though it is old (I wrote it in 2003) the information in it still stands — if anything, elections today are even more opaque and tamper-friendly than before. Here are links for free download of the complete first edition of...

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...

“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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Nevada voters approved Question 6 on Tuesday, placing a right to abortion in the state constitution and delivering a heartbreaking setback for unborn children and those working to protect them. The measure passed with approximately 63 percent of the vote. It was the second and final required approval after voters first backed it in 2024. The amendment establishes a constitutional right to abortion until fetal viability but essentially up to birth because an abortionist can sign of on late-term abortions for any reason. Abortion has been legal in Nevada up to 24 weeks under a 1990 statute; opponents said the...