Free Republic

China’s state-run Global Times wrote in the wake of the U.S. midterms that “the ‘myth’ of Western-style democracy is losing its appeal, even in the West.” The Chinese Communist paper did not explain why it decided to put its own cheap shot of “myth” in scare quotes, as the word was not quoted from any other source, and the point of the editorial was that democracy is mythical because the citizens of the U.S. and other Western nations do not actually believe their votes bring them better government. The Global Times was enthralled with public opinion polls that showed deep...

Here in the U.S., with few exceptions, we have a commendable tradition that victorious politicians do not use the criminal justice system to prosecute or otherwise disable their rivals and adversaries. At the presidential level, before Trump the two most prominent examples against that tradition were the prosecution of Aaron Burr by Thomas Jefferson in 1807, and the prosecution of Eugene Debs by Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Otherwise, our defeated presidential candidates have gone peacefully to retirement. But then, after Trump was defeated in 2020, that tradition was abrogated in rather spectacular fashion. At both the federal and state levels,...

Jamie Raskin says expanded background checks on private firearm sales will be among his priorities as expected House Judiciary Committee chairman. Republicans argue the proposal would burden hobbyists, friends, and people selling firearms from personal collections. Gun rights advocates warn that expanded background checks would create a registry that could enable future confiscation. Raskin also said he would scrutinize antitrust deals and perhaps pursue another impeachment of President Donald Trump. SNIP

The reasons behind these record crime reductions aren’t difficult to understand... Most people who follow the news probably missed Monday’s announcement from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): Felony violent crime plunged 25 percent in 2025. Rape fell 13 percent, robbery dropped 27 percent, and aggravated assault declined 31 percent. Property crime fell 19 percent. Except for rape, these represent the largest one-year declines since the government began collecting these data 53 years ago. That marks a dramatic reversal from the Biden administration, when felony violent crime soared by a record 59 percent and property crime rose 8 percent between...

On the afternoon of Friday, October 30th, Poland's president boarded a plane for Senegal. Karol Nawrocki was somewhere over Spain when the news reached the cabin. Back in Warsaw, Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, who had never taken the oath before the president that Polish law requires of a Constitutional Tribunal judge, ordered the suspension of the Tribunal’s president, Bogdan Święczkowski, and its vice president, Bartłomiej Sochański, for one month. She announced that she was now running the court. Nawrocki told the pilot to turn around at around 6:12 in the evening, and by midnight he was standing inside the Tribunal building beside...

During a portion of an interview with CBS News released on Monday, Raul Ortiz, who served as Chief of the Border Patrol during the Biden administration and as Deputy Chief during the first Trump administration, said that he’s never seen the border this quiet and “Even after 9/11, when we pushed resources to the border, airports, to make sure that we didn’t have another terroristic threat, we did not see the level of security that we’re experiencing right now.” CBS News Immigration Correspondent Camilo Montoya-Galvez asked, “Have you ever seen the border this quiet?” Ortiz answered, “No. Never. Even after...

The O’Keefe Media Group on Monday released “Talarico Tapes” one day before the midterm elections. James O’Keefe released undercover videos of Texas Democrats admitting Talarico’s “moderate” act is just for the cameras to win over Texas voters. Williamson County Democrat Chair and Talarico’s girlfriend’s family were caught on OMG undercover video revealing James Talarico holds extremely progressive views. “James is not going… he’s not going middle. He’s a progressive,” Matt Menard, Talarico’s girlfriend’s father told the OMG undercover journalist. “Don’t put too much stock into border security comments… “He’s [Talarico] offended by ICE. He and I have spoken about these...

Independent journalist and filmmaker Nick Shirley dropped a 43-minute investigative documentary overnight on X that has already gone viral, exposing how the Biden administration’s handling of unaccompanied migrant children operated as the largest government-funded human trafficking ring in history. In the film, posted to his account, Shirley states that “Your tax dollars trafficked over 300,000 children across the United States while NGOs enriched themselves with millions of dollars,” detailing contracts in which one NGO alone received $895 million while others pulled in more than $100 million each. Shirley notes that groups operating in places like Tucson, Arizona, pocketed large sums...

Ilhan Omar has been hiding links to two of her siblings in London in an alleged bid to create further distance between her and rumored brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — whom she married in 2009. Multiple sources told The Post that Mohamed Nur Said Elmi, a political activist for the Puntland cause in Somalia, and Leila Nur Said Elmi, 53, are Omar’s siblings who live in London. Ahmed Elmi, 41 — to whom Omar was married for eight years, and who described himself as “a gay man” in a recent academic paper — is also believed to have lived...

DETROIT (AP) — Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s former opponent in the U.S. Senate primary, Haley Stevens, stunned party officials Sunday by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers after Democratic tensions boiled over days before the election that could determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill. Stevens endorsed Rogers after attending a Detroit church service with him. The remarkable show of support for the President Donald Trump-backed candidate in the tightly contested race comes after she was uninvited to a joint event the same day with El-Sayed, who defeated the congresswoman by a slim margin in the August primary. “Our Democratic nominee...

That’s how many barrels of oil have made it out of the Hormuz Strait with U.S. military guidance. Voters aren’t happy about gasoline prices as they head to the polls, and it’s now axiomatic in the press that the Iran war is a loser for the U.S. with no good choices except capitulation. So it’s worth noting U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper’s update this week that the U.S. has helped its allies in the Gulf export 1.5 billion barrels of oil since this summer.“When I flew over the Strait” recently, Adm. Cooper said in a video on Friday, “I saw...

Elon Musk posted 102 times on X today (10/31/26) | 36:05 Jacob & Isaac | 48.1K subscribers | 19,078 views | October 31, 2026

It must be good to be a black, Muslim woman, the first such to get elected to Congress and, not incidentally, a Democrat and an avowed hater of the United States and of Israel. If you can check all those boxes, then you can commit the most overt and obvious frauds and scams, and the mainstream media will act in lockstep to cover up, suppress and minimize your wrongdoing. But at some point the brazenness can become too much even for the New York Times. That appears to have happened in the past couple of days in the case of...

The month was January 2021, only a few weeks into the mass rollout of the injection called a vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had outsourced its collection of data from the VAERS system – designed to monitor vaccine safety – to General Dynamics Information Technology. GDIT wrote the CDC a memo dated January 15. “The number of incoming COVID-19 reports has significantly exceeded the estimated maximum of 1,000 reports per day,” the memo to the CDC said. “As a result, GDIT is unable to meet processing and other timeframes (data processing, telephone inquiries, clinical inquiries, etc.). GDIT...

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s double life is collapsing and her caterer/donor is going to jail for 30 years for $44 million in fraud. Salim Ahmed Said was sentenced to 30 years in prison after he was found guilty in 2025 for his role in the Feeding Our Future fraud scheme. Said is the former co-owner of the Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis. He and his associates stole over $44 million by claiming to feed up to 6,000 children daily. Omar had her victory party at the Safari restaurant and took part in a video claiming to be feeding people there. But in...

Confused much? Rep. Ilhan Omar apparently didn’t know what her name was when applying in 2009 for a Minnesota marriage license to her alleged brother Ahmed Elmi, according to the document obtained by The Post. A certified copy from the Hennepin County, Minn., government shows that the Democratic congresswoman’s surname was initially written as Omar, before being crossed out and replaced with Elmi. A final edit reverted it back to Omar. The revisions are potentially significant as the Justice Department investigates whether Omar fraudulently gained US citizenship in 2000 by failing to use her accurate legal name — and birthdate.

Ahead of the midterm elections, billionaire Elon Musk warned that a Democratic sweep of the White House and Congress in 2028 could spell the "end of democracy," outlining three moves he fears the party would make to cement its political power. The stark warning comes as Musk pours money into Republican campaigns, arguing that maintaining GOP control of the Senate is essential to preventing what he described as a "permanent one-party state." Musk outlined his three "biggest" concerns about Democrats gaining unified control of Washington, in an X post, warning that the party would move to grant statehood to Washington,...

There is something in the watercooler at The Washington Post. Well, more specifically, in whatever water WaPo's editorial board is drinking. For the most part, the Post remains a hotbed of Trump Derangement Syndrome-induced hysteria. Typically, the wildfire of irresponsible propaganda "journalism" is lit by editorial directives. For example, The New York Times editorial board is comprised of pathological liars, and that creates the standards-free environment that permeates the organization. WaPo's editorial board has been getting some things right lately, which is one of the most interesting things I've seen in 20+ years of writing about media bias. The way...

The endless cries of creeping fascism from the Left have become exhausting, particularly when progressives keep reminding us that their problem isn't authoritarianism itself, but who gets to wield the authority. The most recent example? Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under Bill Clinton - a man who routinely warns about fascism - advocating for the government to seize control of private companies. Reich wants a Democrat-controlled government to cut off Elon Musk's government contracts and prepare to nationalize SpaceX and Starlink if they regain power. In the spirit of Marx himself, Reich wants the state to take ownership...

Democrats promise to lower costs, but journalists rarely ask them to explain their policies—or account for the soaring prices under Biden. Two things are missing from almost every media report attacking President Trump over affordability: acknowledgment that Democrats supported Biden’s policies during the inflation surge, which left Americans paying substantially higher prices, and any serious examination of which Democrat policies would actually make life more affordable. If Democrats regain power, their policies could make things worse. According to a recent article, House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries promises to lower grocery, gasoline, housing, and health care costs. “We are explicitly promising...