Free Republic

The 2026 midterm rout exposed Republican failures on the economy, Iran, and immigration. Trump can still recover, but Democrats risk overplaying their hand with a radical agenda.Midterm RealitiesIn the 126 years since 1900, nearly 90 percent of the midterm elections have led to the party in the Oval Office losing House seats, and two-thirds of those same elections have led to it losing Senate seats. Given this history, midterm losses of some sort in 2026 were almost a sure bet. But what ensued in November went well beyond all normal expectations. When all the votes are tabulated, the current...

The predicted blue wave may never materialize. And even if Democrats retake Congress, history suggests Trump could emerge stronger, not weaker, with the presidency's expansive powers. 2022 vs. 2026In June 2022, the price of gasoline topped $5 a gallon and stayed around $4 a gallon through October, on the eve of the midterms. It is currently about $4.30. The inflation rate in 2022 hit a 40-year high of 9.1 percent—and would average 5.1 percent over Joe Biden’s four-year tenure. The 2026 inflation rate is estimated to be about 3.5 percent and, over the first two years of the second Trump...

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. I’m speaking about 10 days before our Nov. 3 midterms, the second midterm in the second term of the two Trump administrations. We thought, given historical precedents, that it should be a shoo-in for the Democrats. One hundred and twenty-six years since 1900, to take the modern era, 90% of the parties that were holding the White House at the time of the second-term midterms lost. And of all midterms, the in-party only won on three occasions: FDR in the ’34 election, Bill Clinton in the ’98 election, and George...

Elon Musk’s shift to the right, support for Trump, and defense of free speech have turned a former liberal darling into a target of the Left’s growing hostility toward billionaires. As the midterms approach, the Left has gone nearly berserk in its hatred of trillionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk. Yet its escalating venom would have been almost inconceivable before 2022, when Musk publicly declared that he would be voting Republican. Before Musk’s recent political reversal (he voted for both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020), he was beloved by the Left as the first successful upstart challenger to...

The Ukraine war’s mounting casualties, Western divisions, and dwindling prospects for victory make a negotiated peace increasingly urgent before the conflict spirals into an even greater catastrophe. The Ukrainian Gordian KnotAfter crossing with his army into Asia, Alexander the Great stopped at Gordium (in modern-day Turkey). He approached the famous Gordian knot—a tangled mass of bark tying an ox cart to a pole, so intricate and tight that no one could unravel it. When told that anyone who could untie the mess would rule all of Asia, Alexander simply pulled out his sword and cut through it—solving the problem and...

Europe resents its dependence on American military power while criticizing Washington’s foreign policy, exposing the hypocrisy, insecurity, and economic decline undermining its global influence. Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners. Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats. But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats. One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity. Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries. Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy...

There are two ways of looking at the midterm elections, now just a week away. From one angle, it’s a simple referendum on the issues and politicians of the day. From another, it involves a far deeper conflict of visions (as Thomas Sowell puts it): socialism vs. capitalism, intrusive vs. limited government, and the destruction of time-honored institutions and traditions vs. their preservation and renewal. Rarely in American history have the two parties been so far apart — or the choice between them so stark. In brief, Islamist-sympathizing socialism is on the ballot against free-market capitalism and American exceptionalism. The...

Europe resents its dependence on American military power while criticizing Washington’s foreign policy, exposing the hypocrisy, insecurity, and economic decline undermining its global influence. Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners. Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats. But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats. One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity. Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries. Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy...

Hamas could have spared Gaza’s devastation by choosing peace over terrorism. The conflict has exposed international double standards toward Israel and fueled a resurgence of antisemitism. After October 7, 2023Could the destruction of Gaza after October 7 have been avoided? The answer is yes—had Hamas so wished. First, if the Hamas leadership had simply complied with Israeli demands to (a) return the 251 hostages and (b) surrender the architects and perpetrators of the massacre of some 1,200 Israelis, the Israelis would not have had to fight Hamas in the streets and tunnels of Gaza. Note how critics of Israel consistently...

J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of a declining Gondor offers a warning for the troubled West—but also a message of hope that renewal remains possible. The Despair and Hope of J. R. R. TolkienThe novelist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) repeatedly insisted that his epic fantasy The Lord of the Rings, written from 1937 to 1949, was not allegorical. But some scholars have argued otherwise, detecting contemporary, 20th-century influences in his storytelling. Tolkien fought at the nightmarish Battle of the Somme in World War I. He witnessed the slaughter of the youth of Europe in the trenches that lived with him the...

The Left’s cries of “genocide” against Israel ring hollow when many of its loudest critics ignore the far bloodier histories of their own ancestral homelands. On October 7, 2023, Hamas killers slaughtered 1,200 people, more than two-thirds of them civilians, inside Israel. For the ensuing three weeks, they refused Israel’s demands to turn over the 251 hostages and to surrender the architects of the massacre. No matter—within a day of the attacks, when Hamas gunmen were still fighting Israeli troops on Israeli soil, the American Left was already screaming “genocide!” They did not mean Hamas’s intended genocide of Jews, a...

The Democrats’ charge that 1992 saw the worst recession in 60 years was absurd(it worked). (The 1973 and 1981 recessions were far worse than the 1990–91 recession.) The 2025 poverty rate hit an all-time low of 10.2 percent. Median household income also hit a record high of $87,460. The brilliant Bush campaign strategist Lee Atwater, who virtually destroyed the Dukakis campaign in 1988 died in 1991 at the age of 40 from a brain tumor.

Republicans risk repeating 1992 by failing to counter economic pessimism with the facts about strong growth, falling inflation, rising incomes, and a recovering economy. Remembering the False Gloom and Doom of the 1992 Elections—and the Upcoming Midterms In 1992, Bill Clinton won the presidential election partly on the basis of his campaign’s false accusation that George H. W. Bush had overseen “the worst economic performance since the Great Depression.” Or so claimed Clinton’s running mate Al Gore. James Carville, chief campaign adviser to Clinton/Gore, amplified that message with the constant refrain: “It’s the economy, stupid.” That strategy worked for three...

The Iran war could reshape the midterms as Democrats, Iran’s regime, dissidents, and Kurdish rebels weigh the political and military stakes of the next 50 days. Many narratives swirl around the U.S. war with Iran as the November 3 midterm elections loom. The Left is giddy with confidence that Democrats may take control of Congress. It is therefore planning a circus of impeachments, lawfare, and investigations to neuter the last two years of the Trump administration. High gas prices and the current unpopularity of the Iran conflict, coupled with the historical reality that the president’s party has lost seats in...

While the trade war between Trump and Canada continues, China has been selling cheap aluminum and steel to Canada to get around tariffs and undercut American workers. “The United States is fed up. They're fed up with countries that said for 30 years they were going to protect themselves and help NATO, and the most egregious offender in the last 15 years has been Canada.” Watch the full episode with Victor Davis Hanson here: https://youtu.be/-265LpIW5uI?si=H40pljVH0mICeB3f

Mark Carney’s anti-American crusade risks hurting Canada’s economy while strengthening China and exposing the contradictions behind his trade war with the United States. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney now believes he is more than just the Western foil to Donald Trump and his MAGA movement—he is the global one. Accordingly, he seems determined to demonstrate to the world how to stand up to Donald Trump, to force Trump to lose the midterms, and to hurt the U.S. economy to such a degree that Trump will never again bully other nations. So, at the eleventh hour, Carney stormed out of an...

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. I’d like to offer an update on the Canadian-American trade spat. Earlier, I had staged it. I said stage one was surprise on both sides of the border that two neighbors who spoke the same language, had the same civilizational origins in Britain, were close neighbors, and had the largest undefended border in the world were at a point of very angry disagreement. The second stage was that Prime Minister Mark Carney started to suggest that the United States was solely culpable, was a bully, and had forced him to...

The primaries are over, and the November general election looms. Suddenly, the Islamo-socialist podcaster Hasan Piker--who is now infamous for blaming America for 9/11 and warning Jews that "someone's going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews"--is persona non grata on the Democratic stump. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race, once enlisted Piker to jump-start his lethargic candidacy. Now that he is locked in a close general-election race against a strong Republican, El-Sayed dismisses the antisemite, who has suddenly outlived his usefulness, as a mere...

The socialists didn’t radicalize the Democrat Party; they simply inherited a party that had already radicalized itself. The primaries are over, and the November general election looms. Suddenly, the Islamo-socialist podcaster Hasan Piker—who is now infamous for blaming America for 9/11 and warning Jews that “someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews”—is persona non grata on the Democratic stump. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee in the Michigan Senate race, once enlisted Piker to jump-start his lethargic candidacy. Now that he is locked in a close general-election race...

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. The more you look around us today, I think a good description of 2026, culturally, economically, socially, politically, is that we are in a modern medieval world. Maybe we’re progressive regressives, and I don’t mean that just in the sense that progressives are regressive, and they are, but that one part of our society is advancing at lightning speed to the future and progressing. But the other part is regressing, and regressing at a phenomenal pace back to what I would call the medieval period. Remember, the medieval period was...