Free Republic

Democrat Gary Clemons, a South Louisville union leader and U.S. Army veteran, won Kentucky’s vacant Senate District 37 seat on Tuesday in a roughly 47.5‑point landslide, taking 72.6 percent of the vote to Republican Calvin Leach’s 25.1 percent, according to unofficial Jefferson County results. “State Democrats are overperforming and winning special elections across every part of the country,” said Heather Williams, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) president, in a statement shared with Newsweek. “Momentum is on our side as voters turn away from MAGA Republicans and back state Democrats who are fighting to lower costs.”

In two weeks, New York City will inaugurate a new socialist mayor. In a few weeks, Chile will inaugurate a new president from the Right. In Seattle, a socialist is now the mayor, but in Argentina, Ecuador, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Paraguay, leaders from the Right are governing or starting to govern. What in the world is going on? Socialism is dead but alive and well in New York City and Seattle. Of course, they don't really call it “socialism” but rather the "affordability" crisis. Did you ever read about a socialist country that made things more affordable?...

An extinction event is a rapid, sweeping collapse -- something so disruptive that what emerges afterward is unrecognizable from what came before. Volcano eruptions or meteor strikes can trigger such events in the natural world. Washington, D.C. may be approaching a political version of the same phenomenon, and Republicans seem disturbingly unprepared for what is coming. The GOP currently holds narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress -- seven seats in the House and six in the Senate. Those margins are razor-thin by any measure, and fragile given that five senators, three Republicans and two Democrats, are over eighty years...

A few weeks ago, I gave the Republican Party some unsolicited advice about what they should do if they want to get back into the saddle and start winning elections again after this year’s string of off-season/special election losses. Essentially it boiled down to using power to fight the Democrats while giving your own client base the things that it wants. In other words, what people throughout history, in every era, in every type of political system from the most despotic to the most egalitarian, would recognise as basic political acumen. The Democrats, despite their complete disconnection from several basic...

MAGA Republicans are going to prevail in the next two national elections. We are going to applaud so much that our hands will hurt. This is going to come about for a composite of reasons, the most obvious being the Democrats’ complete lack of available talent. Their most marketable candidate is California’s Governor Hair Gel, but the reality of his state’s decline during his watch is an enormous albatross hanging around his neck. He’s soon to be termed out and will then be condemned to spend over a year wandering in the wilderness, preaching to the choir. Other than Newsom,...

In October, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections (BRE) requesting review of the election records from the 2020 election. These records had been previously ordered to be retained beyond the requirements of 52 USC 20701 due to pending litigation. Sheri Allen, the chairperson of the Fulton County BRE, obtained outside counsel, without submitting it to a vote of the Board, to respond to the DOJ that the records requested were not beholden to 52 USC § 20701 and, even if they were, they were not in the...

Republicans in key battleground U.S. House districts are working to contain the political fallout that may come when thousands of their constituents face higher bills for health insurance coverage obtained through the Affordable Care Act. One of those is first-term U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa., whose victory for the Allentown-area seat last year was among the narrowest in the nation. “I think that we need to deal with the reality of where we are now and even if you have a broken system, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t provide or offer relief to individuals who are dealing with those...

If Democrats seem extreme now, wait until they adopt ranked-choice voting. Some activists inside the party want exactly that — a reform that would push presidential nominations even further left and force establishment figures to navigate an ideological gauntlet to win. Multiple reports indicate that Democratic Party activists and elected officials are pressuring the party to adopt ranked-choice voting for its 2028 presidential primaries. Axios notes that the push has grown serious enough that top party officials met in late October with advocates including Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), pollster Celinda Lake, and representatives from FairVote Action. Such an effort fits...

A Dallas congresswoman opened her Senate campaign by telling voters that she “has gone toe to toe with Donald Trump.” Her Democratic primary opponent insisted that Americans are tired of “politics as a blood sport.” The divergent approach highlights how U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico are navigating a race where Democrats hope to break a three-decade losing streak in Texas. It also reflects a broader divide within the party, with some candidates continuing to focus on Trump while others barely mention his name on the trail. Figuring out the best approach will be critical for Democrats...

Democrats just flipped the Miami mayorship from 🟥🔜🟦. The last time democrats won Miami was 1998. Republicans are completely squandering all of the work we did to win the 2024 elections. It’s especially frustrating as democrats are raising taxes in New Jersey & Pennsylvania.

Reporting live from Central America. The General Elections from 30 November gives dysfunction a bad name. Let me bring you up to date. My source is local Honduran television, before the signal was mysteriously cut, just now. The conservative candidate from the National Party "Tito" Asfura remains in the lead by 42,407 votes (1,298,835 votes) over the moderate Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla with (1,256,428). The socialist (let's be honest, communist) Libre Party candidate Rixi Moncada is a distant 3rd with 618,448 votes. The current president Xiomara Castro is from the Libre Party and under the Honduran Constitution, cannot run...

President Donald Trump has fired his latest warning at Indiana state Senate Republicans seeking to work with Democrats in obstructing redistricting plans passed by the Indiana House on Friday. "Why would a REAL Republican vote against this when the Dems have been doing it for years???" Trump wrote Saturday on Truth Social. "If they stupidly say no, vote them out of Office – They are not worthy – And I will be there to help! "Thank you Indiana!" Trump's post followed a Friday night post hailing Republicans in the Indiana House for moving the redistricting plan forward ahead of a...

U.S. President Donald Trump's demand that Republican-led states redraw their congressional maps to help his party retain control of Congress in next year's midterm elections has triggered a national battle over redistricting, with the eventual winner still unclear. The fight began when Republicans in Texas, the most populous Republican state, approved a rare mid-decade new congressional map aimed at flipping five House seats now occupied by Democrats. California, the most populous Democratic state, soon responded by initiating its own redistricting effort targeting five Republican-held districts. Other states, both Republican and Democratic, have followed suit or threatened to do so. Republicans...

Abortion, religion, and race were the three intractable constitutional law conundrums of the second half of the 20th century. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, the justices of the Warren and Burger Supreme Courts felt compelled to step in and resolve them, though their constitutional warrant so to do was anything but clear. As readers of this magazine are well aware, for decades American society has been roiled by what we are slowly coming to see as the Supreme Court’s unwarranted judicial audacity—if not impudence, arrogance, and illegitimacy. Since Richard Nixon’s campaign in 1968, Republicans have been seeking to...

“He’s a fighter, that’s what we need!” a top-tier producer, and reliable Dem ATM over the decades, told Deadline of Newsom. “I just wish more Democrats, like Schumer and the leadership (in Congress), would emulate him, not take any sh*t from Trump,” the producer added of Newsom and his Trump 2.0 strategy of throwing punches online and off line at the authoritarian “loser” White House. With legislation like the January 1 effective ICE unmasking “No Secret Police Act” and his landslide Proposition 50 redistricting victory last month mentioned, admiration for Newsom’s fightin’ ethos is a sentiment echoed throughout town time...

Democrats might finally win a civil war in Virginia -- at least for now. The political party that seceded from the Union to keep American blacks enslaved in defiance of a Republican president in the 19th century is taking a new tack in the Old Dominion to defy a Republican president in the 21st. And the stakes in next year's midterm elections are getting higher. In late October, the Virginia Senate passed, on a party-line vote, a congressional redistricting proposal that would likely change the state's congressional seats from a fairly even split of six Democrats to five Republicans to...

Left-led UK government follows up attacking Magna Carta and frequent social media arrests by announcing it is yet again postponing elections and moving to introduce a nationwide facial camera recognition system.Brexit leader Nigel Farage eviscerated the left-wing British government for piling depredations upon depredations on the British people, as they announced yet another postponement of local elections without good reason, on the same day they moved to roll out China-style facial recognition cameras.(snip)Policing minister Sarah Jones was cited by The Daily Telegraph as having hailed the rollout of cameras as a major leap-forwards in the ability of the government to...

Some of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress are warning that the party needs to sharpen its affordability message to voters heading into the 2026 elections — or risk big losses that would shackle him for the rest of his second term. “I would love him to get back to driving around in the garbage truck, going to McDonald’s. Go to a supermarket, go to a farm. That’s when he’s at his best,” Rep. Jeff Van Drew told CNN, recalling a message he conveyed to the president in a lengthy phone call earlier this week. “Next year, we got...

Colorado Tells DOJ ‘Take a Hike’ as It Rejects Demand for Statewide Voter Data “We will not comply with the Trump Department of Justice’s request for Coloradans’ sensitive voting information,” Griswold said in a statement. “The DOJ can take a hike; it does not have a legal right to the information. Colorado will not help Donald Trump undermine our elections and hurt the American people.” The U.S. Department of Justice asked Colorado to share unredacted voter information, according to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, and the state “Will Not Comply"

n September the U.S. Justice Department Civil Rights Division filed federal lawsuits against six states for failure to produce their statewide voter registration lists upon request: — California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. As the Globe said at the time, “That the DOJ is hauling California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania into court for hiding their voter rolls is monumental, and specifically the accountability Americans have been clamoring for.” Today, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division did it again, but filed federal lawsuits against six additional states — Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Rhode Island,...