Free Republic

Senate Democrats are bracing for the possibility for life under a divided government, with President Biden in office and a strong possibility of a Republican-controlled House. Democrats hope they can retain their majority in the Senate, where a number of political handicappers say the party is favored. That would give Democrats more leverage and congressional support for Biden over the next two years. But if the House does fall as expected, lawmakers expect partisan gridlock. Some Democrats are predicting government shutdowns and standoffs over raising the federal debt limit will take center stage. “If Republicans win control of the House,...

Ohio Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance responded on Tuesday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Hannity” to his opponent Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH), saying that the “exhausted majority” needed to “kill and confront” the extremist Republican movement. Vance said, “This is a guy who, when he runs his scripted TV commercials, says that he wants to appeal to Trump voters, he wants to appeal to the entire state of Ohio, and yet when he’s unscripted, he’s saying that we need to confront and kill the entire movement. A majority of the people of Ohio, of course, voted for that movement in 2016...

Most Americans are not worried at all or not too worried about contracting the Chinese coronavirus, even as public health officials warn of a “resurgence” this fall, a poll from The Economist/YouGov found. The survey asked respondents, “Taking into consideration both your risk of contracting it and the seriousness of the illness, how worried are you personally about experiencing COVID-19?

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron’s alliance got the most seats in the final round of the parliamentary election on Sunday, but it lost its parliamentary majority, projections show. The projections, which are based on partial results, show that Macron’s candidates would win between 200 and 250 seats — much less than the 289 required to have a straight majority at the National Assembly, France’s most powerful house of parliament.

RIO RANCHO, N.M. (AP) - A liberal super PAC is jumping into a New Mexico contested GOP U.S. House primary and running commercials in apparent support of a President Donald Trump ally that Democrats believe they can defeat in November. Patriot Majority PAC began airing television commercials Saturday attacking oil executive Claire Chase for previous critical social media posts about Trump while praising former state lawmaker Yvette Herrell for supporting Trump’s border wall. “There’s Santa Fe lobbyist Claire Chase who opposed President Trump, calling him an (expletive) unworthy of the office,” a voice says while pictures of Chase are aired....

CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten said Monday on “The Lead” that Republicans will win a massive majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the November midterm elections. Anchor Jake Tapper said, “If you’re a Republican running for re-election or trying to unseat a Democrat, things are looking pretty good, right?”

Global News is projecting that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives will form a majority government. The party is expected to win at least 63 seats. Most polling stations closed at 9 p.m. ET throughout the province, though voting at a total of 27 stations in various ridings had extended closing times.

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Friday on CNN’s “OutFront” that the “vast majority” of Americans support lifting Title 42, which limits immigration during the COVID pandemic. Reacting to a federal judge blocking the Biden administration’s attempt to scrap Title 42, Lance Bottoms said, “There are many members of the party who support the president’s position in lifting Title 42. We know there are several Democrats who have expressed concern. But isn’t that the beauty of the Democratic Party? That you can disagree with the leader of the party and he not try to slash your throat, unlike what’s...

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is trying to grab the Reagan mantle in the GOP, campaigning for establishment Republican candidates and tying his message to the former president and longtime luminary of the party. “Today there are people in both parties who no longer share [Ronald] Reagan’s confidence and his unshakable faith in the American people, and they doubt whether we can or we should lead the free world,” Hogan says in a new digital ad provided to Yahoo News ahead of its release Tuesday

A report by the Labor Department that inflation in March rose by 8.5 percent compared to a year ago is setting off new alarm among Democrats that their Senate majority is in serious trouble. The bad news for Democrats is that inflation is projected to be a problem for the rest of this year, there’s not much they can do about it in the short term and it is souring Americans’ view of the economy.

Thirty-five Senate seats are up for grabs in November, but 11 of them could determine which party controls the Senate in the next Congress. Republicans need to gain a net one seat to take back the majority in the upper chamber, which is currently split 50–50 but controlled by Democrats because the vice president casts tiebreaking votes.

Last week, Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) suffered a stroke and underwent brain surgery. He is currently hospitalized in Albuquerque. He is expected to return to the U.S. Senate in four to six weeks, assuming there are no further medical complications. However, during his absence, Democrats no longer have a majority in the Senate—Republicans have a 50-49 majority. This means that until Luján returns, a united GOP can block the Democrats’ agenda and there’s nothing the Democrats could do about it. This is actually a big deal. In addition to blocking the Democrats’ legislative agenda, Luján’s absence could potentially impact...

Democrats are defending the narrowest of Senate majorities in 2022 as Republicans look to fight their way back into power after a series of crushing defeats. While Democrats are going on offense in a handful of states where GOP incumbents are retiring, the party is also facing strong national headwinds in their bid to hold onto the Senate. The party of a new president – in this case President Biden – almost always loses ground in Congress in midterm elections. Given Democrats’ slim Senate majority, control of the upper chamber is likely to come down to just a handful of...

The majority of those who are considered “fully vaccinated” are still wearing masks the bulk of the time when outside their homes, a Yahoo! News/YouGov survey released this week found. As the Biden Administration and public health officials continue to push for mass vaccinations, originally pitching them as the way to return to pre-pandemic life, a majority of people, including a majority of the vaccinated, are still wearing masks “always” or “most of the time” when outside their home.

A shocking new poll from the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia reveals that over half of Trump voters surveyed, and 41% of Biden voters, are in favor of blue and/or red states seceding from the union. Yeah, it’s gotten that bad.The idea that the nation’s political divide has become so toxic that we should prepare from some sort of “national divorce” has largely been left to clever thought experiments best left for dinner parties and ironically detached columns. However, we’ve now arrived at a point where more than half of Trump voters “somewhat agree” that the time...

A majority of Americans are “angry” with how things are going in the country, a CNN survey released Friday found. The survey, taken August 3 to September 7, 2021, asked respondents to gauge how they feel about “the way things are going in the country today.

A majority of voters believe President Biden should resign over his administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Wednesday found. The survey asked respondents, “Should President Joe Biden resign because of the way the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled?” Overall, a majority, or 52 percent, said “yes,” Biden should resign, while 39 percent said he should not. Opinions over Biden resigning are sharply divided along party lines, as three-quarters of Republicans say he should — a sentiment held by nearly one-third of Democrats, 32 percent, and a plurality of independents, 48 percent

A majority of Americans support mask and vaccine requirements for K-12 students and teachers, according to a new poll, but there is a severe partisan gap. Overall, slightly less than 60 percent of respondents in the new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll said they supported mask mandates for students and teachers. A similar percentage said they also supported vaccine requirements for teachers and eligible students.

Fifty-one percent of voters believe His Fraudulency Joe Biden will not finish his first term in office. Rasmussen Reports asked 1,000 likely voters, “How likely is it that [His Fraudulency] Joe Biden will leave office and be replaced by Kamala Harris before the 2024 election?” Fifty-one percent said it was ‘very” (29 percent) or “somewhat” (22 percent) likely. Only 14 percent said it was “not very” (22 percent) or “not at all” (15 percent) likely.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified the more contagious delta variant as the most dominant strain in the United States, comprising the majority of cases in the country for the two weeks ending Saturday, July 3. The prevalence of the delta variant, B.1.617.2, jumped significantly from June to the beginning of July, going from comprising 30.4 percent of the cases in mid-June and jumping to 51.7 percent for the two weeks ending in early July.