Historic Midterm vote centers decency, human rights & economic fairness

The 2026 Midterm Elections have made history, giving Democratic lawmakers new majorities in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. Democrats won new Senate seats in Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina, and Maine. Kansas elected a Democratic senator for the first time since 1932, and—after more than three decades—Texas elected Democratic candidates to serve as U.S. senator and as governor.

Democrats also held crucial Senate seats in Georgia, Michigan, and Minnesota, as well as a massive majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. With dozens of races still to call, at least 235 House members will be Democrats when the new Congress is sworn in. At this writing, the Senate races in Mississippi and Alaska are too close to call.

The election made history in many ways that will remain historic and remarkable for generations to come. Keisha Lance Bottoms was elected Governor of Georgia. She is the first African American woman elected to the governorship of any state. Deb Haaland was elected Governor of New Mexico—the first Native American woman elected to the governorship of any state. Peggy Flanagan was elected by Minnesotans, becoming the first Native American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.

An unprecedented amount of dark money was spent to sway this election toward the Republican Party. The President demanded states redraw maps to “deliver” more House seats, so his party could defend him against the American people and the rule of law. The American people rejected these attempts to subvert their rights and their sovereignty.

Data visualizations clearly show that every district in the country trended strongly toward the Democratic Party. Democratic candidates for the House and Senate won the popular vote by a margin of 13%—a 15% increase over 2024. Texas voters delivered all statewide offices on the ballot to Democrats for the first time in living memory.

Voters in Montana approved a ballot initiative that will bar any company or nonprofit, including foundations and political action committees from operating in the state if they spend money to influence state election outomes. Voters in Michiganapproved a measure banning political contributions from regulated utilities and major government contractors.

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Earlier in the day, the BBC had reported, after speaking with thousands of voters, that “the American people are a worried people, and they have a lot to be worried about.” As election results came in, it was clear tens of millions of Americans had voted not only for hope, but for an overwhelming rejection of the cruelty and corruption of the current administraiton and its enablers.

The current administration has pushed millions of households and thousands of businesses to the brink of bankruptcy with illegal unilateral tariffs aiming to weaken the country’s strongest alliances.
In New Jersey, California, and elsewhere, in the days before Election Day, bystander videos showed masked heavily armed paramilitary units violently kidnapping children from cars and sidewalks.
After two American citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—were summarily executed in Minneapolis, the President coordinated with responsible officials to protect the killers, obstruct justice, and menace witnesses.
A senseless, illegal war against Iran, ordered closed by the United States Congress, is failing to achieve any strategic objective or create any kind of security, while killing civilians with open disregard for humanity or the law.
The President has ordered illegal missile strikes on civilian boats in international waters, killing more than 200 people, despite the Fifth Amendment prohibiting summary execution.
The unlawful dismantling of USAID—which was unlawful, and was rejected by Congress, which reissued nearly all related funding, and established a new Inspector General for the agency—is estimated to have killed nearly 800,000 people in the first year alone, with similar projections for the second year.

Americans are living in unthinkably horrific territory, and are duly worried that greater horrors loom in the months ahead. This explains why so many millions voted early, in record numbers, all across the country.

Americans understand that Congress is their branch of government—comprised of the people’s representatives. It is the body that is meant, as outlined in Article I of the Constitution, to manifest in active law the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, to honor the implicit right of all people to have a say in shaping their own future, to remain free from harm, and to be treated as inherently valuable, with rights more sacred than any aspiration of powerholders.

Jon Ossoff, in a defiant speech marking his reelection by a wide margin in Georgia, said:

“the United States has been adrift in a gale. But, Georgia, we can and will reclaim control over our own destiny. Tonight, we’ve struck a necessary and undeniable blow on behalf of justice and progress. And tonight, in Georgia, we’ve proven not just that unity is possible, but that we can overcome division without sacrificing clarity of purpose.”

Ossoff added:

“our task is to reawaken that great national spirit that defeated fascism and established Social Security, that put men on the moon and passed civil rights laws in order to meet the challenges and obligations of our time, because I refuse to accept that my two little girls will grow up… with artificial friends and teachers in a society where the sick die not because there’s no cure, but because they have no money.”

James Talarico, the state lawmaker and former middle school teacher who was elected to serve as the first Democratic senator from Texas since 1993, told a cheering crowd that they had proven to the world that “Texas is not for sale!” Elon Musk had spent hundreds of millions of dollars in an effort to deny Texans a free choice.

Talarico has said what is broken in American society is not everyday people or democracy itself, but a system that privileges power over humanity. He has called not only for “a politics of love” but for defiance in the face of indecency and corruption. Talarico promised to serve all Texans, saying of big money corruption “That old politics is dying” and now the work begins to “heal the deep spiritual corruption at the root” of Americans’ sense of growing unfairness and peril.

Gina Hinojosa, a fellow state lawmaker, defeated three-term incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott to become the first Democratic Texas governor in three decades and the first Latina governor of the state. Like Talarico, Hinojosa will bring a spirit of no-nonsense optimism to her new role. She quoted her grandmother, who tolder her ‘No te dejes’, or always stand up for yourself.

Her message resonated with Texans, as she focused on people and their everyday experience of opportunity. She called for countering corruption to better fund public schools, getting politics and ideology out of the classroom, putting more money in Texans’ pockets, and ending “the costly data center madness” that has many Texans fearing their community is being sold off to industrial interests.

In Michigan, voters had marveled at Abdul El-Sayed’s improbable campaign. A progressive doctor of Muslim faith, El-Sayed had declined to get down in the mud as his opponent waged a campaign of hate-based incitement and defamation. El-Sayed instead exemplified matter-of-fact American civics, defending the right of every person, whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or agnostic, to pray as they wish or not pray at all.

Last night, he told supporters:

“They weren’t attacking me; they were attacking you. They were attacking the very idea of America… They want an America that is too small for some of us. We know that America is big enough for all of us.”

According to The Guardian:

The list of astounding results extended to Kansas, a state that until recent days lay well beyond even the most optimistic Democrats’ wildest fantasies. Adam Hamilton, a mega-church pastor, becomes the first Democrat to win a US Senate seat in the state in 94 years.

He throws out Roger Marshall, the incumbent, who became a poster boy for Republican callousness when it was revealed he had sued 700 of his own patients for failing to pay him their medical bills when practising as a doctor.

Among the most jaw-dropping results of the night was the victory of Annie Andrews, a Democratic pediatrician, in the deeply conservative southern state of South Carolina. She defeated Darline Graham, the sister of late Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham, marking the first time South Carolina has sent any Democrat to the Senate since 1998.

The 2026 Midterms mark a sea change in American campaign politics. More than any time in recent memory, voters were faced with an overwhelming dark money and disinformation effort to deny them a free and informed electoral campaign. Foreign-based botnets swarmed social media and AI platforms with false and defamatory information, with observers calling for investigations into collusion with billionaire megadonors and Republicans appearing to promise favors, in the style of Donald Trump.

The outcome, however, shows the American people are not willing to be put up for sale, and they are not willing to tolerate the worsening slide into a politics of venomous lies, brazen corruption, and arbitrary killing.

The American people voted, by the tens of millions, to center decency, public service, and respect for the lives, freedom, and dignity of all people. Amy Acton, the Governor-elect of Ohio, called for a politics of decency and healing, as did Talarico, Sherrod Brown, and others. 2027 will begin the project of rooting out corruption and healing the republic.

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Historic Midterm vote centers decency, human rights & economic fairness

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