'A historic beatdown': Americans take back their country in rebuke to Trump

The 2026 midterms are presented as a sweeping rejection of Donald Trump and his political movement: Democrats retook both chambers of Congress and won races in states long viewed as Republican strongholds. The contributors attribute the scale of the losses to voters’ anger at corruption, incompetence, economic pressures and Trump’s loyalty to wealthy allies. They also argue that the results exposed limits to campaign spending: Elon Musk reportedly spent nearly $190m opposing Texas Democrat James Talarico, while Trump-aligned groups spent heavily on candidates in several states, but those efforts failed to prevent Democratic victories.

The South’s changing politics is a central theme. Democrats won Senate and gubernatorial contests in Texas, and Annie Andrews captured South Carolina’s Senate seat, which Republicans had held since 1998. Georgia elected Keisha Lance Bottoms as the first Black woman governor, while other victories included the first Latina governor in Texas, the first woman elected to South Carolina’s Senate seat, and the first Native American woman elected to the US Senate. The writers celebrate these milestones as evidence of continuing faith in progress, but warn Democrats not to mistake the results for a permanent realignment. Voters have given them a temporary mandate, they argue, and now expect transformation rather than a simple return to the pre-Trump status quo.