Donald Trump made one thing crystal clear to Americans who have been suffering because of his failed economic policies, disastrous wars of whim, and rampant corruption: that the 2026 midterms should be seen as a referendum on his presidency. Time and time again, on campaign swings to try and boost hapless Republicans from Ohio to Texas, the president told voters to “pretend that I’m on the ballot.”

The voters listened—and on November 3, they delivered an epic rebuke to Trump and his scandal-plagued party.

Democrats did not just win the House, where they are projected to win as many as 258 seats as this issue goes to press—a majority similar to the one a newly elected Barack Obama enjoyed when he and then–House Speaker Nancy Pelosi enacted the Affordable Care Act. They flipped at least seven seats in the Senate as well, taking control of a chamber that, during the first two years of Trump’s second term, had rubber-stamped such noxious cabinet picks as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. And they made these gains not just in reliably blue territory, but with dramatic victories in state after state where Trump had prevailed just two years ago—including Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina, and Texas—and in at least one state (Kansas) where they hadn’t won a Senate seat since the 1932 election that saw Franklin Roosevelt defeat Herbert Hoover.

Coupled with statehouse wins that put Democrats in charge in all seven of the swing states that backed Trump in 2024, and the victories of a multiracial, multiethnic slate of Democratic governors in states where the party has not prevailed in decades—including Texas and Georgia—this is truly a national mandate. It gives congressional Democrats the authority at the federal and state levels to check and balance a historically unpopular president—the Pew Research Center put Trump’s approval rating at a record-low 30 percent just before the election—and to develop a robust alternative to Trumpism, that toxic blend of authoritarianism, bigotry, corruption, unnecessary wars, tax cuts for the rich, surrender to AI oligarchs, and a cruel neglect of human needs.

The winners tell the story. From coast to coast, voters backed Democrats who called for more than just status-quo politics with a little blue coloring. Michigan Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who overcame Trump’s vicious attacks on his Muslim faith, won with a motto of “Money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All”—as well as an outspoken opposition to the genocide in Gaza and AIPAC’s influence on American politics. James Talarico beat Trump’s “Talafreako” labeling and a $158 million attack campaign by Elon Musk to become the first Democrat to win a Texas Senate seat since 1988. In his victory speech, Talarico called for “a new kind of politics: a politics rooted in a deep love—for our state, for our country, and most importantly, for all of our neighbors,” one that “requires that we stand between the bullies and the bullied.” The senator-elect wasn’t alone; Lone Star voters, long known for dashing Democrats’ hopes, went straight-ticket blue, handing Democrats every statewide position on the ballot and electing Texas’s first-ever Latina governor, the anti-corruption campaigner Gina Hinojosa.

In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms became the nation’s first Black woman to win a governorship. In Ohio, Amy Acton triumphed over the hateful politics of the Republican right. In New Mexico, Deb Haaland became the country’s first Native American woman governor, while Minnesota’s Peggy Flanagan will go to the US Senate as a proud member of the White Earth Nation in northwestern Minnesota, as well as a former head of the Children’s Defense Fund–Minnesota and—along with El-Sayed and Troy Jackson in Maine—a close ally of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Many newcomers to the House are unapologetic progressives who ran with support from Sanders and the surging Democratic Socialists of America, including New Yorkers Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania. And a proud economic populist, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, will return to the Senate as an unabashed advocate for breaking up monopolies, regulating banks, strengthening unions, taking on Big Tech, regulating data centers, and going after Trump’s corruption.

The scope and character of this rebuke to Trump is vitally important: It gives the new Congress a mandate to check and balance “the most dangerous president in the history of the United States,” as Sanders referred to him during the midterm campaign.

Trump is indeed dangerous, and he will remain so in the last two years of his presidency. He retains the much-abused powers of his office—including the ability to unilaterally launch wars abroad—and he will no doubt redouble his efforts to bypass Congress, ignore the courts, target enemies, and obstruct meaningful progress.

But he will do so now as a more diminished and discredited figure than ever before. Voters everywhere appeared repelled by Trump: His corruption and self-dealing finally became an albatross around his neck, with Democrats moving the issue to the top of the political agenda. “While the crook president and his crook family rake in billions from around the world, you pay more for everything,” Senator Jon Ossoff told Georgia voters as part of a scorched-earth campaign that saw the Democrat—a potential 2028 presidential contender—finish with 59 percent of the vote.