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Editor’s Note: Americans delivered for each other this week. It is an opportunity that we cannot miss.
@cottoncandaddy: “we’re teaching RFK’s brain worm critical race theory”
@staidindoors: “we’re putting ms rachel on the $100 bill”
@hexprax: “Tomorrow we go door to door injecting Republicans with vaccines”
@kissphoria: “The people of Texas have decided: God is non-binary”
@Baileymoon15: “father forgive me for i have libbed”
Nikki McCann Ramírez (@NikkiMcR), Rolling Stone reporter: “we’re seizing the cracker barrels at dawn”
@rokhannacycle: “they just called Florida for Gore”
Conor Rogers (@conorjrogers): “Austin Texas sounds like an Eastern European city that just overthrew a dictator”
Unnamed user (via The Federal): “The only thing turning red tonight is Trump’s face.”
Eric Spracklen: “The Truth Social post we are gonna get at 3am is gonna be insane.”
Madeline Hill: “America is experiencing Knicks in 5 collectively right now.”
Francis Wolf (@francis__wolf): “we got blue texas before gta 6.”
Unnamed GOP operatives, Washington Examiner: “Think Titanic meets Hindenburg.”
Tucker Carlson (first seconds of his podcast): “Well, that was a disaster.”
The Daily Show (social post): “Congratulations to Donald Trump on a successful regime change.”
Seth Meyers: “Say goodbye to the shy Trump voter in Michigan and say hello to the shy woke voter in Texas.”
Jimmy Kimmel: “Whether it was a blue wave or blue-nami or a blue-kake, Donald Trump blew it last night”
Jimmy Kimmel: “America treated Donald Trump like he was the East Wing of the White House”
Seth Meyers: “a blue wave or a blue tsunami, or a blue monsoon or a blue ‘Sharknado’”
Michael Kosta, The Daily Show: “A rebuke. A repudiation. A rejection. A … really bad result. I ran out of ‘re-’ words.”
Raphaël Glucksmann, French politician: a “victory of democracy and decency.”
Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain (on X): “Yesterday, American society voted against policies that only impoverish. Against hate.” TRT says he also said the far-right wave “is no longer growing: it is crumbling.”
Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister: said the Democrats’ activist wing is “extremely negative” toward Russia.
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The irony of the MAGA years may be this: it took a homegrown con artist to remind us of who we really are, and who the world wants us to be.
On Tuesday, voters across the nation sent the same message. No more corruption. No more masked officers representing us and chasing people through their hometowns. No more chronic lying. No more invoking the Lord’s name while getting rich. No more hiring clueless lackeys. No more son-in-law and close friends grifting while pretending to do foreign policy.
States such as Texas, South Carolina, and Kansas sent a jolt through the political system. The wins were so massive that we will never know the political shenanigans that might have played out with closer results.
Some really smarmy characters lost. Ken Paxton and public service should never be in the same sentence. Vivek Ramaswamy chose the bottom of the barrel and lost Ohio to Amy Acton. Andy Biggs, a Trump-backed 2020 election denier with $18 million from Turning Point behind him, lost to Katie Hobbs in Arizona. And “MAGA” Mike Collins, surrounded by people associated with white nationalism, lost to Jon Ossoff.
And they all did it bigly.
Before the election, Republicans even redrew congressional lines, a naked political ploy to game the system. It mattered more than they thought to voters, who gave most of the new seats to Democrats.
Everywhere voters got the chance, they said, enough of this. Missouri refused to repeal abortion rights and made it harder for lawmakers to overturn laws that voters passed themselves. Nevada and Virginia wrote abortion rights into their constitutions. Massachusetts voters can now register to vote on Election Day, and they voted to keep stricter gun laws in place. Virginia gave the vote back to people who served their time. The Dakotas said no to making it harder for citizens to amend their own constitutions. Florida kept its Republican governor and senator, but the 19-point cushion left by the last governor shrank to about one, and all the gerrymandered House seats appear to be going to Democrats.
Billionaire money backfired. Elon Musk poured nearly $160 million into a super PAC to put Paxton in the Senate. Talarico’s answer on election night was that Texas is not for sale. Rick Jackson spent his own fortune in Georgia to try to buy the governor’s chair. MAGA Inc. threw millions into South Carolina to shore up a candidate chosen for her name and nothing else.
None of it worked.
¡Ay, caramba! Latinos woke up fast. About six in ten went Democratic. Most of them said deportations were out of control. Seeing brown Americans and immigrants prejudged, run down, and shackled like criminals was too much to stomach. Fear has always been the main asset in promoting these initiatives, but this time they scared their own followers awake.
And the country is just plain exhausted. His limitations have become obvious with every speech, every post, and every utterance of “I, me, my.” The late Senator Joe McCarthy kept the country hooked to fear for years and caused neighbors to turn on neighbors. It only ended when one man asked him, “Have you no sense of decency?” Vietnam stunted the American psyche with governmental spin and body counts and left us wearing a face of shame long after. The Trump years may be the final comeuppance of nearly three decades of unneeded wars, lost opportunities, policies built on myth and fabrication, and the rich telling the American worker to fuck off.
This vote was cathartic, a cleansing, but more than anything else, this was a message the rest of the world so wanted to hear.
America is back.
If Democrats do policy, not politics, this could be the American enlightenment we’ve all been waiting for. There will be disagreements on what to do first. While I would like to see many in this regime run out of town or straight into prison, we need policies that impact everyday Americans.
Here’s what voters started with and where we need to finish:
Reduce the money in politics. The power of people like Elon Musk cannot exist in a democracy. Texas already said no to him. Billionaire political spending has risen 53-fold since Citizens United, and this year 172 billionaire families spent a record $1.7 billion on the midterms, most of it through super PACs with no limits. A constitutional amendment stating that money is not speech is the only fix the Supreme Court can’t undo. Legislation on stock trading, lobbying, betting, and AI profits will help tamp down the level of anxiety and return support to the average citizen.
Set up a single-payer health system. We spent $12,555 per person on health care in 2022, nearly double the $6,651 average in comparable wealthy countries, where everyone is covered and there is no risk of bankruptcy from health debt. Mechanisms are already in place to deliver a single-payer system that covers all Americans. We can extend them and finally get this done.
Set up a tax system akin to the heyday of economic equality in America. Forbes 400 billionaires now pay an average effective tax rate of about 24 percent, while the average American pays about 30. Under Eisenhower, the top rate was near 91 percent, and those were the years we built the middle class. If we want what we say we want (genuine community, better schools, safe streets, and endless opportunity), we need to do a much better job of expecting everyone to do their part, for their country, to the best of their means. We need to see wealth spent in American communities rather than on yachts docked in foreign ports.
Almost any legislation that comes out is going to be vetoed by this president, but it will be the start we need. It will put the country on notice about who the real obstacles have always been.
The voters did their part on Tuesday. The people who won the election must now do theirs.
Disagree with me? Think I missed something? Hit reply and tell me directly, or open this issue on the web and scroll to the very bottom, past the poem and the song, to leave a public comment and read what everyone else said. Sign in with the email you get this newsletter at, and you’re in.
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The people who keep Wikipedia running voted 158 to 14 to unionize. My bet is that Wikipedia’s future is a fact-checked layer you plug into whichever AI model you use. It’s something like the old encyclopedia sets, monitored relentlessly for accuracy. It’s the sort of public utility a country ought to be willing to fund like one.
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Pedestrian deaths fell for a third straight year, to 6,732 in 2025, which is still five percent above where we were in 2019. Sixty-two percent of them happened where there was no sidewalk, and light trucks were the striking vehicle in half of them. We need an initiative that continues to focus on multimodal transportation, with more alternative energy solutions and shading for sidewalks.
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At 103, the world’s oldest bartender still hasn’t turned off the lights, still pouring drinks and still curious about every stranger who sits down. The will to live, it turns out, looks a lot like the will to stay useful to the people around you. A life well lived, blooming where you’re planted.
Indiana decided it is not a crime to let a kid walk to the park
Photo: Mi Pham / Unsplash
Here is a law that cost nothing and passed both chambers unanimously, which in 2026 ought to be studied like a lost art. Indiana’s reasonable childhood independence law took effect the first of July and says the plain thing out loud: a child doing something age-appropriate with no adult attached is not a neglected child. Georgia did the same in Senate Bill 110, which names the activities specifically: playing outside, walking to school, running an errand. The Democrat who carried the Indiana bill with a Republican put it better than I can: child protective services should be working true cases, not children having a wonderful time at the park.
I am glad it is on the books. I also know what it fixes and what it does not. These laws take the caseworker off the sidewalk. They do not build the sidewalk. We criminalized the instinct first and engineered away the opportunity second, and only the first one just got repealed.
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Solar panels could cool down farms and farmworkers
Image: Werner Slocum / NLR
I was trained to think about how things are built together, and once you learn it you cannot stop seeing it. What I mostly see everywhere is single use. A field that is only a field. A street that is only a street. A building serving only one purpose. We zoned ourselves into a country where every parcel has exactly one job, and the bill arrives as higher rent, longer commutes, and a childhood with few places to walk to.
So read a study that argues the other way. Princeton researchers modeled tomatoes grown under solar panels and found cooler leaves, far less water lost from the soil, panels running more efficiently, and the people working that field feeling about four degrees cooler than in open sun.
I believe design should move toward the view of a child. Is it safe, appealing, useful, and fair? This study points the same rule at a farm. A field can also be a power plant. A street can also be a place to play. A highway can charge the car crossing it. A roof can grow food. A public lot can grow pecans. A utility box can be a canvas. Nothing has to do only one thing.
Capture the Moment
Marc Yacht
A snapshot of the past
Came from nowhere
Not thought about for years
But there it is.
Playing tennis against Maurice
There were free clay courts then in the city
Maurice feared the sun and covered his face with white sun screen
He wore long sleeved shirts and khaki pants
The Frenchman was sight alright.
Whenever he won his point
He would sing out, La Vie En Rose
The song Edith Piaf made a classic
Conjuring up Maurice could bring laughter
No matter what the mood of the moment.
The long walk to High School
There were no school buses
Rain, snow, sleet, or shine
Bundled up in the winter
For the long walk to class.
Red cold face, runny nose, and mittens.
The day Kennedy was shot
Never leaves the memory
The trip to Arlington
To see the eternal flame
A memory one takes to the grave
A sadness that never leaves the soul.
A walk on the moon
A trip to Cape Canaveral
A room full of computers and busy engineers
A glimpse of the future
No science fiction here
It is real and happening
The wonder of it all.
Watching the birth of your child
A little girl such an awesome moment
That lifts the day when remembered
And brightens the spirit with sunshine.
So many flashes and they keep coming up
More of late as more time is spent in the past
Little left to the future
Soon the day will be clouded with memories
With very little time for the present.
Humanity, pride, character, and integrity all won this week. Stay on this trajectory, and don’t stop now. Always strive to be a good human.
