Sources
2026 election results. AP News. Access November 4, 2026. https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on how Democrats flipped Congress in the midterms. NBC News. November 4, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/video/senate-minority-leader-chuck-schumer-on-how-democrats-flipped-congress-in-the-midterms-272822341846
REPLAY - US midterms: "Today begins the Great American comeback" (Hakeem Jeffries). France 24. November 4, 2026. https://www.france24.com/en/video/20261104-replay-us-midterms-today-begins-the-great-american-comeback-hakeem-jeffries
Angopa, Barbara. How US midterms have cost a record $12bn as cost of living soars. Al Jazeera. November 3, 2026. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/3/how-us-midterms-have-cost-a-record-12bn-as-cost-of-living-soars
McCreary, Jody. Elon Musk’s $445M spending spree tops 2026 midterm donor rankings. OpenSecrets. November 2, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/11/elon-musks-445m-spending-spree-tops-2026-midterm-donor-rankings/
Glavin, Brendan. OpenSecrets predicts record $12 billion in midterm election spending. OpenSecrets. October 30, 2026. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/10/opensecrets-predicts-record-12-billion-in-midterm-election-spending/
Decision ‘26. NBC News. Accessed Nov. 4, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election
Moore, Elena. 5 DSA candidates are elected to the House in a historic night for their movement. NPR. November 3, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/11/03/g-s1-150034/2026-midterm-election-dsa-candidates
Javaid, Maham. These 9 candidates for governor just made history. NPR. November 4, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/11/04/nx-s1-6028546/governor-candidates-history-election-2026
Gedeon, Joseph. Democrats – finally – embrace Abdul El-Sayed amid extreme attacks from Trump and allies. The Guardian. October 30, 2026. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/30/abdul-el-sayed-michigan-senate-tump
Schumer backs Stevens, sees ‘multiple paths’ to majority. Punchbowl News. June 11, 2026. https://punchbowl.news/article/campaigns/schumer-stevens/
Bose, Nandita. Trump White House maps path to govern without Congress if Democrats win. Reuters. November 1, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/trump-white-house-maps-path-govern-without-congress-if-democrats-win-2026-11-01/
Jansen, Bart. Pete Hegseth stares down likely impeachment vote. And he's not the only one. USA Today. November 4, 2026. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/11/04/impeachment-accusations-hegseth-trump-mcmahon-kennedy/92461205007/
Hawkins, Katherine. Congress Can Impeach White House Officials. Project on Government Oversight. May 27, 2026. https://www.pogo.org/analyses/congress-can-impeach-white-house-officials
Transcript
Thank you to Incogni for sponsoring today’s video. More on them later.
Permission to lib out granted for the next 48 hours to the realm. Here are the results of yesterday’s midterm elections, as of the morning of November 4th.
Starting with the Senate:
In Georgia, Democrat Jon Ossoff held onto his seat.
In New Hampshire, Democrat Chris Pappas kept the senate seat blue, taking over from retiring Democrat Jeanne Shaheen. Pappas will be the first openly gay man to serve in the US Senate, key word there being openly.
In Michigan, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed won a decisive 52.4% victory over Republican Mike Rogers’ 45.6% despite Democrat Haley Steven’s ringing endorsement of Rogers in the 11th hour, winning her White Woman Traitor of the Year Award, congrats to Haley Stevens on being a fucking loser.
In Iowa, Democrat Josh Turek flipped the senate seat blue, the first time a Democrat has won a senate seat there since 2008.
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson, a latecomer to the race after the fall of Graham Platner, won a decisive victory, 53.8% to Susan Collin’s 46.1%, ousting Collins and ending her 30 YEAR death grip on her senate seat.
In North Carolina, Democrat Roy Cooper won with 58.7% of the vote to Republican Michael Whatley’s 39%, flipping the senate seat blue.
In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown ousted Republican Jon Husted, turning the seat once occupied by JD Vance blue.
In Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton has won against the Republican incumbent there. The last time Kansas sent a Democrat to the Senate was 94 years ago when they sent a man who was born in 1879.
In South Carolina, Democrat Annie Andrews won against incumbent Darline Graham who was appointed to the seat after her brother Lindsey Graham died unexpectedly in July after holding on to the seat for 23 years.
And in Texas, Democrat James Talarico won a decisive victory with 55.1% of the vote to Ken Paxton’s 43%, becoming the first Democrat to be sent to the Senate from Texas since 1988.
2 races were still uncalled at the time of recording. Alaska, where it appears the Republican Dan Sullivan will just eek out a victory, and in Mississippi where, in a surprising upset, the race is too close to call. Nearly 1 million votes were cast in Mississippi and the Democrat Scott Colom is currently leading the Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by FEWER THAN 50 VOTES. 50!!
So Democrats will take control of the Senate in January with 54, possibly 55 seats.
And in the House, Democrats are on track to win the largest House majority since 2008. That year, they won 257 seats. NBC News projects that this year Democrats will win 258. Around 65 races have yet to be called, but as of this recording Democrats managed to flip 29 seats in the house, including in important battleground areas in Iowa, Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. At least 5 democratic socialists of America candidates have won seats in the house, a historic night in the US for the DSA. They are Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, and Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania.
And in gubernatorial races across the country, 5 states flipped to Democratic control, Nevada, Iowa, Ohio, Georgia, and Texas where Greg Abbott is OUT. Vivek Ramaswamy was decisively defeated by Amy Acton in Ohio. And in Georgia Keisha Bottoms has become the first black woman governor in US history. In New Mexico, Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor. Democrat Xavier Becerra will be the first elected Latino governor of California and Gina Hinojosa will be the first Latina governor of Texas. Yes you heard that right that means Elon Musk moved his whole damn life to Texas only for that state to turn blue, too. You love to see it.
Yesterday’s elections were a decisive blow to the Trump regime and a clear moment in which the people have shown up to participate in democracy and have made their voice HEARD. It’s a sense of Hope and Victory that democratic voters haven’t felt in nigh on 14 years and has produced some really excellent internet content tweets n memes, a true millennial smorgasbord of delight. Some of my favorites include this one that says “when lindsay graham died all of the gay inside him got released into the surrounding countryside” and this one that says “they’re shooting mitch mcconnell out of a cannon tomorrow.” As well as this image of Obama reviving Karl Marx from the grave, this one that says “every barnes and noble in the state of texas is sold out of the holy quran” and “cleaning out my fridge for when Sharia law goes into effect later this week nationwide inshallah.” Like not only are leftist policies better but democratic voters are way funnier when they win.
And a lot of these victories came despite HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS of spending by the opposition, and these victories were won on the backs of the labor of black and brown people, of southerners who refuse to give up, of DSA candidates who soldiered on despite criticism from establishment republicans AND democrats alike and subsequent pile on by the media. And then Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have the fucking AUDACITY to come out and claim victory for themselves.
AD
Scams. Identity theft. I feel like in this digital age we’re all getting pretty desensitized to the risk we’re in when our personal data gets exposed online. And AI is only making the problem worse. Anthropic acknowledged recently that a hacker used AI to automate an unprecedented cybercrime spree. On people search sites, data broker databases, shady directories, your information could all be out there available to anyone who wants to access your information for nefarious purposes. The information out there about you could be your address, your phone number, your social security number, your mom’s name your grandma’s name, it’s all being bought and sold by shady actors online, usually because of major data breaches that are becoming more common every year. It should be regulated out of existence but ALAS of course our lawmakers have done very little to protect us. My sponsor on today’s video Incogni can help. Incogni tracks down your data and submits opt-out requests from over 420 broker sites, including online directories, people search sites, and even commercial databases. Here’s how it works: you create an account and give Incogni some bare minimum personal info so they can identify you, then they automatically get to work to help remove your information from across the web. And you don’t have to go searching across the web yourself, Incogni’s exposure scanner does everything for you, gathering it all in one place where you decide what to remove with the help of Incogni’s human removal specialists. PLUS you get a Risk Assessment report, all about your personal privacy progress, every 30 days. And with the custom removal feature, if you come across your information on some obscure site somewhere, just send it to Incogni and they’ll handle the removal process for you. And Incogni checks their work–some sites will add you back into their listings even after you’ve been removed, but Incogni will be there to make sure that doesn’t happen. As a woman who is very publicly on the internet, that peace of mind is priceless to me. And Incogni offers a 30 day money back guarantee, so you can try them out risk free. I think you’ll enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing your personal information is being actively protected. They can’t harm you if they can’t find you. Go to incogni dot com slash leeja and use code LEEJA to get 60% off an annual plan today! That’s incogni dot com slash leeja, use code LEEJA for SIXTY PERCENT OFF an annual plan! Thanks Incogni!
[insert Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries clips]
Reminder that Chuck Schumer handpicked Haley Stevens to run in Michigan and openly supported her against Abdul El-Sayed, only endorsing him a few days before yesterday’s election. And it’s truly the entire Democratic establishment that has been critical of every democratic socialist candidate to even attempt to run. It wasn’t until they were pretty sure Abdul El Sayed would win that they started appearing with him, including Elissa Slotkin and President Obama, who made it really really clear they don’t agree with everything El Sayed stands for. Cory Booker wouldn’t even say his name in a CNN interview last week. And of course Haley Stevens went full Benedict Arnold and endorsed the Trump-backed Republican candidate over El Sayed. And it’s the establishment’s treatment especially of El Sayed that is giving me pause, that is putting a damper on my hope, their willingness to use his association with Hasan Piker, a streamer in California, to try to vilify him and distract the people from the real issues that are facing them–I promise you if you are a Michigan voter, Hasan Piker should be like the least of your worries.
And of course it’s about Israel. It’s always about fucking Israel. AIPAC, the Israel-aligned political action committee and their many shady shell PACs spent at least 40 million dollars in Michigan alone trying to keep El-Sayed out of the Senate because he’s dared to side with the Gazans being massacred by the Israeli government using US tax dollars.
In fact this year’s midterm elections were the most expensive midterms on record, with a total of about 12 billion dollars being spent by campaigns and outside groups throughout the election according to OpenSecrets. The biggest spender was, of course, Elon Musk, who spent nearly HALF A BILLION DOLLARS, more money than 99.99% of people will ever see in their lifetime, on this one election, only to be a raging fucking loser. A lot of people are saying this election should give you hope that the people can still win out over big money but I say WE SHOULDN’T FUCKING HAVE TO. The fact that one person was able to pour half a billion dollars into influencing the outcomes of our elections, even if he wasn’t successful this time, does not give me hope. Okay permission to lib out has been RESCINDED we have to talk about this. Focus in. Okay no you’re allowed to be happy and hopeful, I know it’s like the trendy thing to be cynical here and I’m not trying to poop on your parade but as I always always say voting is literally the least you can do when it comes to civic engagement and participation and our elected officials have proven time and time again that they are corruptible and they won’t do what the people want them to do unless we hold their feet to the fucking fire. So we celebrate and then we get back to work making sure they know what we expect of them. Because one of my biggest qualms with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and the democratic establishment is how much they’ve fucking rolled over in the last decade, how little vision they actually have for America.
The reason why people are fired up about Abdul El Sayed and about Zohran Mamdani and about AOC and Bernie is because they offer solutions and hope for a better future in a way that the democratic establishment is completely incapable of. All we have ever gotten out of Jeffries and Schumer are meaningless platitudes and absolutely no vision or follow through. Trump is awful and his policies are horrific and I will never lie to you and say the two parties are the same, if we had elected Kamala Harris none of the worst of this would be happening. Renee Good and Alex Pretti would still be alive, for example. But even on a good year in the US we are selecting between two right-leaning capitalist moderates who want to keep the status quo and avoid rocking the boat so they keep their funding in tact and their wealthy friends happy. Yes this includes Obama. Obama literally ran on hope, and I know I felt it, and all we got was a healthcare bill that’s mostly been gutted, a ton of deportations, and some bombs over Yemen. Oh and the wealth inequality has only been growing. Frankly the only beacon of hope and light coming from Democratic leadership over the last couple DECADES has been Lina Khan’s brief role in the FTC attempting to go after monopolists and enforce the anti-trust laws on the books. Sorry! That’s it! And guess what she went on to work for Zohran Mamdani.
Okay so now that the democrats are about to take over, they need to be ready to hit the ground running. They have a couple months to plan, and reports are saying that Trump and Russel Vought and Stephen Miller and his other goons have been scheming in the background for the past few months planning how to continue to expand executive power, like they’ve been doing, even with Democratic control of congress. SOMETHING TELLS ME Democrats have not been doing the same level of scheming for what they’re going to do when the power gets back into their hands. So let’s talk about what they can and should do.
First, Democrats should elect different majority leaders for both the house and the senate. They don’t have to choose Schumer and Jeffries. They do not know how to connect with American voters, they do not have compelling visions for the future. They have proven incompetent as opposition leaders during Trump’s second term. They should lose their jobs as leaders of the Democratic party. If you agree with me, you should reach out to your newly elected or re-elected Congress members urging them to select more compelling leadership. They have that power and they will be making that decision on who to vote in as majority leader very soon.
Beyond that of course, Congress has the power to investigate governmental corruption and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Impeachment for Trump is definitely on the table but the House impeaches and the Senate convicts and removes from office and even with 55 Democratic senators, that’s not enough to meet the 2/3rds threshold to impeach. Trump’s popularity is waning even among Republicans but I doubt they have the numbers to officially remove him from office. And as we saw the first time around, an impeachment in the house doesn’t do anything to actually stop Trump.
The likely next step would be to impeach and remove his cabinet, efforts to do so have already begun in the house, specifically aimed at Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, and education secretary Linda McMahon. The process is largely the same as for the president–they can be impeached for treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors. A majority of the house has to vote to impeach and then a trial is held in the senate after which 2/3rds have to vote to remove the person. The house would start by launching investigations into these people and I don’t think it will be hard to find evidence of bribery and other crimes and misdemeanors committed by any one of Trump’s cabinet members.
Trump’s advisors in the White House, who are not approved by the Senate, are a little harder to get at, but the Constitution gives Congress the right to impeach “civil officers of the united states” and its arguable who counts as a civil officer. Experts have made compelling legal arguments as to why Congress should have the ability to impeach Trump’s White House advisors like Russel Vought and Stephen Miller. And Congress should also release and unredact all of the Epstein Files including those pertaining to Trump, which could sway any future impeachment and trial against him.
So, in short, Democrats in Congress should plan, on day one, to begin investigating Trump but also his cabinet members and advisors, because the level of corruption and bribery that’s been happening across the federal government under Trump’s watch and with Trump’s direct involvement is so blatant and obvious that it frankly shouldn’t be hard for them to make a case for removal of a lot of different people. And I think the American people want retribution, they want a Nuremberg style event to hold these people accountable. As much as I want to also move forward and push Democrats to give us an actual vision of a hopeful future, I think Congress’ investigation powers are important for holding the Trump administration to account. Now the Supreme Court has given Trump pretty much carte blanche to break the law and as long as he’s president there’s nothing that can be done about it from a criminal prosecution standpoint, but the people under Trump do not have that protection. State attorneys general that have potential cases should absolutely ramp up their investigations, and their cases may be aided by findings in Congressional investigations. Trump’s personal lawyer still controls the Department of Justice so any federal criminal probe would have to wait until a Democrat takes office in the presidency before any sort of criminal prosecution might move forward against various members of Trump’s cabinet and his advisors, I’m thinking specifically, for example, of Jared Kushner who has so clearly engaged in self dealing that there’s no way they couldn’t build a white collar criminal case against him ALLEGEDLY. The criminal prosecution side of things is, however, outside the scope of what Congress can do.
So they should begin investigations but that cannot be the only thing they do and that’s where I’m afraid they’ll stop. Because, again, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have offered no concrete, substantive plans for the future, they have spent the past DECADE simply pointing at how bad Trump is while doing absolutely fuck all to actually make peoples’ day to day lives better. So I’m hoping that the momentum from the progressive wins this election cycle will translate into some actual policy initiatives that could improve peoples’ lives. My worry is that Trump has said he’s going to be “Mr. Veto” and that the Democratic establishment is going to use that as a cop out to get absolutely nothing done, well what’s the point he’s going to veto it, as if it doesn’t matter to us to see our elected representatives actually advocating for us no matter what. As if sitting on their hands is what we want to see them doing. Again, it’s about messaging, it’s about providing a compelling vision of a future where average people in America can thrive in a way they cannot right now. Make Trump veto that vision and that future. Make him say no to it on the record. Do it anyway and then run on that vision next time, run on that record next time. That is how you build momentum, that’s how you show the American people you are ACTUALLY working for them, something that Schumer and Jeffries are incapable of doing.
Here are the substantive policies I think they should push for: first and foremost Supreme Court reform. Yes I think that is the number one issue that needs addressing first. In my most recent video about the Supreme Court I made the argument that the court’s power to override the will of Congress and slap down federal laws as unconstitutional is not a power they should possess and is a power that Congress could take away from them. There is NOTHING in the constitution that says the Supreme Court gets to say what is and isn’t constitutional. There is NOTHING democratic about 9 unelected elites in robes being able to overrule the will of Congress, the body that most closely represents the will of the people. There are very few examples in history of the Supreme Court ever dismantling federal laws in ways that gave us MORE rights. Other than dismantling the defense of marriage act and legalizing gay marriage across the land, which I’ll give em that one, the Supreme Court for the past 250 years has mostly made rulings that got rid of civil rights protections passed democratically by Congress or gutted protections put forward by Congress to keep money from influencing our elections, or undid voting protection laws or the Affordable Care Act, time and again the Supreme Court has undone the will of the people and there is NOTHING in the constitution that says they’re allowed to do that. The only thing that says they can is their own precedent, which is based on a case that deliberately MISQUOTED the constitution. Go watch the whole video I promise it’s compelling but the point is that we first must wrench power out of the hands of the 9 elites in the robes that are holding the reins of Congress before we can make any substantive changes that are going to last. You do that by passing an enforceable code of ethics with an independent oversight body that has actual enforcement powers so the Supreme Court justices are forced to comply with a code of ethics that requires them to recuse themselves if there are conflicts of interest, for example, or bans immediate family members from being actively involved with trying to overthrow Congress, for example, or bans justices from accepting lavish vacations from people with vested interests in cases coming before the court, for example. You bring the court to heel because democracy demands it. And then Congress must pass a law banning dark money and outside spending from attempting to influence the outcomes of our elections, banning corporations from donating money to influence our elections, and keeping caps in place for individual donors to election campaigns. And in that law Congress must write that the US Supreme Court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to hear cases as to the constitutionality of the law. There is nothing in the constitution that says Congress can’t pass a law that limits the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the law’s constitutionality.
Then and only then will we have a Congress that genuinely and fully represents the will of the people as it is supposed to. Because right now studies have shown that whether or not the people want a bill to pass has quite literally zero impact on whether the bill passes. But if the top .1% wants a bill to pass or not pass, they have the demonstrable ability to sway the outcome of bills. That is not a pluralistic democracy at work and until Congress answers to the will of ALL the people equally, there is no way to fix the broken system.
We then need to provide a floor for everyone, not just the neediest, but everyone. That floor should include healthcare, affordable food, and affordable housing. No one should be able to profit off of the things humans need to sustain life. To pay for it, we need to increase taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans. This includes closing loopholes around hoarding unrealized gains, using your stock portfolio to borrow gobs of cash, and passing your money on to your heirs in a way that keeps them from paying their fair share of taxes. These tax increases wouldn’t touch a hair on the head of 99.9% of people. And yet it would sufficiently pay for everyone to get healthcare, food, and shelter. No one should go hungry in the richest country on earth. They need to pass and enforce the green new deal or similar, to ensure not only that Americans aren’t reliant on fossil fuels half a world away but also to ensure that Americans have a future that includes clean air and drinking water and lessens the worst effects of climate change, which is only going to continue to get worse and impact the essential things for life like water and the global food supply chain. The quickest win here would be some sort of moratorium on AI and data centers, which are already incredibly unpopular, and enforceable laws around responsible AI development, environmental standards for data centers, and protections for everyday Americans so their energy bills don’t skyrocket when a data center moves in down the street. And Trump could veto all of it, but they need to run on this vision to inspire people and then get a Democrat into the White House in 2028 who can move forward with these initiatives, as well as reinstate Lina Khan or someone like her as the head of the FTC so that anti-trust laws that are ALREADY ON THE BOOKS, Congress doesn’t even have to do anything with this one, so that these laws are being enforced against the media conglomerates, the tech bros, the food conglomerates, and all the other bad actors that are engaged in anti-competitive behavior to the detriment of everyone.
Those few initiatives: supreme court reform, getting money out of politics, increasing taxes on the top .1%, initiating a social services program that provides food, shelter, and healthcare for every single American, protecting the environment, and ensuring that our anti-trust laws are being enforced would so materially improve the lives of every single American and these aren’t revolutionary suggestions. These are bare minimums that a lot of similar countries already recognize. People vote on vibes, not logic or reason or numbers, and they vote on the economy and how stable they personally feel financially. Pushing for those initiatives will actually improve lives and will also have the happy byproduct of winning progressive Democrats elections in the future because the people will actually feel, for the first time in decades, that the people in charge actually give a shit about them. Imagine that.
So bask in the glow of millennial hope core, but know that it is now on us to hold these people to the high standards they should be meeting. And know that federal elections are just one piece of the puzzle. There is a lot happening at the local level that the federal government doesn’t touch, there is a lot of fuckery and tom foolery happening with abortion access, with trans rights bills, with gerrymandering, that often goes unnoticed because these major federal elections take up so much of our attention. So don’t forget to keep it local and be in community for the continued fight ahead.
Reminder to go to Incogni dot com slash leeja and use code LEEJA to get 60% an annual plan with Incogni today!
To get these videos ad free you can join my Patreon where I also share special extra content that doesn’t make the main edit. Thank you to my multi-platinum patrons Sarah Shelby, Art, David, L’etranger (Lukus), Thomas Johnson, and Tay. Your generosity makes this channel what it is, so thank you!
If you liked this video, you’ll like my recent video about how the Supreme Court made up their power.
