The Country Says "No" to Trump: Not Just Congress, the Blue Tsunami Flips Statehouses Across U.S.

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“The size of the wins for Democrats in statewide races was wild,” says Nichanian. He identifies protecting abortion access, bolstering unions and ending police cooperation with ICE as some of the priorities Democrats are likely to pursue.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show continuing our look at Tuesday’s historic election. On the national level, Democrats took control of the House and Senate in a stunning rebuke of President Trump. Meanwhile, Democrats have flipped 12 state legislative chambers. In Arizona, Democrats are set to control the state Legislature for the first time in 60 years. In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped the state Senate for the first time since 1994. And for the first time in 16 years, Democrats will hold a majority of governorships, including in Texas, where Gina Hinojosa is the first Democrat elected governor since Ann Richards in 1990.

Florida’s outgoing Republican Governor Ron DeSantis spoke Wednesday about Republican losses across the country.

GOV. RON DESANTIS: This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last hundred years. In January, when everyone in office leaves who are either term-limited or got voted out, of the 10 largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state: the state of Florida.

If you look at our chief rival, in a healthy sense, the state of Texas, and I would say over the last — over my lifetime, Texas has been the crown jewel of Republican politics. I think we’ve been the leader for Republicans and conservatives since I’ve been governor, but if you go over the whole generation, no one holds a candle on the Republican side to the Lone Star State. And yet, not only did they lose a very highly publicized U.S. Senate race, they lost everything — the governor, attorney general, all the other statewide. They lost four Republican Supreme Court justices on the Texas Supreme Court. They may even lose the Texas Legislature, or one house or even both. Let’s just be clear that that is going to hurt not just for the next two years. That’s something that can reverberate for the next decade or more. And if the Republican Party doesn’t have Texas as an anchor, then we are not going to be viable nationally going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

Many political commentators have credited New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani with helping make affordability a central issue for Democrats. On Wednesday, Mayor Mamdani posted a video reacting to the midterm results.

MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: Last night’s election proved working people expect more from their government, and they’re tired of waiting. JD Vance asked for a couple more years to finally fulfill the promises he’d made to our country. Working people can’t afford another two years to make rent that’s due this month, childcare for their kids or groceries for their family. People are tired of being told that there isn’t enough to go around, while Elon Musk becomes the world’s first trillionaire. They are tired of being told to sacrifice their land and water for data centers. They’re tired of being told their needs are unrealistic by politicians who have been bought by the wealthiest people on the planet. They’re tired of being told to ask for a little and expect even less.

And last night, the people stood up. They stood up to politicians that spend their taxpayer dollars on war crimes and genocide instead of on building schools and paving roads. They spoke louder than the hundreds of millions of dollars that tried and failed to buy this election. They demanded an end to the affordability crisis that has become one of the few things that unites us all. It is not enough to simply win power; we must use it. And the American people will know the difference between hollow words and hard work. For years we’ve had the debate. Now it’s time for us in the Democratic Party to deliver. My friends, it’s morning again in America.

AMY GOODMAN: Our first guest today has been closely looking at results in state races across the United States. Daniel Nichanian is editor-in-chief of Bolts, a publication that covers local politics and policy with a focus on voting rights and criminal justice, joining us now from Washington, D.C.

Daniel, thanks so much for being with us. I mean, you take a state like Texas, and Governor DeSantis focused on this when he talks about this election was a extinction-level event for Republicans. Now the leadership of Texas, both the governorship as well as the Senate, these two races, are Democrat. And this hasn’t happened in decades. You’ve looked at something that is less well known at this point after the election, which is what’s happening at the state levels in the state legislatures, and what all of this can mean. Lay out what your observations are after this historic election.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: So, I think the thing that we all know is that Republicans suffered very heavy losses for Congress. You were just talking about the big gains for Democrats in the Senate, where they could get up to 56 seats, and in the House. What is still coming into view at this moment is the sheer extent to which Republicans suffered similar losses — to be honest, even greater losses, unthinkable losses even — in state governments and local governments.

So, let’s take the state of Texas, which is really the story of the night and the symbol of the night that you were just discussing. Democrats, of course, flipped the Senate seat and the governor’s mansion, but that just hides so much that’s going on beyond the surface. They may have flipped the state Board of Education, which has drawn so many headlines over many years for injecting Christianity into schools. They flipped four seats on the state’s highest court, the Supreme Court, including electing a woman who will be the first LGBTQ statewide official in Texas. They flipped the state House. They flipped attorney general, railroad commissioner, land commissioner and so on.

And then, if you look down-ballot further down, the situation remains as dire for the GOP. So, in one of the biggest counties in the nation, home to Fort Worth, Democrats flipped the DA’s office. They flipped the county executive’s office. They flipped the county board. These are all important offices. This county drew a lot of headlines over the last few weeks for closing polling stations. They have lots of impacts on people’s lives. There was really nowhere that Republicans could hide on Tuesday to escape the wrath of voters, and this showed in state after state after state.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, hi, Daniel, so good to see you. So, what is your sense at the state and local level? What were voters most interested in? What made them vote Democrat this time?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Well, it’s, you know, the similar reasons as we saw at the federal level: the cost of living. Democrats in Texas and Ohio and many states were really emphasizing the issue of data centers, immigration enforcement. And those are all issues where we are going to see now that Democrats took more power in state governments. We’re going to see actual potential changes being done at a level of government where that has a lot of effects on these — on these issues.

So, for instance, the Democrats took control of six state governments on Tuesday, perhaps seven if Alaska flips. We are still waiting for results there in the governor’s race. So, we’re talking about Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada. Those all are states that became Democratic now. And some of these states, the Democrats haven’t governed for a very long time, and they’ve signaled the kind of agenda they want to bring. So, for instance, in Pennsylvania, which Democrats haven’t governed since the '90s, they've signaled they want to codify abortion rights into the state Constitution. In Wisconsin, where Democrats haven’t governed since 2010, they have signaled they want to repeal, abolish the anti-union law that Scott Walker very famously — it drew a lot of protests nationwide and in Wisconsin — passed in 2011. So, in a way, there’s a lot of issues that have built up, up until Tuesday.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Daniel, you’ve also said — I mean, let’s talk about the places where the Democrats didn’t prevail, or at least don’t have, won’t have full control. Georgia, North Carolina, you say, is also because of gerrymandering, Republican gerrymandering. If you could explain?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Right. I mean, you know, the story you may have heard out there over the past few days is that gerrymandering failed for Republicans in the U.S. House. They were trying to gerrymander their way into a majority. That didn’t succeed.

The situation is more nuanced if you look at the state level. Georgia and North Carolina are two states that saw huge tsunamis on Tuesday. The statewide offices flipped. The size of the wins for Democrats in statewide races was wild, I mean, unthinkable even. And yet, and yet, Democrats didn’t manage to win control of the state government. Why? Because the state Senate in both states is so aggressively gerrymandered that Democrats just couldn’t get over the hurdle.

In North Carolina, for instance, Democrats are one seat short of getting full control of the state government, despite the gerrymander. They won every seat that Trump won by up to 10 points. Any seat that Trump won by less than 10 flipped Democrat. And that wasn’t enough, because the median seat in North Carolina has been so gerrymandered, is so Republican, so that allowed Republicans to keep a foothold of power in states where, by all accounts, they really should have lost everything on Tuesday.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Daniel Nichanian, let’s talk about what states can do all over the country, the significance of states having power. I mean, you have the irony that with President Trump and with the Republicans, they’re often talking about states’ rights, but then they try to federalize everything from the election to law enforcement. So, if you can talk about, oh, states passing laws that ban local police and local sheriffs from collaborating with ICE, for example? Where can states assert themselves?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: I mean, that’s really important. It’s going to be a major storyline, looking ahead to 2027. On many of the issues that people look toward D.C., you know, states have a lot of power. That’s a great example, the issue of immigration, which was a driving factor for many voters, the opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and ICE over the last year and a half.

What we have seen, actually, since Trump came into power in 2025, came back into power, is a wave of states, of blue states, of Democratic-governed states, that have passed laws that have banned local police and local sheriffs from entering contracts with ICE. Now, that actually does — is very important, because ICE really relies on the collaboration of local sheriff agencies and police to expand its reach. For instance — for instance, sheriffs can rent space in their jails to ICE to hold immigrants. ICE can bring immigrants there, pay money to the sheriff’s department — by the way, it also puts more money into local law enforcement through that route — and that helps ICE do its operations. And so, nine states, nine Democratic-run states, since the beginning of 2025, have banned these sort of contracts. States like Virginia, New Mexico, Maryland have passed laws like that.

Now, the obvious question — I was listing earlier the list of states that Democrats have flipped. Are we going to see similar laws in Pennsylvania, in Wisconsin, in Arizona? These are all states where local sheriffs — there are some very far-right sheriffs in those states that have contracts with ICE. Are Democrats at the state level going to do something about it? So, that’s just an example of the kind of questions that this really opens up. And you could do that on issue after issue. What are Democrats going to do with the new authority they’re going to have in these states?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could speak, Daniel, specifically about unions, the states that have had extremely restrictive laws on unions? If you could just talk, for example, about Wisconsin or Nevada?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Right. I mean, another issue where Democrats have not as systematically done recently, the politics around unions having shifted a bit. But Nevada, Wisconsin are — and others are states that have either passed a right-to-work law or — in Wisconsin, as I was saying earlier, it was really the — it was really one of the main issues when Republicans took power after the 2010 midterms. They went after unions in Wisconsin and other states. And Democrats, Democrats want to roll that back. And we’ll see. Also, there was an important referendum in Vermont on Tuesday that enshrined the right to join a union into the Constitution of the state of Vermont, and that also passed on Tuesday, so another important result.

AMY GOODMAN: We want to thank you, Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts, a publication that covers local politics and policy with a focus on voting rights and criminal justice.

Coming up, we speak to Congressmember-elect Melat Kiros, the 29-year-old attorney, Ethiopian immigrant, member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who beat in the Democratic primary Congressmember DeGette, who was in office for almost 30 years. She will now represent Denver, Colorado, in the next Congress. Stay with us.

AMY GOODMAN: “Mean Love” by Sinkane, performing in our Democracy Now! studio.

Special guests Angela Davis, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Michael Stipe and more came together to celebrate 30 years of Democracy Now! at a sold out Riverside Church event in NYC on March 23, 2026.