Talarico’s message to billionaire class:”We will not be conquered.”

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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

HCR
Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 7, 2026

In his victory speech on November 3, after winning a U.S. Senate seat in the previously Republican-dominated state of Texas, Senator-elect James Talarico redefined the modern United States by recalling an older era when Americans worked together to defend their country against those who would take all its wealth and power for themselves.

His words were especially piercing in Texas, where billionaire Elon Musk spent at least $225 million in the midterm elections to keep the state government in the hands of Republicans. And yet, voters elected a Democratic governor, a Democratic lieutenant governor, a Democratic attorney general, and a Democratic state house anyway.

“We just took back Texas,” Talarico told the cheering crowd. “We just proved that all the money in the world is no match for the people of Texas. We just showed that a politics of division is no match for a politics of love. And we just sent a message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor, every corrupt defender of this broken political system in this state, in this country. Power belongs to the people.”

Leaning into his religious faith and his own history as a middle-school teacher of underprivileged students and as the son of a single mother, he told the crowd: “Scripture has taught me, my own life has taught me, always bet on the underdog.”

“We were the underdogs in this race,” he said. “We went up against nearly 40 years of doubt and disillusionment. We went up against more than $300 million, more than any Senate campaign in American history. We went up against all the negative ads, smear campaigns, foreign bots, and AI deep fakes that money can buy. Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment, the death rattle of a status quo that knows its days are numbered.

“They played dirty because they were desperate. But we never lost hope. We never lost faith. And against big money and long odds, we took our power back. Always, always, bet on the underdog.

“We built a movement unlike any this state has ever seen. We united Texans from all backgrounds and beliefs onto one team to take on this broken, corrupt political system: first time voters, three time Trump voters, working people from every corner of this state who are fed up and ready for change. This win is for every underdog who’s been counted out and left behind. This win is for every teacher and every nurse, for every farmer and every rancher. For every young person who’s trying to buy a home. For every parent who’s trying to put food on the table.

“This win is for every Texan who’s ever wondered if anyone is listening. I heard you. We heard you, and tonight the world hears you.”

Talarico identified the moment the nation is in as monumental. “This win is not about the Democratic party or the Republican party,” he said. “It’s much bigger than that. There is something broken in America. Our economic system is broken. Our political system is broken. Even our relationships with each other feel broken. That’s because the most powerful people in the world want it that way.”

Talarico rooted his political beliefs in his belief in the commandments to “love God and love neighbor” and noted that “despite our differences, we all want the same things. A safe neighborhood, a good job, a high-quality, well-funded public school, and the ability to see a doctor when we need one.

“But the billionaires who own the social media algorithms, who own the cable news networks, who own the politicians fighting on our screens, they want us at each other’s throats. They want us focused on how we’re different instead of on how we’re the same. They want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them. The real fight in this country is not left versus right. It is top versus bottom.

“The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power,” he said. “We saw it in this race. We saw it in every billionaire-funded attack ad. The people at the top divide us by party, by race, by gender, by religion, by culture, so we don’t notice that they are picking our pockets, that they are defunding our schools, that they are gutting our healthcare, that they are raising taxes on all of us while they cut taxes for themselves. It is the oldest strategy in the world, divide and conquer. But tonight we sent a crystal clear message to the people at the top. We will not be conquered.”

“[W]e are tired of being pitted against each other,” Talarico continued. “We are tired of being told to hate each other. It has been 10 years of this kind of politics. Politics as blood sport. Politics as trolling and owning. Politics as professional wrestling. It tears families apart. It ends friendships. And it leaves us all feeling terrible all the time. People across the political spectrum are hungry for a different kind of politics. Not a politics of hate, not a politics of fear, not a politics of division, but a politics of love.”

He explained how Democrats had won Texas: “We mobilized our 60,000 volunteers in every corner of the state, and together we delivered bottled water to Sand Branch, a community south of Dallas with no running water. We donated school supplies to an elementary school in El Cenizo, a small town on the border. We collected more than 20,000 pounds of groceries for families in Fort Worth who are struggling under the high cost of living. Before the world changes in ways you see on TV or read about in newspapers, the world changes person to person, neighbor to neighbor.”

“[W]e know how to get there,” he said. “We must get big money out of our politics so no billionaire or trillionaire can buy our elections. We must unrig this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal health care so no one goes bankrupt just because they get sick. We must invest in our teachers and our students so every underdog has a fighting chance. We must end these corrupt forever wars that are driving up prices and killing our brave men and women in uniform.

“And,” he continued, “we must heal the deep spiritual corruption at the root of all of these crises. We must bridge the divides between us and repair the ties that bind us. We forged a new kind of politics here in the Lone Star State. An answer to this decade of division. We showed that when working people come together across every dividing line, we can do extraordinary things. We won this race because people who are desperate for change now are going to get change.

“That old politics is dying,” he told the crowd, “and a new politics is being born through each of us.”

Talarico, who won his race by an astonishing 12 points, accurately identified the extraordinary importance of local and relational organizing to create communities that would elect Democratic candidates in 2026.

He also accurately identified the threat this kind of politics poses to establishment politics, especially to MAGA. President Trump today reinforced his need for division and hatred by offering the job of White House press secretary to Dana White, the chief executive officer of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, whom he described as a “violent Fighter and Warrior.” Trump encouraged White to take the job and bring along a number of his UFC fighters.

“We need these people to defend us against the Lunatic Left,” Trump posted.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

218 Signatures Are Coming Next Week to Force Vote on Epstein Bill

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Survivors Can Sue DOJ Over Hidden Files

Thomas Massie predicts 218 signatures for a House vote on a bill letting Epstein survivors challenge alleged withholding of Justice Department records.

A congressional effort to strengthen access to Jeffrey Epstein-related records could reach a crucial procedural stage next week, with Republican Representative Thomas Massie predicting that a discharge petition will secure the 218 signatures needed to bring the issue before the House.

In a post on 5 November, Massie said he expected to reach the threshold when lawmakers return to Washington. He described the proposed legislation as a way for survivors to obtain records concerning their cases and challenge the withholding of material by the Justice Department.

The proposal, known as the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, is intended to address a central weakness in the existing disclosure framework: what legal options are available when the government is accused of failing to release information it is required to provide.

The Legal Remedies the Bill Would Give Survivors

H.R. 9694 was introduced on 15 July 2026 by Massie, Democratic Representative Ro Khanna, and Democratic Representative Teresa Leger Fernández. Rather than simply demanding another release of documents, the bill proposes mechanisms to challenge alleged failures to comply with transparency requirements.

Read more

Sarah Kendzior: The Bellwether Battle

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Sarah Kendzior

The midterms changed the battlefield, but not the war.

By Sarah Kendzior | Nov 5, 2026

On Election Day, I voted for my vote to count. Again.

I don’t know yet if my vote for my vote to count will be honored by the people who count my vote. There’s not great precedent for that here in Missouri.

For a decade, the Democratic party machine has lectured me to “vote harder”. We Missourians vote so hard, we voted for the same damn thing three times in two years. The third time was a vote for the same damn thing to be made law, as the state constitution decrees. But law stopped following the constitution long ago. Courts follow the whims of liars. I follow the money.

This is why Missouri is the bellwether state.

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Missouri used to be called the bellwether state for its century-long streak of picking the presidential winner. Our swing state status ended in 2008 when a Black man ran for president and operatives field-tested Citizens United tactics on our soil. Missouri is a petri dish for people who seek to end the American experiment.

Missouri is also a “trigger state”. It triggers old laws and new horrors. In 2022, after the Roe repeal, Missouri was the first US state to trigger a pre-existing ban on female bodily autonomy. I spent two years with my uterus as Missouri state property. Once a month, I considered pelting the legislature with receipts.

In 2024, I voted on a ballot initiative to get the right to my body back. It passed. The Missouri legislature said, Screw you, woman, we don’t care what you want, and contested it. Courts debated how human I am relative to my husband. They were leaning toward less, so Missourians made yet another ballot initiative. Ballot initiatives are a state growth industry, like fentanyl and firecrackers. This one said that when voters approve a citizen initiative, the state legislature must actually enact it.

On Election Day 2026, I voted that officials be required to honor the voters’ will. I hear rumor this is known elsewhere as “representative government”. It’s a novel concept, especially in St. Louis, where my House representative is funded by donors who serve a foreign country. On the same day, I voted — again — to protect my body from state control. This is the second time I’ve done that in two years. Both votes went my way.

Folks say I’ve got my body and my constitution back. I say, we’ll see in January.

Missouri is the bellwether state. Missouri is a trigger state. But its official motto is “The Show-Me State.” In 1899, Congressman Willard Duncan Vandiver declared to fancy Philadelphians, “I’m from a state that raises corn, cotton, cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I’m from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

Missouri is so thoroughly built on the expectation that everyone in power is a liar that we tack this motto on our license plates and drive to polling places where we demand to have our stated choice made law. Nothing goes without saying. We don’t believe it until we see it, and we assume a win may be retracted on a whim.

In Missouri, election season and hunting season are at the same time of year.

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Don’t get me wrong — I’m proud of the midterm results and proud of my state. Not for anything I did, but that others fought a Sisyphean battle. They got to the top of the mountain and let everyone see clear the lay of the land.

I’m proud of Texas. I’m proud of Michigan. I’m proud of the South. I’m proud of Missouri, which I love very much. Of course I love Missouri: why else would I be so angry when officials hurt its people while claiming to serve them? My state is not my government. The same is true of the whole US. Everyone knows that, now.

Missouri makes you a realist. I’m watching that mountain top, waiting for the rock to roll down and run us over come January. Maybe it won’t. It feels different this time, even here. Had Missouri a 2026 Senate or governor race, a Democrat may have won by sheer momentum. In Missouri’s 2nd district, Fred Wellman, a Democrat, unexpectedly ousted a long-loathed Republican.

Most voters in Missouri are independents, as are most voters in the US. We are the United States of the Betrayed. The midterm results reject GOP oppression, but that doesn’t equal an embrace of the Democratic Party: not without major changes.

Future Democratic House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries — a confidante of Jared Kushner and an abettor of genocide — is already implying he doesn’t feel it necessary to honor the voters’ will. This is an all-too-familiar refrain for folks who live under GOP legislatures. It makes no difference when it’s a Democrat singing the tune.

I’d love to get behind the paywalls and the propaganda to see how this election was won. But I live in a technofascist oligarchy: data is in short supply. Like a true Missourian, I only know what I see. I didn’t hear any national Democrats talking about the ballot initiatives that determined my freedom. I heard them trashing the folks who knocked on my door one day to make sure I knew.

On my porch were two youths. A boy and a girl, bright-eyed and shiny as a Mentos commercial. “Mormons,” I thought. I opened the door. I welcome attempts at conversion; they let me tally what parts of myself I would give away.

The youths said they were from the DSA: the group both Democrats and Republicans decry as fearsome and wily socialists. The youths smiled and offered a sample ballot for my keeping. They explained to me my rights in plain language. I pretended I did not know who I was.

“No on 3, Yes on 6!” they said cheerfully, referring to the bodily autonomy initiative and the initiative that says, Hey you really need to do it this time.

Shame that officials deem these folks a threat instead of the invasive Flock camera installed down the street recording their door-to-door civic virtue.

My guess is that youth and independent voters caused the “blue” wave, along with voters appalled by unceasing corruption, war, and the abandonment of ordinary Americans in favor of foreign states and wealthy elites. The cost of living is too high: the material cost, the psychic cost. The latter is hardest to bear. How many people have we seen murdered on our phones since 2025?

* * *

I’ve got more to say, but I’ll say it another day. Many writers I respect say they feel an unfamiliar exhaustion. Not one born of agony or anxiety, but of shock, and gratitude, and knowledge that we’re not alone in seeing what’s happening. A Langston Hughes bone-weariness coupled with a Langston Hughes longing for the land that’s never been but may still be. Langston Hughes, child of Missouri, poet of America.

As Missouri shows, votes are only as good as the officials who honor them. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless they are put into practice. But ordinary people are stubborn, and brave, and they look out for each other.

The fight for our country’s freedom is far from over. We are still battling corrupt actors in two parties, many of whom are funded by the same donors.

But nothing can change that our will was heard. The midterm results mitigate a threat about which I’ve long worried: the attempt to harden “red state” and “blue state” designations so that it will be easier for operatives to divide our country and sell it for parts — much like in the former USSR.

The Trump administration and various plutocrats are already doing the latter. But formal partition would have sped it up and broken the bonds of family, friends, and countrymen. Texas, especially, renders toxic “national divorce” rhetoric moot. The culture war has failed: people can see each other past the algorithms.

I’ll leave you with the words I wrote the morning after the results, when I didn’t want to ruin anyone’s good time. I mean them still. But remember, even in your excitement: They have got to show you. You deserve nothing less.

My initial thoughts about the midterms:

May the midterms end the propaganda lie of “red” and “blue” states — conjured in the 2000 election and weaponized. As I’ve said: There is no such thing as a “red” or “blue” state: America is purple, purple like a bruise.

Let the powerful turn of Texas shatter stereotypes. Let the wave of wins elsewhere destroy excuses for abandonment. Americans have been subject to a top-down assault by criminal elites. We remain under assault. Pundits blamed the victims below instead of GOP abusers and Vichy Dem enablers above. They lied and said Texas and the South deserved a cruel fate.

Now pundits are shocked about folks whose strength was evident the whole time. I hope those pundits swallow their forked tongues and choke on them.

Respect to the shunned who fight because we know our own worth — including my fellow Missourians. The midterms were a battle in an ongoing war. You redrew the battle lines in the public imagination. Imagination is a wonder; in a kleptocracy, it is a weapon. You can’t vote out the mafia. But you can change the nature of the battlefield. You just did.

I’m not going to sugarcoat the threat we face, which goes beyond electoral politics. But I hope folks feel proud — not just for last night, but for making it through these terrible years, and for standing up for each other.

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Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.