Commentary by Jerry Lanson

It’s official, at least for those who live in the realm of reality: In states and cities across the country, Democrats won a resounding off-year election victory on Tuesday.

Moderate women in Virginia and New Jersey won double-digit gubernatorial victories. In New York City, a young democratic socialist handily defeated Andrew Cuomo, the state’s former Democratic governor, despite Donald Trump’s endorsement of him. Californians backed redistricting to counter Republican gerrymandering by nearly two to one.

Democrats demonstrated that their party can still provide a big tent for voters with a wide spectrum of views. And the Democratic Party learned without a doubt that by emphasizing economic issues – the rising cost of food, housing, health care and utilities and the rising rate of inflation – it can run winning campaigns in 2026, wherever its candidates fall on the ideological spectrum.

Democratic jubilance, however, should be short-lived. This must be a time of heightened vigilance by those opposing Donald Trump’s efforts to expand his authoritarian rule. He’s already made clear that these election results taught him nothing.

“TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” Trump wrote Tuesday on a Truth Social Post.

What pollsters, he didn’t say.

Going forward, this we can anticipate. In the months ahead, Trump will ratchet up his efforts across red states to redistrict. In the year ahead, he will try harder to scrub Democrats from voter rolls, to intimidate them by sending armies of “poll watchers” to voting locations, to create voting deserts by working with red state governors to close polling sites and limit voting hours in blue neighborhoods.

All will be part of his strategy to undermine a fair election in 2026.

In the meantime, Trump likely will do all he can to further militarize American cities. Let us learn from Chicago. The day after the 2025 election, ICE agents hauled off a pre-school teacher after chasing her onto the school’s grounds and grabbing her in front of students, The Washington Post reports.

While most Americans, beyond burgeoning economic hardships, are living largely normal lives, Chicagoans regularly are being subjected to the sting of tear gas as ICE and Border Patrol officers chase down immigrants or face off against residents trying to record their actions.

Consider these words from The Washington Post.

“Federal immigration officers are using chemical irritants to disperse protesters in ways that violate American policing norms and are testing the boundaries of use-of-force laws, video footage from Chicago shows, in some cases hitting demonstrators directly with the munitions.”

Continued the article: “Federal officers have thrown chemical agents out of vehicles on city streets, creating a hazard for motorists. They have thrown tear-gas canisters near 

stores and schools, exposing children, pregnant women and older people to the noxious gas. And ... federal officers have fired pepper balls directly at protesters – in one case, striking a pastor in the head.”

On the Saturday before Halloween, as kids gathered for a holiday parade in Old Irving Park on the Chicago’s Northwest Side, federal agents began lobbing tear gas when neighbors protested the arrest of a man whose brother said had immigrated to the US at age 4.

“You had folks who were literally out on the street taking their kids to this Halloween parade when this happened,” Brian Kolp, a former Cook County prosecutor, told the local Fox News station. “I didn’t see anybody with a weapon. I didn’t see anybody make physical contact with these agents. I didn’t see anybody do anything that justified, for instance, taking my 70-year-old neighbor to the ground.”

Similar scenes, though not as common, continue to unfold in urban areas from Los Angeles to Boston, where masked ICE agents have smashed car windows to abduct their occupants and where this week, they raided a car wash at 9:30 a.m. and drove off with nine employees who were never given a chance to show their work papers, boston.com reported.

“This is a kidnapping, plain and simple,” Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who represents the neighborhood, told reporters.

Expect more of the same, with New York City a prime target once Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor.

Democrats won this week’s election on economic issues, though polls do show a majority of Americans now believe ICE in its shadowy and harsh arrests has overstepped acceptable practices. But the key question now is who will provide a check on this administration’s actions, often carried out without regard to established law or practice? What will keep ICE and other Homeland Security agencies from continuing to indiscriminately and sometimes violently target immigrants and those who stand up for them? And are most Americans even paying attention?

These questions remain much more important than this week’s rash of post-election punditry about the 2026 election. Remember. As a democracy under siege, the United States first has to get that far.

So, let’s end the post-election celebrations. Let’s stop dissecting the results as if it’s just another post-election media fest.

It’s not. The government remains shut down. And what’s going on in this country is anything but normal.

Republished by permission from Lanson'sSUBSTACK From the Grassroots.