What comes after the blue wave?

Melat Kiros (D) will be the first Black woman to represent Colorado in the House of Representatives. She will also be the first Gen Z woman in Congress. She’s also a democratic socialist, and one of a record number of DSA-endorsed candidates to win House races. Another is Claire Valdez (D), a longtime leader in New York City’s DSA chapter who will become the first Native American woman from the state in Congress. In nearby New Jersey, Adam Hamawy (D) will become the state’s first Muslim congressman. He was a first responder after the September 11 attacks, a U.S. military surgeon in Iraq, and a participant in medical missions to Gaza amid Israel’s genocide there.

Gina Hinojosa (D) was elected the first Latina governor of Texas, backed by a big canvassing push from Latino civil rights organizers. In New Mexico, Deb Haaland (D) became the first Native American woman to be elected governor ever. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) became the first Black woman elected governor ever. Amy Acton (D), Ohio’s first woman governor-elect, won on a platform that included tax cuts for working families, bringing down utility costs and forgiving medical debt. David Crowley (D), who was elected Wisconsin’s first Black governor, also vowed to prioritize healthcare and affordability.

But more diverse representation doesn’t always translate to more progressive policies. Chris Pappas (D), the first openly gay man elected to the Senate, received money from donors aligned with AIPAC and has supported U.S. aid to Israel. Byron Donalds, Florida’s first Black governor-elect, is a Republican endorsed by the state’s outgoing far-right governor. And although Xavier Becerra (D) — California’s first elected Latino governor — wants to stop immigration agents’ use of force and expand healthcare access to undocumented people, he’s taken more moderate positions on issues like single-payer healthcare and taxing billionaires.

So, all these firsts come with lots of additional context — both contemporary and historical. And that brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise!

Speaking of firsts: In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed will become the first Muslim U.S. Senator. Republicans, including the president, spent months hurling Islamophobic rhetoric against El-Sayed. Two days before Election Day, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens — whom El-Sayed defeated in Michigan’s Democratic primary — endorsed Republican Mike Rogers. We all make questionable choices on Halloweekend, but this was a little much for some Democratic Party members who want leadership to banish Stevens.

This story is important for democracy, but it is also great gossip. Jason Turkish was a top donor to Stevens’ campaign, the two were said to be secretly engaged by early June, he became involved in the campaign to the point of other staffers trying to restrict his role, and he endorsed Mike Rogers days before Stevens did. When The Washington Post reported on this, Stevens told them, “any campaign staff being directly quoted in this article, I was made miserable by working with them.”

But you know what doesn’t make her miserable? AIPAC money. The pro-Israel lobby and groups affiliated with it spent nearly $30 million trying to get Stevens to win. El-Sayed has criticized U.S. aid to Israel. A U.N. inquiry recently found Israel kept committing genocide in Gaza even after the October 2025 ceasefire deal.

It happened to me: I watched a TikTok about the news and wondered if it was true. Crazy to be on the other end of this! It was a video about how we have the votes to phase out the Electoral College by 2028.

So I did what we in the biz call lateral reading, or finding other sources on the same topic. And they confirmed that there’s something called the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The NPVIC is an agreement for states to award their electors to whoever wins the popular vote nationwide.

After Tuesday, Democrats control the legislature and governorship in five more states worth 61 electoral votes. States with 222 votes have already joined the NPVIC. If those five join too, it would reach 283, past the 270 needed to win the presidency.

So, this wouldn’t quite be abolishing the Electoral College. Doing that requires a constitutional amendment. But this would be a way around having an Electoral College that picks presidents whom the majority of Americans didn’t vote for. It still remains to be seen, though, if these Democratic state governments will prioritize this.

President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice sent 1,000 election monitors and observers to all 50 states during Tuesday’s elections. Some fun facts about the jurisdictions these monitors were sent to: Trump lost the 2024 presidential election in about two-thirds of them, Black and Latine voters make up a majority in many of them, and they’re in states that held a lot of sway in which party would control the Senate.

This practice isn’t new, and it’s actually been used to stop voter suppression. In the past, the Justice Department sent election monitors to areas where voters ran into trouble casting their ballots, and they were sent to places with patterns of voter suppression following the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But this election, concerns around widespread election monitors mounted amid the Trump administration’s efforts to exert more control over elections. Those have included efforts to restrict and throw out mail-in ballots, trying to block the certification in Alaska if the Republican lost, and accessing sensitive voter data.

I grew up in Miami. But despite Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon (who lost the U.S. Senate race on Tuesday) blowing up my phone to the point that iMessage prompted me to save her contact, I no longer live or vote there. And every now and then, counties will go through their lists of registered voters and kick people like me off. This is called a voter roll purge.

If that explanation bored you, I promise it gets more upsetting. Trump keeps talking about purging noncitizens from voter rolls, even though noncitizens make up a tiny, tiny fraction of voters each year. And to that end, Republican-led states around the country have passed bills that would introduce new proof-of-citizenship requirements to vote. It’s already illegal (and, again, super rare) for noncitizens to vote in state and federal elections. And these requirements create additional hurdles to citizens exercising their right to vote.

There’s also a newly overhauled data system that’s feeding into this same push to crack down on (again, virtually nonexistent) noncitizen voting. And that system has inaccurately flagged some eligible voters as potential noncitizens. In Texas alone, journalists found that these errors involved at least 87 voters across 29 counties.

Democrats held nearly every congressional seat in districts that Trump and his allies redrew to favor Republicans. In Texas, Missouri, Ohio and North Carolina, Democrats gained seats despite Republican gerrymandering. In Florida and Alabama, they held every targeted seat.

Republicans did flip two of the districts they redrew. In Tennessee, Republican Brent Taylor beat Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson. You may remember him from when he was controversially ousted from the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2023 for protesting gun violence on the floor of the chamber.

The other redistricted seat Republicans flipped is in Texas, where Jace Yarbrough won. His xenophobic policy positions and rhetoric have included calling for repeal of the 1965 law that ended race-based immigration quotas and falsely claiming that “hordes of Islamic immigrants” are coming to “set up” Sharia law in the U.S.