Midterms Punish a Party in Power, They Don't Repeal a Movement

By Judd Dunning

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

— Ronald Reagan, 1967

In November 1982, Ronald Reagan’s Republicans lost 26 House seats. Two years later he carried 49 states.

This morning Democrats hold both chambers of Congress, including a Senate seat and the governorship in Texas. It is a serious defeat. Donald Trump lost the House in 2018 and came back to win the White House and the popular vote in 2024. Midterms punish the party in power. They do not repeal a movement.

Did you really think we were going to win, with Trump so willing to be unpopular to do the right thing, to take on the globalists, the graft, the socialists, Big Tech and the fake news?

The record says it undeniably: Donald J. Trump is one of the most industrious presidents we have ever seen, measured by completion and action. That is a fact, not a feeling, and it is on paper. Border Patrol apprehensions hit a 55-year low in fiscal 2025. The crisis was policy, not fate. When enforcement returned, the numbers collapsed. Murders fell 18 percent last year. American oil production is on track for an all-time record. A nation that controls its energy controls its future. He did it through impeachments, indictments and assassination attempts.

None of that makes the pain at the pump disappear. Inflation hit 3.7 percent in September. Regular gasoline averaged a record $4.33 for the month. Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it, or to vote against their own best interest. We are not the smartest country on the planet. Short-term thinkers voted their pocketbooks into greater government dependence. That is the nanny-state play of the hard left. History also teaches what we must protect: what is eternal, what is good, and our sovereignty.

But look at what Democrats are selling as the cure: more government. Washington cannot subsidize a country into prosperity, regulate it into competitiveness or purchase self-reliance with someone else’s taxes. As I wrote in 2022, unmitigated leftist threats push tired Americans to forget that they need nothing from the elites and virtually nothing from government.

Mr. President, here is the job.

For the next sixty days, put every pending bill on the floor and force recorded votes. Make every Democrat who takes a gavel in January answer for how he voted in December. Confirm every qualified nominee the Senate can clear. Turn the executive orders that matter into law while the votes still exist, because a successor can erase an order with one signature. Protect our national identity. Attack the trade imbalances that have been killing America for decades.

Follow the money and put real criminals in real prison. The Justice Department called Minnesota’s Feeding Our Future the largest pandemic fraud scheme in America. California lost billions to pandemic unemployment fraud. Both ran through Democrat-run governments. Prosecute the people behind them and claw back every dollar. Biden spent his final hours handing preemptive pardons to his family and political allies. Those pardons cover federal offenses, not state crimes, and they protect no one who stole from a program meant to feed children. The Justice Department should be feared by crooks, not by lawful political opponents. Follow the evidence into either party. The ledger already shows where to start.

After January 3, the veto pen becomes the most important tool in Washington. Force every proposed entitlement to face the arithmetic. If House Democrats spend the next two years on impeachment instead of gas prices, let them. They can impeach with a bare majority. Removal takes 67 senators, and they do not have them. Every hour spent on a show trial is an hour they are not spending on the family paying $4.33 a gallon, and that family will remember it in 2028.

Know who just won. At least five members of the Democratic Socialists of America are headed to the House, joining Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib. Their program calls for abolishing the police and the prison system, ending ICE deportations, amnesty for every illegal immigrant, abolishing the Senate and putting the Supreme Court under Congress. That is a plan to dismantle the Constitution.

The same movement is at war with the family, the last wall between the citizen and the state. It tells children their sex is a choice and their parents are an obstacle. It demands accommodation without integration. America welcomes believers of every faith. It owes nothing to any doctrine that rejects equal rights for women, free speech or the Constitution as the supreme law. One law, one citizenship, one standard.

Trump broke the establishment’s grip once. The next two years decide whether it ever gets that grip back.

Reagan’s 1984 began in the wreckage of November 1982.

2028 begins this morning.