by Ryan Johnson | Nov 9, 2026 | elections, Fascism, Israel, midterms, Palestine, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, video
On November 3, Democrats secured a historic landslide victory over the Republican Party, securing 54 Senate seats and over 250 House seats. Five governor’s seats were also flipped, including in historically red states like Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Georgia.
According to a New York Times estimate, Americans aged 18-29 voted overwhelmingly Democrat during the Midterms. 70% of voters in the 18-29 age group voted for Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, a 33-point increase from 2024.
Americans aged 18-29 also came out in droves to support Democratic Senate nominees in 2024, with over 30-point differences in every competitive Senate race, including 44-point increases in Mississippi and North Carolina and a whopping 49-point increase in Texas.
Social Reporter Ryan Johnson sat down with Jason Stanley, the Bissell-Heyd Chair in American Studies in the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto and author of Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future, to talk through the issues that swayed young people to vote for Democrats, the global anti-fascist wave, and a lasting change in American public opinion on Israel.
Related Links:
Jason Stanley at University of Toronto
Jason Stanley on Amazon
Credits:
Production: Ryan Johnson
Post-production: David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.
Ryan Johnson:
On November 3rd, Democrats secured a historic landslide victory over the Republican Party, securing 54 Senate seats and over 250 House seats. Five governor seats were also flipped, including in historically red states like Texas, Kansas, Iowa, and Georgia. According to a New York Times estimate, Americans aged 18 to 29 voted overwhelmingly Democrat during the midterms. 70% of
by Michael Fox | Nov 9, 2026 | brazil, Podcast, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Trump, Under the Shadow, Under the Shadow Season 2
On Sunday, October 25, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defeated far-right Senator Flavio Bolsonaro by a margin of three and a half points, and almost 4.5 million votes. It was roughly twice the margin of the 2022 election, when Lula defeated Flavio’s father, Jair Bolsonaro.
It was the first time in Brazilian history that a candidate lost the first round of voting and won the second. And it was also one of the first defeats of a far-right Trump ally in several years.
As we’ve examined throughout this season of the podcast, Trump’s Donroe Doctrine has overshadowed the region since he came back into power early last year. He’s invaded Venezuela, tightened the screws on Cuba, and twisted arms to get his friends elected in countries up and down the Americas. But in Brazil, he couldn’t. And it’s not because Trump and his Silicon Valley buddies didn’t try.
It’s because Lula supporters organized en masse. Students, workers, teachers, retirees, and everyone in between. And they hit the streets to flip the vote, despite the odds.
They rallied with weeks of around-the-clock campaigning, marches, and protests. They pamphleted and fliered. They talked to their neighbors and their relatives. Online, Lula supporters responded with creative campaigns to confuse the algorithms that aggressively pushed content promoting Bolsonaro.
As many in the crowds told me again and again in recent weeks, this election was a decision that would define the fate of Brazil’s democracy. This wasn’t a vote between two candidates in a democratic system, where one wins and the other accepts their loss. It was a decision between democracy and dictatorship. Or democracy and something else.
And democracy won.
We began this
by Plínio Teodoro | Nov 7, 2026 | Article, paraguay, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Prisons and Policing, Reprint, Trump
This story originally appeared in Panamerican Dispatch on Nov. 07, 2026, and is shared here with permission.
Former Paraguayan President Santiago Peña was moved from house arrest to a military unit within the Armed Forces overnight on Friday, October 6. The relocation followed an incident in which protesters surrounded his residence in Asunción, demanding his incarceration in a formal prison facility, which led to clashes with the police.
Peña was removed from office hours earlier, after the Senate voted unanimously to impeach him. The impeachment stemmed from his alleged involvement in the collapse of Ueno Bank, an institution that blocked access to funds for approximately 40% of the Paraguayan population.
The case bears similarities to the financial scandal in Brazil involving Daniel Vorcaro’s Banco Master, which implicated former presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro, a significant portion of the Bolsonaro movement and the political right in Brazil.
According to the Argentine digital news outlet Infobae, the military organized Peña’s extraction from his home in the La Piedad neighborhood of Asunción, using three pickup trucks for the transfer. The operation took place shortly before midnight, after escalating tensions near his residence made it untenable for the former president to remain there.
Footage captured by the Paraguayan newspaper ABC Color shows individuals throwing eggs and shouting insults at the vehicle transporting Peña as the convoy departed. The same outlet reported that Paraguayan intelligence identified the infiltration of agitators within the crowd, individuals who had previously been participating in a protest in the city center and allegedly moved to the residence with the intent of inciting violence.
🔴 AHORA | Trasladan a Santiago Peña al Regimiento Escolta.En medio de momentos de
by Adam Johnson | Nov 5, 2026 | Article, Democratic Party, elections, Israel, midterms, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US
As the tide recedes on the Democrats’ “Blue tsunami” this past Tuesday, before the votes were even tallied, the internecine fight over The Narrative among the US center-left began in earnest. Centrist ideological curators, as is their function, came out strongly to paint the historic drubbing of Republicans as evidence that centrists are more electable than progressives. And progressives, likewise, have made the opposite argument, buoyed by the 7-point swing state victory of progressive and strong Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.
This piece won’t litigate the empirical question as such (though pollster G. Elliot Morris does an excellent job debunking the “centrists overperformed” conventional wisdom), but will highlight instead how many of the “El-Sayed is toxic and can’t win middle America” narratives completely evaporated Tuesday night, and how those pushing them will, of course, never be held to account nor asked to explain why so many outright lies were advanced about the Democratic nominee. El-Sayed won by roughly 340,000 votes despite being subject to nonstop intra-party, intra-liberal attacks emanating from everyone from the president of the most influential liberal think tank in the US, to key Democrats in Congress such as House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, to influential liberal media outlets The Atlantic magazine and The New York Times, to his largely Republican-funded primary opponent Hayley Stevens, who––unlike the others––at least had the courtesy to break kayfabe and come out in support of Republican Mike Rogers explicitly. Unlike genetic white media darlings Roy Cooper and James Talarico who, the centrist wonk expects insists, Covered The Spread, El-Sayed was subject to one of the most
by Florestan Fernandes Jr. | Nov 4, 2026 | Article, bolsonaro, brazil, elections, midterms, Opinion, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Trump
This story originally appeared in Panamerican Dispatch on Nov. 04, 2026, and is shared here with permission.
President Donald Trump’s crushing defeat in the U.S. midterm elections and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s historic victory in Brazil mean much more than two election results. They send an enormous political message to the world. In the two largest and most important countries in the Americas, voters are saying they do not accept a unipolar world order. They reject the ideology of white supremacy. They say no to political projects that turn immigrants into enemies by persecuting them, criminalizing them and denying them fundamental rights.
But the message is broader. People want peace. They want an end to wars, military threats and unilateral sanctions that undermine free trade and relations among nations. They want a world where dialogue and diplomacy prevail over force, intimidation and one power imposing its interests on all others.
The results are also excellent news for the United Nations, which Trump’s foreign policy has treated with contempt. The UN now has a chance to regain a leading role. It can advance the reforms needed to play a truly central part in building a new international order. That order would be more democratic, multipolar and committed to peace, the sovereignty of peoples and cooperation among nations.
Another phenomenon is even more significant. A wave of popular mobilization is growing in Brazil, the United States and several European countries. It brings together young people, workers and broad sectors of society. Street demonstrations have outpaced traditional parties and political leaders, and often their ability to respond. The rise of autocratic governments and projects, threats
by Brett Wilkins | Nov 3, 2026 | Article, Israel, midterms, Politics and Movements: International, Politics and Movements: US, Reprint, Trump
