Even calling it a blue wave is an understatement. Democrats just won in the biggest midterm landslide since 1974. States and congressional districts that haven’t swung Democratic for decades finally flipped. Seventy-five percent of Americans will now be governed by Democrats. The new Congressional class is stacked with historic firsts. People in the streets are celebrating like a latter-day Iron Curtain just fell.
And here’s the important thing to remember: None of this just happened. We didn’t wake up to a world fundamentally re-made by the blue tsunami thanks to dumb luck, or some kind of automatic, thermostatic reversion to the mean. This wasn’t a fluke, or an accident, or inevitable.
This was the result of years’ worth of work from liberty-loving Americans at all levels striving to place a check on the Trump administration’s authoritarianism. People who watched our largest, wealthiest institutions—elite colleges and universities, law firms, media companies, tech platforms, and oligarchs of all stripes—bend the knee to Trump, and refused to follow suit. People who cared enough about democracy to man the barricades and actually fight for it.
People like you.
Since we got our start in 2025, shortly after Trump reentered office, we at Home of the Brave have been moved by the everyday heroism of ordinary Americans who chose not to stay silent in the face of authoritarianism. We set out to document those stories, because we thought that the people who were fighting back deserve a large platform, in the hopes that their stories might inspire others. Here are just a few of them:
George Retes, the US citizen and Iraq War veteran whom ICE illegally detained for three days, and who has spoken out and sued the government for its mistreatment of him and his family
Bob Hilliard, the 101-year-old World War II veteran who fought fascism on the European continent and refuses to stand idly by while it threatens to reemerge on this one
Josie Walsh, a musician who was attacked by ICE and shot with a “less lethal” round through her guitar, because she dared to play it at a peaceful protest outside an ICE facility in Chicago
Ronn Easton, who served his country honorably in Vietnam and has been a leading voice against Trump’s arch, which would be a slap in the face to the memory of his fallen comrades
Then we set out to spread these messages of courage throughout the country, to inspire the millions of Americans who were watching Trump’s authoritarian playbook unfold, but felt powerless to do anything about it. We partnered with the No Kings movement and ran ads in hundreds of local newspapers across the country, mobilizing Americans to peaceful action. These demonstrations turned into some of the largest and most effective protests in American history, and sent a clear message of resistance and resolve to the administration.
We also ran hundreds of billboards in communities across the country to bring clear, compelling, straightforward messages directly to the people: The administration is lying to you. The Iran war is a disaster. Trump’s tariffs are why you can’t afford gas and groceries. Trump cares more about Putin and the ballroom than he cares about you. He’s covering up the Epstein files, when he promised to do the opposite. In all of these campaigns, we cut through the noise and leveled with the American people, while the administration desperately tried to spin and obfuscate.
As tens of thousands of poorly trained, hyper-aggressive masked ICE agents fanned out across the country to occupy blue cities disfavored by the president, we stood with those communities. We called on ICE agents to remove their masks and act like they were there to protect and serve, rather than terrorize and harass. And we called, loudly and repeatedly, for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to be removed from office for her disastrous and morally bankrupt leadership of that agency. She ultimately was fired and left the agency in disgrace.
We blanketed the country with wall-to-wall economic messaging as part of our Sticker Shock Summer campaign, connecting Americans’ cost-of-living concerns with the Trump administration’s disastrous policy agenda. This project included helpful tools for people to calculate just how much of their household budget was going toward Trump’s follies, and included our viral “roll-up” ad spoofing the old “roll-back” commercials at the big box stores.
And we built out new projects designed to make abundantly clear to people just how much of a failure this administration has been—by its own standards. We created AboutTwoWeeks.com, a tracker of all of the times Trump lied about the Iran war being over in “about two weeks,” and connected it back to the impacts the war is having on people’s pocket books.
We also rolled out The January 6 Memory Project, a searchable database of files that the Justice Department desperately tried to scrub from its website. Headed by Tom Joscelyn, principal author of the House’s January 6 report, this will serve as a living reminder of what took place that day, and the continuing need for accountability for those responsible.
A blue wave this massive only happens as a result of a huge amount of time, effort, and energy from earnest, dedicated, well-meaning people who are determined to create a better country and a brighter future for themselves and their children. If you’ve been with us for any portion of this journey, you are one of those people. Thank you for helping show America that a better version of ourselves is truly possible, and for delivering a definitive rebuke to those who have been busily shredding our constitutional order over the past several years.
Now comes the next chapter. It can be tempting to rest on our laurels after a victory this big, but we simply can’t afford to do that right now. Yes, we’re in position to finally get some accountability for those who have been using public office to enrich themselves, and to stop some of the administration’s worst excesses. But we have to continue working to ensure that happens. Any letup will only open the window for the authoritarians to regroup and consolidate their position. To let that happen would be a betrayal of all of the hard work that got us to this point.
So take a moment, celebrate how far we’ve come, and then get ready to fight back once again. This blue wave showed us what’s possible when patriotic Americans refuse to back down. Now it’s time to finish the job.
Home of the Brave exists to show Americans the real-world consequences of this administration’s policies, and to highlight what bravery looks like in defense of American democracy.