By By Raoul Manuel
The 2026 midterm results handed Democrats control of US Congress, a shift celebrated as a rebuke to the Republican Party. We recognize the organizing and electoral efforts of the American people, including immigrant communities who are fed up with Donald Trump’s role in aggravating the economic crisis and fuelling discrimination based on race and religion.
That backlash matters. It shows that ordinary people can band together to counter the ruling class’s tactic of using racism and religious hatred to break class-based unity among the oppressed sectors in American society. They cut through Trump’s divisive rhetoric to forward their common legitimate demands for economic relief and social services. They defended their communities against fascist immigration enforcement agents who spread terror among poor and migrant populations.
For Filipino migrants in the US, the elections were a test of dignity. They felt that migrants have been exploited as cheap labor, then terrorized in the streets. They are needed for hospitals, farms, kitchens and care work, but denied security and human rights. So Filipino migrants eagerly await that elected officials in the US Senate, House of Representatives, and state governments will deliver on campaign promises.
Fellow Filipinos in America expect the Democratic Party to echo its members who loudly call to abolish the fascist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and stop the brutal crackdown on migrants. They demand that the few progressives in the Democratic Party will boldly challenge the systems that withhold universal healthcare, housing, and social protection from millions despite the United States being the richest country in the world.
In the Philippines itself, many have been curious and closely monitoring the US midterm elections. As an American neocolony for 80 years now, the Philippines remains a direct subject of US foreign policy. So for Filipinos, the deeper question after the midterms is whether the machineries of US hegemony—military, economic, and ideological—will change at all.
For decades, Democrats and Republicans have differed in style more than substance on foreign policy. Both parties have treated the Philippines as a strategic outpost, a forward base for projecting US power in Asia and containing China. One speaks the language of human rights, the other of security and toughness, but both largely preserve the same imperial relationship: the Philippines as a compliant “51st state”, not an equal sovereign nation. For all the noise of partisan conflict in the U.S., the colonial logic abroad stays remarkably stable.
This means the impacts on the Philippines will likely remain grimly bipartisan. First, US military aid to the Philippines is unlikely to be rolled back anytime soon. It will take arduous convincing from few brave Democrats before their partymates agree to stop the already pledged US military funding for the AFP until 2030. Whether framed as deterrence or modernization, this aid deepens Philippine subservience and strengthens the logic of permanent dependence in the guise of “self-reliant defense posturing”. It keeps the Philippines tied to US geopolitical strategy and makes our country more vulnerable to being used as a pawn and risk magnet in a larger US conflict with China.
Second, counterinsurgency will remain a shared instrument of empire. Democrats may criticize excesses in tone, but many of them still lean on anti-terror rhetoric to justify support for programs like NTF-ELCAC and the broader security architecture that targets activists, organizers, and communities resisting state abuses and anti-people programs. The language changes, but the repression remains. Under this framework, dissent is criminalized, rural organizing is surveilled, and the poor are told that addressing systemic poverty and violence will turn them into security threats.
Third, there is little reason to expect a rollback of neoliberal pressure. IMF-World Bank logic still rules: foreign debt, austerity in social services, and liberalized market for imports. Whether the White House or Congress is red or blue, the Philippines is still pushed toward policies that weaken public services, suppress wages, and keep the domestic economy stunted.
As to the widely rejected Pax Silica, Filipinos took notice of some Democrats speaking against the explosion of AI data centers in the United States, especially where these projects drain energy and water and intensify corporate control. We Filipinos ask: Will they also stop US Big Tech corporations from exporting the same extractive model to the Philippines and other neocolonies where land, labor, and public utilities are again treated as inputs for foreign superprofits? Will they prevent US companies from treating the Philippines as a dumping ground for the environmental and social costs of their technological expansion, and as literal dumping ground for their electronic wastes? Time will tell.
So yes, the Democrats won. The election results provide a sense of relief to discontented communities. The results were a collective response to outright fascism by Trump. But after the dust settles, we face the reality that the structure of empire remains intact. The US global war machine will still be very much alive, and it will continue to inflict structural violence on the Global South. The US maintains to be an imperialist state under the one-class rule of oligarchs betting on two parties.
That is why change-making persists beyond the ballot box. Grassroots organizations in the US pledge to sustain their work after the midterm elections and keep on building people’s power against oligarch capture of US politics. After defeating the Republican Party at the polls, the task is for people’s movements to resist and change the systems that enrich the global elite of the US-led international order.
Through organized struggle and cross-border solidarity, we can advance national democracy and genuine liberation in the Philippines. The fight against imperialism, racism, militarization, and neoliberal plunder is one fight. It will take painstaking work in our country, in the United States, and across the world to win it.
This international solidarity will be displayed weeks from now. After defeating Trump’s Republican Party in the midterm elections, people across continents are preparing for Trump’s visit to the Philippines on November 16 as he joins ASEAN-related meetings and holds the QUAD security alliance summit with Japan, Australia and India. Trump will not only be welcomed with protests across the Philippines. Groups in the US and other countries will march as well to slam US wars of aggression and imperialist plunder.
In 2026, Trump and his loyal servant Marcos Jr. have become lame ducks clinging to power only through military and police violence. The people will not cower in fear: we will exert our collective strength to create a fair and just future.
