Essentially, the "blue wave" means the Democrats have a majority in both chambers of Congress. They have broadcast widespread opposition to the MAGAgenda, and have the power to do so. Congress passes laws and confirms presidential appointees to executive offices. With Democrats in power, trumps agenda will no longer be rubber stamped by Congress, i.e. they have the power to refuse to confirm trumps nominees, pass laws to counteract executive orders, and control funding streams to rogue federal agencies. Unfortunately, there is not a blue veto-proof majority in Congress, so trump will likely veto a ton of legislation, but that's preferable to what the last two years have been.

Congress also has the power to open investigations into all the gross misconduct the administration has engaged in, as well as remove offenders from office.

Of course, it remains to be seen how much of these powers will be exercised, but we should remain hopeful.

To understand what the midterms mean, you first need a basic understanding of how the US federal government works. In an effort to be brief here, I am going to gloss over many details.

The federal government is comprised of three branches: Judicial (the supreme court), Executive (the president), and Legislative (congress).

The Legislative branch is bicameral; it has two entities: the Senate and the House of Representatives (commonly referred to as "the House"). The Senate has two senators per state, for a total of 100. The House has a number of representatives per state, roughly based on the state's population, for a total of 435 voting members.

In order for anything to have approval from the Legislative branch, approval from both houses is usually required.

Through a system of checks and balances, cooperation/approval from two of three branches is usually required to get anything done. Before the midterms, the *Republicans (aka "GOP") controlled all three branches.

Following the midterms, the Democrats now have a strong majority in both houses of the Legislative branch. In trump's first term, the Democrats had a slim majority in both houses, but a few Democrats in both houses were.... convinced.... to vote along Republican lines. With this wider majority, that's now less likely.

However, the Republicans still have a lame duck president determined to seize as much power as possible, a super majority in the supreme court who have already ruled the president is immune from prosecution, a wide majority of judges in the federal court system, and many loyalists is smaller government agencies, regulatory bodies, and lower levels of government.

So, while the Republicans no longer have control of all levers of government, the Democrats don't control enough to get anything meaningful done. They do now have the power to stop, or at least greatly delay, a lot more than they did before.

Impeachment may again be on the table, but I'm not holding my breath.

* Edited to remove pejorative and preserve informative tone throughout, though I stand by my assertion the party is comprised largely of pedophiles and their various enablers.

It is pretty important in that the House of Representatives and the Senate have their seats exchanged, and I believe they have the power to pass or reject laws (albeit the president can still veto). They can't immediately fix everybody's problems, but it is a step in the right at the very least! It's also super exciting that many Republican "safe" states have swung Democrat, including Texas (the big one), South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa (and others, like Florida, were a tight race)! People have truly voted "as if Trump was on the ballot", and it's a sign that they want change!

And Abdul Al-Sayed from Michigan is the first Muslim senator, and he achieved victory, despite the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby dumping tens of millions of dollars into the campaign against him and the Islamophobic rhetoric of the Republicans. He is advocating for universal healthcare (Trump calls this "communist") and the end of U.S. military aid to the Israeli war machine.

Note that I'm not American, so I could be wrong in some aspects here.

It doesn't restrict Trump, by himself, at all. Trump is the president, i.e. the head of the federal executive branch, which is by itself unaffected. Anything that Trump (or his successor) had the authority to do last week, he still has now and will still have after the new Congress is inaugurated.

What has been changed is the majority in the legislative branch, this means that all new federal statutes in the US will (after January) need to be passed by a majority in that new Congress, in which both houses have a Democratic majority, meaning that the Republicans can no longer pass new legislation all on their own.

Senators have a term of 6 years, but 1/3 of them are up for election every two years since their elections are staggered.

Members of the house have a term of 2 years and every one of them is up for election every two years.

That's where we are now. This is an opportunity for power to shift in Congress based on what the voters want.

Honestly, I don't expect much but a slowdown in the rate of terrible things coming out every day. We will need to continue organizing, continue building support networks, continue finding ways to protest, support our neighbours and get people prepared to fight for all our sakes. This is a positive, in that it drops a boat anchor that will keep us from falling deeper into authoritarianism... for now. It will not, by itself get us out of this mess. It will not undo the damage that's been done, and most importantly, it won't last forever. It's an opportunity to take a breath, regroup, and prepare ourselves for the hard work ahead.

Democrats in Congress isn't going to save anyone. It's just going to stabilize things, temporarily. It's a place to start, not a finish line.

Edit: What's far more promising is the number of state level elections that went blue. This is a massive opportunity to undo past state governments' illegal election fixing and corruption, pass electoral reform, and get serious about laying the ground work to keep someone like Trump from ever taking power again.