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Happy New Years Eve, readers.
With no disrespect to the gods, and the pride they take in blindsiding us, the outlook a year ago was grim, which made predicting the future relatively easy.
The outlook on 2026 is much murkier. Donald Trump is weakened and unpopular. His opponents have regained at least some mojo. He is most erratic when he’s endangered. But he has played his cards aggressively and stupidly. He thus has fewer degrees of freedom and the moves he does make are likelier to meet a growing resistance.
What does that all add up to? I have no idea! But I’ll hazard some guesses.
Either Bari Weiss will be driven out of her position at CBS or there will be an exodus (including from 60 Minutes) that wrecks its news programming, such that its owners can transform it into a right-wing propaganda generator. But the unstable equilibrium that drove the recent CECOT segment fiasco will not last the year.
Netflix will decide its bid for Warner Bros isn’t worth the trouble. Instead of countering the hostile-takeover bid from Trump-aligned Paramount, it will accept the $2.8 billion contingency fee written into the terms of the sale. The fate of CNN will then be contingent on the fate of CBS. If journalists wrest control over CBS News back from Weiss, the Ellisons will turn CNN into Fox News, Jr. If Weiss prevails, there will be no need for the Ellisons to compete with themselves. They’ll sell CNN off or fold it up.
SCOTUS will void Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order and his tariff regime. The Republican majority will also hold that Trump can fire basically every Senate-confirmed official in government without cause except for those who serve the Federal Reserve. Stephen Miller will respond to the first outcome by devoting immense resources toward denaturalizing as many citizens as he can. Trump’s economic team will respond to the second decision by reimposing some tariffs, citing different, dubious legal authorities—but the new regime won’t be nearly as regressive or distorting, and it, too, will be subject to Supreme Court reversal.
The economy will nevertheless continue to deteriorate.
That’s in part because Trump will nominate (and Senate Republicans will confirm) Kevin Hassett to chair the Fed, and will fabricate false cause to fire Fed board members. Monetary policy will become somewhat adrift, but not too much, as Hassett et al find themselves in the same bind as Jerome Powell: if they lower the federal funds rate to appease Trump, they’ll generate inflation. Unfortunately for all of them (and us) public confidence in Fed independence will be shattered; the damp blanket on the economy will become sopping wet.
Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas will both retire; Trump will nominate Aileen Cannon to replace one of them, but she will have to withdraw from consideration and accept an appeals-court vacancy instead, because she’ll lack the votes for Supreme Court confirmation.¹
Kristi Noem will get pushed out as Homeland Security secretary.
There will be at least one more government shutdown.
Russia will continue its assault on Ukraine; there will be no armistice by the end of the year, though battlefield casualties will diminish for the simple reason that so many warfighters have already been killed. Trump will walk away for real. Europe will pick up at least some of the slack and in return benefit from Ukrainian strategic briefings on effective modern drone warfare—intelligence that will be withheld from the United States for at least as long as Republicans remain in power.
The hawkish and xenophobic arms of MAGA, represented by Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, will find synthesis: An illegal war for oil against Venezuela, passed off falsely as a war against “narcoterrorists,” which will give Stephen Miller another run at Alien Enemies Act removals. This scheme will seem to work for a while, perhaps for the whole year, but between its criminality, the high risk of quagmire, and vulnerability to legislative and judicial checks, will prove incredibly unstable.