2026 Predictions

What will happen in 2026?

1. Clarence Thomas Retires From The Supreme Court

It didn’t happen in 2025.

Republicans have a solid Senate majority. It wasn’t an election year. There wasn’t any rush to replace a 77-year-old Clarence Thomas before he dies on the bench like Ruth Bader Ginsberg. I’m sticking with my prediction that Clarence Thomas will ultimately retire before the 2026 midterms.

2. Redistricting Is a Wash

Redistricting won’t determine the outcome of the 2026 midterms. Indiana Republicans defied Trump and forfeited the opportunity to redraw their map and eliminate the two Democrats who represent Indiana in the House of Representatives. The GOP advantage in redistricting won’t be enough to overcome Trump’s unpopularity with Independents and the usual midterm cycle of backlash politics

3. Thermostatic Politics Is Back

In early 2025, I was optimistic that Donald Trump might be able to break out of the crippling cycle of thermostatic backlash politics and cobble together a governing majority like FDR, but I also sensed that we were entering Gilded Age II. My optimism about Trump was always incompatible with my sense of where the country was going and where it in fact went over the course of the year.

Republicans are getting crushed everywhere in special elections … Miami, Kentucky, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia, etc. Donald Trump is deeply unpopular with Independent voters. There was an Atlas Intel poll which came out last night which showed that Democrats are up 16 points on the 2026 generic congressional ballot. This is more than enough to sweep away the Republican House majority and endanger the Republican majority in the Senate. The House map is also more favorable to Democrats than it was in 2018 because of the 2020 Census. Backlash politics will sweep away Republicans in 2026.

4. Donald Trump Remains Deeply Unpopular

There isn’t going to be a Donald Trump polling comeback.

Trump is now in locked in the same position that Biden was in last year. Voters have already made up their minds about the Republican Congress and Trump’s economy. There aren’t many events that could possibly change that between now and the midterms. Congress isn’t going to pass major bipartisan legislation. Trump’s big legislative win – the Big Beautiful Bill – was never popular. It isn’t going to put any wind in his sails. Inflation is cooling, but prices aren’t going to come back down. Voters will remain pissed off about the cost of living. There just isn’t anything in the cards that can alter our trajectory.

That’s what I said last year about Biden and Kamala. Trump and the Republican Congress now own the problem and will suffer the same fate because of their lack of any solutions. Trump didn’t betray his voters on the economy. He did everything that he said he was going to do on the campaign trail. He did tariffs. He cut taxes. He brought down gas prices. The stock market has been doing great. He just never had any solution to the affordability crisis that is the fatal flaw of his presidency.

5. Supreme Court Guts The Voting Rights Act

The Supreme Court will gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act when it rules on Louisiana v. Callais. This will empower Southern state legislatures to sweep away the Congressional Black Caucus by redrawing their DEI districts out of existence. Unfortunately, I think this will happen too late in the year to alter the course of the 2026 midterms, but it will have a huge impact on future elections.

6. Supreme Court Rules Against Trump on Tariffs

The Supreme Court will hand Trump a stinging defeat on tariffs, probably very early in 2026, which he has wielded in an erratic way that has them unpopular.

7. Supreme Court Gives Trump a Partial Win on Birthright Citizenship

The Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of birthright citizenship this summer and will throw Trump a bone by giving him a partial win on the issue. I’m expecting a defeat on tariffs, a win on the Voting Rights Act and a partial win on birthright citizenship.

8. Mass Deportations

2026 is an election year.

Trump spent his political capital on the Big Beautiful Bill which included billions in ICE funding.

The Trump administration will be stymied by a gridlocked Congress in campaign mode, but will predictably try to excite the base for the 2026 midterms by going hard on immigration. The easiest way to do this is to “Build the Wall” and crank up deportations. After a slow start in 2025, I think the border will remain secure and there will be immense political pressure to crank up deportations. I think the Trump administration will succeed in achieving “mass deportations” in 2026 because it can’t deliver on much else.

9. Democrats Win 2026 Midterms

The Democrats will retake the House in 2026.

It could possibly happen even before the midterms due to a wave of retirements. 2026 will be a “Blue Wave” year although that wave will crash into a House that has been drawn to protect incumbents and in which there aren’t that many vulnerable swing districts. The only complicating factor that I anticipate is the speed at which Southern states are able to redraw their maps after Louisiana v. Callais. While I doubt that Democrats will retake the Senate, I wouldn’t be surprised if the MAGA base continues to fracture.

10. Vivek Ramaswamy Loses Ohio Governor Race

Amy Acton will likely become the next governor of Ohio.

2026 is shaping up to be a terrible year for Republicans. A swath of Trump voters have never been Republican voters. They never show up to vote Republican in midterms and special elections. They didn’t show up to vote for Republicans when Biden was president at his worst in 2022.

Vivek Ramaswamy will lose a R+10 state because Independents will swing against him, Trump voters won’t show up to vote for him and because he will run a terrible campaign. He might succeed in buying the Republican primary, but he will struggle in the general election. Vote for me because I am an Indian scammer who thinks Americans are lazy and ought to be replaced by Indians will fall flat in Ohio.

11. Republican Infighting Gets Worse

Donald Trump will become a lame duck president in 2026.

Even before that happens, the GOP will begin to rip itself apart over the post-Trump future. The fighting which began around the time of the Iran strike is only getting worse. It certainly isn’t going to get any better with the 2028 campaign season just around the corner. The GOP establishment and MIGA have already launched a vicious campaign to retake the Republican Party after Trump leaves office. The plan seems to be to lose the midterms, blame the defeat on Trump and use the loss against Vance. Charlie Kirk’s assassination seems to have succeeded in removing a major barrier to this.

12. Alt-Right Remnants Coalesce

2026 will be the year that something finally changes on this front.

The Alt-Right died because Con Inc. changed after 2020. The former always depended on the latter for its existence and identity. Richard Spencer is correct to portray Charlie Kirk as a “reverse William F. Buckley.” He did everything in his power to adopt and mainstream Alt-Right talking points, to erase the old barriers, to coopt and domesticate the audience while keeping figures like Nick Fuentes at arm’s length. Charlie Kirk’s plan was to integrate the Alt-Right into Trump and Vance’s coalition. We spent years marveling at how much Charlie Kirk had changed and how he was “moving the Overton Window.”

Ben Shapiro is now trying to occupy the void that Charlie Kirk left behind in Con Inc. America Fest 2025 was full of declarations about the need for Jewish gatekeepers, purges, excommunications, denunciations, boundaries, how various factions of the Online Right have “no place in the conservative movement” for being racist and not supporting Israel enough, how “Heritage Americans” are woke, and so on. Shapiro & Co. want to lead a sort of Con Inc. fundamentalist movement and RETVRN to 2015.

Charlie Kirk saw the folly of going down this road and resisted pressure from his Jewish donors, but he is dead now and the coalition that he built to get Trump elected is crumbling.

13. Race Realism and Jewish Question Continue To Go Mainstream

The Con Inc. fundamentalist movement led by Ben Shapiro is a reaction to how radically the Online Right has shifted on race, Jewish power and Israel over the course of 2025. MIGA feels threatened by the collapse of the taboo on the Jewish Question that came out of Trump’s Iran strike. This trend will continue and will accelerate in 2026 due to generational turnover. Older conservatives are more philo-Semitic, Zionist and antiracist than younger conservatives. They watch more television. It is a shrinking audience.

14. Israel Returns To War

I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Israel will return to war – in Gaza, in Lebanon, in the West Bank, with Iran, somewhere – which has been the solution to all of Netanyahu’s political problems in the past. I also doubt the Trump administration will join Israel in returning to war. No one will “die for Israel” in 2026. There won’t be an American war with Iran. Republicans already have enough problems.

15. Political Violence Continues

I didn’t read enough into the Luigi Mangione assassination or the two attempts to assassinate Trump which foreshadowed the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Political violence was a feature of the Gilded Age. I’m expecting another big act of political violence in 2026 – an assassination, a bombing, a riot. It could manifest in any number of forms, but I expect the trend toward violence will continue.

16. MAGA Fails

Donald Trump will not succeed in “Making America Great Again.”

I’ve said this from the beginning in 2015. I supported him for other reasons … because he was a bridge to a better future, because he was so divisive, because he weakened Con Inc. After the midterms, millions of Trump supporters will have to reckon with the fact that the end is near.

In sum, 2026 will be a bad year like 2018 for Republicans or 2022 for Democrats. It will be another year of backlash politics punctuated with some Supreme Court victories.