Cromwell

We won’t know if the conservative majority on the Supreme Court intends to use its bogus “major questions” doctrine against the far right until later this year. We already know, however, that the combination of “major questions” and the filibuster will make it impossible for the Democrats to govern effectively if they win the 2028 election. How can they deal with this problem?

They have two choices: abolish the filibuster and engage in the constant process of legislating that SCOTUS appears to have in mind; or either ignore unfavorable Court decisions or limit them to the actual parties to the case. Trump may well set the precedent for the latter option if he loses the tariff case and is ordered to provide refunds.

This will be one of the biggest issues in the 2028 primaries. After Trump and “major questions,” there can be no going back to the McConnell version of the Constitution, regardless of the risks.

With apologies to Julia Ward Howe.

BATTLE HYMN OF THE TRUMPSTERS

Our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Don.

The wokesters really hate him ’cause he says their right is wrong.

He dominates the country, and the immigrants are gone.

Our cause is marching on!

______________

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Our cause is marching on!

It’s customary to enter the new year with lots of optimism. Unfortunately, I can’t; things will either stay more or less the same or get significantly worse. Trump isn’t going to stop being an authoritarian or give up his reactionary policies. The GOP optimists could be right about the economy, but the balance of probabilities is against them. That means stagnation is the best case scenario.

Much depends on the outcome of the election. If the GOP outperforms current expectations, the following two years may be reasonably peaceful. If the Democrats win a clear victory, we are undoubtedly looking at two years of constitutional crises; the question then is whether Trump will retaliate by declaring an emergency, sending the military to run the blue states, and clamping down on dissent in the MSM and on the internet. I’ll address those issues if and when they arise.

The unknowns are pretty well known for this year. Here are my predictions:

1. VENEZUELA: We know for certain that Trump will continue to ratchet up the pressure on Maduro. The uncertainties are whether it will work, and if it doesn’t, whether Trump will launch an invasion over the objections of a majority of Americans. My best guesses are no and no; Trump makes a face-saving deal with Maduro over oil, drugs, and immigration and backs down.
2. CHINA: Trump clearly wants to make a sphere of influence deal with Xi which includes trade concessions on the part of the Chinese. Will it happen in 2026? I don’t think the Chinese are ready for it yet. I suspect it will happen in 2027.
3. MIDDLE EAST: Will there be another war with Iran, and will Trump join in this time? Yes, Bibi will launch more airstrikes, and no, Trump won’t join in. In the meantime, Phase 2 in Gaza goes nowhere fast, and while there is plenty of anger within Iran, there is no revolution–yet.
4. UKRAINE: The slog will continue until Trump either forces the Ukrainians to give in by siding openly and permanently with Russia or makes Putin moderate his demands by supplying more and better weapons. I predict that he will do neither and that the current trajectory of the war will consequently remain unchanged in 2026.
5. EUROPE: It is safe to assume that Trump will keep insulting the EU, which will do nothing meaningful in response.

The price of eggs got Trump elected in 2024, so why does he talk about “affordability” so disdainfully now? Because he doesn’t care about it, and he never did. The only thing that truly engages him is using his power to punish his opponents and show the world who’s the boss.

Even MTG has figured this out by now. So have the American people, minus the base, which is on board with the power trip. That will present a problem for the GOP in the midterms, because notwithstanding what Trump and Vance think, our elections are still decided more by swing voters than base mobilization.

1. ELECTION RESULTS: Trump doesn’t feel sufficiently threatened by the midterms to send troops to cities in blue states. As a result, the election is reasonably–but not completely–free and fair. The outcome is something between a blue ripple and a wave; the Democrats flip ten to fifteen seats in the House and two in the Senate. Constitutional crises loom for the next two years.
2. ECONOMIC STAGNATION: Uncertainty continues to prevail. Growth slows even further as a result of the tariff and deportation regime. If there is some sort of major shock–say, a big AI or crypto crash–it could be even worse. Trump, of course, insists that life has never been better, which doesn’t win him many fans among swing voters.
3. A MIXED RECORD IN THE COURTS: SCOTUS lets Trump fire anyone who is even debatably part of the executive branch except Lisa Cook, but rules against him on birthright citizenship and tariffs. Trump interprets the latter ruling as narrowly as possible to avoid giving refunds, which adds to the uncertainty referenced above.
4. LEGISLATIVE INACTION: Congress keeps the lights on but does little else.

Trump spent 2025 attacking and wrecking everything he despised. It was a very long list. He brought elite universities, museums, cultural institutions, and law firms to heel. He changed positions and openly advocated for Putin’s positions with regard to Ukraine. He stopped wind farms and threw lifelines to coal mine owners. He sent troops into blue cities on flimsy pretexts. He denied asylum seekers due process, evaded court orders, and sent immigrants to dangerous overseas prisons. He threatened war with Venezuela and bombed Iran. He cut Medicaid benefits and food stamps. He openly gave orders to prosecute his political and legal enemies; his DOJ complied. He intervened in administrative issues that should have been apolitical. He fired experts of all kinds when they didn’t support his agenda. He supported RFK’s madcap efforts to send public health back to the 19th century. He made it clear he had no interest in defending liberal democracy at home or abroad.

It’s an impressive list, if watching car crashes is your thing. Some of his supporters insist that the wrecking will now be replaced by more constructive, bipartisan efforts to build a new and fairer America. If you live in the real world, however, you know that the wrecking will continue into 2026, because that’s all the man knows how to do.

Some of the wounds he inflicted on the body politic may never heal. Thanks in part to the Supreme Court, the presidency now has more arbitrary power than ever before. For those “accomplishments,” Donald Trump is the man of the year for 2025.

A lengthy article in today’s NYT makes the point very clearly that DOGE caused plenty of disruption but saved very little public money. Does that prove the exercise was a complete waste?

Not in Trump’s eyes. DOGE was never about saving money; it was an effort to show the bureaucracy that any resistance to the reactionary presidential agenda on either policy or legal grounds would be met with swift punishment. In those terms, DOGE was a success.

The revolution in Syria was manna from heaven; Israeli policy had nothing to do with it. The continuing conflict in Gaza was a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat that cost Israel public support even on the right in the United States. The war in Lebanon, however, was a major victory, both tactically and strategically. It had the effect of removing the last obstacle to an attack on Iran itself.

The Israelis destroyed Iran’s defenses and damaged its nuclear program, suffering only minimal loss of life and property damage in return. Even better, from their perspective, they finally convinced Trump to join the party. The Americans used their bunker buster bombs and declared that the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated.”

Even now, no one knows for sure, but that assessment appears to be overly optimistic. Iran is humiliated and vulnerable, but it is not defeated, and it has not changed course. Israel’s attempts to inspire regime change have been a complete failure. Netanyahu is coming to Washington today to try to talk Trump into a joint effort to cut the grass, an entreaty Trump is likely to reject, given the opposition to the war from portions of the base and his assurances that the conflict is over and already won.

The war in the Middle East, for what it accomplished and what it didn’t, is the biggest story of 2025.

Trump insists he wants to end the Ukraine war. In this instance, there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. And yet, he is effectively prolonging the war. How is that possible?

If Trump would only take a firm, consistent position on the war, both sides would know where they stand and negotiate accordingly. Since he hasn’t, he gives hope to both the Russians and Ukrainians that he might, if manipulated carefully, come down completely on their side. It is that hope of ultimate victory that prolongs the war.

NATO may continue to exist on paper, but in the real world, it is as dead as a doornail. Why? Because the whole point of it is to use the American military to prevent Russian aggression against fellow liberal democracies, but Trump despises liberal democracy and thinks Russian aggression is just a normal fact of life. No one seriously believes American security guarantees can be relied upon at this point. Then what?

The French have a bomb, but the far right is likely to win the next presidential election, and it has little use for NATO. The UK also has nuclear weapons, but it isn’t even part of the EU, and the far right may win the next election there, too. The burden of protecting Europe from the Russians, therefore, will fall on the Germans.

Rebuilding a powerful conventional German military will be a slow and expensive process. The short cut would be to build a bomb. Given Germany’s, shall we say, awkward recent history, you would expect Putin to threaten a preemptive attack with both conventional and nuclear arms when he finds out about it. That’s when events in Europe start getting really interesting.

I noted in my introduction last year that I had less confidence in my predictions than usual. The caveat was appropriate; the predictions didn’t age that well.

1. NO IRAN WAR: I predicted that Bibi would push for war, but that the Iranians would snow Trump with promises while building the bomb. That was, in fact, the strategy, and it was working until Bibi decided to act unilaterally. Trump subsequently piled on when it appeared he could do so without much risk. The war was limited and, in the end, inconclusive. Bibi is now pushing for more grass cutting. Trump is unlikely to oblige.
2. GAZA WAR WINDS DOWN: This one was generally on target. The war is sort of over, but no meaningful political progress has been made, and none is likely in the near future.
3. UKRAINE WAR ENDS: I predicted that Trump would move from being an active party supporting Ukraine to a mediator, that Putin would be intransigent, that America would refuse to give meaningful security guarantees, and that the Ukrainians would accept a bad deal in the absence of better alternatives. Most of this has come to pass, but the war obviously isn’t over yet. We have heard that the American negotiators have agreed to guarantees similar to Article 5, but until Trump signs off on that, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
4. CHINESE RECOVERY: I thought Xi would finally agree to a large stimulus program to stop the rot. Instead, he doubled down on exports and alienated the rest of the world in the process.
5. MACRON RESIGNS: This one was a total bust. Macron won’t even agree to new parliamentary elections. As a result, the far right is in an even stronger position to win the presidential election in 2027; the public has no evidence of the right’s inability to govern and reason to believe that Macron, not the right or left, is the source of instability. This won’t end well.
6. AMERICAN IMPERIALISM: We may well be on the verge of a war with Venezuela. This one was mostly accurate; the timing is off slightly.

The argument has several components:

1. The new tax cuts will kick in;
2. The chaotic part of the tariff rollout will end, so a greater degree of certainty will return;
3. Foreign investment will increase as a result of the trade deals;
4. Interest rates will fall; and
5. The worst of the inflationary impacts of the tariffs and deportations have already been experienced. Inflation will cool significantly.

To which I respond as follows:

1. Most Americans aren’t getting a tax cut; they are simply avoiding a tax increase. Eliminating taxes on tips and overtime will only help a very limited number of people. The increase in the standard deduction for seniors will have a greater impact, but will be largely offset by higher costs elsewhere.
2. Trump and chaos are synonymous, because the whole point of his presidency is to show his opponents he has arbitrary power over them. There will be plenty more whimsical interventions in the economy, and the uncertainty will continue.
3. There will be plenty of foot-dragging on the investments that were contemplated by the trade agreements.
4. Many of the inflationary impacts of the tariffs haven’t been felt yet. There will be lots of very visible price increases in 2026. As a result, interest rates won’t decline much.
5. What if there is an unforeseen external shock? What if crypto crashes, as it often does? What if AI is a bubble? The Trump economy depends on these things not happening. Don’t count on it.

My predictions on domestic affairs were right on target. Here is the list, and what actually happened:

1. TAX CUTS: I predicted that, after much grunting and groaning, something like the BBB would ultimately be approved, which was correct.
2. SPENDING CUTS: In the same vein, we did see significant spending cuts in discretionary spending and in the less popular entitlement programs, and the deficit continued to be a problem.
3. TARIFFS: I was too optimistic about the universal tariffs, but I was right about the chaotic rollout of the programs and the impacts of the ensuing uncertainty.
4. DEPORTATIONS: I predicted that there would be plenty of terror, but that Trump would quietly tell ICE to back off on agricultural and food industry workers. There is an ongoing debate within the administration on the latter point, but for the most part, I would say my guess was correct. Immigrants everywhere have been threatened, but of the activity has taken place in the cities.
5. POLITICAL PROSECUTIONS: They have happened, as I suggested, but my prediction that Trump would lay off the most visible targets was wrong.
6. END OF THE BROMANCE: Right on schedule.

Here’s where the factions stand on Trump’s AI deregulation:

1. CLs: Go for it! Get government off the back of business and watch the economy fly!
2. PBPs: We’re not sure exactly where AI is going, but we’re sure it will reduce our labor costs and boost profits. Count us in.
3. CDs: This looks like a rerun of globalization. Big business will make huge profits, and workers will get the shaft. Plus, AI will be used by perverts and fraudsters against decent American citizens. We need sensible regulation before we let the big dog eat.
4. Reactionaries: Making a handful of tech entrepreneurs even wealthier at the expense of American workers doesn’t sound like a great idea, and we share the CDs concerns about perverts and fraudsters.

Trump has clearly sided with the CLs and the PBPs against the base on this issue. Expect it to be discussed extensively in the 2028 primaries.