Listening to the standard legacy media suspects, one may assume 2025 was an apocalyptic wasteland of types — an authoritarian fever dream introduced on by the return of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Workplace. The fact regarded very completely different. This previous 12 months was, in some ways, a reasonably nice and clarifying one. Let’s take inventory of what occurred when our authorities remembered whom it serves, in addition to what unfinished enterprise stays as we flip the calendar.
First, the apparent: Political sanity was restored to the nation’s capital. After years of leftist elite-driven chaos — wide-open borders, hyper-vindictive lawfare, fecklessness on the world stage and extra — the nation has begun to revert again to first rules: nationwide sovereignty, regulation and order, and powerful management overseas. Beneath Trump, the USA has as soon as once more acted like an actual nation-state that pursues its actual pursuits — not a nongovernmental group with a nagging guilt advanced.
That reorientation has paid enormous dividends. On immigration, the Biden-era invasion on the southern border has tapered by greater than 90%. On power, a renewed embrace of home manufacturing has led to the bottom common nationwide gasoline costs in practically 5 years. Violent crime, because of Trump’s regulation enforcement operations and progressive use of the Nationwide Guard, has dramatically fallen: Murders decreased by practically 20% from 2024, and theft and housebreaking additionally noticed double-digit proportion decreases. Overseas, allies and adversaries alike recalibrated to the fact that the White Home as soon as once more means what it says.
Nonetheless, work at all times stays. Right here, then, is my 2026 want checklist.
Peace in Japanese Europe
The Russia-Ukraine warfare has gone on far, far too lengthy. The Trump administration has exerted great diplomatic effort making an attempt to orchestrate a peace deal, which stays elusive. A sturdy peace — one which halts the mindless slaughter on each side, respects Ukrainian sovereignty and accommodates reputable Russian considerations, and avoids a wider great-power conflagration — must be a paramount Trump administration overseas coverage purpose in 2026. Russia is the invader and Vladimir Putin is the better impediment to an enduring peace, however each side must make painful — if, frustratingly, additionally painfully apparent — concessions.
Victory on birthright citizenship
Again dwelling, a consequential authorized battle now sits earlier than the U.S. Supreme Court docket: the Trump administration’s righteous problem to the faulty follow of constitutionally “required” birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born youngsters of noncitizens. The notion that the 14th Modification, ratified in 1868 within the aftermath of the Civil Warfare, was meant to constitutionalize a world human trafficking magnet — granting automated citizenship to all youngsters born right here, together with these whose mother and father entered the nation illegally — is indefensible as a matter of plain constitutional textual content, the congressional historical past within the Home and Senate Judiciary Committees, and fundamental frequent sense. Certainly, birthright citizenship has been nothing in need of ruinous for the USA. A Trump administration victory would restore Congress’s rightful authority over circumscribing citizenship and take away a longstanding incentive for unlawful immigration.
Improved affordability and housing prices
Authorized victories imply comparatively little if odd Individuals proceed to really feel like they’re getting squeezed. Improved affordability have to be entrance and heart in 2026 — from the federal stage all the way down to states and localities. The price of dwelling will not be an financial abstraction; it impacts lease, groceries, little one care and the problem of shopping for a primary dwelling. Housing, particularly, calls for consideration. Housing coverage ought to reward provide, not suffocate it — slicing crimson tape and burdensome development charges, reforming zoning incentives, and curbing the inflationary spending that places upward stress on mortgage charges. A nation the place younger households can’t afford to place down roots is a nation courting decline — the very antithesis of Trumpian restoration.
Justice for Minnesota fraud scandal
The burgeoning fraud scandal over state and federal funds for little one care in Minnesota, together with at companies run by Somali Individuals — astonishing in scale — has turn into a check case for whether or not the rule of regulation nonetheless applies when politics get uncomfortable. Justice means following the info wherever they lead: recovering stolen taxpayer {dollars} and holding wrongdoers and abettors legally accountable with out worry or favor. To wit, with regards to abettors: What did Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Atty. Gen. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and different outstanding Minnesota politicians know, and when did they comprehend it? Furthermore, what did Kamala Harris — who picked Walz as her 2024 presidential operating mate — know, and when did she comprehend it? The Biden administration and the Walz administration started investigating these fraud allegations years in the past, and the American individuals deserve solutions to all these questions.
Tamed Communist China
Lastly, no want checklist might be full with out confronting the central geopolitical problem of our age: that of Communist China. Merely put, Xi Jinping and the Chinese language Communist Social gathering, who simply presided over their largest live-fire navy workout routines round Taiwan, have to be meaningfully deterred within the Indo-Pacific. Which means sustaining a combative tariff posture, implementing as a lot financial decoupling as is possible and emboldening key regional allies — resembling Japan — who share America’s curiosity in freedom of maritime navigation and diminished Chinese language hegemony. Many years from now, Trump’s presidential legacy might be partially outlined by how he dealt with the China problem. Now will not be the time to take the foot off the gasoline pedal.
This previous 12 months confirmed what is feasible when Washington rejects the politics of managed decline and reembraces the very best of the American custom and lifestyle. Allow us to hope we’ll see extra — much more — of that very same success on this new 12 months.
Josh Hammer’s newest e book is “Israel and Civilization: The Destiny of the Jewish Nation and the Future of the West.” This text was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. X: @josh_hammer
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