2025 will go down as one of the bleakest years in the history of American democracy. US president Donald Trump’s first term in office was disturbing mostly for the things he said, but his second term has been alarming for things he has done. With a dedicated team of right-wing loyalists behind him, Trump moved with a shocking swiftness – and a total disregard for legality – to implement his agenda.
He called the National Guard and even the army to the streets of US cities. ICE arrested more than 200,000 suspected undocumented migrants, many of them abducted in raids at schools and workplaces. Trump launched an illegal – though effective – attack on American universities by withholding funds appropriated to them unless they complied with his demands. His tariffs, though often applied haphazardly, reshaped the global economy. His illegal shutdown of the USAid agency led to devastating humanitarian crises worldwide and, by one count, was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths.
With 2025 nearly in the rear-view mirror, what will 2026 hold for American politics? While it is impossible to predict the future with any accuracy, especially in such unsettled time, the following five questions will likely define the coming year:
War with Venezuela
If the British military was summarily executing fishermen in the Irish Sea – as the US is doing in the Caribbean – we might feel that we were already at war. In clear violation of international law, the US has attacked Venezuelan fishing boats, killing at least 87 people, without providing any evidence that they were smuggling drugs.
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Americans are now wondering if secretary of war Pete Hegseth ordered a follow-up strike in September on two shipwrecked sailors who had survived a first strike, an obvious war crime. But that is something of a sideshow. The real issue is whether the US will seek to overthrow the government of Nicolás Maduro.
Trump has openly mused about the possibility of a ground invasion of Venezuela, which would be a catastrophe on the scale of the second Gulf war. Maybe he is simply trying to intimidate Maduro into leaving office peacefully. After all, Trump has consistently understood the dangers of entangling Americans in land wars. Yet, there are key voices in his administration, especially Cuban-American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who see regime change in Venezuela as a prelude to overthrowing the Cuban government.
Even if the disaster of a military invasion can be avoided, destructive aerial bombardment of Venezuela now seems likely. While Trump has sought to disentangle the US from other parts of the world, he has vigorously reasserted the Monroe Doctrine of unrestrained US intervention within the western hemisphere.
Midterm elections
Democrats are poised to have a big year in the 2026 midterm elections, building on their electoral successes in 2025 and exploiting Trump’s deep unpopularity. Even given the advantages that gerrymandering gives to Republicans, it would be very surprising if Democrats did not regain control of the House of Representatives where Republicans now hold a narrow majority.
It will be more difficult for Democrats to win the Senate, which would require multiple wins in Republican-leaning states. But since senators serve for six years, 2026 could set Democrats up to retake both chambers of Congress in 2028.
Under Republican leadership, Congress has served as a rubber-stamp for Trump, abetting his authoritarianism by surrendering many of the constitutional powers granted to the legislature. A Democrat-controlled chamber would be a significant source of resistance to Trump.
Trump’s hold on the Republican Party
Trump’s political strength has been a hold over his own party so tight that it is practically unprecedented in US history. Yet there were small signs at the end of 2025 that Republicans were beginning to defy him, most notably in the vote to release the Epstein files.
Typically, a president in their second term becomes a lame duck following the midterm elections, especially if their party suffers serious losses. That is unlikely to be as true for Trump because Republican politicians will remain scared that he will endorse primary challengers against them and because he continues to talk as if he might – in violation of the constitution – run again in 2028. Still, even if Trump continues to evade normal rules of political gravity, odds are that cracks will appear in the Republican coalition as contenders line up to control the party’s future beyond him.
Political violence
2025 saw the separate assassinations by lone gunmen of a Minnesota state legislator and of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The main apologist for political violence in the US is Trump himself, who at Kirk’s funeral, astonishingly contradicted his widow’s Christian message and declared, “I hate my opponents.”
In addition to unleashing ICE and the National Guard on to American streets, Trump pardoned January 6th insurrectionists – including neo-Nazis and cop-killers – emboldening future vigilantes in his cause. And most recently, he launched an extraordinary outburst following the murder of director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Reiner, claiming the former died “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome”.
It is impossible to predict how, where, and with what effects political violence will surface in 2026. But in a country suffused with gun ownership and vicious political rhetoric, we should brace for further political violence.
Transatlantic relations
In 2025, Ireland was like a kid taking a different route to school to evade the neighbourhood bully. By staying out of Trump’s crosshairs, Ireland avoided worst-case economic scenarios as he settled on a 15 per cent tariff on EU goods with no special extortionate rate on pharmaceuticals. No deal with Trump is ever safe, however.
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Meanwhile, in December, the US president expressed open contempt for “decaying” European countries led by “weak” leaders. This followed the release of his National Security Strategy that called on Europe to “regain its civilisational self-confidence.” It conceived of “civilisation” in white supremacist terms, worrying that “within a few decades ... certain Nato members will become majority non-European”.
The Trump administration aims to strengthen the ethno-nationalist European far right, which hailed his call to Make Europe Great Again. How will Ireland, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2026, respond? Will it find a way to defend an egalitarian vision of Europe under attack from without and within, one that prioritises civil liberties, the free movement of people and human rights? Or, as seems more likely, will it play it safe in the hope that it can be spared from Trump’s wrath?
Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott professor of US history at Trinity College Dublin
