The start of a new year is a freighted time. We are looking forward and looking backward.
It’s a balancing act. The end of every year comes with idiosyncrasies and cargo. Who could believe that in 2025, Donald Trump would be rehabilitated and reinstated as president of the United States? Only this time, thanks to a popular majority of voters.
Trump ensured this departing year has been like no other. Wake me up next year. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect 2025 was all a bad dream or a bout of indigestion caused by sour shrimp or spoiled mussel.
The news flow of 2025 has been feverish, and next year, I fear, will be even spookier. We need a bit of comity. Please.
However, this year’s political goings-on reflect anything but comity. Comedy, perhaps, but comity? No way.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson seems intent upon running the ball down the field while his allies stand around looking for guidance. This fall, his city budget came out of left field and landed with a thud. The budget had to be rescued at the last minute by a renegade City Council majority. They will be loaded for bear in 2026.
Johnson’s meager spade work in Springfield was about as productive as planting a garden without tilling the soil. The mayor and governor are congenial as crabs in a barrel. Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker need to work together for Illinois and Chicago to prosper. The last year has shown precious little evidence of any comity between those two. It’s time for Pritzker to invite the mayor back to his tony Gold Coast abode to break bread and make some peace.
U.S. Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino watches as agents detain a man they found painting a house in Chicago’s Edison Park neighborhood on Oct. 31, 2025, during immigration enforcement operations. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
An even bigger nightmare here is Trump’s ICE parade. His emissaries from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are scouring the streets to hunt down law-abiding residents — who are mostly people of color. Housekeeping staffers, construction and day care workers, restaurant servers, taco vendors. For months, federal officers have been snatching hardworking people from the streets.
No criminal should get a hall pass. If the bad guys are here illegally, ship them out of town, pronto. Yet it’s clear that the vast majority of those who have been arrested are law-abiding residents, living quiet and productive lives.
They are the people America needs to keep its economic engine running. They are powering the so-called Trump economy. Ask small business owners if they can replace these workers. They are scrambling. Have you noticed the “help wanted” signs popping up in stores and restaurants across the city?
It’s time for the Trump nightmare to end. What a propitious time as 2026 arrives.
Slipping into 2026 mode should be easy. Leaving behind mountains of crummy political baggage should be a treat. The problem with the future, however, is that the individual responsible for so much destruction ain’t going anywhere. Trump has designs on political immortality.
The big number for 2026: Trump’s favorability ratings. They are sinking fast. At the end of his first year in office, Trump’s job approval rating stands at 36%, which is the worst level for any U.S. president at that point in time in the last 50 years, according to a new Gallup poll taken Dec. 1-15.
Now is the time to clip DJT’s wings. The upcoming midterm elections could be the pivot point to electing a Democratic majority. That would be a momentous change, but it could lead to extra-extraordinary political volatility.
2026 will be the year when the pols who hanker for the presidency will have to show their cards. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is flying so high, he may as well declare now. The media has already anointed him as a runaway front-runner to take on Trump. That is, if the two-term president decides to defy the Constitution and mount a bid for another round.
Other Democratic presidential aspirants don’t want Newsom to get too far ahead, but I predict that he is already out over his skis, and his ambitions will crash and burn.
That brings us to the White House wannabes right here at home. Pritzker has been aggressively laying the groundwork for a run, but he needs to lay back until Newsom fades.
For months, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has been boosting his profile on TV talk shows, podcasts and political speeches. He is considering a presidential run, so he says. There is no path for the hard-charging Rahmbo, who has permanently alienated his party’s progressive wing.
Back in Chicago, the “new” City Council made history this year, wresting control of the city budget from Johnson. The women of the council sported the biggest brawn in the budget battle. Look for them to rise as City Hall stars in 2026: Ald. Pat Dowell, 3rd, Nicole Lee, 11th, and Samantha Nugent, 39th.
They will flex their newfound muscles in the policy and budget brawls to come.
I will be blessed to have a ringside seat. 2026, bring it on.
Laura Washington is a political commentator and longtime Chicago journalist. Her columns appear in the Tribune each Wednesday. Write to her at LauraLauraWashington@gmail.com.
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