The Spirit of ‘26

As 2026 begins, Americans are faced with a stark choice: Bow to the inevitability of long-term authoritarian control of the country, even as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or find the same strength of spirit in ourselves that led those 18th-century revolutionaries to resist an increasingly oppressive government that had for so long supported them.

We’ve already seen that spirit alive, well, and thriving today on a number of fronts:

• Millions of Americans joined No Kings rallies across the country in April, June, and October.
• In September, viewers demanded that Jimmy Kimmel be reinstated after he was suspended from his late-night show for comments he made following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
• More than 650 college and university presidents signed a letter decrying Trump’s efforts to limit academic freedom. Trump had threatened to withhold federal funding from several leading institutions, including those engaged in medical and scientific research, if they did not comply with his demands.
• More than 500 law firms signed a friend-of-the-court brief in a case that opposed Trump’s executive orders imposing punitive sanctions on law firms that had represented perceived enemies of Trump and the radicalized Republican Party. The court struck down Trump’s orders.

Despite a legal system stacked in favor of Republican radicalism, courts overseen by judges appointed by both parties have ruled against Trump often enough to demonstrate that resistance is not futile. More recently, Trump dropped his efforts to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon following the Supreme Court’s ruling that he lacked the legal authority to do so.

With free and fair midterm elections clearly in their crosshairs, Trump and his party are doing all they can to tilt the playing field in their favor – from partisan gerrymandering to voter suppression to reducing opportunities for citizen-led ballot initiatives. They know if they retain control of Congress, they can further cement their power for years, perhaps decades, to come. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged the stakes when he opted to fight power with power, proposing the state’s own gerrymandered map to counterbalance a Republican gerrymander in Texas. Californians overwhelmingly supported the initiative.

In Indiana, Republicans in the state legislature voted against their own party, ignoring pressure from Trump and the national party to redraw the state’s congressional map to create more Republican seats. The vote provided one of the most visible signs that party loyalists are willing to break ranks and exercise their own forms of resistance in defense of our democracy.

Still, Trump’s assaults on the Constitution, the rule of law, and the country’s standing as a great global power did not let up over the holidays and may have grown bolder even as he ignored increasing opposition to his policies.

In particular, the Jan. 2 attack and takeover of Venezuela further eroded support among his MAGA faithful, who are feeling the impacts of Trump’s failure to rein in high prices at the grocery store and his support for increasing the cost of healthcare insurance premiums. Now, between his refusal to release the Epstein files and a foreign policy that involves financial bailouts of foreign governments and imperial conquest, they are recognizing his promises are empty, and his America First policy is a sham. As Trump and his cronies profit from stock market gyrations around his Truth Social posts, cryptocurrency deals, and outright corruption, many are seeing the overriding policy as Trump First.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press”, outgoing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said, the Venezuela attack “is the same Washington playbook that we are so sick and tired of that doesn’t serve the American people, but actually serves the big corporations, the banks, and the oil executives. And so, my pushback here is on the Trump administration that campaigned on Make America Great Again, that we thought was putting America first.” Greene, a long-time Trump loyalist, famously broke with the president over his broken promise to release the Epstein files.

Closer to home, Trump vetoed bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO), to fund a pipeline that would bring clean water to 50,000 people living in a rural area of Colorado. Speaking to Colorado’s 9News, Boebert said, “If this administration wants to make its legacy blocking projects that deliver water to rural Americans, that’s on them.”

She added that she hopes “this veto has nothing to do with political retaliation for calling out corruption and demanding accountability. Americans deserve leadership that puts people over politics.” Boebert is another long-time Trump supporter who broke with the president when she voted to release the Epstein files.

The question for 2026 and the critical midterm elections is whether the disillusioned Trump loyalists can find common cause with the Democrats and RINOs whose policies they’ve spent a lifetime vilifying. It’s worth remembering that, when it came time to write the Constitution, the revolutionaries of 1776 disagreed over slavery, “fair” representation, and state versus federal power, among other significant issues. And yet, together, they threw off the mantle of monarchy and initiated a grand experiment in self-rule that has persisted despite significant setbacks.