Welcome to a special holiday edition of the newsletter. Heading into the new year, I asked my colleagues from around NBC News to provide one big storyline they will be watching for. Their responses are below.
Programming note: Keep an eye out for another holiday edition in your inbox next Monday before we return to our regular schedule on Jan. 5. Thank you for reading!
— Adam Wollner
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10 big storylines to watch in 2026
Garrett Haake, senior White House correspondent: President Donald Trump describes the United States at the end of the first year of his second term as standing on the cusp of a “golden age” of economic boom times. But what if voters never feel it?
The White House has been trying to delay any reckoning of bad economic vibes for as long as possible. The president and allies argue that the full benefits of his “one big beautiful bill” won’t be felt until tax season and that by then, things like gas prices will continue to fall and tariff-driven spikes in some prices will level out.
But if the economic picture remains more complicated, how long can Trump defer responsibility to former President Joe Biden, to China, or to anyone but himself and the Republicans who control Washington? A dud of a tax season late spring, just months before the midterms, could be a disaster for the GOP.
Hallie Jackson, Sunday “Nightly News” anchor and senior Washington correspondent: Come 2026, plenty of experts will be tracking the latest economic indicators — the unemployment rate, inflation, grocery and electricity prices, and more. I’ll be looking closely at how voters say they feel about their financial situation — and who they blame for it.
I’ve spoken with Trump voters coast to coast this month, and some of them are feeling frustrated. One wondered whether the president can relate to her financial struggles. “Has he ever gone to the grocery store?” she asked. And while several said they’re willing to give the president and Republicans more time in 2026 to help bring prices down, another told me, about Trump, “I don’t blame him for the prices being high. I blame him for the prices staying high.”
Kristen Welker, “Meet the Press” moderator: I’ll be watching how the fight over health care plays out next year. Congress left town without a deal on extending Obamacare subsidies and pushed a vote in the House on a three-year extension to next year — something Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said “is not happening” in his chamber. Now, premiums are set to go up for millions of Americans. Which party will people blame? And how salient will this issue be in the midterms?
I asked Trump last week if he plans to roll out an official health care plan in the new year, and he told me that from his perspective, he’d already done that when he called for direct payments to Americans during his prime-time address. But the White House has yet to release specific details about how that plan would be implemented.
Ryan Nobles, chief Capitol Hill correspondent: 2026 is the last year Republicans are guaranteed to maintain control of the House, Senate and White House during Trump’s final term. Every decision made by lawmakers this coming year will be viewed through the lens of the looming midterms, making it even more difficult for GOP leaders to find consensus on government spending, health care, foreign policy and a wide range of other key issues.
Control of Congress will determine not only the future of Trump’s policy goals, but how much scrutiny the administration will face. If Democrats have a majority in either chamber, they would have subpoena power over Trump and his agencies, which could lead to confrontational hearings and document requests that pester the president as he attempts to build his legacy.
Jonathan Allen, senior national politics reporter: Trump spent his first year in office aggressively pursuing his agenda through the “one big beautiful bill” and executive actions, which have put the Republican House majority on tenuous ground heading into the midterms.
What I’ll be watching closely is what actions he takes to either soften some of those policies — by pulling back certain tariffs or providing subsidies that help certain constituencies, for example — or promote new policies that make it easier for GOP candidates to win.
Natasha Korecki, senior national politics reporter: I’m looking at whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol recalibrate their operations in the new year. While Trump and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have consistently called for more deportations, they are running out of time before running up against the midterm season.
There’s growing evidence that even voters who supported an overhaul to border security and immigration laws think the Trump administration has gone too far. In 2025, lagging poll numbers and lost elections did little to slow Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, which sent agents into cities including Los Angeles; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; New Orleans; and Charlotte, North Carolina.
While immigration has been a thorny political issue for Democrats, some 2026 candidates have seen an opening. In Maine, for instance, Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner has called for an end to the administration’s “secret police.”
Bridget Bowman, national politics reporter: Democrats have cheered victories up and down the ballot in 2025, but the fight for the future of the party will continue into 2026, with a slew of hotly contested primaries across the country divided along strategic, ideological and generational lines.
Open Senate primaries in states like Maine, Michigan, Minnesota and Texas will be key battlegrounds over the party’s path forward. And several House Democrats have drawn progressive, and younger, challengers as they seek re-election. The outcomes of these battles will help shape the direction of the party heading into the next presidential cycle.
Steve Kornacki, chief data analyst: Democrats’ surprisingly dominant performance in 2025’s off-year elections coupled with a late-year slide in Trump’s poll numbers has raised the party’s hopes that 2026 will bring a blue wave midterm, just like the one they inflicted on Trump and his party during his first term. But to do that, they’re going to need to reach far deeper into Republican territory than they did back in 2018.
Simply put, there just isn’t the kind of low-hanging fruit for Democrats that there was eight years ago, when 22 of the 40 House seats they netted were from districts that had already voted against Trump in the presidential election. This time around, there are only three GOP seats that didn’t vote for Trump in the 2024 election. In the years since 2018, maps have become that much more gerrymandered and the party coalitions that much more sorted out.
The result is that far more Republican seats are now insulated in districts Trump won handily. Democrats need only a net gain of three seats to flip the House, and there are more than enough targets for them to do that. But if they want to run up the score, they’re going to need a level of support from GOP-friendly voters that has so far eluded them in the Trump era.
Laura Jarrett, senior legal correspondent: 2026 is going to be the year the Supreme Court shows whether it believes Trump has gone too far. Whether it comes to tariffs, firings of federal workers or his effort to ban birthright citizenship — it’s all unprecedented and squarely at the feet of the nine justices.
If they say the administration’s view of the law is correct on these issues, it could radically reshape the federal government as we know it. If they say the president is wrong, it would be a sharp brushback from the same court that granted him broad immunity from criminal prosecution. Either way, it’s a confrontation to watch.
Andrea Mitchell, chief Washington and foreign affairs correspondent: A big foreign policy trend to keep an eye on is the significant downgrading of America’s close transatlantic alliance with European allies that has promoted peace and mutual security since World War II. The Trump administration has instead defined its national interest as the Western Hemisphere, with a major focus on Venezuela.
The White House seems poised to keep escalating its military pressure after blockading sanctioned Venezuelan oil, which could also weaken Cuba and Iran — regimes that rely heavily on the country’s oil. At the same time, breaking the traditional U.S. bond with Europe helps Russian President Vladimir Putin accomplish a long-held goal of dividing America from its NATO allies, which may not bode well for Ukraine’s future.
