Congress

Place Your Bets: A 2026 Political Quiz

Published

8 months ago

December 31, 2025

In the spirit of the late William Safire’s long-running “Office Pool,” I bring you this column’s predictions for 2026 — from Senate races to unexpected congressional resignations, and even the future of a certain controversial new college football hire.

To make it easier, and have some fun, the soothsaying is multiple choice. Feel free to answer yourself, but worry not, accountability-seekers: My guesses will also be included under each question, along with some context. Yes, I’m borrowing an earlier era’s format. But the same can be said about end-of-year columns as is said for old yarns: no new stories, only new audiences.

So with hopes that this will be new to most and bring back fond memories for others, let’s get to the guessing: 16 for ’26.

1) What Washington landmark will President Donald Trump name after himself in conjunction with America’s 250th birthday?
A) Dulles Airport
B) The Dulles Airport “people-movers”
C) Arlington Memorial Bridge
D) The National Mall

2) Should Justice Samuel Alito retire, or another vacancy open on the Supreme Court, who will Trump appoint?
A) Jeanine Pirro
B) Andrew Oldham
C) Aileen Cannon
D) Ted Cruz

3) How soon after appointing his new “My Kevin” — Kevin Hassett or Kevin Warsh — as Federal Reserve Chair will Trump pressure him to lower interest rates?
A) In the Truth Social post announcing his selection
B) In his remarks at the White House event making it official
C) In response to shouted press questions at said White House event
D) Never — Trump will fulfill his New Year’s resolution respecting the traditional independence of the Fed

4) Now that he’s ordered strikes on targets in Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Yemen and over the Caribbean, what country will Trump attack next?
A) Venezuela
B) Iran, again
C) Russia
D) Canada, and specifically the provincial capitol building in Toronto, should Premier Doug Ford run another tariff ad on American TV

5) Trump will endorse the winning candidate in which Republican primary?
A) Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District, represented by Rep. Thomas Massie
B) Indiana State Senate District 37, represented by Rod Bray, the president pro tempore who defied Trump’s redistricting demands
C) U.S. Senate in Texas
D) U.S. Senate in Louisiana

6) For all of the attention Democrats are lavishing on the Texas Senate campaign, which other Senate races will have a closer final margin in the general election?
A) Maine
B) North Carolina
C) Ohio
D) Nebraska
E) All of the above

7) Which 2028 Democratic presidential hopeful will unwittingly hurt their candidacy by writing a book?
A) Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, by revealing he’s still doing self-discovery in his late-50s
B) Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, by revisiting the arson of the governor’s mansion so much that a tragedy becomes an origin story for a campaign — and without much subtlety
C) Former Vice President Kamala Harris, by confusing book tour crowds and enthusiasm for the notion that Democrats want to relive anything relating to 2024
D) Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, by showing, again, that he’s the smartest kid in class and affirming his future in appointive, not elective, politics

8) After next year’s election, the Trump-ordered redrawing of red state House maps and subsequent arms race will be seen as:
A) A political masterstroke
B) Having helped Democrats retake the House
C) The hinge point marking Trump’s slide from full control of the GOP
D) Close to a wash: Republicans picked up a few seats but between the Trump-imposed redraw and the new maps enacted after the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act, the GOP got greedy and imperiled a few incumbents who lost in a difficult year after their previously-safe districts absorbed more Democrats.

9) Which House Republican, after Marjorie Taylor Greene, will resign before this session of Congress is over?
A) Rep. Don Bacon (Neb.)
B) Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.)
C) Rep. Victoria Spartz (Ind.)
D) Rep. Cory Mills (Fla.)

10) By the end of 2026, which Republican will emerge as the best-positioned to challenge J.D. Vance for the 2028 GOP nomination?
A) Ted Cruz
B) Ivanka Trump
C) Tucker Carlson
D) Marco Rubio

11) The first major Trump appointee to leave his or her post will be:
A) Kash Patel
B) Kristi Noem
C) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
D) Pete Hegseth

12) Who is finally able to convince Trump that Vladimir Putin has no interest in stopping the war and only wants to string Trump along?
A) Marco Rubio
B) Alex Stubb
C) Sylvester Stallone
D) Jared Kushner

13) What “known unknown” will take place in 2026?
A) China invades Taiwan
B) Russia finds a pretext to attack another neighbor
C) Lula and Trump begin to hit it off, and Trump offers the leftist leader his “total and complete endorsement” ahead of Brazil’s fall election
D) The west endures irregular but persistent terrorist attacks from non-state actors, like the massacre in Sydney

14) Democrats will flip the governorship of which state?
A) Florida
B) Ohio
C) Iowa
D) Alabama

15) NVDA shares will close 2026 at?
A) $300
B) $250
C) $175
D) $37 — the tech bubble finally bursts

16) The results from season one of the Lane Kiffin Experiment at LSU will be:
A) Drama and a debacle of a year
B) Drama and just good enough of a season to make the playoffs
C) Drama and dominance, with the Tigers poised to win the national title
D) Incomplete because Lane’s interest in hot yoga takes him away from football and he leaves Baton Rouge to embark on a midlife-crisis Eat Pray Love — but with naan, Hinduism and a nice co-ed on the subcontinent

Congress

Trump pollster says Abdul El-Sayed’s polling lead is a ‘fake narrative’

Published

2 days ago

August 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A top pollster for President Donald Trump is pushing back on recent public polling showing Republican Mike Rogers trailing progressive Abdul El-Sayed in the marquee Michigan Senate race.

Tony Fabrizio, who is conducting polling for Rogers, says the polls released this month are over-sampling Democratic-leaning voters, specifically college-educated and Black voters, according to an internal memo obtained by Blue Light News. A Susquehanna poll released this month showed El-Sayed leading by seven points and a TIPP poll showed him leading by four points.

El-Sayed’s lead in those polls is a “fake narrative,” Fabrizio wrote. His polling for AARP — conducted alongside Democratic firm Impact Research — showed the race essentially tied.

The warning follows huge polling misses in the Democratic primaries in the Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida, which he wrote were “some of the most egregious examples of public polling failures in recent memory.” It’s also a sign that Republicans are wary of the string of bad polling numbers for Rogers in the race, which is crucial for determining control of the chamber.

Jim Lee, CEO of Susquehanna Polling and Research, told Blue Light News that the firm did not oversample any demographics. “I think their head is in the sand,” Lee said, noting in part what he said was a gap in enthusiasm between Democratic and Republican voters this cycle.

TIPP didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Fabrizio, in the memo, argued on the Susquehanna poll: “50% of the sample in this survey is college-educated – making them massively overrepresented to what they should be. We took a look at 2022 and 2024 Exit Polls and VoteCast data and, as shown below, there is no indication that the Michigan electorate will be anywhere near 50% college-educated. In fact, it is unlikely they will be even 40% college-educated.”

He also noted “a huge gap” between college-educated and non-college educated voters.

“This was the driving issue of the public polling misses for President Trump in 2016 and 2024, especially in the Upper Midwest states of Michigan and Wisconsin,” Fabrizio added. “By increasing college-educated voters by 10+ points, and thus decreasing non-college educated voters by the same, we can pretty much guarantee this poll is significantly overestimating El-Sayed’s vote share.”

Congress

White House, hemp lobbyists bet on shutdown politics to delay ‘diet weed’ ban

Published

2 days ago

August 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump and hemp industry lobbyists are hoping to win a final vote on Capitol Hill next week to skirt a ban on intoxicating products — with shutdown politics as leverage.

Nine months ago, Congress cleared a bill to close a loophole created in 2018 that allowed the sale of some hemp-derived products containing types of THC colloquially known as “diet weed.” That ban is supposed to take effect in mid-November, or roughly 11 weeks, to limit overall THC levels in hemp products that can get people high — including gummies, canned drinks, pills and vapes.

But Trump and industry leaders successfully lobbied Senate leaders to add language to a government funding patch earlier this month to delay the ban until mid-December, with the administration promising instead to finalize regulations cracking down on how the products are made and sold.

Now House Republican leaders are aiming to clear that bill for Trump’s signature early next week, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And many GOP lawmakers are not pleased at the prospect of being rolled.

Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) told reporters last week that he expected House lawmakers would “iron out” some “sticking points” with the Senate-passed funding bill, “particularly the hemp issue,” rather than pass the legislation without changes — which appears to be GOP leadership’s current plan.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) was more blunt: “it is morally reprehensible to threaten a shutdown over a loophole Congress agreed to close to less than a year ago,” he said in a statement Thursday.

Yet despite fierce pushback from lawmakers warning that the intoxicating products are harming Americans, hemp industry leaders are preparing for a victory, betting members of Congress ultimately care more about swiftly passing legislation to avert a Sept. 30 government shutdown before the midterms.

“Any effort to try to shut down the government — over a one-month delay on a hemp issue — I don’t think is going to fly well with most members of Congress,” Jonathan Miller, a top lawyer for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable advocacy group, said in an interview this week.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its plans for imposing new rules on hemp products in the coming months. But the Trump administration is expected to need more time than mid-December to finalize regulations, so hemp industry representatives are discussing a “regulatory bridge” that would impose temporary rules while continuing to avoid a full ban, according to Miller.

That could include restricting purchase to adults age 21 and older, blocking imports from China, mandating certain manufacturing practices, cracking down on copycat products that look like popular candy or potato chips and requiring transparency in product labeling.

While lawmakers have been back home over their summer break, hemp industry leaders have fanned out across the country to make their case for this plan. “The hemp industry does not have an August recess,” Christopher Lackner, head of the Hemp Beverage Alliance, said in an interview this month of the group’s work to facilitate passage of the Senate-passed funding bill.

Trump administration officials have also been telling reluctant lawmakers they will use the one-month delay to work on regulations. “The White House has committed to me that they’re committed to regulate the industry,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) said in an interview this month.

Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), who fought in the Senate to retain the ban as originally intended, said White House officials have said “they don’t want another extension, and I agree with that.”

In a statement, Ricketts said that “manufactured high-THC products like gummies and drinks are putting our kids in the hospital” and need to be taken “off our shelves.”

Some supporters of the ban say the White House and industry are just employing delay tactics to get to December, when lawmakers will face another pressure campaign to delay the ban while they are motivated to avert a shutdown before leaving town for the holidays.

“What they’re really after is to try to jam this on some must-pass, end-of-the-year funding,” Budd told reporters earlier this month. “That’s really what this is about.”

Budd fought to block the delay in the Senate as part of the government funding measure, but his amendment to that end was shot down 61-32 before the chamberpassed the legislation, sending it on for House action.

Trump personally called Budd after the senator filed the amendment and talked about creating federal regulations for hemp products, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.

Days later, Budd demanded a vote on the amendment anyway and continues to slam the hemp industry.

“It is clear that businesses that sell unregulated, intoxicating products will stop at nothing to protect their bottom line, even at the expense of children’s health and safety,” he said in a statement this week.

Besides lawmakers fighting to ban intoxicating hemp products, others are pushing alongside the White House and industry for federal regulations.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-W.Va.) has crafted legislation that would direct the Food and Drug Administration to create federal rules for intoxicating hemp products and wants to see mandates for third-party testing, as well as new THC limits per serving.

Griffith told reporters Thursday the “deadline push” in the Senate-passed government funding measure “is not long enough” to finalize necessary regulations.

Since state limits for THC vary widely throughout the country and the federal government has taken years to step in since the hemp loophole was created in 2018, Griffith argued it makes more sense to regulate the intoxicating products than to enact a federal ban.

“That horse is out of the barn,” he said. “What we need to do is corral it.”

Kelsey Brugger, Amanda Friedman and Rachel Shin contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump’s MAGA Inc. to host first public event in battleground Michigan

Published

2 days ago

August 27, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s $400-million super PAC is taking its first steps into the general election: hosting a public event in battleground Michigan, headlined by Vice President JD Vance.

Battleground Republicans have been clamoring for Trump’s MAGA Inc. to spend in competitive races. The Michigan event is an early indicator of how the massive group might seek to use its funds to help the party keep control of Washington.

Vance will be joined in Sterling, Michigan, on Monday by GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers, 10th District nominee Mike Bouchard Jr. and gubernatorial nominee John James, along with several other Michigan Republicans, according to an event advisory from MAGA Inc.

The GOP sees Michigan’s open seat as its best Senate pickup target this fall as Rogers faces former public health leader and progressive Abdul El-Sayed, who emerged from a grueling primary earlier this month.

“MAGA Inc. will be hosting events throughout the nation to ensure that Republicans retain control of Congress in order to finish cleaning up the mess the Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer Democrats left,” said Alex Pfeiffer, spokesperson for MAGA Inc. “We’re not going back to their record inflation, open borders, and surging crime.”

MAGA Inc. is sitting on more funds than any other super PAC, and Republican donors and battleground candidates have been hoping it will unleash that money to help the party keep control of the House and Senate.

So far, the group has only spent only a few million dollars out of its massive fundraising haul, and its funds have largely gone to competitive Republican primaries. Most recently, it spent $827,000 on phone calls and text messages to boost Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) in the state’s special primary.