2026 hasn’t been going too well for the new Trump administration.
Republicans are likely to lose seats in the midterms due to historical patterns where the president’s party typically loses ground, especially when the president has low approval ratings, and boy does he.
Additionally, recent polling indicates that competitive races are emerging even in traditionally Republican states, suggesting a fierce fight for the GOP.
Adding insult to injury, the admin hasn’t done much to solidify support within its own base. In fact, several policy proposals and public stances have pushed some of their most fervent supporters.
Let’s dive a little deeper in to some of those failures.
Gun Control
In policy, this administration has been the least restrictive on gun control and gun rights advocates have been able to take a breathe of fresh air for once in over a decade. However, it appears to only be short lived. Multiple times now the Trump admin has taken a very authoritarian stance on the second amendment.
Most recently was the murder of Minneapolis protestor and concealed carry permit holder Alex Pretti who was gunned down by border patrol agents while attempting to defend a a female protestor from unwarranted assault by one of those agents.
2A supporters (including myself) have forcefully defended our stance that the second amendment is a means to keep Americans safe from government overreach and abuse and has stood fast in its fight to expand Americans’ right to carry concealed firearms in public and private spaces, even as Trump administration officials, and Trump himself, have stated otherwise.
That Saturday after the shooting, several White House officials claimed that the 37-year-old nurse had threatened the officers with a gun, and then argued that even if he didn’t use the gun, carrying one was an indication he was out to harm the officers.
Gregory Bovino, ex-border patrol commander, baselessly told reporters that Pretti’s goal was to “massacre law enforcement”. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, falsely said Pretti was looking to “inflict maximum damage” and kill law enforcement. Kash Patel, the FBI director, wrongly told Fox News it was illegal to bring a gun to a protest.
In a post on X following the shooting, Bill Essayli, a US attorney, argued: “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”
By the day’s end on Sunday, organizations like the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America had released statements calling for the shooting to be investigated, and pushing back fiercely on Essayli’s comments.
“It is essential that [the Justice department] conduct a complete, transparent, and prompt investigation so the public can fully understand what occurred and maintain confidence in the rule of law,” Gun Owners of America posted to X on Saturday.
“Responsible public voices should be awaiting a full investigation, not making generalizations and demonizing law-abiding citizens,” said the NRA.
“Bill Essayli’s comments were completely out of line and inappropriate,” said Bryan Strawser, chairman of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, a group that advocates for second amendment rights. “This is a horrible tragedy and it’s complicated by the fact that the messaging from the federal government has been very misleading and that causes a lot of distrust and disappointment.”
Essayli walked back his comments following the backlash, saying on social media his comment “addressed agitators approaching law enforcement with a gun and refusing to disarm”.
Trump on that Monday, however, was blunt: “I don’t like that [Pretti] had a gun, I don’t like that he had two fully loaded magazines, that’s a lot of bad stuff. And despite that, I’d say it’s very unfortunate,” he said while visiting a restaurant in Iowa.
In Minnesota, it is legal to carry a firearm openly or concealed with a permit, which Pretti had. Protests and public spaces like the street where the ICE enforcement was happening are not on the state’s list of off-limits places.
By the way, having “off-limit” places listed for public anything owned by the American taxpayers is unconstitutional and should not be abided by anyone, although that is a conversation for another article.
I’d also like to add in a little bit more commentary regarding the NRA which is notorious for pissing off 2A lovers.
When Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed a pedophile in a mob attempting to harm him at a riot in 2020 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he was embraced by the NRA and Gun Owners of America, who argued that Rittenhouse was acting in self-defense against and was being demonized in the news media and by people on the left because of it.
This is a stance I also stood with.
But when Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, was shot and killed in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old daughter by a police officer in St. Anthony, Minnesota, a suburb of St. Paul in July 2016, those same groups stayed silent or, in the case of the NRA, made a vague statement that didn’t mention Castile, who had a permit to carry, by name.
In my opinion, this discrepancy is an indication of the penchant of some of the largest national gun groups to put political views above common sense, whether it is the racial politics at the center of Castile’s shooting or the ongoing and escalating debate about immigration and crime in U.S. cities.
Both the Second Amendment Foundation, a second amendment advocacy group and law firm, and the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus mentioned Castile by name in their calls for an independent investigation. “We made a statement because it was the right thing to do, there was a core moral issue,” Strawser said.
The Minnesota group also spoke out about the 2022 killing of Amir Locke, a 22-year-old legal gun owner, who was shot and killed by Minneapolis police while they were attempting to execute a no-knock warrant on his apartment.
Election Rigging
The 2020 Presidential Election and even midterms were clouded by questionable acts and tons of evidence of fraud being committed. I covered it pretty extensively for a few years.
However, now it appears the tides have turned. With Republicans controlling the House and Senate (at least until this year’s elections), Trump is taking no time to attempt control of the election.
Last month, he proposed nationalization of the entire voting process, an extremely dictatorial and unconstitutional proposal. He claims that it is to prevent fraud which absolutely has been committed by the Democrats previously but rigging the entire election process for the other side is no better, and with this method is even more sinister.
The Trump admin can see clear as day that the odds of losing the House or even the Senate is pretty high. They are willing to convert the nation entirely in to a banana republic to prevent that from happening.
During an interview with MS Now’s Stephanie Ruhle earlier last week, Sen. Rand Paul expressed his thoughts on Donald Trump’s call to nationalize elections.
“That’s not what the Constitution says about elections,” Paul said. “There is some dispute that has gone to the Supreme Court about whether federal elections are different than state elections.”
“The Supreme Court did rule that, for example, Washington state can’t set term limits on federal officials if Georgia doesn’t. It has to be a uniform election law,” the Republican continued. “But, as far as the time, place, and manner of elections, that, under the Constitution, is a state activity. So, I’m not for nationalizing it,” he emphasized.
Paul also said he opposed Nancy Pelosi’s bill, which would have also nationalized elections. He added that, similar to that bill, he opposes Trump’s latest proposal, and any other bill from the current administration regarding nationalizing elections.
His comments came days after Donald Trump did an interview on The Dan Bongino Show podcast, where he said that the Republicans should “nationalize the voting”. He said, “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many as 15 places.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” Trump went on to claim that he won the election in several states, but that those victories were “not shown” in the final results.
In a later press interview, Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary, defended Trump’s statement.
“The president was referring to specific states in which we have seen a high degree of fraud,”.
Leavitt claimed that in states like California and New York City, non-citizens have the right to vote in the elections. She argued that any electoral system allowing these results is “fraud.” She highlighted, saying, “The SAVE Act is the solution to doing it.”
We certainly don’t need nationalized voting to stop illegal immigrants or in some cases, dead people from voting. Putting stricter control on mail-in ballots or ending them outright could do that with far less repercussions although the latter would no doubt make it harder for everyday working Americans to vote as well.
ICE Becoming the “Gestapo”
Secret police are a quintessential feature of authoritarian regimes. From Azerbaijan’s State Security Service to Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization, these agencies typically target political opponents and dissidents through covert surveillance, imprisonment and physical violence.
In contrast to the regular police and armed forces, secret police primarily use preemptive repression to thwart threats to the government.
In Nazi Germany, for example, Gestapo informants penetrated all levels of society, producing an atmosphere of distrust among those against Adolf Hitler. In Uganda, Idi Amin’s State Research Bureau employed sophisticated spying equipment and intercepted mail at the post office to root out supposed saboteurs.
In Syria, Bashar al-Assad relied on the General Intelligence Directorate to oversee a network of torture centers. And in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro has used the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Sebin) to spy on opponents overseas, often running operations out of diplomatic missions.
Since Trump took power in January, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has become a far more visible and fearsome force on American streets.
Though ICE is ostensibly still bound by constitutional limits, the way it has been operating bears the hallmarks of a secret police force in the making.
I’ve studied a good bit of historical and contemporary secret police forces extensively across Africa, Asia and Europe. They typically meet five criteria:
- They’re a police force targeting political opponents and dissidents
- They’re not controlled by other security agencies and answer directly to the dictator
- The identity of their members and their operations are secret
- They specialise in political intelligence and surveillance operations
- They carry out arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, indefinite detentions, disappearances and torture.
How close is ICE to becoming a secret police force? Let’s consider each of these criteria.
- Targeting Dissidents: ICE has used the pretext of combating antisemitism to target dissidents.
- Directly Controlled by One Man: While ICE does not report directly to Trump, the agency is controlled by people who have shown intense loyalty to him.
- Opaque Operations: ICE agents are increasingly operating in secret.
- Surveillance Capabilities: ICE is organized into two distinct law enforcement components, giving it both political intelligence gathering and surveillance capabilities.
- Unlawful Policing: There has been a stream of reports exposing how ICE is conducting arbitrary searches, arrests, interrogations, and indefinite detentions.
- Potentially Expanded Scope: Overall, the evidence shows ICE meets most of the criteria for being a secret police force which will most likely start targeting political opponents in the future.
Failed Economy
The main reason Trump won again is obviously because the economy has taken such a downturn since COVID. Or at least, that’s the public sentiment. In reality, it’s been degrading since the 80’s and Reagan administration. The fictitious stock market might be booming but the nation is suffering everywhere else.
Stagnant wages, a short supply of available homes which are extremely overpriced. Vehicles are overpriced. Utilities and energy costs are overpriced. The average American is being bled dry financially and half of the nation is surviving off of credit cards.
The Epstein Cover-Up
Recently, millions of pages of documents were released regarding Epstein and all of the elites involved in his sex trafficking operations.
Most notably so far have been his full interview with Steven Bannon, emails to notable elites like Bill Gates about his STDs and Elon Musk essentially begging to go to the island, and all kinds of weird videos involving Epstein, or random girls, many who sounded very young, likely underaged.
These same documents that mention Trump over one thousand times were said to not exist last year. These are some of the same documents that Attorney General Pam Bondi and new FBI Director Kash Patel claimed didn’t exist.
In fact, Patel lied under oath to the senate and all of the American people.
To date, none of Epstein’s co-conspirators have been arrested or imprisoned except for Ghislaine Maxwell who has received incredibly good treatment from the Trump administration, including a comfy cell at a much safer and cleaner federal facility.
She even received some new benefits by converting to Judaism apparently.
Anyways, Maxwell absolved Donald of any wrongdoing when she took part in a DOJ interview back in August which questioned his participation in Epstein’s activities.
“I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age,” she said, referring to her years of interactions with men who socialized with Epstein, her former companion. “I never saw inappropriate habits.”
Awfully convenient answer given that he is the only one who could pardon her, or at the very least, make her living standards a lot better, or a lot worse..
Racism
There has always been racists among the right-wing base. This is like calling water wet. However, Trump and his admin have for the most part, avoided any integration with notable white supremacists or segregationists.
This at least gave the impression that the administration was only focused on pushing Conservative policies that have a blanket effect on all Americans, not to the advantage of anyone based on their ethnicity.
Even though they’ve done things like threatening to cut off more than 42 million Americans (many minorities) from food stamps during the 2025 government shutdown and allowed prominent members like Vice President JD Vance and Trump to state outright lies such as claiming that Minnesota Somali immigrants were eating cats and dogs.
I’m sure the treatment of dogs and cats isn’t great in Somalia. The country is poor and in need of much better education. Not to mention that many countries don’t view dogs or cats in the same light as Westerners. The most notable example being the Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, China.
However, there is absolutely no evidence of such acts being committed by immigrants here in the United States and if there was, I would see absolutely no problem in having those people deported, imprisoned, or even turned in to nutrient enriched soil.
The most recent debacle with Trump reposting an AI slop meme video portraying the Obamas as monkeys was just straight up, blatant racism. Of course press secretary Karoline Leavitt came up with some ridiculously stupid excuse that a staffer made a mistake.
I doubt it.
Hell, the fact that it was in the staffer’s recommended feed is already enough evidence.
Conclusion
To conclude, this past year under the Trump administration has been an eventful one, filled with a lot of political drama and corruption.
Unfortunately for them, many of the actions committed by the current White House, Republican majority House of Representatives, and Republican-led Senate have made decisions that have had a huge impact on the American people.
Even the wealthier or well-off are feeling the weight of the economy.
2A advocates are feeling less and less protected by this admin and starting to see little difference from the anti-gun Democrats.
Everyday folks are seeing their law abiding immigrant neighbors and co-workers being disappeared while a lot of the worse criminals are still running free because they don’t show up to court or provide paper trails for the government. Business owners are being smashed by the realities that they can’t afford to pay American wages and benefits to replace illegal immigrant workers without increasing costs for consumers dramatically.
The left has slowly been transitioning from socialism to communism while the right has increasingly pushed for the equally radical fascist side of the authoritarian coin.
And now every American can see that the claims from “conspiracy theorists” for years like Alex Jones about massive pedophile rings involving the most powerful people on the planet weren’t theories at all.
Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Noam Chomsky. A Democrat, a Republican, and a Socialist. All three opposing major parties, yet all three with leaders that are involved in raping underaged girls.
Libertarians aren’t going to save the world anytime soon either. Hell, many of them are straight up pedophiles and want to lower the age of consent.
Sadly, there aren’t many good guys in politics, if any at all.
Even many of those who exposed this sick reality, including Alex Jones himself have completely sold out. After the ridiculous verdict against Infowars and Alex in regards to his accurate questioning of the Sandy Hook shooting hoax, Infowars was essentially bankrupted.
Jones clearly had nowhere else to turn to financially and was saved by Trump. Turning against him would mean utter destruction for the mighty conspiratorial news empire.
It’s a sad state of affairs for the United States. We can only hope that the coming generation of leadership (Millennials and Gen Z) are able to make a change for the better.
Although, things aren’t looking to good, for the right-wing or America.
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/trump-administration-gun-rights-groups-minnesota-shooting
- https://www.mandatory.com/news/1726557-donald-trump-call-nationalize-elections-rand-paul-react
- https://theconversation.com/how-ice-is-becoming-a-secret-police-force-under-the-trump-administration-255019
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