2026 Is the Year Trump Stops Testing the Limits, and Starts Barging Past Them

This year is shaping up to be the most lawless, corrupt, and norm-shattering stretch of his presidency. When it’s over, 2025 will look more like a citation for jaywalking.

By the time Donald Trump’s first year back in office ended earlier this week, it was no longer clear what counted as a scandal at all. Actions that once would have triggered hearings, resignations or criminal investigations now landed with a shrug or feigned shock—if there was even time to muster a response before the next sh-tshow landed. Corruption was open, grift was ever-present, constitutional violations routine and abuses of power staggering. The guardrails all but disappeared.

But here’s the bad news: 2025 was just the warm-up. As the old saying goes, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

You might say what’s coming will be unprecedented. But that word has been used so often to describe Trump that it’s lost almost all meaning. What hasn’t lost meaning—at least, not yet —is the idea that things can still get worse.

They can. They will.

What matters now isn’t what Trump has already done, but what he is incentivized to do next. The reason is simple. Trump’s time is running out, both in his ability to operate unchecked and, possibly, in good or even below adequate health.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/2026-is-the-year-trump-stops-testing-the-limits-and-starts-barging-past-them/