Americans are sour on the economy, and Trump and the GOP are suffering because of it. In the December NPR/PBS News/Marist poll, 63% of respondents said the country is headed in the wrong direction. Trump gets just a 38% approval rating overall and an even lower 36% for his handling of the economy. A majority of people think the country is already in a recession, even though technically it isn't.
The prime minister will give a speech in the coming days focusing on how his government is bringing down living costs, highlighting recent cuts to energy bills and interest rates and the end of the two-child benefit cap. He will reinforce the message with a series of new year drinks receptions for Labour MPs at Chequers as he hopes to dispel angst about local and devolved elections in 2026, at which the party is expecting heavy losses.
CBS News's Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett joined his colleagues in offering predictions for 2026 over the weekend and warned of a brewing battle within MAGA over the regulation and spread of artificial intelligence in the U.S. noting that President Donald Trump has fully embraced AI while several major red states are starting to try and restrict it. Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan asked her panel of veteran CBS News reporters for their predictions for 2026.
In our hour, 2026 now looms as the critical moment, the time in which we will continue to have free and fair elections or not, will continue to have courts that uphold the rule of law or not, will continue to enjoy constitutional rights of citizenship and free speech and free press or not. For all Americans, very much including for journalists, the question for the year ahead is whether we will rise to the occasion.
I've got some tough questions for ya, Lahren warned Auchincloss in the program's first segment. Do you think Sen. Schumer has been an effective leader and do you agree with some of those colleagues we just heard from that it's time for that change? She was referring to the 17 Democrats in the House of Representatives that have called for Schumer to step down, in the wake of the deal to reopen the government earlier this week.
"We sent a message to every corner of the commonwealth, a message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country," Spanberger told supporters Tuesday night in Richmond. "We sent a message to the whole word that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our commonwealth over chaos."
President Donald Trump has spent the first nine months of his term bulldozing limits on his power, abetted by a supine Congress. What might be left of checks and balances after four years of unified Republican control in Washington is unclear. Trump sees winning a majority in the midterms as crucial to his agenda, and he is also worried about them, as demonstrated by his cajoling and badgering of GOP-led states to gerrymander House districts to aid Republican candidates.
"When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy," Musk said Saturday on X, the social media company he owns. "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."
