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America’s political revolution ranks as the world’s greatest geopolitical risk in 2026, according to Ian Bremmer’s influential Eurasia Group.
In the past year, president Donald Trump purged career civil servants for political rather than performance-related reasons; sacked ethics watchdogs, inspectors general and independent agency heads; and transformed the Justice Department and FBI into political wings of the White House.
Media companies, law firms and universities faced lawsuits, investigations and shakedowns to whip them into submission.
As the Democrats appear poised to take the House in the midterms, “Trump and his inner circle will grow more, not less, risk-acceptant in their efforts to entrench the president’s power and cement his legacy before the window narrows,” according to the Eurasia report.
As the guardrails that contained Trump during his first administration buckle, Eurasia Group cannot predict what kind of political system the US will have once Trump is out of office.
But it expects chaos in 2026.
“The machinery of government will be wielded aggressively against the president’s enemies. The administration has already launched investigations into Democratic fundraising platforms, donors, officials, and candidates. Companies that employ prominent critics will face investigations and regulatory retaliation; executives who criticize the White House will be singled out; foundations that donate to Democrats risk dragged-out fights over their tax-exempt status.”
The upshot: public criticism of and opposition to Trump will become costlier.
“Trump is more likely to respond to domestic setbacks, from sinking poll numbers to a defeat in November, as he did to his 2020 election loss: by doubling down.
“Except that as a lame duck surrounded by loyalists who can’t afford defeat any more than he can, the impulse to go for broke will be stronger.
“Trump’s political revolution is ultimately more likely to fail than succeed, undone by a combination of belated institutional resistance, limited coalition fracture, and, not to be underestimated, the president’s own impulsiveness.”
Eurasia Group says the US can’t be categorized as a representative democracy in 2026, not because it’s heading toward dictatorship, but because it’s in the middle of a political revolution whose outcome will remain genuinely indeterminate for years.
“Trump and his supporters will take ever greater risks. Resistance will mount too, but neither side will land a decisive blow. The longer this plays out, the greater the risks—more substantial than they have any right to be in the world’s oldest democracy.
“It’s America’s own late Gorbachev era: The country is careening toward something, but nobody knows what. Whatever the endpoint, the damage over the next year will be significant.”
Eurasia Group notes that the US was already the most structurally dysfunctional political system among advanced industrial democracies before Trump returned to office.
“He is a symptom, a beneficiary, and an accelerant of that dysfunction, but he didn’t cause it—and he won’t fix it. Whether Trump’s revolution succeeds or fails, there is no going back to what came before.”
America’s great political unraveling comes as it celebrates its 250th anniversary.
Russian propaganda machine got it wrong on its looted gold story... RT on Jan. 4 reported a bogus story that the US dispatched C-17 military cargo planes to Venezuela to steal $3B of the nation’s gold reserves.
A NewsGuard investigation of flight data for C-17s found that none of them entered Venezuelanair space this year. Four planes did fly to Puerto Rico on Jan. 3 and Jan. 6, apparently delivering supplies for Trump’s Venezuelan adventure strike force.
RT should have focused on “black gold,” instead. Trump posted on Jan. 6 that Venezuela “will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America.”
That’s worth about $3B. And who is going to oversee the cash hoard? “This Oil will be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” posted Trump.
The Don is sounding more and more like The Godfather each day.
