New Year’s Day is a celebration of the hope and promise of a fresh start. In that spirit, we have identified five goals that we hope will be achieved in 2026. Some of the items on our 2026 list are repeats from 2025: Progress has been made, but the goal has not been fully obtained.
We are happy to report, however, that two goals from our 2025 list were achieved: border security and permanent tax reform. Hopefully, our leaders in the White House, Congress, and the states will turn more of our hopes into reality by this time next year.
1. An end to the war in Ukraine
The pace of killing appears to have slowed down, but easily more than 100,000 soldiers and civilians were killed this year alone in what has become the largest and worst conflict in Europe since 1945. President Donald Trump was unable to bring the war to an end on Day One of his second term in office, but he has overseen steady, if somewhat uneven, progress toward an end to the fighting.
The foundation of a deal is there. Ukraine would accept territorial concessions and suspend efforts to join NATO in return for Western security guarantees. This is not an ideal end, but it would be an end. However, Putin is balking over the security guarantees. They would make it harder for him to reinvade in the future. Hopefully, Trump will find the right pressure points (through sanctions on friendly oligarchs and Russia’s trading partners) to get him to acquiesce to a deal. Any deal with Putin would most likely be temporary and would require constant vigilance, but it would be an improvement over the current constant death and destruction.
2. Permitting reform
A year ago, we were bemoaning the death of the Barrasso-Manchin bipartisan permitting reform bill, legislation that would have exempted only certain energy projects favored by Democrats, like powerline transmission and geothermal energy, from the burdensome National Environmental Policy Act process. Now the House has passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, which would provide long-overdue NEPA reform not just to energy projects, but to all federal government permitting decisions. This is a major step forward. A compromise should be found to advance the legislation through the Senate.
3. An end to ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
Encouraged by Trump’s deregulatory agenda and the imminent passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, business investment was increasing steadily before Trump upended the entire economy with his unilateral “Liberation Day” tariffs. While the intense inflation that some predicted never materialized, business investment has still been weak as companies dealt with the many uncertainties that Trump’s constantly changing tariff policies created. We have said from the beginning that these tariffs are both illegal and unwise, and we still believe the Supreme Court will find that Trump lacked the authority to implement them. Trump should take such a decision as an off-ramp from what has been the biggest blunder of his second term.
4. Housing
Rents have begun to decrease in many cities, in no small part due to Trump’s successful mass deportations. However, home ownership is still out of reach for far too many workers, especially young men and women looking to start a family. Fortunately, both the House and Senate have passed bipartisan legislation that would increase housing supply by cutting regulations (the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act in the Senate and the Housing for the 21st Century Act in the House). House and Senate leaders should find a way to combine the bills and put them on Trump’s desk.
SAN FRANCISCO’S EMPTY REPARATIONS PROMISES
5. Multiplying the Mississippi miracle
Long a punchline for backwater ineptitude, Mississippi has turned that image around in recent years by climbing the charts in reading scores at the fourth- and eighth-grade levels. Beginning in the 2010s, Mississippi adopted science-of-reading reforms, including phonics-based instruction, intensive teacher training, universal literacy screening, and clear accountability tied to student promotion. The results have been striking. On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Mississippi posted the fastest gains in fourth-grade reading in the country, closing long-standing gaps. Other states have taken notice. Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas have passed or expanded similar literacy laws, and more states will likely follow suit.