Listening to the usual legacy media suspects, one might think 2025 was an apocalyptic wasteland of sorts — an authoritarian fever dream brought on by the return of Donald J. Trump to the Oval Office. The reality looked very different. This past year was, in many ways, a pretty great and clarifying one. Let’s take stock of what happened when our government remembered whom it serves, as well as what unfinished business remains as we flip the calendar.

First, the obvious: Political sanity was restored to the nation’s capital. After years of leftist elite-driven chaos — wide-open borders, hyper-vindictive lawfare, fecklessness on the world stage, and more — the nation has begun to revert back to first principles: national sovereignty, law and order, and strong leadership abroad. Under Trump, the United States has once again acted like a real nation-state that pursues its real interests –not a nongovernmental organization with a nagging guilt complex.

That reorientation has paid huge dividends. On immigration, the Biden-era invasion at the southern border has tapered by more than 90%. On energy, a renewed embrace of domestic production has led to the lowest average national gas prices in nearly five years. Violent crime, thanks to Trump’s law enforcement operations and innovative use of the National Guard, has dramatically fallen: Murders decreased by nearly 20% from 2024, and robbery and burglary also saw double-digit percentage decreases. Abroad, allies and adversaries alike recalibrated to the reality that the White House once again means what it says.

Still, work always remains. Here, then, is my 2026 wish list.

1. Peace in Eastern Europe. The Russia-Ukraine war has gone on far, far too long. The Trump administration has exerted tremendous diplomatic effort trying to orchestrate a peace deal, which thus far remains elusive. A durable peace –one that halts the senseless slaughter on both sides, respects Ukrainian sovereignty and accommodates legitimate Russian concerns, and avoids a wider great-power conflagration — should be a paramount Trump administration foreign policy goal in 2026. Russia is the invader, and Vladimir Putin is the greater obstacle to a lasting peace, but both sides need to make painful — if, frustratingly, also painfully obvious — concessions.

2. Victory on Birthright Citizenship. Back home, a consequential legal battle now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Trump administration’s righteous challenge to the erroneous practice of constitutionally “required” birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of illegal aliens. The notion that the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the aftermath of the Civil War, was meant to constitutionalize a global human trafficking magnet — granting automatic citizenship to “all” children born here, including those whose parents entered the country illegally — is indefensible as a matter of plain constitutional text, the congressional history in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and basic common sense. Indeed, birthright citizenship has been nothing short of ruinous for the United States. A Trump administration victory would restore Congress’s rightful authority over circumscribing citizenship and remove a longstanding incentive for illegal immigration.