2026 year in preview

What could be in the coming year

By Reader Staff

While it may be a fool’s errand to predict the future, we’ve been doing it at the Reader every year since 2020 — getting some things right, or at least half right, and just as many wrong (or half wrong). Well, here we are again as the calendar turns on yet another year; and, by way of introduction, we will say that our first prediction for 2025 fell closer to the “right” side of things than “half right” and that was: “we’ll be happier if we don’t expect to be too happy over the next 12 months.” 

We reckon that one will hold up for 2026, too. And with that dour prognostication, we present our best guesses about the shape of the coming year on a range of select topics.

Ben’s predictions

Chaos will continue 

The American philosopher Abraham Kaplan once said, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” My personal twist to that statement: “If you’re standing in a toilet, everything smells like shit.”

Well, we have been forced to stand in the proverbial toilet for years now, waiting for someone to flush it and bring some relief. It ain’t coming soon, folks, so I suppose we might as well just learn to love the smell of Big Brother’s McOfferings.

The whipsaw first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has continued with the usual chaotic nature of his governance, but this time turned up to 11. My prediction is that this chaos agenda will continue, and Trump will further erode long-held norms and rely on his preferred form of fascist oligarchism to run the country. The tariffs, the bullying, the systematic deplatforming of his perceived “enemies” and executive orders will continue unfettered. 

Trump will continue to strike targets in the Caribbean. He’ll wage illegal wars against Venezuela. He’ll continue to pursue “taking” Greenland and the Panama Canal, even if those are just red herrings to cover up more nefarious actions taking place in secret. He’ll continue sending ICE and the National Guard into American cities, blatantly defying court orders and laws while doing so, dragging people off the street and disappearing them and no one will attempt to stop him. And he’ll continue to personally profit off the presidency. That isn’t a prediction — it’s a certainty.

As more CEOs, corporations and billionaires become dependent on Trump’s favor, they’ll continue to acquiesce to his wants. I wouldn’t even doubt if they finally gave him a Nobel Peace Prize after he’s whined about it for longer than many readers of this paper have even been alive. 

God help us all.

A Supreme Court Justice will retire

Clarence Thomas will be 78 next year and Samuel Alito will be 76. If our republic is still able to hold free and fair elections in 2028 (more on that later), the chances of a Democrat elected president grow with every disastrous decision coming from the wanna-be king. With midterms possibly ushering in a House majority for Democrats and Trump’s unchecked power finally given a leash, 2026 will be a year when Republicans cling to their grasp on power however they can, laws and decency be damned. Democrats will continue to fill their breeches with fear dumps and send strongly-worded letters of admonition, further proving their total ineffectiveness.

Economic showdown

To almost everyone’s surprise, the American economy is proving more resilient than many expected it to be. That’s mostly because there are still some stalwarts defying the continuous pressure from above to bend to the orange toad’s bidding. However, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is replaced in May —  most certainly by a Trump lackey — that’s going to be the real test. The politicization of the Fed could trigger a market showdown, and if there’s anything the market doesn’t like it’s uncertainty. With the executive, judiciary and legislative branches of government, the Fed and more of the media controlled with a ham fist by Trump, the dykes defending against such surges of unilateral power will begin to break and we could be in for a world of economic hurt.

Epstein who?

In the waning months of 2025, as millions of court-mandated released documents prove that a sick group of oligarchs participated in sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s disgusting proclivities, it seemed like there might finally be some sort of accountability in the offing. Think again, bud. The year ahead will prove that these ultra-wealthy perverts will get away with it all, because nothing will come of it. The prevailing opinion will become, “Epstein who?” and we’ll all just go on with our lives, knowing that those who hold the reins of power are some of the worst human beings to walk this earth. 

Midterms will be very important

The 2026 midterms will likely be a disaster for Trump, so expect him to find any possible way to cancel them. My guess is that he’ll either get us embroiled in a war or claim that widespread protests represent some kind of uprising, so he’ll attempt to declare martial law and suspend elections until 2028. Whether or not this works is murky, but it’s clear that we all need to get out and vote in 2026 in this all-too-important election.

Final thoughts

This is now Trump’s world. We’re all just living in it. Though history will paint his administration as the worst to plague our country for all of history, there are still too many cowards elevating his words and actions as divinity to claw back any form of decency in government for many years. It will get worse before it gets better. Buckle up, folks. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, and some of us will not make it.

Zach’s predictions

Statehouse crock

In the infamous — though sort of perceptive — words of late-Defense Secretary and full-time Skeletor Donald Rumsfeld: “there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.” That’s as good a theme as any for approaching what might transpire at the Idaho Legislature when its 2026 session begins on Monday, Jan. 12.

What we know we know is that Idaho’s tottering budget will be the overarching concern of lawmakers on both sides of the lopsided aisle. One major “known unknown” is just how big the unprecedented deficit will be. 

As of mid-December, analysts put the projected shortfall for the end of FY’26 at $40.3 million (down from $58 million or so), but the bigger FY’27 budget crisis of at least $550 million remains.

Of course, all this goes against Idaho’s constitutional requirement that the state end the fiscal year with a balanced budget. So who’s to blame? People like Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke fingered legislators for passing spending bills without a firm revenue projection. Others — who are more accustomed to reality — pointed to more than $400 million in tax cuts approved by the Republican supermajority in 2025.

Another thing we know we don’t know is how the Statehouse will address this mess. In response, Gov. Brad Little already announced a range of budget cuts and holdbacks that we predict will not only continue but grow deeper (because God forbid we consider reversing any of those enormous handouts to big business and special interest causes like “vouchers” for private, religious “education”).

On top of additional budget reductions, it’s all but certain that Little will press for dipping into the state’s $1 billion “rainy day” fund, because all that is the quintessence of “conservative budgeting.”

We’re not going to be surprised at all if Democrats — and maybe even a few Republicans — will propose either getting rid of the $50 million voucher program or putting it on hold. That effort won’t go anywhere, though, because shuffling tax dollars to private, right-wing policy experiments is a sacred cow that our culture war-addled legislators will never slaughter for fear of retribution from the base during the midterms.

Long-term plans for short-term changes

Much of what takes place at the federal level will affect Sandpoint city politics, but this year — maybe more than any other in recent memory — moves in Boise will have an outsized local impact. No matter what legislators get up to in either the nation’s or the state’s capital, Sandpoint can expect to be staring down an empty well when it comes to funding for any number of initiatives. That will include the wastewater treatment plant reconstruction project, which we anticipate will go relatively quiet as staff scrambles to scrape up whatever dollars they can to offset the $130 million that voters authorized City Hall to bond for in the 2025 election.

Beyond that, lawmakers are also considering at least a few bills that will directly affect Sandpoint — among them, lobbying by the short-term rental industry to strip cities throughout the state of the ability to regulate vacation homes.

It’s already apparent that among the first orders of business for the City Council in 2026 will be addressing how (or whether) to amend Sandpoint’s STR ordinance to bring it into accordance with state law ahead of whatever legislation may be approved in Boise.

Our best guess is that there will be a lot of talk about whether the “cap” on 35 STRs in Sandpoint’s residential zones is actually a “prohibition” under state law, but councilors will ultimately vote to approve the amended ordinance as presented to the Planning and Zoning Commission earlier in December.

City Hall and votes

Otherwise, we predict some big changes at City Hall with the swearing-in of two brand-new councilors, Joe Tate and Joshua Torrez. We’re guessing a new majority will form more or less consisting of Councilors Pam Duquette, Kyle Schreiber, Tate and Torrez. 

Judging by past comments and conversations, we’re reasonably confident that this will have major implications for a number of hot-button issues. Mayor Jeremy Grimm has cast about six tie-breaking votes in the past year — that’s an estimate, but even two or three is unusual. Those votes have often fallen along the lines of the mayor, Councilors Joel Aispuro, Justin Dick and Rick Howarth on one side, and Duquette, Schreiber and Council President Deb Ruehle on the other.

With Dick and Howarth replaced by Tate and Torrez, we reckon Grimm will see his role as deciding vote greatly diminished, which means we have an inkling that we’ll see the reintroduction of Sandpoint’s non-discrimination ordinance, which was “amended” into near non-existence on one such tie-breaking vote and much to the chagrin of many (but celebration of others).

We also suspect that there will be a much more critical eye cast on such ideas as what to do with the City Beach RV park — specifically that the council will be more inclined to push back on Averill Hospitality’s various attempts to see the site redeveloped in a form more amenable to its adjacent resort hotel development.

Our prediction is that city staff will present a proposal to council recommending the rejection of a $1 million-ish state grant to improve the RV park and instead focus on some kind of multi-use facility that, while remaining entirely public, will more fit Averill’s vision for its future surroundings. (After all, as many officials have pointed out, the city’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan didn’t envision an RV park at City Beach in perpetuity.)

Since we’re poking around in the woods, we’ll go out on a limb and guess that the incoming council will reject that suggestion and stick with the state grant and redeveloped RV park — especially since declining any state money in this budgetary climate would seem like a waste.

Another big conversation that we foresee in the new year is whether to bring back the city administrator position in some form. Ruehle has already broached the subject, and we have it on good authority that it will return sooner than later. Again, given the new council — and clear tensions that have developed between the mayor and some sitting councilors whose terms will continue into 2026 — it’s reasonable to assume that the conversation will gain much more traction.

Finally, we predict Phase III of downtown revitalization will rise to the front ranks of community conversation and, like two bodies dragged into orbit by gravitational pull, will collide with the ongoing debate/discussion/sometimes outrage surrounding parking policies in the city.

Soncirey’s ‘predictions’

Public lands in private hands

After years of lobbying, Congressman Russ Fulcher, R-Idaho, will finally succeed in his bid to “take back” Idaho public lands from the federal government. Once in state possession for all of five minutes, Idaho will sell off its public lands to the highest bidder, who happens to be Fulcher in a fake mustache. After the papers are signed, the congressman will rip off his mustache with dramatic flair and reveal it was him all along, to the surprise of no one. What will come as a shock, however, is when he repeats the motion, ripping off a flesh mask and revealing that he was, in fact, a lizard man the entire time. He will then explain his plan in a rambling interview on Fox News, stating that he intends to raze the land, plunder its natural resources and leave behind a stinking wasteland of primordial ooze like the miasma from which he first emerged millions of years ago.

“Brethren, I have taken back our lands,” he will proclaim to a delighted Brian Kilmeade, who, along with legions of other far-right conservatives, will also remove their human disguises.

The newly revealed lizard people — or “reptoids” — will flock to their ancestral homeland in Idaho’s wilderness and begin unethical fracking operations, which will both produce oil and, eventually, open up an enormous sinkhole in the Earth’s crust. This will reveal the subterranean reptilian civilization that had once ruled the planet until the meteor that killed the dinosaurs drove them underground. Brandishing Gadsden flag merch and assault rifles, the reptoids will take advantage of their Second Amendment rights by hunting and then eating the remaining Idahoans. When asked to intercede, President Donald Trump will say, “Where even is Idaho? Never heard of it. Plus, we don’t have the money — we’re rich, but we’re poor, because of Biden,” then proceed to launch a $200 million intercontinental ballistic missile at a Venezuelan orphanage.

Fairgrounds 51

The Bonner County board of commissioners and the Fair Board hired a new bookkeeper and treasurer in 2025 to address improperly maintained financial records, including miscalculated profits. After a thorough audit, the boards will determine that the Bonner County fairgrounds never actually existed, but were rather a mass-hallucination created using a combination of mirrors, robotic animals and aerosolized LSD. The grounds will be exposed as a government black site and storage facility housing, among other things, the Arc of the Covenant and Bigfoot’s seasonal decor. The FBI will issue a public apology for drugging residents, wiping thousands of memories and misusing QuickBooks while reporting the site’s fake financials, stating, “Our bad. We were distracted by all the cool alien stuff.” The apology will be harshly whispered over the phone to anyone who thought they’d visited the fairgrounds in the past 20 years, and when asked, the FBI will refuse to elaborate on the “cool alien stuff.” Several days later, residents will find the Fairgrounds property devoid of all buildings, with only loose change and the county’s missing pets left behind on the lawn. The county commissioners will then build a fairgrounds building identical to the old, fake one, but this time with new and improved financial issues.

Welcome to Averill, Idaho

In another bid to delay work on its proposed resort at City Beach, Averill Hospitality will warn the Sandpoint City Council that its nonexistent multi-million dollar project will be “unviable” unless Sandpoint agrees to find an alternative use for the majority of the city’s residential areas. Developers will list every home in the city — except those in South Sandpoint — as an obstacle to the project, as their elite clientele are “put off” by anyone who makes less than six figures.

“The character, density and proximity of poor people is incompatible with the level of guest experience, design quality and market positioning of the proposed four-star waterfront resort,” a representative will argue.

After vocally opposing the demand to displace all its constituents, the council will vote to hold a series of public meetings to consider it, during which the developers will offer to buy the homes and convert them into paid parking “as a courtesy.” Hours of placating later, the council will agree to Averill’s demands, setting up temporary housing for Sandpoint locals inside the wastewater treatment plant’s disused sewage pond.

Soncirey’s “predictions” are works of satire and are not meant to be taken literally.