Damian Paletta

For voters, affordability and the economy, those are huge issues, and those are always big issues.

Those are the sorts of things that can decide elections, potentially much more so than whether the United States controls Greenland.

But President Trump is in legacy mode.

He's trying to think of the sorts of things that'll outlive him, the sorts of things that'll define him and his legacy going into the future.

Now, ironically, this midterm election idea is kind of forcing Trump to move faster because he knows he only has 10 or 11 more months of Republican control of Congress.

If Democrats take control of the House, it makes it much harder for him to operate unilaterally like this.

So that might make him even more adversarial, even more aggressive with the European allies.

And that could, ironically, pull him even further away from voters.

And that's exactly what we're going to be watching for today and in the days to come.

My pleasure.

Hi, this is Damian Paletta, Washington Coverage Chief at The Wall Street Journal.

One of the biggest storylines that we've been following here in 2025 has been President Trump's implementation of his economic agenda, both through a huge tax cut package that passed Congress in the middle of the year, and then all along the way, these tariffs that the president has imposed on a number of countries.

And the tariffs remain a big story.

The Supreme Court now is reviewing his power to impose these tariffs.

And that's a decision that we could have soon to determine whether or not he can continue to impose tariffs against countries without congressional approval.

So that's going to be a big storyline going forward.

The economy is a huge story right now, especially for many Americans who remain unsettled, even though we have low gas prices and a high stock market.

Many Americans are feeling a disconnect with this economy, and this is creating mounting pressure on President Trump.

That's going to be a big story that we follow in 2026 as the White House is hoping to save the Republican majority in Congress.

It was a very busy 2025, and it's going to be an even busier 2026 here in the Washington Bureau.