The Undersold Political Stories Reshaping 2025

The Most Undersold Political Stories of 2025 — And Why They Matter for 2026

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Key Takeaways

• Congress had its least productive year in modern history, while executive orders under President Donald Trump surged to FDR-level pace.
• The administration’s growing disregard for the courts is eroding judicial norms and the traditional “presumption of regularity.”
• The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, failed to cut spending meaningfully but may have fueled humanitarian crises abroad.
• Republican non-interventionism has sharply declined as the GOP base increasingly backs military strikes and expansionist rhetoric.
• A fragile, early-stage GOP reckoning with conspiracy theories could reshape the party’s media ecosystem and influencer culture.

Table of Contents

• The Abdication of Congress and Rise of Executive Power
• A Growing Clash Between the Courts and the Presidency
• DOGE and the Long-Tail Fallout of ‘Government Efficiency’
• How the GOP Moved Away from Non-Interventionism
• Inside the GOP’s Budding Reckoning with Conspiracy Culture
• What to Watch Next: How These Stories Shape 2026

The Abdication of Congress and Rise of Executive Power

In 2025, Congress didn’t just slow down — it nearly stepped off the field. Only 61 pieces of legislation were enacted, putting this Congress on pace to be less than half as productive as any since at least the mid-1970s, according to GovTrack data.

At the same time, President Donald Trump leaned heavily on executive authority, signing more than 220 executive orders in 2025. That’s four times his first-term pace and more than double that of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

For engaged readers, this imbalance raises core questions:

• Who is really making policy — elected legislators or the executive branch?
• What happens when future presidents use this precedent, regardless of party?

Action step: If you track public policy, focus less on bills in Congress and more on executive actions, rule changes, and agency directives. That’s increasingly where real power is being exercised.

A Growing Clash Between the Courts and the Presidency

The legal friction around Trump’s agenda has been widely covered, but the pattern of noncompliance and misrepresentation by the administration is easier to miss.

A study highlighted by Just Security and “60 Minutes,” spanning more than 400 cases, found:

• 26 cases with some level of noncompliance with court orders.
• 60+ cases where courts saw serious problems with government claims.
• 68 cases where judges deemed the administration likely “arbitrary and capricious.”

This isn’t just about losing in court; it’s about eroding the norm that government acts in good faith. If courts cease extending the usual “presumption of regularity,” future administrations could face higher legal hurdles, and judicial authority itself may be tested.

DOGE and the Long-Tail Fallout of ‘Government Efficiency’

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) generated spectacular headlines — and equally spectacular disruption. Yet data now show that it barely reduced federal spending.

A New York Times analysis found spending continued to rise and that many of DOGE’s touted cuts were inaccurate. Musk has conceded the effort was only “somewhat successful.”

The deeper story lies in the human costs:

• Indiscriminate firings drained government expertise and forced later reversals.
• Medical research grants were cut off, slowing long-term scientific progress.
• A ProPublica investigation tied food aid cuts in Kenya to thousands of deaths.
• A New Yorker documentary estimated that shutting down much of USAID has already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide.

For readers interested in global development, this is a case study in how domestic “efficiency” drives can trigger unintended humanitarian crises.

How the GOP Moved Away from Non-Interventionism

Trump’s second term has marked a sharp turn from his earlier “America First” non-interventionist framing. In 2025 he:

• Invoked “manifest destiny” and talked about taking over Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal.
• Launched military strikes on Iran and later on several other countries, including Nigeria.
• Floated the idea of war with Venezuela, with shifting justifications.

What’s striking is how Republican opinion has moved with him. A CNN poll found 8 in 10 Republicans supported the Iran strikes. Two separate polls showed GOP voters backed military action in Venezuela by double digits, even as only 25% of Republicans in a CBS poll viewed Venezuela as a major threat.

For foreign policy watchers, this signals a GOP that is more comfortable with force projection than its recent rhetoric suggested.

Inside the GOP’s Budding Reckoning with Conspiracy Culture

Conspiracy theories have long been a feature of Trump-era politics, but 2025 introduced a subtle twist: internal backlash.

Key flashpoints included:

• Speculation and conspiracies around the Jeffrey Epstein files and the January 6 pipe bomber.
• Antisemitic conspiracy theories swirling around Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which undermined attempts to pin the event squarely on the political left.

Former Trump officials who later led the Justice Department have tried to tamp down some of these narratives, claiming there’s nothing to them. Simultaneously, some conservatives have publicly argued that figures like Candace Owens should be pushed out of the movement.

The dilemma: conspiracy content energizes parts of the base, but it also derails messaging and policy goals. That tension will likely define the right’s media ecosystem heading into 2026.

What to Watch Next: How These Stories Shape 2026

Each of these “undersold” stories points toward larger structural trends:

• A presidency increasingly empowered by congressional inaction.
• Courts forced to decide how hard to push back on executive overreach.
• Global perceptions of the United States reshaped by the fallout from DOGE.
• A Republican Party redefining its stance on war, peace, and intervention.
• An unresolved fight inside the GOP over whether conspiracism is a feature or a bug.

If you follow U.S. politics into 2026, consider using these five threads as a framework for deeper exploration. Each one connects day-to-day headlines to longer arcs in democratic governance, global leadership, and political culture.

Suggested next step: Create a simple tracking document or reading list around these five themes, and follow new polling, court rulings, and investigative reporting that touch on them. Over time, patterns will become clearer — and much more predictable.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/31/politics/2025-undersold-political-stories