Losing My Perspicacity, December 31, 2025

In 2026, may we be the ones coming to save us

Author

Julie DiCaro
December 31, 2025

In partnership with

Good morning and Happy Wednesday — and happy last day of 2025, thank the freakin’ heavens. I know we said this from 2017 to 2021, and now we’re back to it, but it’s hard to imagine a worse year, collectively, than the one we’ve just gone through.

I’ve thought long and hard about what I wanted my final message of the year to be to all of you, and I think it’s this: We are still here. We are still fighting. We still have hope, and rebellions are built on hope.

At times, it can seem like the bad guys own everything and control everything, and it’s easy to get lost in despair. I’m guilty of contemplating throwing in the towel about 4 out of 7 days a week. After all, everywhere I look, I seem to see people who don’t think much about politics — or the state of the world — much at all. They all seem perfectly happy in their obliviousness. They certainly aren’t raging into the void on social media like I am. Not caring looks awfully tempting, sometimes.

So, my message to you at the end of this exceptionally challenging year is one I’m stealing from one of my favorite films: Never give up, never surrender. I am grateful to each and every one of you who subscribe to this newsletter, follow me on social media, and allow me to keep doing this work. To me, it’s important work, even if I’ll never get rich or famous by doing it. Someday, when we’ve made it through this especially hard time, I hope I’ll look back on what I contributed to the world and that I’ll feel good about it. I hope you’ll feel good about what you contributed, too.

So, as a pep talk for 2026, here’s a list of what we accomplished in 2025, and why we must persist, as exhausted and downtrodden as we may feel in the moment. Better days are in the offing — for all of us.

Protesting Matters 

If you were a part of a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, the Women’s March in 2017, a #NoKings March in 2025, or any other protest in your lifetime, you should feel good about it.

According to The Guardian:

According to historians and political scientists who study protest: very. From emancipation to women’s suffrage, from civil rights to Black Lives Matter, mass movement has shaped the arc of American history. Protest has led to the passage of legislation that gave women the right to vote, banned segregation and legalized same-sex marriage. It has also sparked cultural shifts in how Americans perceive things like bodily autonomy, economic inequality and racial bias.

***

Research confirms that the Women’s March incited tangible change. In particular, it directly prompted an unprecedented surge in female candidates for elected office, which scholars attribute to feeling empowered to draw attention to issues that have historically been dismissed. During the 2018 midterms, more than 500 women ran in congressional races, nearly doubling numbers from 2016.

***

Momentum begins with a first protest, research shows. Citizens who participate in one demonstration are more likely to take part in another.

For example, protesters who took part in the 1964 Freedom Summer – a movement to register Black voters in Mississippi during the civil rights movement – were more likely to engage in activism over the course of their lifespans than those who intended to join the protest, but ultimately did not.

On October 18, 2025, roughly seven million Americans participated in the #NoKingsDay rally, an increase from the five million who took part in the #NoKingsDay in June. Seven million Americans are just a few million shy of that magic 3.5 percent number — 11.9 million. You know the 3.5 percent rule, right? If 3.5 percent of the people protest, the regime in power is likely to fall.

And it’s not just taking to the streets. Boycotts work, too. Let’s take a look at Target’s stock since it ditched DEI and bent the knee to the Trump administration.

Elsewhere, Bari Weiss’s much-anticipated sit-down with Erika Kirk pulled in a measly average of 1.9 million viewers, while CBS’s broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors saw viewership fall 35 percent from 2024 and hit an all-time low. Just today, I programmed my remote to skip CBS altogether. The Washington Post is running out of people willing to pay for its content. Tesla’s sales hit a three-year low in November in the US, and the company is bleeding numbers in Europe.

Boycotts work. Let’s do Amazon and Meta next.

Standing up to elected officials works

In 2025, we saw a string of town halls where voters shouted down their elected officials, primarily for siding with Donald Trump over the people they represent. The optics were so bad that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson advised Republican House members not to hold any more meetups with the electorate.

While we can’t give all the credit to the voters at town halls, so far, 30 congressional Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection in 2026, and a good chunk of them are retiring. Good riddance.

Meanwhile, in the first significant election since Trump took office, Democrats dominated at the polls in November:

Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.

And I’ll do you one better: Democrat Renee Hardman won an Iowa state senate seat last night with 71 percent of the vote, a 27-point improvement over 2024, when Kamala Harris took the district by 16 points. More importantly, she’s the first Black woman elected to the Iowa Senate, and her victory blocks a Republican supermajority. Well done, Iowa SD-16!

The courts are (mostly) holding

While the Supreme Court may not have given us much to celebrate in 2025, the federal district courts have, slapping down Trump’s attempt to remake the federal government and the country we live in.

Not only did the Supreme Court exceed expectations (which, admittedly, are in the basement for this Court) in taking the National Guard away from Donald Trump, but just yesterday, federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that the Trump administration can not starve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of its funding, as Russell Vought and the Project 2025 crew have been attempting to do. In November, Judges Indira Talwani of Boston and John McConnell of Rhode Island smacked down the FDA for playing games with SNAP during the shutdown, and this week, Judge Mary McElroy prevented HUD from implementing rules that sought to disadvantage non-profits working with the homeless.

All of that, of course, is before we get to the string of cases involving ICE and CBP, in which Judges like Sara Ellis (N. District of IL), Karin Immergut (District of OR), and Charles Breyer (N. District of CA) granted preliminary injunctions or made other rulings that kept the Trump administration from using federal agencies and/or the National Guard to brutalize some of America’s bluest cities.

Elsewhere, the trumped-up criminal cases against James Comey and Letitia James are in their death throes, thanks to Judge Cameron McGowan Currie of South Carolina. Judge James Boasberg found that the Trump administration wrongfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act against undocumented immigrants. Judge Paula Xinis has been a brick wall between ICE and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom DHS is still trying to traffic out of the country.

Nearly every day, I read legal filings in which the courts are doing the right thing. Those may not be the cases we hear about in the news, but they’re happening all around us. Don’t give up on the judiciary just yet.

A look ahead to 2026…

This is usually when I ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber to Losing My Perspicacity. As many of you know, this newsletter is what I pivoted to after being laid off by yet another media publication. And while I spend a lot of time on this newsletter, I’m planning to do much more in 2026, including a regular podcast. I’ve missed radio a lot since I hosted my last show in 2020, and the audio bug has been calling to me again. I hope you’ll stick with me and check it out.

And, if you subscribe to LMP before January 1, you’ll get a full-year’s subscription for 50 percent off, as well as 20 percent off any monthly subscription tier. I believe an independent media is more important than ever, and I hope you’ll help support LMP. If you’d like to share a one-month trial subscription with a friend or family member, just shoot me a quick note, and I can make that happen.

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The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

I’m wishing every one of you and yours a wonderful New Year and a happy, prosperous, and peaceful 2026. May we be the ones who come to save us.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

The next LMP will arrive in your inbox on Monday, January 5, 2026. I’m wishing you all the best in 2026.

Follow Julie on Bluesky and Instagram so she can get another book contract.

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