In Search of Secrets

• Democrats will win back the majority in the House and Senate.
• Democrats will not gain enough seats for the supermajority required to override a presidential veto.
• The House will once again impeach President Trump, and the Senate will once again fail to convict.
• President Trump will veto nearly every piece of legislation that hits his desk. The few exceptions will either include significant concessions to MAGA, or they will be about issues so brain-dead and uncontroversial that they won’t even make the news.
• There will be another government shutdown. President Trump will blame both the shutdown and the lack of any other legislation on obstructionism by Democrats. (That last part isn’t much of a prediction, but I’m throwing it in here anyway.)
• While doing his best to prevent Congress from doing its job, President Trump will continue using executive orders to bypass the legislative process entirely. More court challenges will be brought as a result, and many will eventually make it to the Supreme Court.
• Court challenges will also be brought against the midterm results, by both parties. Democratic threats of SCOTUS reform will lead to rulings largely favorable to Republicans in these cases, or at least favorable to the status quo, even by some of the more liberal Justices.
• It’s less certain how the challenges to President Trump’s executive authority will play out. It’s likely most of the rulings will be in his favor, but if there are significant rulings against him, he will probably ignore them. What happens after that will depend on how many cases he loses, and how brazen he’ll have to be to ignore the ones that don’t go his way.
• Meanwhile, federal crackdowns on brown and trans people will continue to get worse. Protestors and demonstrators will begin to be arrested and tried as terrorists based on their ties to “violent left-wing extremist,” “radically pro-transgender,” “anarchist,” “anti-American,” and “anti-facist” groups. The same tactic will be used on brown people, including citizens, under the pretense of ties to “cartels” and “jihadists.” The arrests will start with a few high-profile cases involving overt aggression or violence, then the scope of the arrests will gradually expand based on that precedent, with the goal of making any serious protests against the administration a de facto crime.
• ICE will continue to murder people with impunity (now with the additional excuse of “counter-terrorism”).
• Although many Democrats will continue to support trans rights, many others will become more vocal and open about throwing trans people under the bus. These fair-weather friends will view trans rights as a bargaining chip at best and a political liability at worst.
• Gas prices will drop sharply after the Strait of Hormuz reopens. A partial reopening may occur earlier, but an Iran-US agreement that fully reopens the strait will probably not happen until shortly before the midterms. After the midterms, prices will go back up, but more slowly than during the closure.
• Deltarune Chapter 5 will not be released until after the midterms. Its release will be a surprise, announced no more than a month in advance.
• You will continue to be awesome, and I will continue to be grateful to have you as my readers.

What do you think? Do some of these predictions seem outlandish? Or do you think some of them don’t go far enough? Let me know in the comments!

And as always, joy and health to you all.