The 5 most undersold political stories of 2025

The 12 months in politics has been quite a bit. We can say that about quite a bit of years in current historical past, however that’s particularly the case with 2025.

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And that veritable onslaught of information meant we frequently didn’t get sufficient time to actually digest the importance of the occasions we had been dwelling by way of.

So on the finish of the 12 months, I wish to look again on the stories that didn’t get their due — the issues which may have escaped some folks’s discover however may stay on for years to come back. It’s the issues we didn’t respect or digest as absolutely as we should always have.

Here is my listing of the most undersold political stories of 2025.

It’s no secret that Congress doesn’t do practically as a lot because it used to. Words like “gridlock” and phrases like “do nothing” have adopted the physique for years.

But this 12 months was exceptional, even by these requirements.

Congress not solely completed lower than it has at any level in current recorded historical past, however it additionally successfully ceded its powers to President Donald Trump — willingly and repeatedly.

Some congressional Republicans began the 12 months by arguing that their job was principally to do whatever Trump told them; then Trump proceeded to sign he just about simply needed to do issues by himself, with out Congress’ involvement or interference.

The last information is gorgeous.

Just 61 items of laws have been enacted this 12 months, in response to information from the Congress-tracking web site GovTrack. That places this Congress on tempo to be lower than half as productive as any since at the least the mid-Seventies, and doubtless for much longer than that (GovTrack’s information goes again solely that far). The low for a two-year interval is 274 enacted items of laws, and Congress is prone to accomplish even much less in 2026, given it’s a midterm election 12 months.

But the hole left by the dearth of laws has been crammed — by Trump’s pen. He’s signed greater than 220 govt orders, in response to the American Presidency Project on the University of California, Santa Barbara. That’s 4 occasions the tempo he set in his first time period and greater than double the tempo of any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

So Congress is doing quite a bit much less. And Trump is doing much more in its stead.

The scenario has led to an rising quantity of congressional Republicans asking why they don’t do more and questioning what the purpose of Congress even is.

2. An more and more dicey conflict between the courts and Trump

Trump’s efforts to increase the powers of the presidency — together with by way of these govt actions — have led to a lot of courtroom circumstances, which have recurrently been large information.

But one explicit side hasn’t gotten sufficient consideration: the administration’s disdain for the judicial course of.

It’s not simply Trump attacking judges and selections he disagrees with; it’s additionally his Justice Department flouting judges’ orders and missing candor. A examine revealed by the authorized and nationwide safety information web site Just Security and covered by “60 Minutes” in October discovered that, throughout greater than 400 circumstances:

There has been a lot of speak about a possible “constitutional crisis” if the administration opts to willfully disobey courtroom orders. And the administration has definitely flirted with that, on the very least.

But even shy of that, the administration has handled the courts with a model of contempt we not often see in American politics.

How may that play out? It may definitely injury the authority of the judiciary if these courts don’t do sufficient to fight it. And/or it may injury the administration’s authorized efforts if judges more and more deal with the administration as a bad-faith actor — depriving it of what’s referred to as the “presumption of regularity.”

The Department of Government Efficiency appears like outdated information now. Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s effort to rein in authorities spending was arguably the most chaotic half of Trump’s chaotic return to the presidency early this 12 months.

But it’s unlikely historical past will neglect it.

For one, it’s changing into clearer that the trouble minimize nearly no spending. A New York Times study final week discovered that authorities spending continued to rise and that most of DOGE’s greatest claimed cuts had been inaccurate. So even Musk, given immense energy to take a meat cleaver to the federal government, couldn’t make a dent within the deficit. (Musk has acknowledged DOGE was only “somewhat successful.”)

But arguably much more important is the long-term impression that DOGE could possibly be remembered for.

An enormous half of that’s the loss of experience in authorities, because of the customarily seemingly indiscriminate firings — some of which later needed to be reversed, in addition to the medical research grants that were cut off.

But it goes effectively past that. A current ProPublica investigation discovered that cuts to meals support in Kenya left thousands to starve. And a New Yorker documentary final month estimated that the broader shutting down of the US Agency for International Development — the first engine behind US overseas support — has already led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.

To the extent these numbers are borne out, that is the sort of episode that could possibly be remembered internationally lengthy after Trump’s second time period is over — simply not for chopping spending.

2025 was the 12 months the GOP obtained again in contact with its interior neoconservative.

Despite Trump having run his campaigns on non-interventionism and “America First,” his second time period has been rather more imperialist and militaristic.

Trump began it by instantly speaking about “manifest destiny” and taking on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. He’s proceeded to launch navy strikes on Iran, in addition to a series of other countries this year, together with most not too long ago Nigeria. And he’s even speaking about going to war in Venezuela, regardless of an ever-shifting collection of justifications.

And maybe most remarkably, he’s taken most of his base together with him.

Despite early reservations throughout the GOP in regards to the Iran strikes, a NCS ballot afterward discovered that 8 in 10 Republicans supported them. And two current polls present Republicans supported taking navy motion in Venezuela by double digits — at the same time as one of them, from CBS News, confirmed simply 25% of Republicans regarded Venezuela as a serious risk to the United States.

Conspiracy theories have lengthy featured prominently in the Trump-era Republican Party — which makes quite a bit of sense given Trump successfully launched his political career on one.

But of late, the Republicans appear to be second-guessing simply how a lot their celebration has been consumed by such claims and theories. As these theories have ensnared their very own and jeopardized their political objectives — on the Jeffrey Epstein information and on Charlie Kirk’s assassination — many within the celebration are instantly calling for it to reckon with the cottage business of conspiracism in its influencer base.

On Epstein and the January 6, 2021, pipe bomber, for example, distinguished Trump administration officers who as soon as trafficked in these theories however went on to run the Justice Department have sought to guarantee there was nothing to them. But that’s proving a tricky promote with distinguished influencers and even with some members of Congress.

And on Kirk’s assassination, antisemitic conspiracy theories shortly hijacked Trump’s efforts guilty the occasion on the supposedly irredeemably violent political left. Of late, some distinguished conservatives have argued it’s time to kick the likes of podcaster Candace Owens out of the movement.

But it’s not an simply fixable drawback. These sorts of theories have develop into so ingrained within the celebration, largely because of Trump, and a few Republicans appear to worry that excommunicating the likes of Owens may jeopardize key elements of Trump’s base.

It’s one of the defining political questions as we head into 2026.