I swore off the prognosticator business after the 2016 election, but my students and news anchors alike still ask me anyway. Who will run for president? Will California’s temporarily redrawn congressional boundaries withstand legal challenges? 

I have some reasoned guesses and some informed analysis, but one thing is for certain: What happens here in the Golden State, and to the nation’s largest congressional delegation, will continue to influence the conversation in Washington. 

From the minor to the monumental, here are a handful-and-a-half of political predictions for California’s year ahead. 

Retrospective on monstrous wildfires

Be prepared for California’s largest story from 2025 to carry over into 2026. There will be no shortage of reflection about the deadly blazes that destroyed much of Pacific Palisades and Altadena — two very different neighborhoods 35 miles apart — last January. As I have told my journalism students, this is a story of their generation as it touches just about everything: politics, policy, climate change and the cost of housing. 

These communities had their lives shattered, and even people whose houses remained standing have been forced to relocate or make the choice to return to property surrounded by rubble with scarce resemblance to the area they once called home. 

The stories coming out of Los Angeles showcase resilience and human ingenuity in defining community (and surely are setting news outlets up for Pulitzer nods). Will the fires have political consequences? Mayor Karen Bass will be able to answer that when she faces the voters again in June. 

ICE on the streets

Massive immigration raids across the state have reshaped California in tangible and intangible ways. Viral videos of people being slammed to the ground, families being torn apart and, worse still, U.S. citizens wrongly detained, are now the norm in our state. Plus, there’s a growing protest movement ready to document each and every capture by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. 

The new year isn’t going to change the administration’s focus on California, even though last week President Donald Trump said he would pull back the 2,000 National Guard members deployed here after a long legal back-and-forth.

What I’m watching is action from Gov. Gavin Newsom and the legislature that surely will provoke Trump. 

A new analysis from the University of California, Merced found the economic impact of the ICE raids in California are comparable with the Great Recession and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with both actual job losses and workers who feel they must shelter in place out of fear.

Professor Edward Flores, director of the UC Merced labor center, recommended in a December report that lawmakers consider some form of economic relief. 

The raids “reveal how the state currently lacks an adequate economic safety net system for undocumented immigrant workers, and the downstream effects of escalated immigration enforcement on citizens’ employment,” the report read.

It suggests lawmakers develop “a major economic stimulus and disaster........

© Roll Call