There is one thing we can all agree on: This year has been filled with news and happenings that just never gave us room to breathe.

Regardless of what side of the political debate you're on, you've had plenty to talk about and react to.

Thankfully, so have the USA TODAY columnists and editors. We've spent 2025 doing our best to stay on top of a never-ending news roller coaster. As we careen toward 2026, we wanted to take one last look back at the year that was. Specifically, we asked our columnists to write about what they got wrong or right.

Early on in President Donald Trump’s second term, I reserved some naive hope that Congress would have enough dignity to block his most egregious actions. Whatever low expectations I had were obviously far too optimistic.

The story of Trump’s second term has been one of Congress abdicating its duty as a body to legislate. Amid lawless tariffs, military strikes without congressional approval and attempts to slash wasteful federal spending, Congress has been completely silent and ineffectual. 

As much as Trump’s abuses of the role of the executive speak to how unfit for the office he is, there is something worse about Congress standing by idle to let it happen. Trump is a known quantity, and his self-serving nature was priced in when Americans voted for him. What wasn’t part of that calculus, however, was that Congress has abandoned its duty to defend the Constitution.

— Dace Potas

Since I hear all the time about how wrong I am from you, dear readers, I thought I would focus on something I got right this year. 

In January, while former President Joe Biden was still in office, I wrote about how I thought it was likely that Biden’s awful rewrite of Title IX would be overturned in court. Shortly thereafter, it was. 

Biden spent his four years in office prioritizing gender identity over biological sex, and he sought to remake Title IX, the law that prevents sex discrimination in schools that take federal money, to give his misguided goals the force of law. 

Luckily, more than half the states challenged the new rules, and the courts found them to be unconstitutional. 

I also believed that Trump –

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