This insane post foreshadows the year to come

Why 2026 is a year for the big, bold and brazen

On New Year’s Eve, the Department of Homeland Security’s X account posted an illustration of a 1960’s car parked on an idyllic beach. The caption — I’m not making this up — is “America After 100 Million Deportations.”

A casual reference to the forcible removal of over a quarter of the country (coming from the official account of a cabinet-level department of the U.S. government!) is, of course, insane. But there’s a message behind the madness, as I quickly realized after looking up some of the latest polling on DHS.

It turns out that DHS’s vision of an imagined past resonates with quite a few people. Recent polling from Gallup finds that the Department is the only federal agency to see a significant increase in its job rating in 2025.

But here’s the kicker: Gallup also found a huge increase in Americans’ support for immigration (including among Republicans). So what explains the support for DHS but not its vision of mass deportation?

Vision is the keyword here. People are sick of the realistic and the reasonable, because look at where it got us: houses you can’t afford to buy and healthcare you can’t afford to use. A mass immigration bringing back a 1960’s-era country isn’t really what Americans want; it’s the boldness of the idea that appeals to people. They want political leaders to think big. And what’s bigger than 100 million?

President Trump seems very aware of this, having taken up the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as an opportunity to impose his vision of where the country goes from here, with his typical penchant for grandiosity. He said in his New Year’s address:

“2026 will be a celebration of America like no other, honoring our nation and all of its glory … Working with states, companies, and organizations across the country, we will renew the patriotism, pride, and pioneering spirit of America, and lay the groundwork for the next 250 years of independence and freedom.”

Trump senses people’s appetite for vision and is eager to provide his own. Others in his administration are, too.

Another DHS post yesterday declared “We will not live like this anymore” over a meme titled, “AMERICA IN 2025.” It’s a play on the old expectations vs. reality meme. The post says “what we expected” above an image of Jetsons-style hover cars and a rocket-powered bass pro shop pyramid zooming through using a futuristic cityscape (lol); “what we got,” it then says, is an image of urban decay in Minneapolis and a misspelled sign for a “Quality Learing [sic] Center” — a reference to a government-funded childcare center in Minneapolis that has become a fixation for MAGA in recent days.

Trump’s war on immigration obviously isn’t going to get us any kind of utopian future (much as I’d like to ride the Bass Pro Shop spacecraft). But it’s important to recognize that these memes speak to a bone-deep hatred people have for the realistic, reasonable, moderate center that Washington is so enamored with. The insanity is the point.

But for anyone not looking forward to this Bass Pro Shop, anti-immigration future, 2026 has already produced another vision rebelling against the moderate middle.

Today, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as the Mayor of New York City. As he took office he laid his hand on a Quran — something I never thought I’d see. Bringing together an inclusive coalition around a vision of a “rent freeze” widely mocked as unworkable and unrealistic by the punditocracy, Mamdani is a symbol of the people’s yearning for the impossible.

It remains to be seen if Mamdani will take on the greatest cause of our political stagnation, the national security state and its own vision of a society besieged by lurking threats, given his decision to avoid the issue entirely. He may come to see that the public is now ready for a big change here, too.

Earlier I mentioned DHS as the only federal agency to see a significant increase in public approval. All other major agencies saw their approval decrease. Guess which saw the greatest decrease of all?

The CIA. It’s collapsed to just a 30 percent approval rating — its lowest since Gallup started asking the question in 2003.

In other words, people are ready for a different vision of society than the one driven by the logic of national security.

I’ve taken this battle between the possible and the impossible to heart and in the coming weeks will set out myself to do what I didn’t think was possible. We’re going to turn this newsletter into an organization under the KlipNews banner and with more contributors than just me. I’ll need the help because we’re going to reveal a bunch of government secrets, from codenames to secret organizations, including the embedded permanent elements that are daily entrenching themselves to survive well after Donald Trump.

By all accounts, I have more documents than I have time to report them out. But if I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s how overrated being realistic is.

Help me make the unrealistic a reality in 2026 by becoming a paid subscriber (or by chipping via my GoFundMe here if you prefer a one-off contribution).

Happy 2026!

— Edited by William M. Arkin