Donald Trump will celebrate the new year alongside allies and MAGA celebrities at a fancy New Year’s Eve gala at Mar-a-Lago while the first year of his presidency comes to a close – and with 2026 promising to be a year of tumult for D.C.
The president’s annual New Year’s bash was set to kick off Wednesday evening at 7:30 at the Palm Beach manor and club owned by the president and is expected to be well-attended by the MAGA elite.
White House officials were tight-lipped on Wednesday regarding an official guest list. In recent years, the lists have included Cabinet officials and the occasional congressional ally like Sen. Ted Cruz, who attended in 2024.
This year’s event is likely to be attended also by a new generation of MAGA insiders, including many of the wealthy CEOs and socialites who make up the new Trump-aligned social circles in Washington D.C. Those insiders include the members of Donald Trump Jr.’s exclusive Georgetown club, the Executive Branch, which hosts notables like crypto guru David Sacks, venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, and the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler. FBI Director Kash Patel, known for hitting the D.C. nightclub scene since taking the job, is also very likely to be there.
Other MAGA influencers like James O’Keefe, Jack Posobiec and C.J. Pearson, host of the “Cruel Kids” Halloween party in Washington D.C. attended by a few White House staffers and many younger conservative staffers in the city, are likely to be in attendance tonight as well. Pearson attended several parties at the club over the past several days, according to his Instagram. Posobiec is due to host one in February.
Guests could also be on the lookout for Laura Loomer, whose presence in the West Wing felt like that of a grim reaper in 2025 as her visits typically heralded efforts to purge “disloyal” members of the administration from the White House to smaller positions at various federal agencies. Loomer tweeted that she was at a Mar-a-Lago event on Tuesday evening.
A former mainstay of the Mar-a-Lago scene who attended last year’s bash could make headlines simply by showing up tonight: Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO and former DOGE chief had a rough falling out with Donald Trump this year, accusing the president (correctly) at one point of being “in the Epstein files” and breaking with the GOP on the passage of the Republican budget reconciliation package this summer after his time in the White House came to a somewhat unceremonious end. Tales of his antics and alleged ketamine usage were widespread in the press and seemingly confirmed by chief of staff Susie Wiles in an 11-interview series that published in Vanity Fair this month.
But Musk was in attendance at the club as recently as November, making his appearance Wednesday evening a distinct possibility.
The president’s family including his newest soon-to-be daughter-in-law, Bettina Anderson, are likely to be in attendance. Anderson and the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., announced their engagement on December 15, which would make her the latest MAGAworld insider to marry their way into the Trump family after sister-in-law Lara Trump did the same.
Mar-a-Lago will mark an outpost of resistance for MAGAworld as the president’s political landscape crumbles in Washington, D.C. The House of Representatives is heading into 2026 with a very thin margin complicated further by the impending departure of Marjorie Taylor Greene on January 5 and, more broadly, a growing feeling of resentment shared by lawmakers of all stripes in the Republican House caucus.
“More explosive early resignations are coming,” one unnamed senior House Republican told the outlet last month. “It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower.”
This week, Trump did nothing to help that dynamic as he vetoed a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by one of the Republicans who broke with him on the Jeffrey Epstein files resolution, Rep. Lauren Boebert. The congresswoman, who vowed “this isn’t over” on Tuesday after the veto, is just one of a number of members of the president’s own party increasingly dissatisfied with the White House’s total control over the lower chamber of Congress through Mike Johnson, the Speaker known for relying on the president as his own enforcer.
He also lashed out at a Republican district attorney in Colorado who recommended against ceding to Trump’s wishes and honoring a federal pardon for Tina Peters, a former county clerk who was convicted of crimes related to the 2020 election and efforts to investigate supposed fraud in the state’s voting systems.
“I wish them only the worst. May they rot in Hell,” the president wrote in a Wednesday morning Truth Social blast.
His polling continues to suffer as Americans feel the brunt of persistently high prices on many grocery items and other consumer goods, which experts continue to blame on his “reciprocal” tariff agenda and persistent trade issues with China, which threatened to blow up the U.S. soybean market this year.
A Gallup poll this month found Trump’s approval – at 36 percent – to be the lowest of any president at this point in their term in 50 years.
That problem could explode for Trump in just a few days.
As 2025 comes to a close Wednesday evening, federal subsidies for Obamacare plans on the Affordable Care Act’s public exchanges are due to expire, a deadline which is set to spike premiums for many health plans on the public exchanges. The issue is likely to affect millions of Americans who purchase health care off of the Affordable Care Act exchanges rather than see it provided through their jobs, some of whom experts told The Independent earlier this year will be priced out of health care altogether.
Affordability remains a top issue for Americans of all political affiliations heading into 2026, the same as it was in 2024 when Joe Biden and later Kamala Harris attempted to win four more years in the White House. Republicans, now in control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, are reportedly in deep fear of losing the House and possibly the Senate in 2026’s midterm election cycle, which is set to kick off in earnest in just a few weeks. Despite calls from the likes of Greene and moderates such as Sen. Susan Collins for their party to pass legislation addressing the impending premium spikes, the House and Senate left town unable to do so in December.
The challenge of passing a bill when Congress returns in a few days won’t be any easier.
Already Johnson and his counterpart in the Senate, John Thune, are both facing resignations from key Republicans who threaten to endanger their holds on either chamber this year. Some Republicans in hard-fought seats are still publicly undecided over running for re-election, causing further headaches. Those include Joni Ernst, whose Iowa seat could be the center of a massive battle were she to step down in 2026.
One House Republican described as a “senior” member of the caucus by Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman excoriated the White House in a text to the outlet shortly after the Thanksgiving holiday in November.
“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file,” they wrote.
Trump may enter 2026 surrounded by his family and most fawning supporters, but his return to D.C. will mark a return to the cold reality of the unique challenges Republicans have set themselves up for in the new year, and the rough waters that appear to be coming up ahead.
