It’s become a tradition here at LI for our authors and contributors to offer their predictions about what might happen in the coming year. Just don’t hold us to it.
You can click the links for our previous predictions and see how we did for 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018.
As we ring in the New Year, here are our predictions for 2023.
No optimism here for 2023:
1. Biden will continue to abandon southern border control, and the surge of economic migrants from around the world will steadily rise to even more unprecedented numbers. Large migrant camps and relocation facilities will arise in blue states, with federal funding.
2. The FBI/DOJ will continue to label lawful opposition “extremist” and potentially dangerous. The “potentially” part will be key to the repression. The J6 prosecution of people who committed minor offenses such as trespassing will be the model and the excuse. The IRS and other federal bureaucracies will be weaponized as part of the effort.
3. Academia will continue to sink lower and lower into one-sided unithought, with dissidents being purged more quietly than in 2020, but more effectively. DEI gatekeepers will continue gaining more power to keep counter-thinkers from entering the academy. There will be a large red state-level pushback.
4. China will “invade” Taiwan, likely by engineering some sort of coup or massive civil unrest, with the PRC “invited” in to help restore order. The PRC will promise a Hong Kong style transition with no disruption of the semiconductor industry. The U.S. will not do anything.
5. Iran will walk up to the edge of going nuclear, but will not test a nuclear explosion even underground. The U.S. will pressure Israel not to attack, and will “blow the whistle” on any Israeli plans.
6. President Kamala Harris. Vice President Pete Buttigieg. If you oppose them in 2024, you are racist and homophobic.
7. Ron DeSantis runs for President.
2023. Everyone seems so burnt out on the news and politics. Not surprising. Maybe I’ll add more good news posts daily to lighten the mood. I predict everything will get worse in 2023. I hate being a Negative Nancy. Trump literally broke the left, Democrats, and others. Hillary’s crushing loss in 2016 showed them that Americans could not handle their nonsense. They will do anything not to lose now. Start prepping, grow a garden, learn to shoot guns, buy guns, and buy as much ammo as you can. Learn to be self-sufficient and keep cash around.
But remember, despite the mainstream media and politicos being all doom and gloom, there is so much good in the world. People overall are a lot more giving, thoughtful, caring, and nice than we are led to believe.
Remember what Samwise Gamgee said to Frodo.
Happy New Year everyone!
While a new year can feel like a fresh beginning, we are not, I fear, facing anything new or fresh. Instead, we are “ruled” by a party that wishes it was the 1930’s and fascism was still king. Actual fascism, not the twisted Orwellian way the radical, tyrannical left use the term.
The authoritarian left will continue its long march through our institutions in 2023, focusing on cultural issues as never before. In response to the pushback from parents and a handful of brave teachers, physicians, and ordinary Americans, they will double-down and work twice as hard to keep the ground they’ve won and to snatch back the ground they have lost.
The corrupted parts of our government–the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ, the Departments of Education, Labor, HHS, and etc.–will continue their attacks on normal Americans with the complete backing of the White House and a far too large portion of Congress (including many elected GOP representatives and senators).
There will be some kind of new reason to control the masses. It may be another virus or just their go-to excuse for everything they seek to destroy, climate change, but something will require the economy to shut down, people to agree to all manner of liberty-stealing indignities, and / or further disruptions of the supply chain and energy availability/reliability.
Recession is already here, but it may be formally recognized this year. Americans who have been paying attention are prepping for the worst while hoping for the best.
The Biden war on American energy independence and production will ramp up this year, and gas prices will go up. Way up. And with that, everything else will go up, as well. See above re: recession. If Biden and his team of America-hating radicals can manage it, they may well usher in a depression this year (or next).
I don’t think Trump will gain the sort of steam (support/enthusiasm) he had in 2016 or even in 2020, but he’s the one to beat for any Republican hopeful. And they’ll all be declaring in the spring/summer of this year. My own hope is that Ron DeSantis remains as governor of Florida and goes for it in 2028. My hope, however, may not be reality-based. This does seem to be his time, but he’d have an easier time of it in ’28 when Trump is completely out of the picture. That said, if DeSantis does declare, it’s going to be a hot mess on the right. As we all know all too well.
People who will be throwing their hat in the ring this spring / early summer: Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan (stop laughing, he really thinks he has a shot), Mike Pompeo, maybe Kristi Noem. I guess Mike Pence is thinking of running, but it would be a mistake.
Then again, Trump is reportedly sending out feelers about a third party run, so who knows? If he takes that bait (and yes, he’s being played. Again), and he just might, the GOP field gets stronger immediately, and DeSantis would almost certainly run and win the GOP nomination. How that plays out in 2024 is a prediction for another year.
There are a couple of bright spots, though. One is a bit of a surprise, but the #TwitterFiles are having an impact that is not being fully felt but may be as this year unfolds.
The other is the parents’ rights movement that is gaining steam and pushing back against the attacks on their children’s innocence and futures. From CRT to genital and bodily child mutilation to racist “anti-racism,” parents are fed up and are not just sitting around waiting for the FBI to crash through their door. They are organizing and gaining support in unlikely corners (Gays Against Groomers, Trans Against Groomers, Muslim communities sickened by kiddie porn in their children’s schools).
We have millions of Americans fighting for their children, and they have the federal government, the media, Big Tech (except Twitter), Hollywood, the unions, and the newly woke military fighting for a radical, destructive leftist ideology. I like our chances. I really do.
I’ve become very wary about making predictions after the 2022 midterms, but here are a few things I can see happening in 2023.
1. Biden and Democrats will be emboldened because they did not lose the Senate. They’ll continue pushing the country further left with their horrible policies.
2. The same media that obsessed over every investigation of Trump by Democrats will demonize the GOP’s efforts to investigate the Bidens, calling it a waste of taxpayers’ time and money.
3. The war in Ukraine will continue and Democrats will try to send billions more in aid as Americans continue to struggle with inflation.
4. The situation at the southern border will get worse and Biden will do nothing to stop it.
5. Democrats will continue trying to find new ways to make being a Republican a crime and the media will go along with it.
Looking back on my 2022 predictions, I nailed two out of three of them completely. I was off only on my projection about the November election (as I let naturally high levels of optimism cloud my forecasting).
As we look into 2023, I have far less political optimism than I did a year ago. However, I am praying more and focusing on what I can change, and how I can best contribute (especially in the fight against the ideological capture of the hard sciences). I will admit I am grateful it is not an election year.
Here is what I foresee for the next 365 days:
1) There we be another new infectious disease, which will be used by our public health officials to try and broaden their powers. The press will parrot the narrative-based science presented by the “experts”. However, because Twitter is now truly a free speech platform, the attempt will fail.
2) There will be further erosion of Environmental, Social, and Governance priorities in corporate culture, as inflation-based realities mean that time and monies need to spent on personnel, equipment, and services that actually help the bottom lines. A few natural disasters in which the failure of green energies leads to more destruction will help the process along.
3) The candidates topping the presidential polls at the end of 2023 will be substantially different than who tops them currently.
4) Russia will still be fighting in Ukraine. China will continue to harass Taiwan….and may harass India more often as well. North Korea will continue to lob assorted missiles into the Sea of Japan.
5) Legal Insurrection’s Equal Protection Project will be an outstanding success.
6) There James Webb Space Telescope will continue to bring fascinating information that will change theories on the formation of stars, planets, and other “settled science”.
I am wishing all our Legal Insurrection readers a healthy, happy, and prosperous 2023.
My prediction for 2023:
Having reported on Europe and the Middle East for nearly a decade, I am cautious of making any bold or sweeping predictions as we enter 2023.
The war in Ukraine has led to realignment of geostrategic alliances beyond the continent of Europe. China and Iran are emerging as big beneficiaries as U.S. and its European NATO allies are locked in a costly slugging match with Russia.
Putin’s Russia has now moved firmly into China’s sphere of influence. In 1950s, Mao Zedong auditioned for the role of Joseph Stalin’s sidekick. With Putin now at Xi Jinping’s mercy, those roles have been reversed.
Iran, the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, is forging an intimate military alliance with Russia. Iran is providing drones and military advisors to Russia, and in return getting its hands on Western military technology captured from Ukrainian battlefield.
Recent statements from the Biden White House suggest that the administration is admitting the failure of its appeasement policy towards Iran and is simply going to watch as the genocidal Mullah regime goes nuclear.
As China-Russia-Iran forge a new Axis of Evil, the West is governed by woke pygmies, and not political giants to match the stature of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.
My big misses from last year:
– Poland and the Baltic states didn’t need to form their own alliance, because NATO didn’t collapse. In fact, two stand-offish neutrals, Sweden and Finland, are waiting to join. Hooray! Glad I missed that one.
– China didn’t invade Taiwan. Another whew. Still, I’m giving myself half a point on that one, based on a claim in Newsweek that China did plan to invade last year, but shelved the idea after it saw how miserably Russia fared in its invasion of Ukraine, and saw that the West pushed back surprisingly hard.
– Mercifully, Iran didn’t get the bomb. Thank God.
Predictions for the coming year:
The Supreme Court will hold that racial discrimination in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause. It may overrule Grutter v. Bollinger outright (Grutter is the case in which a majority of the Court held that discriminatory admissions were sort of okay); or it may say, Grutter’s reference to 25 years is a hard deadline, and schools may no longer discriminate as of 2028. Colleges (including graduate and professional schools) will of course continue to discriminate.
They’ve already begun laying the groundwork, by eliminating or proposing elimination of test requirements (SAT, LSAT, possibly MCAT). The lack of test scores will make discrimination harder to prove, and weaken the college readiness of newly admitted classes. Like the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, many schools will resist, and eliminating reverse discrimination will be a slow process.
Anti-Semitism will become increasingly accepted in mainstream American culture, leading to ever more discrimination and violence targeting Jews. Jonathan Greenblatt’s Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish mainstream figures and organizations will continue refusing to face the reality that anti-Semitism’s MAIN DRIVERS INTO MAINSTREAM AMERICA today come from so-called allies on the progressive left, especially from certain vocal college students and professors, parts of the black community (where it’s promoted by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and by the Black Hebrew Israelites), and parts of the Arab and Muslim communities. If you can’t name your enemy, you can’t defeat him.
President Biden’s interagency task force on anti-Semitism and “Islamophobia” will be as useless as the 2019 House resolution condemning anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, which started as a condemnation of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks and ended up essentially treating her as a victim.
Netanyahu has gotten into bed with religious extremists eager to force their brand of religiosity on the Israeli Jewish community as a whole, thereby angering Jews from non-Orthodox religious streams, many secular Israelis, and some Modern Orthodox too.
The Biden Administration will continue to harass Israel and blame it for defending itself against Arab terrorism, while exerting no pressure against Abbas and the Palestinian Authority, and largely ignoring Hamas/Islamic Jihad provocations. The UN, International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice, and European Union will ratchet up their hysterical attacks on Israel’s right to exist.
Palestinian groups will continue attacking Israel and each other as they jockey for position. Abbas is old and unwell, and the Palestinian Authority is corrupt and has generally lost credibility. On the other hand, Hamas has shown itself even less competent to run an economy than the Supreme Leader and Guardian Counsel in Iran or the Taliban in Afghanistan; and Iran has cut back its funds and those of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Biden won’t pressure or sanction them for their terror tactics or refusal to negotiate in good faith with Israel. He won’t do what he should do, which is to put the burden on the Palestinians to put forward a final two-state compromise offer they would commit to living with, which they have never done.
My predictions for 2023:
(1) Of all the New Year’s resolutions made, 72% will be broken by January 2nd. Of the rest, only 1% will last till February 2nd.
(2) The new House will hold a number of hearings that will reveal just how pernicious the FBI and other intelligence agencies have been, as well as the DOJ. The remainder of the yet-to-be-revealed Twitter files will be released, and they will be further confirmation of the shocking extent of the corrupt collusion of government and business to stifle free speech. The MSM will ignore the news or write “Republicans pounce!” stories about it, and the DOJ will decline to do much of anything except continue to pursue the remaining January 6th protesters to the ends of the earth.
(3) Joe Biden will somehow manage to dodder on.
(4) The Republicans in Congress will shoot themselves in the foot several times.
(5) Some sort of recession will occur in the US. Most forecasters call it “modest,” and who am I to differ? Then again, it was supposedly Galbraith who said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.”
(6) The James Webb Space Telescope will deliver more photos that inspire awe and challenge what we think we know of the universe, showing that “the science” is never “settled.”
(7) Legal Insurrection will continue its efforts in the defense of truth and liberty.
Seven’s a nice round number, so I think I’ll leave it at that for my predictions. Happy New Year to all from The New Neo!
Last year, I acknowledged that I’m really bad at predicting the future and then went ahead and predicted it incorrectly again. (I predicted that the Biden administration would declare a new and improved nuclear deal with Iran. It turns out that Iran was too unreasonable to allow that.)
With that history in mind, here’s my prediction for 2023.
I really like Gov. DeSantis and think he would make a fine president. Early polling suggests that he should be the favorite for the Republican nomination. I believe that Donald Trump is a spent force, and, despite his bluster, he realizes it too. It’s still early, and the out of power party rarely has its nominee decided two years in advance.
Another Republican will line everything up politically in 2023 and pass DeSantis as the likely nominee. This won’t be because of any mistakes on DeSantis’s part, but because of events outside of his sphere of influence. I don’t know who. Maybe it will be Gov. Youngkin. Maybe it will be someone not on the radar yet.
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Happy New Year to all of our readers and commenters from all of us!
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