City Councilmember Rick Caruso, Stephen Miller grows hair and more 2026 predictions
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Among the many geniuses we lost in 2025 was satirist Tom Lehrer, who scandalized America in the 1950s and 1960s with his biting political songs, then left that career in the early 1970s to teach math.
“Political satire became obsolete,” he famously quipped, “when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”
That thought crossed my mind as I deliberated whether to continue my annual Gustradamus columna, where I offer predictions for the coming year. How could I possibly find mirth after a 2025 in Los Angeles that started with infernos, continued with a blizzard of immigration raids worthy of the White Walkers in “Game of Thrones” and is ending with record Christmas rainfall and a gas line rupture that threatened to turn Castaic into a giant bonfire?
But hope and humor are what make life worth living, and President Trump makes Kissinger seem as inoffensive as Bluey. So behold my 2026 forecast, which will absolutely come true, because my track record is more perfect than an order of taquitos at Cielito Lindo washed down with horchata.
My Magic 8 Ball sees little to look forward to except a lot of laughs — because we’ll need to crack up at the cruelty to keep from crying, you know?
- Rick Caruso decides not to run for California governor or mayor of Los Angeles when he realizes JD Vance has a better chance of winning than he does. Instead, the developer challenges L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park and easily beats her by spending $538 million. He then shocks everyone by siding with the progressives on the council, citing his Catholic faith and the fact that Jesus made the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter seem as woke as, well, Park, a Democrat who’s about as blue on the political spectrum as a firetruck. Caruso uses his riches, deep connections and billion-dollar smile to solve homelessness, housing affordability and how to get from the Westside to the Eastside in 20 minutes during Friday rush hour.
- Speaking of will-he-or-won’t-he, Gov. Gavin Newsom decides not to run for president in 2028. He retreats to his predecessor Jerry Brown’s rural ranch in Northern California, shaves his head and announces he’s taking a vow of silence until the first leg of California’s high-speed rail project is finished. Newsom never speaks again.
- UCLA football breaks its contract with the Rose Bowl and relocates to a venue closer to campus where it’s supposedly easier to fill the stands: The Bad News Bear Field at the Westwood Recreation Center. The bleachers remain half-filled all season even as the Bruins finish with an undefeated record, because who wants to see UCLA play football?
- Stephen Miller, the chief architect of Trump’s scorched earth deportation policy, accidentally applies Rogaine to his bald pate and sprouts an Edgar cut within seconds. Turns out he’s a modern-day Samson: His lack of hair was the reason he was such a soulless ghoul. He quickly grows a heart and urges the president not only to stop all deportations but to pass a full-scale amnesty and open the borders. For a generation, Latinos name their first-born sons Esteban in his honor.
- For an entire hour, no political scandals hit the cities of southeast L.A. County.
- The Angels make the playoffs for the first time since 2014, ending an 11-year drought that was the longest in Major League Baseball. They get swept faster than downtown streets after a Dodgers World Series victory parade.
- NASA announces that a meteor is headed toward Los Angeles, leading Mayor Karen Bass to successfully order the evacuation of the city for everyone except her. L.A.’s terrible air quality shrinks the subsequent meteorite into the size of a Chihuahua’s head as it lands on the steps of City Hall, takes the elevator to Bass’ office and proceeds to criticize her for taking that trip to Ghana while the Palisades burned.
- Bill Essayli is desperate to prove to the world he’s a brilliant legal mind, after a judge ruled he was “not lawfully serving” as acting U.S attorney in Los Angeles, his prosecutors called him mean nicknames behind his back and federal public defenders consistently beat him in cases involving protesters at immigrant rights rallies. He volunteers to prosecute Hamburglar at a kindergarten mock trial — and he loses.
What’s next: Rick Caruso buys his suits at the Paramount Swap Meet? USC wins a national football championship? I’m calling those, as well as the following — and if any come true, be afraid.
- Everyone running for California governor gets the exact same vote count in the June primary, meaning they all move on to the general election. The same thing happens in November, leading to a runoff decided by a communal game of rock, paper, scissors. The final two candidates are former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and British and American political commentator Steve Hilton. Hilton agrees to concede defeat when Villaraigosa promises to make him the marquis of Huntington Beach.
- San Clemente buys all the sand in Saudi Arabia to replenish its rapidly declining coast and builds a 500-foot-tall seawall to keep the waves from the shoreline. The city still sinks into the sea because Mother Nature remains undefeated.
- Border Patrol sector chief at large Gregory Bovino returns to MacArthur Park, which he invaded last summer, on the same day MS-13 holds its first international convention. He ignores the transnational cholos and commands his migra to gang-tackle a mango lady, then justifies the excessive force by claiming she squinted at him.
- L.A. County Chief Executive Fesia Davenport, who is currently on leave, returns the $2-million payout the Board of Supervisors awarded her after voters passed a measure to make her position an elected one, which Davenport claimed hurt her reputation. Her change of heart happens after finding her shame in a Louis Vuitton bag left behind in the ladies’ room of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration.
- More low-level tornadoes descend on communities along Whittier Boulevard, where twisters struck Boyle Heights and Pico Rivera in 2025 and Montebello two years before. Scientists do emergency studies before realizing the phenomenon only occurs when former L.A. City Councilman Kevin de León is talking.
- AI takes over Disney, proving that computers are capable of creating slop only by ordering a fifth “Toy Story,” a reset of Marvel Studios’ Avengers franchise, a Baby Yoda movie, another crappy live-action remake of a Disney animated classic. … Wait, that’s Disney’s actual 2026 slate? Told y’all I’m a prophet!
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