From the New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro.

This is the Daily.

As 2026 gets underway, so does a midterm election year for control of Congress, a campaign that will determine whether Democrats can operate as a check

against the extraordinary power of President Trump, or whether Republicans can hold on to

every lever of influence in Washington.

Today, my colleagues, Annie Carney and Shane Goldmacher,

on the opportunities and perils for both parties.

It's Wednesday, January 7th.

Annie, 2026 elections, here we come.

Here we come.

Or, I guess here we are.

This episode is going to be kind of a roadmap and a primer for this year ahead in American politics, because while a lot of eyes are on Venezuela right now, in Congress, which you cover, the focus is on the reality that

it is an election year, a very big midterm election year coming up in November. And November sounds very far away, but as you know,

well, in politics, that really isn't very much time at all. And there's just a ton at stake in this

election. So we are turning to you to talk about the Republican side of that election and how Republicans in Congress are now thinking about

planning for or perhaps dreading this coming election.

I think that dreading is the correct word here.

Republicans ended last year feeling very pessimistic about their chance of holding onto control of the House.

And that's in a really large part because their party has failed to fix what ails the American economy right now.

Namely, high prices. High prices, high utility bills.

Americans can look at their receipts and they are not doing well right now.

Right. The receipts for the failure are literally the receipts.

...