Ethereum went live 10 years ago, bringing programmability and composability to a technological innovation sparked by the advent of Bitcoin in 2009.
But what does the future of Ethereum hold? It’s a loaded question that is incredibly difficult to answer given the complexity and decentralized nature of the world’s pioneering smart-contract blockchain protocol.
Cointelegraph recently traveled to EthCC in Cannes to speak to the brightest minds in the Ethereum community about its current state and the future of the protocol amid the rise of highly competitive next-generation layer-1 blockchains.
These conversations formed the backbone of Cointelegraph’s latest mini-documentary: “The Fight for Ethereum’s Soul.”
The documentary features several founders, CEOs and builders in the Ethereum ecosystem including Ethereum Foundation (EF) co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Ethereum France president Jerome de Tychey, Figment co-founder and CEO Lorien Gabel, Dune Analytics co-founder and CEO Fredrik Haga, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, YAP Global co-founder and CEO Samantha Yap and Base head of product Tom Vieira.
The documentary was directed and produced by Cointelegraph’s head of multimedia Gareth Jenkinson, with senior producer Celine Tan.
A decade of dominance under threat
Ethereum has dramatically evolved over the past decade. The blockchain managed to execute a change in consensus algorithm, often likened to replacing the engine of a car driving at full speed on a highway.
The shift from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake fundamentally changed the way the protocol works. Ethereum parted ways with Bitcoin’s proof-of-work approach to consensus, rooted in computationally and energy-intensive hashing, to a skin-in-the-game system that requires validators to stake ETH tokens to maintain the network and reap rewards.
While Ethereum initially provided fantastic functionality, it eventually encountered the same problems as the preeminent cryptocurrency protocol. Its base layer chain simply could not serve the needs of the growing number of users, applications and services that set up on its network.
To enable the ability to process infinitely scalable transactions, the Ethereum community adopted a layer 2-centric approach to scaling. Execution, from transactions or asset creation, was shifted to a separate infrastructure layer. These layers use incredible advances in cryptography, like ZK-proofs, to submit trustless evidence of transactions and activity to Ethereum’s base layer.
This brought scale, speed and cost reductions to layer 1, but an inevitable consequence was the fragmentation of liquidity and shifting incentives for validators. Fees dropped on the base layer, which remains a core incentive for Ethereum validators to maintain the network.
Meanwhile, the superior execution environments of layer 2s began to pull liquidity from Ethereum’s base layer. In 2024, grumblings of discontent began to surface.
Prominent voices called for the EF to intervene and propose changes to the protocol that ensured the value of ETH continues to rise while maintaining the advances in UX and UI that layer 2s had provided.
Changing of the guard
In 2025, the EF made significant changes to its organisational structure. Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang took up a dual role at the top of the Foundation, reporting to a braintrust led by Vitalik Buterin.
Pectra, Ethereum’s latest network upgrade, hit the mainnet in May. It was the most significant change to the protocol since the Merge in 2022.
Combining the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer hard forks, Pectra introduced 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) to improve scalability, user experience and staking efficiency.
Pectra builds improvements made by the 2024 Dencun upgrade, which famously introduced Blobs through EIP 4844, known as proto-danksharding.
Blobs provided a new way for L2s to post transaction data on the L1. The impact was dramatic; L2 transaction fees dropped by 90%.
An unavoidable consequence of this upgrade was that L2s no longer paid huge fees to settle on Ethereum. According to Dune co-founder Fredrik Haga, this was a technological boon, but an economic drawback for L1 validators.
“The L2 situation is interesting because now 85% of transactions are on L2, so there’s only 15% left on Ethereum L1, but 85% of the volume still lives on L1,” Haga said. “The L1 has very limited engagement, if you will, in like the absolute number. But the big money is still clearly on L1. Then obviously the L2 used to pay a lot to settle to L1. And since blobs were introduced in March 2024, that has basically gone to zero.”
The combined impact of Dencun in 2024 and Pectra in 2025 has helped the Ethereum ecosystem move further down an intricate development roadmap. Stańczak said unifying liquidity, interoperability and improving overall user experience has been a top priority for the Ethereum Foundation (EF) over the past 18 months.
“I think the big focus now is on the interop, on the tooling and the standards, and accelerating that idea that all the chains around Ethereum should feel very much like a single ecosystem, and it should be very natural for the users to transfer between them to use all the applications that just flow to different chains if they need to,” Stańczak said.
“There are clear challenges on presenting how the fee structure, data availability and interop mechanics all work together. Just a few years ago, it was really hard to predict how the L2s would evolve. Now we see we have much more clarity.”
Jerome de Tychey, the head of Ethereum France and organizer of EthCC, added that the future success of the protocol is a balancing act between prioritizing L1 mechanics and the symbiosis with L2s.
“We are doing two things right now. First, we are putting some emphasis on the L1, on scalability and on the sustainability of the L2. We have a lot of consideration about the future performance of the security aspect of things, and also of potentially the token itself, of course, but also upgrading how the user experience is going to be unfolded in the next years. That’s a very, very good signal that Ethereum is going to be more accessible from a usability standpoint,” De Tychey said.
Still, the balancing act remains a precarious one. How does the Ethereum L1 ensure that validators are incentivized to keep the network running and avoid getting into a performance arm-wrestle with new-age layer 1s like Solana, SUI and Aptos?
Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron offered food for thought, suggesting that any efforts to try to compete directly with Solana, SUI or Aptos might be to the detriment of Ethereum’s future.
“I’m pretty optimistic about it in the sense that it does look like they’re saying, like, OK, maybe let’s focus on data availability and execution more than personally I would like, but without really giving up this benefit that we have from a settlement perspective,” Boiron said.
“I think it is dangerous, right? If they go down this road of trying to compete on execution too heavily, the likelihood is they will end up getting out-competed by those who are trying to do the exact same thing.”
The next decade
While the volume of criticism was deafeningly loud over the past year, conversations at EthCC gave a sense of optimism about the future of Ethereum.
This optimism is not rooted in fervour but rather in utility and onchain metrics. More than 90% of tokenized real-world assets are being built on Ethereum.
BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, is tokenizing securities on Ethereum.
Robinhood grabbed headlines in Cannes with the launch of its own Ethereum-based layer 2, squarely aimed at RWA and securities tokenization.
“If you think about DeFi versus TradFi, I would say absolutely no chance that DeFi will not dominate all the global markets. It will be there. It will happen on Ethereum,” Stańczak said.
De Tychey said there’s no meaningful alternative. “Everything else is a ghost train and going in the wrong direction, and pushing and lobbying to still be able to exist with a lot of different interests, a lot of vested interests.”
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal summed things up succinctly:
“Ethereum got dragged into the execution game. Whereas Ethereum’s core value proposition is this highly decentralized, sovereign-resistant, permissionless settlement layer. And if Ethereum plays well to its strengths and focuses on being the best settlement layer, we already have enough network effects and the momentum for the whole Web3 world to be created around Ethereum.”
Farmer’s Almanac Unveils Long-Range Forecast: “Widespread Wintry Weather” For U.S.
The Farmer’s Almanac has issued its long-range forecast for the upcoming Western Hemispheric winter, calling for cold and snowy conditions across large swaths of the Lower 48. While the two-century-old publication touts an 80% accuracy rate, independent analysis places that figure around 55%.
The forecast, which dates back to 1818 and accounts for environmental fluctuations on Earth, solar activity (sunspots), the motion of the Moon, and other proprietary factors, calls for “widespread wintry weather” in the 2025–26 winter season.
Texas/Southern Plains: Wetter than average, periodic cold snaps, limited snow but freezing rain possible.
Southwest: Wet winter, near-average temps.
If the Farmer’s Almanac’s long-range forecast is even partially accurate, it could spell serious trouble for Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states already plagued with strained power grids, with Maryland at the epicenter of the crisis.
George Soros turns 95 today, and for his birthday present America brought him the annihilation of his legacy.
Soros has been known for two things: making money and spending it on political influence. Over the last few years, he has handed over control of his empire to his son, Alex, and Alex seems unable to do either of those things successfully.
The money
First, Alex ruined his reputation for making money. George was once known as “the man who broke the bank of England,” famous for making $1 billion in one day by sniffing out arbitrage opportunities in currency exchange markets.
Taking control of Soros Fund Management, Alex became the man who broke the bank of Soros. In December 2021, Alex invested $2 billion to buy nearly 20 million shares of an electric vehicle company called Rivian at somewhere between $70 and $100 per share. It was one of the largest one-off investments the fund had ever made.
A year later, Rivan shares were selling for just $18 and Soros Fund Management sold at a loss of what must have been more than $1 billion. HedgeFollow, a website that tracks and ranks U.S. hedge fund performances, currently gives Soros Fund Management a performance rating of 1 out of 5 stars, making it one of the least successful in the country.
The politics
Alex is as talented at making billions vanish as George was at making them appear, but maybe he inherited some of his dad’s skill for political maneuvering and network building?
Well, no, not really.
Alex has become famous for posting photos of himself posing with Democratic politicians and liberal world leaders, but the actual influence of the George’s network seems to have been greatly diminished. Perhaps related to the massive losses on Rivian, in July 2023 Open Society Foundationsannounced that it would be laying off 40 percent of its staff worldwide, halting all new grants until February 2024, and completely changing its operating model. What had once been an international network of influence peddling was slashed to the bone.
The crowning achievement of the Open Society Network under Alex so far was the passage of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Open Society staffers, such as Tom Perriello, were so involved in pushing the legislation that Open Society Policy Center briefly re-opened lobbying operations and became one of the top lobbying spenders in the nation. Perriello was on the floor of the House when the bill was passed. (Capital Research Center has written at length on Soros’ involvement in the IRA. The research can be found here.)
Billions of dollars for EV chargers (that never got built) and billions more for EV tax credits were crammed into to the bill, seemingly the perfect bandage for Rivian’s revenue troubles. The IRA even allocated $3 billion for purchasing electric delivery trucks for the postal service, and Rivian is one of the biggest producers of electric delivery vans. But, despite the EV subsidies and green energy handouts, the bill came too little and too late to save Soros’ investment in Rivian.
This period coincided with another of Alex’s big political maneuvers: Spending at least $4 million on Stacey Abrams’s failed gubernatorial campaign in Georgia. During that time, Rivian was starting to build a “giga-factory” outside of Atlanta and, most importantly, asking the state government for subsidies. In the eleventh hour of the Biden administration, Rivian was also awarded $6.5 billion loan for the factory from the Department of Energy. Construction on the factory has yet to even start, and Rivian stock currently trades at less than $12 per share.
The decline and fall of the Soros DA’s
George’s most notable political achievement, one so famous that his name was used to coin the term for it, was the funding of the “Soros DAs.”
One of George’s goals for decades has been to end of the War on Drugs and implement a total overhaul of the American criminal justice system. To that end, he has funded soft-on-crime think tanks and pro-legalization ballot initiatives.
And then, in a showcase of the financial genius that made him a billionaire, George spotted a political arbitrage opportunity. He realized his immense fortune could make an outsized impact if he supported soft-on-crime politicians running to become local prosecutors and district attorneys.
A lot of them won. And then, “Soros DA” became a political lightning rod as soaring murder and violent crime rates followed behind George’s donations.
Coupled with the “reforms” and defunding of the police that were popularized during the summer of 2020, the Soros DA became a nationwide blight on urban areas. While left-leaning pundits, researchers, and think tanks, frequently funded by Soros, tried to explain away the spike in crime and blame it on the pandemic, guns, or economic hardship, Americans grew more discontented with the “reform” they had been promised.
Today, more than a dozen Soros DA’s have been removed from office by recalls, scandals, or simply not seeking re-election. And the spike in urban crime ended up being a key factor for the Democratic Party’s defeat in 2024.
The demise of the Soros DA is more than a rejection of Soros’ legacy on criminal justice policy. It was also a rejection of his legacy on immigration. As one might guess from a name like “Open Society,” Soros is a proponent of open borders. One reason Soros began funding DAs in 2016 was to create “sanctuary cities” that would be the heart of the so-called “resistance.”
The second election of Donald Trump—in a race where crime, immigration, and the IRA were three of the major issues—was America’s personal slap to George Soros’ face. Today, on his 95th birthday, his legacy is in shambles.
Trial Begins Over Trump’s Use Of National Guard In California
A federal court began hearing testimony on Aug. 11 in a trial to determine whether President Donald Trump illegally used National Guard troops for law enforcement in California.
The trial is part of a broader legal debate over the federal government’s power in combating lawlessness in the country.
On the day the trial started, Trump said he would activate National Guard troops to combat crime in Washington.
Sam Dorman reports for The Epoch Times that U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who is overseeing the trial, previously blocked Trump’s use of National Guard troops, but an appeals court halted that decision.
Breyer’s decision had focused on whether Trump violated a federal law that directs the president to issue orders through a state’s governor.
This trial is focused on whether Trump violated a law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, by using federal troops for civilian law enforcement.
The trial is expected to last three days with multiple witnesses. The state of California brought three witnesses on Aug. 11, including Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman, who led the troops in the state.
His testimony, and another by Enforcement and Removal Operations Field Office Director Ernesto Santacruz Jr., probed the relationship between federal law enforcement and the activities of military troops called into California.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who initially sued the administration in June, is alleging that the Trump administration violated the Posse Comitatus Act by using troops for direct involvement in civilian law enforcement activities, such as forming blockades and detaining civilians.
Last week, the Justice Department argued that the trial should be canceled.
Among other things, it argued that the federalized National Guard troops were not executing the laws but were instead focused on the protection of federal property and personnel performing federal functions.
Besides, it said, another section of federal law allows the National Guard to execute the law.
It was referring to Section 12406 of federal law, which allows the president to federalize the National Guard under certain conditions, including if he “is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
That was the law that Breyer previously said the president violated.
According to testimony from Sherman, troops were conducting multiple requests for assistance as of the night of Aug. 10.
The Department of Defense said on June 11 that it was deploying more than 4,000 troops, including Marines and members of the National Guard.
By Aug. 5, the Justice Department told Breyer that less than 10 percent of the originally deployed force—or about 300 Guardsmen—remained.
During Sherman’s testimony, an attorney for California played a portion of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s speech that morning about plans for mobilizing the National Guard in Washington.
In the nation’s capital, Trump is calling up hundreds of National Guard troops and has invoked a law that puts the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington under his control for 48 hours.
House Judiciary Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) accused Trump of a “phony, manufactured crisis” and said he would introduce a resolution to “restore full home rule powers to the Mayor, Council, and people of the District of Columbia.”
LOS ANGELES—When students in Jamie Rector’s Energy and Civilization course at the University of California–Berkeley came to him with the idea for a project on California’s abandoned oil wells, he was intrigued.
The state has more than 120,000 abandoned oil and gas wells, as well as 30,000 idle wells and 70,000 active wells. Many were drilled or dug in the late 1800s, clustered in areas such as downtown Los Angeles and near present-day Dodger Stadium, where the California oil boom began.
The concern among some is that these wells might be emitting methane or other hydrocarbons. Older ones are likely to have been improperly or shallowly sealed.
The federal government has spent $4.7 billion to plug and reclaim abandoned wells. California has plugged about 1,400 wells at a cost of $29.5 million since 1977, and now requires operators to eliminate idle wells or face increasing fees.
As they researched California’s abandoned oil wells, Rector’s students discovered an abundance of natural oil seeps located above the same fields—and came to a surprising conclusion. According to them, geologically driven, natural oil seeps are a major contributor to California’s greenhouse gas emissions. And drilling—long seen as the problem, not the answer—might be a panacea for emissions.
Natural seeps occur when liquid oil and gas leak to the Earth’s surface, both on land and under water. California sits on actively moving tectonic plates, which create fractured reservoirs and pathways for the oil to escape.
Waters off Southern California are rife with seeps, and oil and gas fields, including the Salt Lake field beneath the La Brea Tar Pits, and the Coal Oil Point field off the coast of Goleta, have some of the highest natural hydrocarbon seep rates in the world, emitting gases such as methane, as well as toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
But these geologically driven seeps, Rector said, have been largely unaccounted for in assessing how oil production fields contribute to California’s greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are hundreds of studies linking oil and gas fields to greenhouse gas emissions, to cancer rates, to climate justice, to groundwater pollution and everything else,” said Rector, a professor in the University of California–Berkeley’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department. “And yet none of these studies ever considered the possibility that it wasn’t from equipment or production, but natural seeps above the oil fields.”
Reviewing existing literature, Rector’s team calculated that natural seeps, together with orphaned wells, produce 50 times more methane emissions than oil and gas equipment leaks in Southern California.
If seeps are driving emissions above oil fields, Rector said, then plugging abandoned wells may do little to help pollution.
In fact, he said, the only demonstrated way to reduce natural seep emissions is by depleting underlying reservoirs—that is, by drilling.
Pointing to studies showing that oil production has reduced and even eliminated seeps, he suggested that California’s current regulatory environment may be counterproductive.
“The crazy thing is, by stopping oil and gas production in California, after we’ve regulated and really gotten equipment emissions way down, we may be increasing seep emissions,” Rector said. “Because these seeps come up through the oil and gas fields, and the only way to stop it is by producing oil.”
Ira Leifer, a researcher in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California–Santa Barbara, said the argument is valid but that Rector’s analysis gets ahead of available data.
“The problem is that there is no statewide seep emissions estimate,” said Leifer, who studies marine seeps and oil field emissions. Arriving at a publishable estimate is “impossibly difficult,” he said.
Rector characterized the student project as a “skunkworks” effort without any funding, which he said he planned to submit for peer-review by August. Ideally, it will be followed by field research.
“We will have to go out and make measurements with the hypothesis that seeps are the principal cause rather than oil field equipment, and make measurements along traces of faults, above oil fields where faults intersect the surface,“ he said. ”That’s really the only way we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
Meanwhile, Leifer is working on his own forthcoming paper analyzing satellite data of methane anomalies. The strongest ones, he said, are associated with refining and other large infrastructure, and with natural faults that have been punctured by man-made wells—something he calls “anthropogenically amplified seepage.”
Of Rector’s paper, he said: “I fundamentally agree with their conclusion. I just don’t think it can be supported with data at this point.”
Leifer acknowledged that petroleum-related hydrocarbon emissions, including a “poorly understood” geological component, “clearly are extremely significant to overall California methane budget emissions,” based on spatial patterns from satellite data he has been studying for years.
Both Leifer and Rector agree that so far, emissions from orphaned wells and natural seeps have not been differentiated. Thus, the critical question remains unanswered: How much does natural seepage contribute to overall emissions?
While California has some of the highest concentrations of recoverable oil and gas in the world, it also boasts the most stringent oil and gas regulations in the country, and production has been in steady decline as the state aims for a 2045 “decarbonization” goal.
“If we’re really worried about emissions, pollution, disadvantaged communities, health—even fire danger, earthquakes and public safety—this is all affected by seeps,” Rector said.
By relying on studies that have broadly ignored them, he said, policymakers may have unknowingly implemented counterproductive policies.
Ancient Rocks, Modern Problems
Los Angeles sits atop one of the most petroleum-dense basins on the planet. Rector cited a 2015 U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study estimating that there are still 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the Los Angeles Basin. This year, the USGS estimated that 61 million barrels of recoverable oil and 240 billion cubic feet of gas remain.
The organic-rich sediment beneath us is oil-prone and “relatively immature,” Rector said, and hydrocarbon generation is ongoing. Massive natural seeps such as Coal Oil Point off the coast of Santa Barbara, California—one of the largest seep fields in the world—continue to actively produce petroleum.
Seeps concentrated along the coast are fed by adjacent reservoirs deep within sedimentary rock beneath the region’s oil and gas fields.
California’s geology is also uniquely affected by actively shifting tectonics. Along with organic-laden sediment deposits, the shifting plates create conditions for rich petroleum accumulations, as well as natural seepage and hydrocarbon venting, Rector said.
Oil fields both in the Los Angeles Basin and throughout Southern California, he said, tend to concentrate along fault lines, allowing oil generated down deep to migrate into shallower pools and eventually make its way to the surface.
The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles is one of the largest seepage sites in the state, and hydrocarbon gas emissions there are the highest on record for any onshore seepage site in the United States, according to a 2017 research article published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
California’s bubbling tar pits have been part of human culture for millennia, their bitumen used by the Chumash Tribe as a sealant long before anyone showed up to drill for oil.
When they did, in the late 1800s, surface seeps and methane vents played a crucial role in the California oil boom, during which most of the state’s large oil fields were discovered, starting with the Los Angeles Oil Field.
“Back a hundred years ago, they had people, they were called ‘smells,’ and they would smell the ground trying to see if there were oil seeps in an area,” Rector said, describing how early oil pioneers would decide where to dig.
More recently, trapped oil and methane have offered a pointed reminder of the city’s ancient subterranean history, including the mysterious 1985 explosion at a Ross Dress for Less store near the La Brea Tar Pits that sent 23 people to the hospital.
In a report the same year, a city task force noted that the source of the explosion was likely natural seepage of methane gas.
Oil production in Los Angeles County has declined dramatically since its peak in the 1920s, when it was one of the most prolific producers in the world.
But the infrastructure left in place—and whatever interaction it may have with naturally occurring seeps—remains vast and, in some ways, hidden in plain sight.
Health Impacts
In a 2023 paper exploring health impacts of oil and gas facilities on “cumulatively burdened” communities in Los Angeles County, researchers point to this hidden infrastructure.
“As government and industry negotiated to continue oil drilling within residential zones, oil extraction in L.A. County became increasingly hidden from public view, often by utilizing tall walls or hedges, and consolidating operations into fewer neighborhoods,” the authors and university researchers wrote.
For as long as there have been teenagers, there has been curiosity about what they want to be when they grow up.
Today, that question is particularly interesting for Generation Alpha—those born from 2010 onward—because they will be the first cohort to grow up entirely in the 21st century, shaped by rapid technological change, global crises, and evolving ideas of work.
This infographic, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, sheds light on Gen Alpha’s dream careers based on a GWI survey of 11,452 kids aged 12–15 across 18 countries, revealing a broad mix of career aspirations among today’s teens.
What Gen Alpha Wants to Be When They Grow Up
Below is the breakdown of Gen Alpha’s career aspirations by gender, showing the percentage of boys and girls who named each profession as their dream job:
Across both genders, science and technology careers dominate.
Nearly a third of boys and almost one in five girls want to become scientists, engineers, or inventors—roles often associated with innovation, problem-solving, and impact.
Video game design and tech development is another popular choice, highlighting the influence of digital entertainment and the growing familiarity Gen Alpha has with coding, gaming platforms, and emerging tech.
For boys, professional sports is still a powerful aspiration, ranking third at 18%. For girls, careers in healthcare are particularly popular, with nearly one in five aspiring to become doctors or healthcare professionals.
The Creative Pull
Not all of Gen Alpha’s aspirations are STEM-oriented. Artistic careers—like musicians, dancers, actors, and painters—top the list for girls at 21% and still capture interest from 11% of boys.
Meanwhile, the rise of content creators and influencers as a career goal underscores how social media is reshaping the idea of work. About 11–12% of both boys and girls express interest in this path, suggesting it’s not just a passing trend but a legitimate aspiration in the digital age.
The first 2026 midterm primaries are more than 200 days away, with Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas kicking off inter-party preliminaries on March 3, 2026, but many congressional races are taking shape as incumbents and challengers launch campaigns.
Among the most closely-watched contests will be for supremacy in the House of Representatives, where Republicans now hold a 220-213 advantage.
Democrats believe they can flip the chamber while the GOP is gunning to increase its majority in the Nov. 3, 2026 election.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has identified 35 Republican-held congressional districts “in play,” while the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has a “target list” of 26 “vulnerable” incumbent Democrats it believes GOP challengers can unseat.
Among these races are 13 House seats Democrats won in districts President Donald Trump captured, and three Republicans won in districts then-Vice President Kamala Harris secured in November 2024.
These 61 House contests include anticipated tight tussles in eight of California’s 52 House seats, with the NRCC putting the bull’s eye on five incumbent Democrats, and the DCCC spotlighting three Republicans. Democrats now have a 43–9 bulge in California’s congressional delegation.
Other states with multiple House races that could be 2026 dogfights include five each in Florida and Ohio. In both states, the NRCC believes it can knock off two incumbent Democrats, and the DCCC is targeting three sitting Republicans.
Four New York House incumbents are in hot seats with the NRCC confident it can defeat three sitting Democrats—two on Long Island—and the DCCC targeting Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) in the lower Hudson Valley.
Once again, the NRCC will attempt to win at least one of three Democrat-held Nevada seats in the Las Vegas area.
The sitting president’s party has lost House seats in every midterm but two since 1950.
Of course, with Texas lawmakers set to redraw the state’s 38 congressional districts and California legislators threatening to do the same, the playing field could be significantly altered by the end of thr year. Stay tuned.
Here are 16 prospective 2026 midterm House races listed chronologically by primary date that could determine which party controls the chamber when the 120th Congress convenes in January 2027.
1. North Carolina Congressional District 1
Two-term Rep. Donald Davis (D-N.C.), defeated Republican challenger Laurie Buckhout by 1.7 percentage points—6,300 votes—in the 2024 North Carolina Congressional District 1 (CD 1) race.
Davis might be hard-pressed to retain his seat in a district that was once a Democratic stronghold but, following post-2020 Census redistricting, is now rated as a “toss up” by The Cook Political Report.
To win a third term, Davis must fend off Rocky Mount Mayor Sandy Roberson, who enters the race with $2.2 million in his war chest, according to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), a more than $1 million edge over the incumbent.
Roberson, who owns home-care, hospice, and nursing home operations, ran for the seat in 2022 but lost the GOP primary by 2,000 votes.
North Carolina CD 1 is among the 13 congressional districts where voters selected Trump in 2024, but sent a Democrat to the House. The president won the district by 3.1 percentage points, meaning Davis outperformed Harris by 4.8 percentage points while squeezing past Buckhout.
While The Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss-up” district, Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball gives it a “Lean Democratic” classification.
As of Aug. 1, neither Davis nor Roberson face challengers for the March 3, 2026, primary.
2. Texas Congressional District 34
At least five Republican challengers will vie in the March 3, 2026, GOP primary for the party nod to take on two-term Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. (D-Texas) in Texas Congressional District 34.
This is a seat Gonzalez retained by fewer than 5,000 votes—2.6 percentage points—in 2024, despite Trump winning by 4.4 percentage points.
The 2024 election marked the second time Gonzalez edged out former Rep. Maya Flores (R-Texas), after ousting her in 2022 from the seat in the Gulf Coast district, which stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi. It was the tightest margin of victory in Texas’s 38 congressional district elections in 2024.
Gonzalez will first need to brush aside a primary challenge from Brownsville policy researcher and rock musician Etienne Rosas before facing the winner of the GOP primary.
As of Aug. 1, at least five Republicans have declared candidacy with the Dec. 8 primary filing deadline still months away.
They are: Keith Allen, retail manager, ordained minister, and podcast host; Joshua Cortez, former senior advisor to Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas); Eric Flores, Army infantry veteran and former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas; Mauro Garza, teacher and entrepreneur; and Bam Morales, Army veteran and law enforcement officer.
As of June 30, Gonzalez’s campaign had more than $932,000 in its FEC campaign kitty while challengers had amassed nominal contributions.
The Cook Political Report and Larry J. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rate Texas’s CD 34 as a “toss-up” district, while Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales gives it a “Tilt Democratic” rating.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has been on the GOP’s target list since she succeeded 14-term Rep. Thomas Ashley (D-Ohio) in 1982. In 2026, Republicans feel confident they can flip Ohio’s Congressional District 9 for the first time since 1930.
The state’s longest-serving member of Congress is seeking an 18th term in the northwest Ohio district that Trump won by 7 percent and Kaptur retained by 1,382 votes—0.7 percentage points—over business owner, realtor, and former state representative Derrick Merrin.
Merrin is among four Republicans who will contend for the party berth to challenge Kaptur in the May 5, 2026, GOP primary. The others include Alea Nadeem, an Air National Guard officer who has been a national security policy advisor at the Pentagon and the National Security Council; attorney and Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams; and Air Force veteran Wayne Kinsel.
Kaptur, as of Aug. 1, does not have a primary opponent. She does, however, have a big fundraising advantage with nearly $950,000 in her FEC campaign fund. By contrast, of her opponents, only Nadeem has reported contributions—less than $86,000—as of June 30.
The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate Ohio’s CD 9 as a “toss-up.”
Newcomer Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) in 2024 knocked out three-term incumbent Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) by 4,062 votes—1 percentage point—in their Pennsylvania Congressional District 7 race.
Wild, as of Aug. 1, is not among the three Democrats who have declared their candidacies for Pennsylvania’s May 19 primary for a space on the ballot opposite Mackenzie in 2026. The state candidate-filing deadline for the party preliminaries is March 10, 2026.
The confirmed three are: Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure, and nonprofit executive Carol Obando-Derstine.
Mackenzie, who does not have a Republican primary challenger as yet, served on the Pennsylvania Economic Development Financing Authority before defeating Wild in CD 7, which includes all of Carbon, Lehigh, and Northampton counties in northeast Pennsylvania.
Mackenzie’s campaign had $1.2 million in its FEC war chest as of June 30, significantly more in contributions than any of his potential opponents.
The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Crystal Ball all rate Pennsylvania’s CD 7 as a “toss-up” district.
This key Omaha-area House seat is wide open after five-term Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) announced on June 30 he is not seeking reelection in 2026, and Democrats believe they can win it.
Nebraska Congressional District 2 is one of three districts in the country that Harris won in 2024 while also electing a Republican to the House. Bacon, a retired Air Force general, defeated Democrat Tony Vargas by less than 2 percentage points in their rematch from 2022.
With Bacon out of the picture, four Democrats and one Republican have launched campaigns for the seat, which The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate as “Lean Democratic,” and Inside Elections calls a “toss up.”
As of Aug. 1, state Sen. Brett Lindstrom and Omaha City Councilman Brinker Harding have thrown their hats in the ring for the GOP primary.
Vying for the Democratic nod are Kishla Askins, a former deputy assistant secretary of Veterans Affairs under President Joe Biden; state Sen. John Cavanaugh; Denise Powell, small business owner and former corporate executive; and Evangelos Argyrakis, immigration attorney.
The Nebraska State Legislature has not yet set a date for the primary, but it is typically in May.
6. California Congressional District 13
Although Trump lost California by 20 percentage points in 2024, he won Congressional District 13 by 5.4 percentage points.
Newcomer Rep. Adam Gray (D-Calif.) unseated one-term Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) by 187 votes in their 2024 slugfest—the closest House race nationwide—and Republicans will likely spend big to get the Central Valley seat back.
As of Aug. 1, Gray doesn’t face a party rival in the June 2 primary, but Republicans Ceres Mayor Javier Lopez and business owner Vin Kruttiventi will face off for the GOP nod.
Gray is one of 13 Democrats holding seats in crossover districts the president won.
The district garners a “toss-up” rating from the Cook Political Report, Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections.
7. New Jersey Congressional District 7
Two-term Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-N.J.) does not, as of Aug. 1, have any opponents in New Jersey’s June 2 primary, but at least eight Democrats will battle for a Congressional District 7 ballot berth to dislodge him in November 2026.
The district, one of the most affluent in the nation, includes Hunterdon and Warren counties, and parts of Morris, Somerset, Sussex, and Union counties in north-central New Jersey.
Kean was reelected in 2024 by 5.4 percentage points over Democrat Susan Altman after wresting the formerly blue stronghold from two-term Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) by 2.8 percentage points—less than 9,000 votes—in 2020. It was a rematch from their 2020 race, which Malinowski won by 1.2 percentage points.
The son of former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean Sr., Kean is a former state lawmaker who worked in the Environmental Protection Agency during the George H.W. Bush administration.
The candidate-filing deadline for the primary is March 23, 2026, but the Democratic inter-party preliminary is already crowded.
Among contenders are Rebecca Bennett, criminal justice professor; Beth Ellen Adubato, former Navy helicopter pilot, Air National Guard officer, and health care executive; Valentina “Vale” Mendoza, an attorney; Michael Roth, an official in the Biden administration’s Small Business Administration; Felipe Santos, an entrepreneur; Tina Shah, a physician; Brian Varela, a marketing agency owner; and Gregory Vartan, Common Council of Summit councilmember.
Crystal Ball rates New Jersey CD 7 a “toss-up,” while The Cook Political Report classifies it as “Lean Republican,” and Inside Elections as “Tilt Republican.”
8. New Mexico Congressional District 2
Rep. Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) edged out incumbent Rep. Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) by 0.7 percentage points in 2022—the nation’s closest House race during that midterm election. He beat Herrell again by more than 4.2 percentage points in their 2024 rematch in New Mexico’s Congressional District 2.
As of Aug. 1, Vasquez does not face a challenger in the state’s June 2 primary, nor does Republican Eddy Aragon, although that could change by the Feb. 3 candidate-filing deadline.
The district, which spans southern New Mexico—including Las Cruces and the southern reaches of Albuquerque—is one of 13 districts Trump won in 2024 while a Democrat was elected to the House.
Vasquez, a former journalist, Hispano Chamber of Commerce de Las Cruces executive director, and field representative for Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), served on the Las Cruces City Council before challenging Herrell.
Aragon is CEO of Rock of Talk and a longtime Albuquerque radio broadcaster. As of Aug. 1, he had $3,000 in his FEC campaign fund compared to Vasquez’s $626,000.
The Cook Political Report rates New Mexico’s CD 2 as a “toss-up,” while Inside Elections gives it a “Tilt Democratic” classification, and Crystal Ball calls it a “Lean Democratic.”
9. Maine Congressional District 2
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) is seeking a fifth term in Maine’s Congressional District 2, a district he won in 2024 by 0.6 percentage points—2,706 votes—and Trump won by almost 7 percent.
Next year, he’ll have to do that against former two-term Republican Gov. Paul LePage in the 27,326-square-mile district, the largest by area, east of the Mississippi River.
As of Aug. 1, neither face party rivals in the state’s June 9 primary, but that could change before the March 15 candidate-filing deadline.
Golden had $1 million in his FEC campaign fund as of June 30, while LePage had $527,781.
The Cook Political Report and Crystal Ball rate Maine’s CD 2 as a “toss-up,” while Inside Elections pegs it as “Tilt Democratic.”
10. Virginia Congressional District 2
Rep. Jennifer Kiggans (R-Va.) has survived two races in Virginia’s Congressional District 2, unseating incumbent Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) in 2022 by 10,000 votes—3.4 percentage points—and then fending off Democrat Missy Cotter Smasal by 3.8 percentage points in 2024.
Another tussle awaits if she’s to three-peat in the tidewater district, which has a strong military, primarily Navy, constituency.
Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot and an adult-geriatric nurse practitioner, faces no GOP challengers in the June 16 primary as of Aug. 1, but party rivals could emerge before the April 2 candidate-filing deadline.
Three Democrats have declared candidacies. They are U.S. Naval Academy graduate and fast-attack submarine veteran James Osyf; Navy veteran and entrepreneur John ‘Burk’ Stringfellow; and data center project manager Nicolaus Sleister.
Kiggans had nearly $1.5 million in her FEC kitty as of June 30. The Democratic candidates had either nominal contributions or had not reported yet.
Virginia’s CD 2 is rated a “toss-up” district by Inside Elections and Crystal Ball. The Cook Political Report calls it “Lean Republican.”
11. New York Congressional District 4
First-term Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.) defeated incumbent Rep. Anthony D‘Esposito (R-N.Y.) by 2.3 percentage points in their 2024 Congressional District 4 race. It was a rematch, and a reversal, of their 2022 race that D’Esposito won by 3.6 percentage points.
As of Aug. 1, Gillen, the former Hempstead Town supervisor, faces two Democrat rivals in the party’s June 23 primary: real estate professional and veteran Democrat campaign manager Gian Jones, and artist and stagehand Nicholas Sciretta.
Americord founder and CEO Martin Smithmyer is the only Republican seeking the party nod to take on Gillen, although more are likely to join the race before the April 2 candidate-filing deadline.
Gillen has more than $1 million in her FEC campaign bank. None of her challengers in the Long Island district had significant contributions as of June 30.
The Cook Political Report rates New York’s CD 4 as a “toss-up.” Inside Elections calls it “Tilt Democratic,” and Crystal Ball rates it as “Lean Democratic.”
12. Colorado Congressional District 8
Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) defeated incumbent Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D-Colo.) by 0.7 percentage points in 2022 in Colorado Congressional District 8 and again warded her off in 2024 by 1.2 percentage points.
Evans will face a similar close race in 2026 if he’s to return to Congress for a third term representing Colorado’s newest district, which traces I-25 north of Denver in Adams, Larimer, and Weld counties.
Nearly 40 percent of CD 8 voters are Hispanic, and Democrats have a 3 percent registration advantage, which is why at least seven Democrats have launched campaigns to win the June 30 primary to take on Evans in November 2026—including Caraveo, a pediatrician.
The other six are: Amie Baca-Oehlert, executive director of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association; State Rep. Shannon Bird; Marine combat veteran and finance associate Evan Munsing; state Rep. Manny Rutinel; software management consultant John Szemler; and Colorado state Treasurer Dave Young.
Evans, an Army combat veteran, farmer, and former police officer, as of Aug. 1 does not have a GOP primary challenger, although there’s time for rivals to declare before the March 17 candidate-filing deadline.
He had $1.5 million in his FEC campaign kitty as of June 30, far more than the Democrat campaigns, although Rutinel had more than $800,000 in contributions.
The Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Crystal Ball all rate Colorado’s CD 8 as a “toss-up” district.
These Are The Best-Selling Cars In The US So Far In 2025
The first half of 2025’s best-selling cars in the U.S. confirms America’s long-standing love affair with trucks and SUVs.
Pickup models from Ford, Chevrolet, and Ram continue to dominate the top ranks, while compact SUVs from Toyota and Honda also make strong showings. Sedans, once the default choice for many households, are now largely absent from the bestseller list.
With 3.17 million cars sold across America’s top 20 models in the first half of 2025, pickup trucks and SUVs dominate the top of the list, making up nine out of the top 10 most-sold cars.
The data table below lists the top 20 car models and their sales figures for H1 2025, along with what kind of vehicle it is.
Ford’s F-Series led with 412,848 units, with the Chevrolet Silverado close behind at 284,038. The Toyota RAV4 (239,451) and Honda CR-V (212,561) were the leading compact SUVs, reflecting the segment’s broad appeal.
If you take a look at the best-selling cars by state, the Ford F-Series dominates the map, which is no surprise considering Ford is among the top three favorite car brands of every generation in America.
Among the top 10 best-selling cars, pickups account for five spots and about 56% of volume, while SUVs take four spots and 36%. The top five models—three pickups and two compact SUVs—together make up about 42% of all top-20 sales.
Few Sedans Among Best-Selling Vehicles
Sedans claim just one place in the top 10 with the Toyota Camry at 155,330 units sold in America in the first half of 2025. The Honda Civic (128,236) and Toyota Corolla (120,052) follow just outside of the top 10, joined by Tesla’s Model 3 (101,323) in 17th place.
Looking at the full top 20 sales by vehicle type, SUVs account for 47% of top-20 sales (1.49 million vehicles), followed by pickup trucks at 37% (1.17 million) and sedans at 16% (505,000).
While sedans still find buyers, since 2015 a strong majority of car sales have continued to shift to crossovers and trucks.
To learn more about car production around the world, check out this graphic on Voronoi which maps out global vehicle production by country in 2024.
Jailed American Hit With New Charges By Russian Court, As 9 Total US Citizens Remain Imprisoned
Russian prosecutors have brought new charges against Robert Gilman, an American citizen and former Marine who was already slapped with an eight-year prison sentence for attacking law enforcement while drunk as well as a prison official, according to court records.
The 30-year old Gilman has actually owned up to the attacks – but claimed self-defense and that he was also responding to insults. The new charges, which were filed in late July in a court in Voronezh, southern Russia, are also said to relate to alleged assaults on prison staff.
Kommersant newspaper says Gilman’s legal team is requestiong a reduced sentence, citing an unspecified mental health issue, and he’s next due in court on August 25.
Gilman’s family as well as advocacy groups say he was wrongfully detained on false charges, and further that he’s being held as a bargaining chip for future possible prisoner swap with Washington. Here’s how one such US non-profit organization working on obtaining his freedom characterizes his arrest:
Robert is a Marine Corps veteran, who was traveling in Russia when he fell sick on a train. Instead of medical help, he was taken to a police station. He fell into a cycle of charges, which began with a case that was dismissed, a second that was without evidence, and a third for assault of a police officer where even the police officer says he should not be charged.
A typical Russian Government tactic is getting Americans into their system, and pile on various unfounded charges to keep them there. This is Robert’s story, and they continue to put him in conditions that set him up for further charges that further politicize his case. Beyond this, the profile of the case against Robert appears eerily familiar to the Trevor Reed case, where a former Marine unexpectedly blacked out and was charged with punching a police officer, suggesting this may all have been staged.
And here is a description of what came next via the Amsterdam-based Moscow Times:
Robert Gilman, 30, was found guilty of attacking a policeman while drunk in the western city of Voronezh in 2022 and sentenced to four and a half years in jail, which was later reduced to three and a half years following an appeal.
While jailed for that conviction, Gilman allegedly punched prison staff “in the head” on two separate occasions, once during an inspection of his cell in September 2023 and again in October, according to prosecutors cited by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
Days later he attacked a criminal investigator and, after being moved to a pre-trial detention center, struck another prison guard during a search, the agency reported.
In October 2024, when Gilman was sentence for the attack on a prison guard, Reuters featured the following: “RIA cited Gilman as telling the court last week that he had been forced to use violence after the prison inspector had caused pain to his genitalia and after the investigator had insulted his father.”
Such an admission and the circumstances surrounding his case are perhaps why so far the US government has not declared him ‘wrongfully detained’ – which is a legal designation which signfifies the US sees someone as essentially a hostage for which a swap can be authorized.
Even after a series of past high-profile prisoner swaps – from Brittney Griner to former US Marine Paul Whelan to The Wall Street Journal’s Evan Gershkovich and others – at least nine American citizens are currently imprisoned in Russia.
Back in April, Russian-American ballerina and spa worker Ksenia Karelina was swaped for a Russian national accused by the US government of helping transfer sensitive electronics to the Russian military.
Karelina had been hit with treason charges by the Russian government, for merely making a $51.80 donation to an American charity supporting victims of the war in Ukraine. Apparently the transaction had been found on her phone while she visited Russian family, and this was enough to get her an ultra-harsh 12 year sentence in a Russian labor camp. Thus her case was more easily classified as ‘wrongfully detained’ by the US.
Below is a summary review of the other eight detained Americans still in Russia, compiled by Reuters & other media sources:
Stephen James Hubbard
Hubbard, 73, was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison in October last year after being convicted in a closed court in Moscow of serving as a mercenary for Ukraine. Russian state media said he pleaded guilty.
An English teacher who had previously lived in Japan and Cyprus, Hubbard had been living in the Ukrainian town of Izium and was arrested after Russian forces took control of the town in 2022. His relatives rejected claims that Hubbard served for Ukraine, pointing to his advanced age.
He was designated by the US in January as “wrongfully detained”, meaning Washington is committed to try to negotiate his release.
Gordon Black
An active duty US staff sergeant based in South Korea, Black was detained in May 2024 in Russia’s Far East on suspicion of stealing money from his Russian girlfriend.
A court in June found Black guilty of stealing 10,000 roubles (R1,874) from the woman and threatening to kill her, sentencing him to three years and nine months in prison. In April, a Russian court cut Black’s sentence to three years and two months.
Daniel Joseph Schneider
Schneider was sentenced to six years in prison in September last year by a court in the Kaliningrad region for kidnapping his son after he tried to leave Russia with the four-year-old without permission from the boy’s mother.
Schneider was detained near Poland by Russia’s border service while trying to cross the border in a forest swamp, the court said.
Joseph Tater
Tater was sentenced to 15 days in jail last August for “petty hooliganism” after he was alleged to have abused staff at a Moscow hotel, which he denied. Russian news agencies later said he was also being investigated on a more serious charge of assaulting a police officer, which carries up to five years in prison.
On April 6 a court ordered Tater be removed from pretrial detention and placed in hospital. State media said doctors have diagnosed him with a mental disorder.
A Russian court later ruled he was not criminally responsible for his actions and committed him for treatment in a Russian hospital.
Michael Travis Leake
A musician and former US paratrooper, Leake was sentenced to 13 years in prison last July for drug smuggling.
It was not clear how Leake pleaded to the charges, filed after his arrest in June 2023.
Robert Romanov Woodland
A US citizen adopted from Russia as a child, Woodland had moved back to Russia and was working as an English teacher when he was arrested on charges of attempting to sell drugs. He was sentenced on July 4 last year to 12 years and six month in prison. His lawyer said Woodland had partially admitted guilt.
In April, a Russian court ordered Woodland’s jail sentence be reduced to nine years and six months, his lawyer told Reuters.
Eugene Spector
Serving a three year and six months sentence for bribery, Spector, who was born in Russia and moved to the US, was charged last August with espionage.
Before his arrest in 2021, he served as chair of the board of Medpolymerprom Group, a company specialising in cancer-curing drugs, state media said. Spector had pleaded guilty to helping bribe an assistant to an ex-Russian deputy prime minister. It was not clear how he pleaded to the espionage charge.
David Barnes
Barnes was sentenced by a Russian court in February 2024 to 21 years on charges of abusing his two sons in the US. He had been involved in a custody dispute with his Russian ex-wife.
The allegations had previously been investigated in Texas, where authorities found no grounds to charge him.
Andre Khachatoorian
An Armenian-American from Los Angeles, Khachatoorian was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison in 2023 for arms trafficking. He was arrested in 2021, while travelling from California to Armenia via Moscow, after a firearm was found in his luggage.
Khachatoorian, 38, said his firearm was legal, and he was tricked into applying for a Russian visa at the airport, and removed from the transit zone, where he could be arrested under Russian law.
* * *
It is entirely possible that at least some of these imprisoned individuals could be traded in a future swap with the United States – something which Moscow has clearly shown itself open to, especially in instances where it can get back from US custody people that may have been tied with its intelligence services.
Syria’s caretaker government is moving to restore the Kirkuk-Baniyas oil pipeline with Iraq, a strategic corridor that had the capacity to move up to 300,000 barrels per day to Syria’s Mediterranean coast before war and sanctions shut it down in the early 2000s.
Syrian Energy Minister Mohammed al-Bashir will travel to Baghdad in the coming days to discuss rehabilitation plans, according to Iraqinews.com.
For Damascus, reconnecting to Iraq’s oil network could provide critical transit revenues, reduce reliance on costly maritime imports, and restore its position as a regional energy hub. For Baghdad, reopening the route would offer an alternative export outlet to Europe, bypassing chokepoints in the Strait of Hormuz and diversifying away from Turkey-dependent pipelines, as highlighted by Shafaq News.
The proposal comes as post-Assad Syria navigates a shifting geopolitical landscape. Regional powers, including Turkey, Iran, and Gulf states, are recalibrating their strategies, while Western capitals weigh how to engage without ceding influence to rivals. Analysts told the Yetkin Report that the Kirkuk-Baniyas revival could weaken Ankara’s leverage over Iraqi exports and reshape Mediterranean energy flows.
The revival of the Kirkuk-Baniyas could also have far-reaching consequences for Baghdad’s relations with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.
For over two years, northern exports have been hampered by the shutdown of the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to Ceyhan, a route that runs through territory controlled by the KRG.
A functioning Baniyas route would give Baghdad a northern export corridor that bypasses both KRG-controlled infrastructure and Turkish territory. Analysts note that this could diminish Erbil’s bargaining power in budget talks and shift Iraq’s export calculus toward Syrian cooperation.
The change could also heighten tensions if Baghdad attempts to channel crude from disputed fields in Kirkuk and Nineveh through Syria without KRG consent.
