For as long as I can remember, corporate executives have mostly treated politics as something that happened in Washington D.C., on cable news, or in the comments section of social media sites, but not in the boardroom. In 2026, that illusion is gone. Today, politics doesn’t sit at the edge of your business; it runs straight through it. Whether you are expanding to new markets, reshaping your workforce, rolling out AI tools, or making any business decision of consequence, your success is now directly shaped by decisions made in government organizations. That could be a city hall or a state capital. It could also be a federal agency that is increasingly pulling you in different directions. The old playbook assumed that a company could “stay out of politics” by limiting engagement to a small federal team or an occasional check-in with a local representative or your governor’s office.…