My guess is a slimmed-down API with most or all support for older browsers removed, perhaps something similar to Zepto.

There is still something to be said for the usability of jQuery's API for direct DOM manipulation, as opposed to the more verbose API offered by the DOM itself.

I love modern reactive frameworks, but for DOM manipulation the jQuery-style API is great.

Some problems are much easier to solve working directly with the DOM (eg: drag and drop). The problem is that you either have control over the DOM, or let someone else do it (React, Vue, etc).

> The problem is that you either have control over the DOM, or let someone else do it (React, Vue, etc).

Someone needs to implement a (higher or lower) level of DOM access than what's offered by the current API -- something that would allow React's virtual DOM to be the actual DOM, whether that means allowing direct API access to the underlying tree data structure, or simply implementing the internal React VDOM API on top of the current DOM API.