Yesterday marked one year of Donald Trump’s second Presidency. To say the least, it has been consequential and insane. The Federal Work Force has been gutted by DOGE. USAID and the Department of Education is gone. DEI is virtually illegal inside of the Federal government. ICE is running raids across the United States and rounding up basically whoever they want, then deporting them, sometimes incorrectly or without due process. Major projects like the transit tunnel between New York and New Jersey are being stopped or canceled. We are no longer helping Ukraine fight Russia. We removed a dictator in Venezuela. We are threatening to take Greenland and the Panama Canal. The President is trying to arrest some of his political enemies. The President called his Vice-President incompetent to his face in a cabinet meeting. He wants to push the Federal Reserve Chairman out of his job because he won’t cut rates.

This was all one year.

The Congress is completely derelict in it’s duties and is barely even capable of appropriating funds. The Supreme Court is so stuck in their obsession with creating a powerful executive branch that they are allowing the President to ignore courts, agencies, laws, and the constitution to achieve his agenda. Now the truth is that the other two branches of the government have been broken and deteriorating for a long time now, and this is just the logical end point. Conservatives beliefs in “states rights” are being shown as bullshit, just a slogan to justify them doing bad shit to people they don’t like. Our foreign policy is increasingly in line with Putin, Netanyahu, MBS, and Xi, and less in line with the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The President is abusing tariff powers that were expressly given to the Congress under the constitution, to hurt our traditional allies much less, and the courts are basically punting on the issue. Our government is broken.

Our society is basically broken too. Seemingly normal people literally decide which celebrities and sports teams to like, what singers to listen to, based on their perceived view of Donald Trump. Siblings argue on social media and eventually don’t talk over politics. People justify behavior that they themselves won’t do, based on the political leanings of the protestors and insurrectionists doing it. People will justify anti-Black racism and outright anti-semitism based on their political leanings. The level of division in our society over politics is at an outright tipping point. All in one year.

Assuming good health (which I sadly must wish him, as it is only right), Donald Trump will not leave office until three days from yesterday at high noon. The Congress won’t even pretend to be a separate branch of the government for at least a year. The court will only be as useful as Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Comey Barrett allow it to be. This isn’t going to end by some other miracle anytime soon, and even if it did, J.D. Vance would arguably be a much worse President in power. As George W. Bush once famously said, elections have consequences. We are living them now. You skipped voting over Gaza? Netanyahu now is basically free to do as he wishes. You wanted to crack down on immigration? This is the ICE you get. Joe Biden was too old? Your “new” President falls asleep in cabinet meetings and confuses Iceland and Greenland. Americans picked this. We are not “better than this,” or any other favored slogans of the “resistance.” This is who we are.

Here’s the really dark part for folks who are either left-leaning or just hate Trump- I don’t think the election would play out differently today. As much as voters are unhappy with Trump, conservative views generally defeat liberal ones in polling. Republicans still lead on their old faithfuls, immigration, crime, taxes and the economy, and usually on foreign policy. Democrats will almost certainly win the 2026 midterms, because that is the nature of midterms. Once they take back the House, they will inevitably face the task of governing with Trump, which is hard. The Presidential race will begin, and inevitably left-wing candidates will take far left positions popular in the primary, but unelectable in the general election, and we will see how they deal with that. I guess what I’m getting at here is simple- this isn’t going away easy. No one is rescuing us. God speed.