Flood the zone. Move fast and break things. DOGE the civil service. War against woke. Liberation Day tariffs. Big Beautiful Bill. The longest government shutdown in history. The “Peace President” bombing seven countries—plus fishing boats in the Caribbean. Bulldoze the East Wing, slap gold and the Trump name on every wall in reach. Barrages of unhinged Truth Social rants, including a Christmas blessing to “the radical left scum.”

Amid the chaos, Trump’s first year of his second term featured a lawless grasp for power, exercised most dramatically to wage a culture war at home and to open a reign of untrammeled corruption.
 

The Autocratic Incursion

“Elect me and you’ll never have to vote again,” Trump promised the faithful on the stump. A year later, he’s still handing out Trump 2028 bumper stickers and consulting with Alan Dershowitz, a fellow Epstein reveler, on how he could run for a third term. Consider this trolling the libs. At 79, the oldest president in history, Trump can barely stay awake now. What’s clear is that on taking office, armed with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 Blueprint (that Trump characteristically lied he knew nothing about) Trump and his operatives have implanted core elements for an autocratic reign.
 

Asserting Presidential Prerogative

Invoking emergency and national security powers, an invented popular mandate, and the so-called “unitary executive theory,” Trump has trampled limits imposed by custom, law, or the Constitution, usurped the congressional powers over spending (as in shuttering USAID), and taxes (exemplified by his tariffs), while scorning any limit on his power to make war or peace abroad.
 

Geld Checks and Balances

Trump has backed this power grab by gelding the other branches of government. Slim Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress are disciplined by threats of political and personal retribution. “We are all afraid,” Republican Senator Lisa Mirkowski admitted. “Retaliation is real.”

While lower federal courts have shown some independence, the reactionary supermajority on the Supreme Court eased the way for Trump’s usurpations, overturning lower court injunctions, largely in “shadow docket” decisions without explanation. Emboldened by the presidential immunity proffered by that same majority, Trump and his operatives in the administration have not hesitated to violate court orders and defy congressional subpoenas.
 

Purge and Pack the Civil Service

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OMB director and former Project 2025 leader Russell Vought declared, “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” to be “viewed as the villains.” Trump, without legal authority, unleashed Elon Musk and DOGE to terrorize the civil service under the cover of cutting waste. Over 300,000 employees were purged from the bureaucracy in the first year. Over a million employees have been stripped of their collective bargaining rights.

Simultaneously, Vought—a “right-wing absolute zealot ”according to Trump’s Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—moved to pack the bureaucracy with MAGA sympathizers. Civil service protections were eliminated. Applicants for employment are now required to submit written pledges of their loyalty not to the Constitution but to the president.
 

Politicize the Justice Department, Police and the Military

Trump has turned the Justice Department and the FBI into instruments of his whims—investigating his enemies, dismissing prosecutions of his allies. He has pardoned allies convicted of serious crimes, most notably when he pardoned all convicted for storming the Capitol on January 6, including those who assaulted the police on duty.

He dispatched the national guard and the Marines into blue cities, even over the state governors’ opposition. ICE—the US Customs and Enforcement Agency—was given the largest budget of any law enforcement agency. Trump also informed military leaders to prepare for deployments into US cities to fight the war against an “enemy within.”
 

Paint Political Opponents as Enemies of the State

According to Trump, that “enemy within” includes the Democratic Party, whose leaders the President slanders as “very sick people, radical left lunatics” or “Marxist scum.” He’s ranted that senators warning the military about illegal orders were “traitors” punishable “by death.” His deputy chief of staff, Steven Miller, head of a federal campaign to prosecute “domestic terrorist organizations,” charges that Democrats are not a “political party” but a” domestic extremist organizations.”

The vile rhetoric isn’t just divisive. It is a signal both to the weaponized federal police forces as well as right-wing militia groups. It also provides the predicate for Trump’s ominous internal security plans. He issued NSPM-7, calling on the Justice Department to create an enemies list of “domestic terrorist groups,” and investigate groups identified by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity…extremism on migration, race and gender” and disrupt them before they “result in violent political acts.”
 

Bully and Buy the Media

Trump not only constantly assails the “fake news,” he’s sued The Wall Street Journal, CBS and The New York Times directly. His FCC has unleashed investigations on ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR and Comcast. Public radio at home and abroad has been defunded. Allied moguls own FOX, X, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and more. Companies seeking media mergers have learned that they must pander to play, illustrated when CBS owners seeking support for a new merger deep-sixed a 60 Minutes report on the horrors of ICE shipping often law-abiding immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious CICOT prison.
 

Cow Establishment Institutions

Trump has brought elite universities to heel, using threats to their funding to force changes in leadership and curricula, purges of professors, and policing of students. Leading law firms have folded in the face of threats to access, promising over $1 billion in pro bono work to Trump’s causes, shunning cases and causes disfavored by the regime. Trump’s threatened major foundations like Ford and the Open Society Foundation, as well as targeting Democratic donors. Major corporations and banks scrambled to eliminate DEI and climate programs, while larding out pay to play offerings for presidential ego projects—like new Trump White House ballroom.
 

Subvert Democratic Elections

Trump has intensified Republican efforts to rig the electoral process. Notably, Trump pushed mid-term partisan redistricting to gain Republican seats. When Indiana Republicans balked, Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, warned that that “President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.” In the end, Indiana’s Republicans showed most spine than expected and defied the White House.

The right-wing Supreme Court majority not only overturned a lower court ruling against Texas’s racially discriminatory redistricting, it is also poised to gut the remainder of the Voting Rights Act, essentially declaring open season on African American districts across the South.
 

The Purposes of Power

Past presidents have claimed extraordinary powers in emergencies, notably Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression, and Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War. They acted to save the nation. Trump, in contrast, has used his powers to divide and plunder the country.
 

Kulturkampf

On taking office, Trump immediately launched a culture war, championing a reactionary white, male, heterosexual, Christian culture against what Vought termed the “complete Marxist takeover of the country.” Proclaiming America a “Christian nation,” the White House moved to relegate DEI—diversity, equality and inclusion—to, in Vance’s words, “the dustbin of history.” African American and female military leaders were publicly dismissed. Confederate names were resuscitated for military bases; libraries were purged of unacceptable books. Assault on gay rights was ramped up, with particular and cruel focus on the trans community.

The administration sought to pasteurize American history, erasing “anti-American” accounts of slavery, racial or sexual discrimination, and Native American eradication from schools, public parks, and national museums. In Trump’s new Golden Age, America’s history will be offered only in expurgated versions.

Immigrants, caricatured in Trump’s campaigns as “eating the dogs,” as terrorists, rapists, criminals, are the centerpiece of the offensive. Trump and his operatives peddle the white supremicist Great Replacement theory, that Democrats encouraged immigrations in order to replace or at least outnumber white voters. The White House moved to close the southern border and unleashed ICE raids on immigrant communities, sending masked thugs to terrorize immigrants and people of color largely in blue cities, arresting them without warrant, and deporting mostly law-abiding residents to notorious hellholes in El Salvador and elsewhere.

The administration propaganda featured streaming edited versions of ICE’s raids and AI generated burlesques as a kind of cruelty porn—featuring footage of shackled immigrants, Kristi Noem’s sadistic photo ops, and mockery of those arrested. Asked if he were concerned about the systematic trampling of basic constitutional rights, Trump said he thought the ICE raids “haven’t gone far enough.” Legal immigration was also slashed, with citizens from some 39 countries banned altogether.

Trump extended the culture war internationally as well. His National Security Strategy warned that immigrants were driving European allies to a “civilizational erasure,” pledging overt support for right-wing parties committed to regime change. In Latin America, the “Trump Doctrine” featured open efforts to support right-wing parties in elections in Argentina and Honduras, as well as escalating efforts to overthrow the Maduro government in Venezuela. On Christmas Day, Trump announced that the US had bombed in Nigeria, allegedly to stop Islamic extremists from murdering Christians. He repeatedly accused South Africa of the fictional charge of condoning genocide against whites. On legal immigration, he made clear that America would give preference to white and rich people.

Bizarrely, climate change—which Trump labels a “hoax”—was rolled into the Kulturkampf. The White House systematically dismantled and defunded agencies designed to measure and address catastrophic climate change, sought to impound funding for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles, larded subsidies on fossil fuels, even moved to eliminate FEMA, leaving it to the states to respond to the growing number of climate related calamities.
 

The Kakistocracy: America ME First

For all of Trump’s America First rhetoric and his overhyped tariffs, his economic policies adhere largely to traditional business class agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and privatization. He packed his cabinet with billionaires and former CEOs. His big budget bill featured tax cuts skewed to the rich and corporations and harsh cuts in healthcare and food assistance. He larded money on the Pentagon and decimated investment in public education, public health, and public housing. He crippled the IRS’s capacity to audit the wealthy, encouraging tax avoidance, while shuttering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, effectively ending federal protection of consumers against financial frauds. He rendered the National Labor Relations Board inoperative and gutted the agency for Occupational Safety and Health. He torpedoed the effort to impose a global minimum tax on multinationals, while opposing raising the minimum age for workers and deep-sixing the Biden initiative to extend the right to overtime pay to over 4 million workers.

The plutocratic policies were accompanied by personal plunder. This Trump White House has made shamelessly brazen self-dealing and corruption its signature. The New Yorker estimates that the Trump family fortune has grown by over $3 billion dollars this year, benefiting from an astonishing array of schemes, ranging from the tacky (peddling Trump-branded Bibles and baubles) to the preposterously corrupt.

The Trump Organization is now nominally run by his sons, who have accompanied him across the world, cutting deals for hotels and resorts as the president bestows official favor on the countries involved.

By far the biggest scam has been the president’s embrace of cryptocurrency. Proclaiming the US the “crypto capital of the planet,” Trump and his organization launched not just its own meme coins—$Trump and $Melania—but created World Liberty Financial with its own crypto currency. To bolster his meme coins, the president peddled a private dinner with those who would purchase $100,000 or more. One of the largest purchasers was Justin Sun, a crypto billionaire, who also purchased $30 million worth of Trump’s World Liberty currency. Not coincidentally, the SEC’s investigation of Sun for fraud was dropped; and the Justice Department shut down its crypto enforcement efforts. Reuters has estimated that Trump pocketed $800 million in sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025, with much of the cash coming from foreign sources.

Trump’s latest scam is the announced merger of his floundering Media Group with TAE Technologies, a fusion energy company. Large public contracts are certain to follow. The president has already begun to reduce regulation and safety rules on nuclear power plants.

Trump notoriously abused his pardon powers to reward his benefactors. Alongside the official channel for pardon appeals is an informal Trump channel, with, The Wall Street Journal reported, a going rate of about $1 million per pardon to insider lobbyists.

Along with personal enrichment, Trump has amped up the traditional pay-to-play political corruption so corrosive to America’s politics. The billionaires row standing behind Trump at his inaugural was more than symbolic. The major financial supporters of Trump’s campaign—fossil fuel, AI and Big Tech, crypto, defense contractors—have been rewarded in policy and larded with government contracts. Companies seeking approval for mergers or regulatory relief learned that it was necessary to pay to play, often garnering favor by anteing up for Trump’s ego projects and political coffers—his inaugural committee, his super PAC, his White House ballroom, his future library.

Abroad, America First turned out to mean turning the United States from the world’s policeman to its rapacious brigand. He’s used tariffs as a bludgeon to exact promises of investment in the US. He extorted promised access to Ukrainian minerals in exchange for continued assistance. He geared up the campaign to overthrow the Venezuelan government, as opposition leader Maria Machado, Venezuela’s bellicose Nobel Peace Prize winner, promised access to $1.7 trillion of Venezuelan oil and other assets. Trump announced that the US would “take back” control of the Panama Canal, purchase or conquer Greenland, while suggesting Canada become the 51st state.

Perversely, Trump policies have served only to exacerbate the major challenges the country faces. He’s increased the corrosive inequality that undermines our democracy and our economy. Catastrophic climate change wreaks an ever-greater toll has he dismantles our ability to address it. He’s bludgeoned an already inadequate public health system, even as global pandemics pose an increasing threat. He’s torpedoed regulation of AI, even as its plants drain more and more energy and water and its founders turn to peddling pornography in a desperate effort to gain revenue to keep the bubble from bursting. The last existing agreement limiting nuclear weapons expires this spring with the United States, China and Russia racing to build a new generation of weapons that can never be used.
 

The Reckoning

At the end of his first year, support for Trump has reached new lows, less because of his assault on democracy and blatant corruption than because his program doesn’t work for most Americans. Prices continue to rise; job growth has slowed; unemployment has risen. Manufacturing has lost jobs. Majorities now oppose his health care cuts, his top end tax cuts, even his immigration raids. Trump’s attempts to label concerns about the economy a Democratic hoax have failed.

Most important, while established institutions folded or cashed in, Americans stood up in large numbers. Record “No Kings” protest rallies spread across the country. Neighbors rallied to defend neighbors from ICE abuses. Trump’s complicity in Epstein’s crimes and the cover-up has begun to erode even MAGA support. Republicans have lost every statewide election race held over the last year.

Increasingly desperate, Trump will no doubt double down. Massive deficits, lower interest rates, and a cheaper dollar under a newly appointed Federal Reserve chair will goose the economy. The crackdown on domestic dissent will be intensified. Election subversion—most likely with ICE used directly to intimate voters at the polls—will intensify. Trump will turn the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence into a Trump-branded celebration, and campaign kickoff. At the end of the day, however, if Americans get to decide, it increasingly seems likely that Trump, who has never been popular, is not likely to enjoy their verdict.