This Week and Next
The Year That Never Should Have Happened.
I knew it would be bad.
Anyone who lived through the first Trump administration and possessed functioning synapses knew the sequel would make the original look like a dress rehearsal. But even my darkest premonitions couldn’t conjure the systematic dismantling of American institutions that unfolded in 2025. This wasn’t just political theater or partisan warfare. This was something darker — the hollowing out of the republic itself, conducted in broad daylight while half the country cheered and the other half watched in mounting horror.
We got Trump Unbound. Trump Unleashed. Trump without even the threadbare guardrails that occasionally constrained him the first time around.
Walk through the West Wing colonnade now and you’ll see Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame” — inspired, he said, by a display at a Hilton hotel. Every president rendered in gold frames. Except Joe Biden, whose portrait Trump replaced with a photograph of an autopen. In December, Trump added bronze plaques beneath each portrait, many of which he wrote himself in his characteristic bombastic style. Biden is declared “by far, the worst President in American History” who took office “as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States.” Obama is branded “one of the most divisive political figures in American History” who “spied on the 2016 Presidential Campaign” — a claim debunked by multiple bipartisan investigations. George W. Bush’s plaque says he “started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of which should not have happened.” Bill Clinton’s notes that “his wife, Hillary, lost the Presidency to President Donald J. Trump!” Reagan, naturally, “was a fan of President Donald J. Trump long before” his political career began.
Trump’s own plaque boasts about overcoming “unprecedented Weaponization of Law Enforcement” and “two assassination attempts,” then lists accomplishments including ending “eight wars in his first eight months” and building “the magnificent Trump Presidential Ballroom.” The introductory plaque proclaims: “The Presidential Walk of Fame will long live as a testament and tribute to the Greatness of America.”
And that’s just the décor.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — vaccine skeptic extraordinaire — spent his first months at Health and Human Services methodically dismantling public health infrastructure that took generations to build. He fired the entire vaccine advisory panel and replaced them with allies who share his creative interpretations of medical science. The CDC’s website now says the consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism is not “an evidence-based claim.” He stripped away public comment periods on agency decisions, promised a 20% workforce reduction, and barreled through legal challenges with the zeal of a true believer.
The consequences are already written in the mortality statistics. Measles cases hit 2,012 by late December — the highest level since the disease was declared eliminated in 2000 and the worst year in over three decades. Three people died, including two unvaccinated children in Texas. Fifty outbreaks were reported across 44 states. The U.S. is now at genuine risk of losing its measles elimination status entirely, joining the ranks of nations that couldn’t maintain basic public health standards
Whooping cough is surging — more than 35,000 cases in 2024, the most in over a decade, with 2025 numbers already double last year’s pace. Two infants died in Louisiana in the past six months. One died in Washington. Another in Idaho. The disease is particularly deadly for babies under age one, and we’re watching it come roaring back because parents have been convinced that protecting their children is somehow suspect.
As Johns Hopkins epidemiologist William Moss warned, measles is “a fire alarm going off” — when vaccination rates drop, other preventable diseases follow. The vast majority of measles cases — 93% — occurred in people who were unvaccinated or whose vaccination status was unknown. We had conquered these diseases. We’re choosing to bring them back.
Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth — the Fox News host playing Secretary of Defense — delivered Signalgate, where he shared classified Yemen strike plans on his personal phone minutes after being briefed, potentially endangering American troops. A Pentagon inspector general found he violated protocol, risking “potential compromise of sensitive DoD information.” Then came reports of Caribbean boat strikes where Hegseth allegedly ordered commanders to “kill everybody” aboard suspected drug boats, leading to a second strike on survivors struggling in the water — what military lawyers quietly called potential war crimes. Even Republican Senator Rand Paul accused him of either lying or being “incompetent.” Hegseth preferred to be called “Secretary of War.” At least he’s honest about what he’s building.
At the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin announced 31 “historic actions” in what he called “the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” driving what he called “a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” Coal plants can release more mercury. More ozone pollution. More deadly particulates. The “good neighbor” rule that prevented upwind states from poisoning downwind states? Gone. Environmental justice programs? Eliminated. Zeldin moved to overturn the 2009 “Endangerment Finding” — the scientific determination that greenhouse gases harm human health, the legal foundation for decades of climate regulation. It’s straight from Project 2025, that blueprint Trump swore he knew nothing about.
But perhaps no figure better embodies the corruption of justice than Attorney General Pam Bondi, who arrived with promises of independence and vows not to “weaponize” the Justice Department. When Trump posted on Truth Social demanding she prosecute James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James — “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” — she indicted Comey five days later. So much for that “one tier of justice” she promised.
Then came the Epstein files, and with them a masterclass in institutional betrayal. Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act with unanimous support, requiring the Justice Department to release all unclassified records by December 19. What Bondi delivered was a heavily redacted document dump so incomplete, so transparently designed to conceal rather than reveal, that both Democrats and Republicans threatened her with contempt of Congress.
Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie — the bill’s bipartisan co-sponsors — announced plans to pursue “inherent contempt” proceedings against Bondi, a rarely-used congressional power not successfully employed since the 1930s that could result in her detention and fines for every day she fails to comply. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it a “blatant cover-up.” The initial release included 119 pages of New York grand jury testimony — entirely redacted. Photos that had been public for years suddenly disappeared from the files, then reappeared after public outcry. The DOJ claimed one letter signed by “J. Epstein” was “FAKE” after they had already released it. Every single post from Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche defending the release received “community notes” on X flagging inaccuracies and misleading claims.
On Christmas Day, the Justice Department announced they’d found “over a million more documents” potentially related to Epstein — documents that somehow hadn’t been discovered during their initial review. Release of these will take “a few more weeks.” Even Trump’s own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted Bondi had “whiffed” the handling of the Epstein matter. Epstein survivors were more direct. One told CNN she wanted Trump impeached over the handling of the investigation. A statement from a group of survivors slammed the “abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation.”
This is what accountability looks like in Trump’s America: performative transparency masking deliberate concealment, with the nation’s top law enforcement officer treating congressional mandates as suggestions and survivors of horrific crimes as inconveniences.
And then there was DOGE — Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, named after a cryptocurrency meme because nothing says “serious governance” quite like internet jokes. Musk promised to save us $2 trillion. Then $1 trillion. Then $150 billion. He literally brandished a bedazzled chainsaw at CPAC in February, promising to cut through bureaucratic fat.
Here’s what he actually delivered: The federal workforce dropped 9%, from 3.015 million to 2.744 million workers. Federal spending rose 6%, from $7.135 trillion to $7.558 trillion. The national debt grew by $2 trillion. Interest payments are $100 billion higher. As the Cato Institute dryly noted: “DOGE had no noticeable effect on the trajectory of spending.” The New York Times analyzed DOGE’s 13 largest claimed cuts and found them all incorrect or outright false. The top two “savings” — totaling $7.9 billion — were Defense Department contracts that DOGE listed as “terminations” that never actually happened.
But DOGE did accomplish something: chaos on a scale that killed. They gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was folded into the State Department in November. An internal memo projected hundreds of thousands of deaths from halted vaccine programs, malaria prevention, and HIV/AIDS response. One study estimates more than 600,000 people have already died as a result. Six hundred thousand people. Let that number sink in. That’s more American lives than were lost in the Civil War, more than in World War I, more than in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And these weren’t combat deaths. These were preventable deaths from the deliberate dismantling of programs that worked.
Social Security processing ground to a halt. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — which had returned $21 billion to Americans since 2011 — was decimated, with over 1,500 employees terminated. The Social Security Administration’s chief data officer resigned in protest after DOGE employees “circumvented oversight” and ignored security warnings while siphoning agency data. At least 23 DOGE staffers made cuts at agencies that regulated industries where they previously worked. The staffers? Mostly young coders without government experience, working 120-hour weeks. One was 19 years old. Edward “Big Balls” Coristine left DOGE over the summer to work at the Social Security Administration.
Musk fled Washington in May after an epic falling-out with Trump. DOGE quietly disbanded in November, eight months before its charter ended. “That doesn’t exist,” the Office of Personnel Management director told Reuters. Musk’s own assessment? He called DOGE’s work “a little bit successful” and said he wouldn’t do it again. Six hundred thousand dead for a “little bit successful.”
While all this unfolded, Congressional Republicans quietly let enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expire on December 31. About 22 million Americans — 92% of ACA marketplace enrollees — will see their premiums more than double. Average annual premiums will jump 114%, from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026. Small business owners, early retirees, and middle-income families are simply giving up coverage.
One small business owner captured the moral obscenity perfectly: “We can find money to build an arch and a ballroom that are completely unnecessary and tax cuts for billionaires. But we can’t insure people medically in this country. It’s unconscionable.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates 4 million more Americans will become uninsured.
The ballroom he mentioned? The $400 million monstrosity Trump is building where the East Wing once stood — home to first ladies’ offices since Eleanor Roosevelt. Despite Trump’s promise it would be “near it but not touching it,” the East Wing was demolished in October. Renderings show gold chandeliers, gilded Corinthian columns, gold floor lamps, and checkered marble. Two commemorative magnolia trees — for Presidents Harding and FDR — were removed to make room. The beloved Rose Garden, Jackie Kennedy’s elegant outdoor room, was paved over into a “Rose Garden Club” patio meant to “resemble a patio like the one he has at Mar-a-Lago.”
The Kennedy Center became the “Trump-Kennedy Center” after a board vote that Democrat Joyce Beatty says wasn’t actually unanimous — she was muted when she tried to object. Legal experts note federal law prohibits changing the name without congressional action. Trump also proposed an Arc de Triomphe knockoff for Arlington National Cemetery.
Trump flew his personal “gold guy” from Mar-a-Lago to Washington on Air Force One to add gold medallions, frames, mirrors, cherubs, eagles, coasters, and moldings to the Oval Office. Some of the medallions closely resemble polyurethane appliqués sold on Alibaba for $1 to $5 each. None of the items on the mantle were made in the U.S. When asked if the decorations came from Home Depot, Trump insisted they’re real gold.
While Trump redecorated, his family got richer. David Kirkpatrick’s New Yorker investigation found the family made $3.4 billion from Trump’s time in office, including over $2.3 billion from cryptocurrency ventures. A House Judiciary report found crypto holdings potentially worth $11.6 billion and income exceeding $800 million in the first half of 2025 alone. A UAE sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Binance via a Trump family cryptocurrency. Trump pardoned Binance’s founder weeks after the investment. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth paid into LIV Golf events at Trump properties. Melania scored a $28 million Amazon documentary deal — because nothing says conflict-free like Jeff Bezos cutting checks to the president’s wife. She’s been spending “minimal time in the East Wing,” splitting her time between Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago. Rumor has it she’s living full-time in New York. Can you blame her?
Abroad, Stephen Walt at Foreign Policy called it “the greatest voluntary liquidation of a great power’s status and geopolitical influence in modern history.” The trade war with China escalated to a 145% U.S. tariff. Trump proposed taking over Gaza, Greenland, and Canada. He renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” He started or expanded five wars: attacking Yemen after the Houthis had stopped their Red Sea harassment, bombing Somalia 118 times in his first year alone, conducting air raids on Iran’s nuclear sites. He gutted USAID, withdrew from international organizations, slashed global health funding.
If this was Year One, we should be terrified of what comes next. We’re not watching normal political combat or the usual swing of the pendulum. We’re watching the systematic dismantling of institutions that took centuries to build and that, once broken, may not be repairable. The Cabinet of horrors delivers new disasters daily. DOGE left 600,000 dead in its wake. RFK Jr. presided over the return of diseases we had conquered. Twenty-two million Americans are losing their health insurance. The Justice Department has become a weapon of personal vendetta. The White House has become a shrine to one man’s ego, decorated in dollar-store gold.
Some presidents leave behind libraries. Trump’s leaving behind a gaudy ballroom, a hall of petty insults masquerading as presidential history, resurgent measles and whooping cough, millions of uninsured Americans, hundreds of thousands dead from his “efficiency” cuts, and an Oval Office that looks like it was decorated by someone whose only exposure to elegance came from a Dubai hotel lobby.
Happy Holidays America! It was nice knowin’ ya.
