The Weekly List

I wanted to start this week by noting the cruelty we have normalized. During Trump’s first regime, after widespread protests and condemnation over his “zero-tolerance” policy of separating families, he rolled it back. During the second regime, the repugnant acts of cruelty and lawlessness far outdo those of Trump’s first regime, yet the public outcry is sporadic and hushed. Almost as if the country is too exhausted to keep up the fight on so many fronts, and is instead choosing to wait out the clock until Trump’s departure. In fact, it seems that on immigration, the only thing holding Trump back from his worst impulses is his sinking polling on what was once his strongest issue. This week, the regime claimed they were leaving their wildly unpopular and lawless occupation of Minneapolis.As Trump’s popularity continues to deteriorate, and has now fallen even lower than during his first regime (which was already a record low), Trump and his Republican lawmakers have amplified a new strategy of trying to suppress the vote, while at the same time sowing doubt over the outcome of the midterm elections. All of this is happening in the light of day, which makes it all the more alarming.This week we see a continuation of trends that have been unfolding, including the shifting world order; Trump’s branding and renaming, and using the power of the government to enrich himself; the slow degradation of our country’s advancement towards equality; incompetence at Health and Human Services threatening our country’s well being; and the DOJ and FBI acting more as an appendage of Trump’s Oval Office than independent agencies.In summary, the country is just about done with Trump, except his really hardcore supporters. As one media pundit put it, there does not seem to be a floor anymore for his approval. Yet Trump, surrounded by loyalists and yes men, seems unbothered — instead sharpening the tools used by dictators to strangle democracy.

In a week of chaos, so much happened it was easy to lose sight of the fact that Trump posted an image of former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes on Truth Social. He then deflected that it was posted by a staffer, took down the post, and refused to apologize. In any sort of normal time, that act, in and of itself, would be career ending. In the era of Trump, it’s Thursday.Trump did not back off of his racism, which seems to be more a feature than a bug, castigating Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny over his Super Bowl halftime performance. Trump’s brutal and racist immigration push also continued unabated, even as polling increasingly showed the American people turning against him. Those who dare to speak out were targeted — from protestors in Minneapolis getting arrested, to Trump lambasting a U.S. Olympian.Amid all this, information from the latest Epstein files release led to resignations around the world, but little in the U.S., although the files increasingly are gaining public and media attention. Commerce Department Sec. Howard Lutnick became the first regime member to admit visiting Epstein’s island. Calls grew louder for the release of the remaining three million files.All the while, the regime continues to deconstruct the government from within. It is important to read the stories of what is happening at our federal agencies. Trump also continued his campaign of branding his name wherever he can, and unprecedented corruption. Republicans have largely refrained from speaking out against him or his agenda, except on the fringes. Questions continue to arise about Trump’s plans to interfere with a free and fair midterm election, and polling increasingly suggests even control of the Senate will be in play.

This week the Justice Department released three million more of the Epstein files, with three million still withheld. The timing of the highly redacted release, which included limited damning material on Trump, seemed like a shiny coin to distract from the rest. Yes, it was that bad!Trump continued to discredit past elections, this week escalating by using the FBI to seize Fulton County ballots. The seizure presaged Trump calling for nationalizing U.S. elections, a shocking and extraordinary statement that his White House then tried to walk back, before Trump doubled down on his demand, despite its going against the Constitution.The reality is, Trump now understands his loss in public standing. Polling show a continued deterioration in support, even among Republicans. Immigration, once the top issue for Trump, now haunts him. The economy is souring, with his tariffs producing the exact opposite of the golden era he promised: a loss in U.S. manufacturing, a growing trade deficit, and a slowing job market. No better example of his loss in standing than an earthquake of a special election in a Texas red district that Trump had won by 17 points in 2024, which flipped blue by 14 points this week.Beyond these major themes, this week’s list is packed with stories that in normal times would dominate the news cycle for days or weeks: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard burying a whistleblower complaint by a U.S. intelligence officer; the Trump and Witkoff families striking a huge deal with UAE royals that enriched them by hundreds of millions; Trump shuttering the Kennedy Center for two years; Attorney General Pam Bondi arresting journalists; and so on, and so on. Please read this list in its entirety to appreciate all that is happening, all that is being normalized, and all that is being lost.

What happened to Greenland? What happened to the Epstein files? That’s the story within the story this week: how effective Trump has become in driving the media, and hence the narrative, until he is not.What it took this week was another tragedy: federal immigration agents in Minneapolis murdered another U.S. citizen as part of their so-called immigration sweep or fraud sweep — the rationale for the occupation seems ever-changing. The murder came as half the country was facing a severe winter storm, and hence at home watching television, and on a weekend when Trump was at the White House for the launch of the documentary “Melania,” and, according to the NYT, also watching the news coverage obsessively. Immigration, once Trump’s strongest issue, has now become an albatross, of which he has many. Polling shows not only record low approval on his handling of immigration, but also growing support for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement altogether, as Trump and his regime’s tactics have become increasingly lawless and cruel.Notable this week is a continuing trend of our allies moving on without us, and expressing grave concern about Trump and his state of mind. Republicans have started to speak out, but only at the edges and meekly. Trump has intimidated corporate America from publicly opposing him and his agenda, filing a lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase and its chief executive, shortly after Jamie Dimon made comments at Davos in support of NATO. But by the end of the week, even corporate titans were speaking out against immigration tactics, and called for de-escalation.The country feels as if it’s in non-stop chaos. Consumer confidence is plunging, and Americans are expressing broad disapproval of Trump and his handling of key issues. All the while, many of the broken norms this week illustrate changes to the fabric of our country, and decay at federal agencies meant to serve and protect us.

This week marked renewed escalation by Trump and his regime, both internationally and at home. Nothing feels safe or stable. One pollster found that 71% of Americans said the country feels out of control. As we hit the one year mark of Trump’s return, he finds himself increasingly unpopular and underwater on every issue, even on fighting crime.Unlike the start of the second regime, when Trump methodically went down a to-do list provided to him by the Heritage Foundation in “Project 2025,” as 2026 gets underway, there is no longer a rhyme or reason to his actions. After marketing himself as an anti-interventionist and peace president, so far in 2026, Trump has threatened to invade or has invaded Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Colombia, Canada, Iran, and this week Greenland (which he four times referred to as Iceland). Trump whines and petulantly blames these actions on not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s hard to reconcile a grown adult, let alone a sitting U.S. president, acting in such a puerile fashion that the actual recipient tried to calm and flatter him by handing off her award.On the home front, Trump and his regime have made Minnesota ground zero for Trump’s war on his own country. The rationale for the mass deployment of ICE agents shifted frequently, as Trump threatened to further escalate by sending in the U.S. military on its own citizens, and took the unprecedented action of subpoenaing five Democratic officials.Trump continues to use the DOJ and FBI as tools to pursue his perceived enemies. In addition to Minnesota Democrats, this week, Trump ally Jeanine Pirro opened an investigation into four more Democratic lawmakers. All the federal government agencies are acting at Trump’s behest. Perhaps the most telling quote from his nearly two hour speech on his first year’s achievements was his musing that he wanted to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Trump, but said he was rebuffed by his staff, then he said that was just a joke, saying, “My people don’t rebuff me.”

This is the longest list of broken norms during the second regime, so far. I would encourage you to read through the list in its entirety, because amid the chaos of the week, many stories that would normally garner broad attention received little or no coverage. Some mark escalations, like the regime serving a grand jury subpoena to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, while others, like the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery altering history, remind us that details matter.This is perhaps the most unhinged we have seen Trump during his second regime. Part of this feels like a continuation of a theme we have covered: the notion of his running out of time with midterms ahead, and his acknowledgment that in a fair election, Democrats will likely prevail. But this is also a new version of Trump, who by common sense should be listening to voters ahead of midterms (polls tell us they are overwhelmingly against what he is up to); either he does not care, or perhaps, cannot stop himself.I’ve been ruminating on a framework to understand Trump’s recent illogical, intemperate, unbounded behavior. That’s the thing — it doesn’t feel like he can regulate and stop himself, and as we’ve covered, he has surrounded himself solely with sycophants who will almost never tell him no or that he is wrong. I found an op-ed by Thomas Edsall that helped me make sense of things. Edsall writes, based on speaking to experts, that Trump is “showing symptoms of an addiction to power,” noting, “the size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.” One expert described to Edsall Trump’s malignant narcissism: “Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact.”This week we have stories indicating Trump is still consumed with his petty grievances, as he vents against federal attorneys and Attorney General Pam Bondi for being weak and ineffective. But in a broader sense, his statement to the NYT that the only thing that could stop him was “My own morality. My own mind” indicates a man who has increasingly lost touch with reality and its consequences. My guess is Trump is headed for troubled waters not far ahead, and a crash down to reality for him and his regime.

The main takeaway of this week’s list is what we are NOT discussing: the Epstein files, the five-year anniversary of Jan. 6, the affordability crisis and Trump’s tariffs exacerbating rising prices, rising healthcare premiums, the MAGAverse implosion, and of course, Trump’s health decline. Those story lines were the top themes amid his falling approval on every issue and overall, until he decided to orchestrate a coup — a classic ‘wag the dog’ operation.Trump has been, throughout both regimes, a master of distraction — of throwing shiny coins and having what remains of our media chase that story instead of the ones he did not want covered. We saw this earlier in the second regime, when he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. He was itching for another story to drive the headlines from his considerable problems, and he got it.In what clearly was not a well thought out, if thought out at all, plan, Trump ordered the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In the days after, the regime teetered from claiming it was “running” Venezuela, to not running, to running again. When that story started to become stale, the narrative switched to seizing Greenland through military action, to buying Greenland, to all options are on the table. Trump, who ran both campaigns on an anti-interventionist “America First” platform, and claimed rights to the Nobel Peace Prize as the peacetime president, also threatened longtime U.S. allies Mexico and Colombia, as well as Cuba. He finds himself increasingly at odds with the MAGAverse, including notably his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who removed herself from the public discussion.The other big story this week is Trump’s visible efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, quite literally on the White House website, and in the MAGA ecosystem. The both-sides narrative also bled over to CBS News, whose owner seeks to win Trump’s favor in a proposed takeover of Warner Bros. This week Trump continued to publicly claim he won the 2020 election, although according to the testimony by former special counsel Jack Smith, we learn this week that Trump had privately acknowledged that he in fact lost.

As we close out 2025 this week there is a marked shift in sentiment, not only among the American people, but also by Trump himself. A year ago as I restarted this project, the conversation was, will he ever leave? We’re not having that conversation anymore.Not only do polls show that the American people are souring on Trump as the year comes to a close, the Republicans too are starting to turn on him, even if at the fringes, for their own self-preservation. One GOP member of the House mused this week that House Speaker Mike Johnson is “hanging on because Trump wants a weak speaker,” as the 2025 Congress was the least productive in modern history. By week’s end Rep. Lauren Boebert also spoke out publicly against Trump, after he retaliated against her, and the state of Colorado, for not freeing Tina Peters.Trump tried to play grown-up, or at least appear engaged, by hosting two world leaders at Mar-a-Lago, with little to show for either. But more notable was his lack of focus on what Americans want, and his unhinged behavior, back to rapid-fire posting onChristmas Eve, and striking out at his perceived enemies, including Boebert’s Republican-leaning district. This is the disorganized, scattered behavior reminiscent of his first regime. While Trump was able to follow the Project 2025 roadmap for most of 2025, now that the Heritage Foundation has, as conservative WSJ Editorial Board pronounced, “blown up,” Trump too seems rudderless.The mood of the country remains gloomy as the year comes to an end. Just 24% believe the country is heading in the right direction. The vast majority feel Trump and his billionaire beneficiaries are out of touch with the regular people. Trump increasingly is losing the tight grip of control he had for most of 2025. I wrote more about what I expect for 2026 here.

This week, Trump is continuing to lose not only broad-based American support as he did during the first regime, but for the first time of either regime, he is also losing support from within the Republican base. At the same time, the Republican Party is in turmoil, amid infighting over the party’s direction post-Trump. The once mighty Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025, is imploding, a notion that would seem unthinkable just a year ago. MAGA influencers are attacking one another, this week quite publicly at Turning Point USA’s annual conference. More prominent Republicans announced this week they would not seek re-election.Already there is a notable shift in Trump’s demeanor. During his address to the nation at the start of the week, he seemed frustrated and agitated that he even had to speak about affordability, or concerns of the American people. Although the question of a third term continues to be floated, Trump no longer speaks or acts as if this is a possibility. It is unclear if this is health-related or an unhappiness with the pushback he is feeling post-2025 election, and a sense that Democrats are likely to take control of at least part of Congress in midterms, but this is a different Trump. He is acting in some ways like he is running out of time. An example that continues this week is his frantically putting his name wherever he can, a sign of possible insecurity, and a manic effort to preserve what he hopes will be his legacy.In the meantime, this week is filled with examples of Trump’s abuses of power. It is almost as if the country has normalized these broken norms, and is just hoping to run out the clock until midterms. The Epstein files are not going away, despite Trump and his Justice Department’s efforts — in fact, they have been feeding the flames. Just as CBS News did by pulling the plug on a “60 Minutes” segment, seemingly to placate Trump. There are many more examples this week of a federal government in decline and disarray. And at long last, a Supreme Court ruling against Trump that could set back his efforts to send U.S. military troops to American cities.

There continues to be a notable shift this week of Trump losing his grip on power. First and foremost, the American people are unhappy with the economy, the cost of living, and increasingly even with his handling of immigration. They are showing their displeasure at the polls, in the polls, and speaking to their representatives. For the first time in either Trump regime, we see growing dissatisfaction with Trump from within his base, and a movement away from identifying as “MAGA” to “Traditional Republican.”Increasingly, Republicans are standing up to Trump. Not only in the House of Representatives, where his proxy and junior assistant, Speaker Mike Johnson, is losing control, but also at the state level. In Indiana, where Trump and his proxies tried bullying to get redistricting, it backfired, turning state Republicans against them. Trump threw in the towel on installing loyalists to U.S. attorney positions, as another resigned.Even members of Trump’s regime are beginning to see pushback from their base. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin saw blowback from MAHA Moms over his siding with the chemical industry lobby. Fox News started covering the alarming outbreak of measles under Health and Human Services Sec. Robert Kennedy Jr., in which they noted cases had increased by 14,608% since 2020! FBI Director Kash Patel continued to try to jump ahead of tragedies to take credit on social media, raising a chorus to criticize his incompetence.The week was already feeling heavy with sadness, after yet another mass shooting at a school in America, this time at Brown University, followed by an anti-Semitic inspired mass shooting in Australia. Trump again showed his inability to rise to the occasion, show empathy, or lead. In what was perhaps a defining moment of his second regime, after the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner by their son who struggled with addiction, Trump’s response on social media of blaming Reiner for having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” led to widespread blowback from Republican and conservative corners, many of which had previously been too fearful to speak out publicly against him. Conservative WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan wrote “Trump May Be Losing His Touch,” noting, “he’s surrounded by mood shifts, challenges and ominous signs.”

This week Trump struck back at media outlets and others who continue to raise questions and concerns about his health and age, likening it to sedition and treason. Trump continued to advance his own version of reality, calling affordability a “Democrat hoax” and “con job,” as he at long last held an event in a U.S. city, which was meant to address affordability concerns, a top issue in the country, but did not. More off-year elections this week showed a 10+ point slide away from Trump’s 2024 performance, amid continued malaise over the economy, and Trump’s handling of other key issues.Defense Department Sec. Pete Hegseth continued to be at the center of the storm, as a Pentagon inspector general report found he had endangered U.S. troops with his use of the Signal app. A top story this week continued to be the legality of a second strike of an alleged drug vessel in the Caribbean, as Trump and Hegseth bobbed and weaved on releasing video and other requested information. Health and Human Services Sec. Robert Kennedy Jr. also continued his anti-vax campaign, with his handpicked immunization committee issuing troubling new guidelines.The Trump regime issued a shocking National Strategy document this week, completely changing the focus on global threats away from countries formerly perceived to be U.S. enemies, to instead attacking European allies and Ukraine. Trump, desperate for recognition on his foreign policy, was awarded with an odd inaugural peace prize from FIFA, a soccer league, at the Kennedy Center. Trump later mused about renaming that center for himself, after this week rebranding the U.S. Institute for Peace with his name.Overall, Trump’s behavior is increasingly inconsistent, even by his own past standards, and odd. He is increasingly unfiltered, both in being openly racist and personally insulting two more female journalists this week, for a total of six in recent weeks. The issue of age and the pushback from Republicans has clearly taken him off track, and he seems this week to be spinning and raging, without focus.

For what should have been a quiet holiday week, Week 56 was packed with bombshell news, and escalating chaos and rhetoric from the Trump regime. The week started with Trump grasping on to the adage “never let a crisis go to waste,” when he used a Thanksgiving Eve shooting by an Afghan national of two National Guard troops as a prelude to make the most significant changes to his immigration policy during the second regime.Notable this week was Trump’s increasingly unhinged rhetoric, and his late night social media posting storms, including one late night marathon of nearly 150 posts over a two hour span! This type of maniacal behavior was more typical during his first regime, often at times when he felt under attack or out of control; notably, this was the first week of his acting this way during the second regime.Trump has a lot to be upset about: Republicans are at long last pushing back (because of election results, NOT because they finally found a moral compass), and big news stories hit this week, including questionable intent by Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner in their negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and a second strike on an alleged drug vessel that may amount to a war crime. Trump’s so-called war on drug cartels took an ironic twist this week when he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was found guilty of flooding the U.S. with cocaine, for which he was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Trump also weighed in on the close election in Honduras, and baselessly alleged fraud.Finally, since the NYT reporting last week on signs of Trump’s fatigue and aging, there has been a renewed focus by our media on Trump’s health, which up until now had been largely absent, unlike their seeming obsession with former president Joseph Biden’s age and cognitive health. This is another plot line that Trump hates, because it diminishes his strongman status. However, you will note what we were not talking about this week: the Epstein files.

This week started with an enraged Trump signing into law the release of the Epstein files, but that story quickly faded to other headlines. Trump’s longtime ally, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, became the first MAGA true believer, in either regime, to resign. Reporting indicates other House Republican lawmakers may not be far behind, claiming mistreatment by Trump, his regime, and Speaker Mike Johnson. This week Trump seized control of the GOP midterm election strategy, sensing at last that the country is turning against him, and he cannot simply message away very real concerns about affordability.Trump’s retribution campaign hit some embarrassing speed bumps this week, with cases against James Comey and Letitia James being dismissed, and six Democratic lawmakers, whose video evoked his ire, stood firm. Republicans, too, are increasingly pushing back against Trump, a shift that seems to frustrate and infuriate him. Trump tried, successfully, to change the subject from the Epstein files with a push for a peace plan between Russia and Ukraine, but as Republican senators spoke out against what amounted to a Russian wish-list, his regime looked like the keystone cops, and his plan sputtered.Notable this week is reporting by the NYT on Trump’s signs of fatigue. I wrote about his Friday afternoon meeting with incoming New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, where a seated passive and pacifist Trump seemed to have run out of gas (read here). Trump has suffered a series of setbacks in recent weeks, some public, some being swept under the rug, like the disbanding of DOGE, and he is desperate for a win.

Two weeks after Democrats decidedly won the election, this week we see a shift: the first instance of Republicans pushing back against Trump during his second regime. The Epstein files started as a drip, drip, with Trump and his senior regime officials trying to intimidate four House Republicans into not signing a discharge petition. But once the horse was out of the barn, by the week’s end, the House voted 427–1 to release the files, and hours later the Senate did the same under unanimous consent.The swing was a remarkable shift for Republicans, who up until now had blindly abdicated their role, and had been unshakably obedient to Trump. Not to do the right thing per se, but sensing the American people turning on them ahead of midterms, with a Marist poll showing voters favoring Democrats by 14 points, the highest level in eight years. Trump’s approval continued to hit new lows with several pollsters, as did his handling of major issues, including affordability, which he haplessly continued to assert this week is really not an issue. Just 20% approve of his handling of the Epstein files.The regime continued its quiet work of dismantling federal agencies from within, and carrying out Trump’s orders. Yet another head of FEMA resigned this week, and there continues to be alarming exits and firings from the Justice Department and Fannie Mae, both at the center of Trump’s retribution campaign. In other federal agencies like DHS, agents are being reassigned to help on immigration, as Trump abandoned largely unsuccessful efforts this week in Chicago and Portland.Notably in closing are Trump’s blatant conflicts of interest, and how easily he is escaping accountability. Lest we forget how many inspectors general he has already fired! This week Trump’s pardon of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao came back into focus. As did his family’s significant business dealings with Saudi Arabia, as Trump hosted crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud in an extraordinary state visit.

This week’s list has multiple examples of Trump’s continued efforts to rewrite the history of his first regime, and to seek retribution for lawsuits and other actions against him after. Much of his focus during his second regime has been towards establishing a new version of the historical record of these times, recasting himself as a victim and a hero, and obliterating the truth. He has been aided in this endeavor by a compliant Republican Party, which has yet to push back on his not normal, and often lawless, actions.The election results and their aftermath have revealed how out of touch Trump is with the state of the American people during his second regime. I have posited that this is a result of his surrounding himself solely with loyal sycophants, who likely are fearful of sharing actual reality, and instead practice flattery. Trump continued to showcase his White House renovations this week with an interview on Fox News, while at the same time denying SNAP food payments to low-income Americans, and even going so far as an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, two times, to not have to make payments which were due on November 1.Eight Senate Democrats voted with Republicans to end the government shutdown on Monday, and Trump declared victory as the measure headed back to the House of Representatives, which convened for the first time in seven weeks. A Democrat who won a special election in Arizona was at long last sworn in, and could be the deciding vote on measures to bring attention to the Epstein files.

This week, on Election Day 2025, Democrats swept virtually every competitive election across the country, in a thorough rebuke of Trump and his policies. In two key governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, where candidates won by 13 and 15 points, every single county and demographic shifted towards Democrats. The election came as the country entered the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, which Americans mostly blamed on Trump and the Republicans.Trump continues to be remarkably tone deaf to the plight of most Americans during his second regime. As funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ran out, leaving tens of millions of low income Americans at risk of going hungry, Trump posted images of his ostentatious renovation of the Lincoln Bathroom, and hosted a Great Gatsby themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago. I wrote more about it here. By many other measures, the American people are discontented and suffering, but Trump seems completely removed from the reality of what is happening to real people, perhaps a byproduct of his second regime being an echo chamber of sycophants.Also this week, we saw more examples of the media losing access to the regime, and media outlets losing staffers or being shuttered. Trump and his agency heads also continued their targeted firings of perceived enemies or anyone who might question or in any way hinder Trump’s agenda and drive for retaliation. We saw the first slight pushback from Senate Republicans, symbolically voting to undo Trump’s tariffs, and the question now really is: will Republicans, after the Election Day drubbing, stop blindly following Trump’s every wish and whim? Mind you, the House of Representatives was last in session on September 19, although unlike furloughed federal workers, they continue to get paid.

This is the week when Trump’s ‘Let them eat cake’ era truly came to the forefront. Juxtapose Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing to construct a $300 million ostentatious ballroom with cutting off food stamps for 42 million of America’s neediest, who count on government assistance to put food on the table! Add to that hundreds of thousands of U.S. government and private sector workers either losing their jobs, or their income — while Trump regales in the former, and tries to obscure the latter.All the while, Trump and his family continue to use the office of the presidency for their own financial gain. In this second regime, Trump makes little effort to conceal the ‘pay to play’ nature of his presidency. Technology, cryptocurrency, and other corporations push money his way for favors, like tariff relief or merger approval, or even pardons or government lawsuits being quietly dismissed. Countries have learned to do the same, flattering Trump like a dictator to get their way.As the government shutdown entered its fourth week, the second longest in history next to the shutdown in the first Trump regime, Congress has completely abdicated its power to Trump. The House of Representatives has not even been in session since September 19! One Republican senator described it as, “The Congress is adrift. It’s like we have given up.” Trump continues to order military strikes in Central and South America, and insert himself into other countries’ politics.

This week Trump ordered the demolition of the White House East Wing, which seems an apt metaphor for the state of our democracy. He has assumed unbridled and unprecedented power, and is acting on his worst impulses, while sycophants throw millions his way in an attempt to curry favor.Trump is very publicly pursuing his enemies using the apparatus of federal agencies, at which he has installed loyalists into leadership roles to carry out his every whim and fancy. Who could have imagined in one week another indictment, classifying those who speak out against him as terrorists, siccing the IRS on perceived enemies, and seeking $230 million from taxpayers for perceived slights? And that’s just the tips of the waves in a very disturbing week.Reading through the broken norms this week, I am struck by how many would have been previously unthinkable, even during the first regime. The list of atrocities is startling! I encourage you all to read through this long and disturbing list. Information is still power. It is imperative that we keep informed of what is happening, so we will find our way back to normal.

This week had the sharp scent of authoritarianism, as Trump and members of his regime continued to put forth actions to block free speech. Ironically, this comes after a centerpiece of the right’s complaints in the 2024 election, and prior, was being censored, and Trump’s myriad of lawsuits over the same. Wide-ranging examples of restricting free speech this week included castigating a singer for his lyrics; firings and revoking visas over comments critical of Charlie Kirk; forcing a social media company to remove content; and attempting to restrict media access to the Pentagon.The paradox noted this week by an NYT columnist was that while Trump promoted peace abroad, he was siccing the U.S. military on its citizens in Democratic-run cities. Portland poked fun at Trump’s invented crisis there, dressing up in costumes to protest the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence. Things took a turn for the worse in Chicago, as ICE agents used tear gas on residents, including police officers and onlookers.The mood of the country remained largely somber, and increasingly divided, not only by party and ideology, but also in the broadening gap between those who have access and are benefiting from Trump’s economic actions, versus those who have seen their financial well-being negatively impacted. Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought seized on the continuing government shutdown to devastate agencies, cutting jobs in what Trump called “Democrat-oriented” positions, including the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The implications of the regime’s continuing federal employee cuts are already being felt well beyond blue states and cities.

This week Trump and his White House budget director made dramatic threats of mass firings of federal workers if the shutdown continued, in an effort to get Democrats to capitulate. As the shutdown neared the end of its first week, and Democrats appeared to have the upper hand, Trump escalated, threatening to withhold to back pay from furloughed workers. Cracks began to appear, as air traffic controllers, already in short supply with previous Trump cutbacks, stopped showing up to work, and delays spread to airports around the country.The other big story this week was Trump escalating his threats to send National Guard troops to two Democratic cities, Portland and Chicago. After a Trump-appointed federal judge ruled he could not deploy the Oregon National Guard in Portland, the regime tried an end-around of deploying the California National Guard there, which the furious judge also temporarily blocked. As the week closed out, Trump deployed the Texas National Guard to Chicago, in what the Illinois governor dubbed an “authoritarian march,” while Trump threatened to throw him and the mayor of Chicago in jail, and possibly invoke the Insurrection Act.Meanwhile, the country’s mood continues to sour. Just 17% say Trump’s policies are making them financially better off. Trump finds little support for deploying military troops against the wishes of governors (37% approve), and an overwhelming 83% say the U.S. military should remain politically neutral.