Trump has ruined everything at record speed

Donald Trump made it clear when he was re-elected last year that he was in it for revenge, force and hate. Political pundits, elected Democrats, and liberal voters collectively worried that his second term would destroy what was left of our country’s well-being.

But who could have predicted to what extent and how quickly the set of informal rules that keep the United States running would be destroyed?

It’s been a long year and you could be forgiven for forgetting some of the rules we used to abide by that have since been decimated by Trumpworld. The president himself has deployed the military to American cities against their will, turning communities into war zones. The Supreme Court, in its rush to do everything it can for the administration, has ignored the destruction of decades-old legal precedent. Justice Department employees blatantly lie in open court.

Some of our country’s premier agencies charged with saving lives have become a shell of what they were before – or completely dismantled. Instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated against deadly diseases, federal public health agencies are now leading the charge. anti-science charge. And our main foreign aid agency has been destroyedthreatening millions of lives around the world.

The immigration system has long been plagued by inefficiencies, arbitrariness, and racism, but the Trump administration has made an already flawed system even more inhumane. In doing so, his acolytes have adapted language about immigrants – both legal and not – that would please some of the most hideous world leaders in history.

And that’s just one part. For the final Politics Newsletter of 2025, we asked the News themezone newsroom to weigh in on what else has become normal this year, and there was a batch of suggestions. Across the federal government, American culture, and everyday life in general, there is a seemingly endless list of things that happened in 2025 that, if you had asked us on December 31, 2024, we might have said were outrageous, perhaps even impossible. But here we are!

However, there are some important areas in which the American people have regressed, despite the administration’s best efforts. And heading into 2026, that could continue or even grow.

Below are eight things we unfortunately saw normalized in 2025 and a couple that we didn’t. — Nathalie Baptiste, Senior National Reporter

Sending the National Guard to blue cities

Presidents have deployed National Guard troops to American cities in the past for various reasons, as is their right under federal law. A president has not federalized troops and sent them to a state without a governor’s consent since. President Lyndon B. Johnson did so in 1965. to protect civil rights protesters from violence. The highly political and controversial move would have left Republicans apoplectic today if it had come from another Democratic president. (Barack Obama once displayed Guard to help patrol the US-Mexico border in Texas, but at the request of then-Texas Governor Rick Perry).

In its deployments in California, Oregon and Illinois, the Trump administration argument that a National Guard presence was needed to help combat crime and address protests against mass immigration raids, despite opposition from the states’ Democratic governors. Federal judges have since called the deployments illegal and ordered troops to withdraw, but the Trump administration is appealing their rulings in higher courts.

“It is deeply un-American to suggest that people peacefully exercising their fundamental right to protest constitute a risk that justifies the federalization of the military,” said US District Court Judge Charles Breyer. wrote in an opinion on Trump’s deployment to California. — Igor Bobic, senior political reporter

Supreme Court legalizes racial profiling

Although racial profiling has always been a key part of immigration law enforcement, the Trump administration made it explicit in its immigration raids, arresting people, including those with citizenship or legal authorization to be in the United States, based on their appearance, speech or line of work. In July, Southern California residents, workers and immigrant rights groups defendant Department of Homeland Security, accusing the agency of using illegal and racially discriminatory stop-and-arrest tactics to conduct immigration enforcement based on a person’s appearance, the language they speak or where they are located.

But in a short and unsigned orderthe Supreme Court in September allowed those practices to continue. The ruling generated the nickname Kavanaugh Stop for these types of arrests.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote“We shouldn’t have to live in a country where the government can arrest anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to have a low-wage job.” — Jessica Schulberg, Senior National Reporter

Trump’s political career was built on racism, from declaring in 2015 that Mexico was “sending” rapists to the United States to promising to ban Muslims from entering the country. But the first year of his second term saw rot overtake the government.

To make matters worse, Pablo”Nazi streak“Does Ingrassia still somehow have a government job?— Matt Shuham, Senior National Reporter

Demolishing part of the White House

The stately mansion, which was built, largely, by enslaved people between 1792 and 1800, it has been an iconic landmark that has hosted state leaders, dignitaries and ordinary people for decades. But last month, Trump hired construction workers to demolish the east wing. The president is building a flashy ballroom in its place.

Historians and other experts have said that Trump is supposed to first go through a legal process that includes public input before he can start tearing the place down. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit organization that oversees the preservation of historic buildings, has filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to stop the president from building the ballroom. The administration, as always, has argued that Trump can do whatever he wants with the White House. And in the meantime, well, the east wing is gone.” —Nathalie Bautista

The law no longer applies to Trumpworld

Justice Department lawyers or federal prosecutors now openly outwit the judges in the courts, including the Kilmar Abrego García deportation case, where a federal judge lawyers reprimanded for misleading the court about where they intended to send him. And by the way, the government too avoid the judges about where and when other people targeted for deportation are sent. (The 137 men loaded on planes after a judge banned it was clearly quite jarring.)

And former January 6 prosecutors and FBI agents investigating the insurrection had to sue to prevent the Department of Justice from potentially exposing their names because the executive branch and the Department of Justice could not be trusted not to mislead them. Never, in the 10 years I have covered courts, have I seen this type of egregious conduct by government lawyers. The caution, obfuscation and outright denials of facts when a judge asks for details are patently shameful.”— Brandi Buchman, national reporter

Government encourages anti-Vax quackery

Measles was officially declared eliminated in 2000 in the United States, thanks to the federal government’s highly effective vaccination program and the American public who put their faith in science and public health experts. But the Trump administration has been dragging the country backward on all these fronts, with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. systematically spreading misinformation about vaccines and baselessly fueling skepticism about safe, effective, life-saving drugs.

Virtually all of these cases could have been prevented with vaccines. Ninety-two percent of these people They were not vaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. Three people were confirmed to have deceased this year due to measles and 218 people had to be hospitalized. — Jennifer Bendery, Senior Political Reporter

The dismantling of USAID

The speed, callousness, and chaos with which the administration dismantled USAID within weeks of taking office was astonishing.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was a lifeline for millions of people: a financier of aid groups that distributed food, medicine, and other essential items, and a source of expertise ready to confront natural disasters, epidemics, wars, or other emergencies. For the Trump administration – specifically, for Elon Musk – the most important thing was to be an easy target. The policy became the defining example of the administration’s disregard for foreign policy expertise and a successful test of its plans to reshape the government, as USAID advocates failed to limit Musk’s ability. “wood chipper” approach.

A year later, the administration has not proven wrongdoing by the agency, but there is significant evidence of the cost of its approach. Around the world, observers report hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and worsening problems that put global health and stability at risk. For American foreign policy, the assassination of USAID means a potentially irreversible change. Washington wields great military and economic power, increasingly so under the Trump administration. USAID represented the United States simultaneously trying to collaborate, mitigate international tensions, and help some of the least powerful people in the world. It will be difficult to reverse the impression, inside and outside the United States government, of a deep disdain for that type of mission.”— Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent

Immigrants being deported to countries they have never been to

The Trump administration has been so desperate to increase its deportation numbers that it has adopted some tactics unusual and highly questionable cases, including the deportation of immigrants to third countries, which are often countries they have never been to. Hundreds of immigrants have been sent to Panama and Costa Rica, while smaller numbers have been sent to South Sudana country that the United States says is not safe for Americans.

Previously, deportations to third countries were rare. The U.S. government would only use the method when an immigrant had a removal order but their home country was deemed unsafe. But under Trump, they are increasing, in an effort to carry out mass deportations.” —Nathalie Bautista

Andrew Lichtenstein via Getty Images

However, not everything is useless. While Trump is hacking away at our freedoms with a hacksaw, there have been some moments where his attempts to normalize his bogus policies just… didn’t work. For example:

Jimmy Kimmel was suspended for a few days and returned immediately

Trump has had a long feud with Jimmy Kimmel, an ABC late-night television host who frequently makes jokes about Trump and the MAGA world in general. In September, after Charlie Kirk, a right-wing podcaster and founder of Turning Point USA, was delicate by a shooter in Utah, Kimmel made a joke about Trump supporters politicizing his death.

Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, later made some not so thinly veiled threats against ABC, which airs Kimmel’s show, unless he is fired. That same day, the network Kimmel suspended indefinitely. Trump welcomed the suspension and called for more late-night hosts to be fired.

But it turns out the public had no appetite for the Trump administration’s attack on free speech.

Millions of people they canceled their subscriptions to streaming services owned by Disney, ABC’s parent company. Protesters protested outside the company headquarters, and celebrities threatened to cut ties with Disney if Kimmel didn’t return to the air immediately. Even some Republicans criticized the measure. It was not lost on critics that, while Trump and the Republican Party largely present themselves as the party of free speech, this was an example of the government punishing someone for speech they don’t like. Six days later, Kimmel was reinstated… and yes, Trump he had a breakdown because of it.” —Nathalie Bautista

Mahmoud Khalil fought against his deportation, won and continues to fight

Mahmoud Khalil, the Algerian-Palestinian graduate student at Columbia University who arrested by the Department of Homeland Security after leading pro-Palestinian protests on campus, he became one of the best-known targets of the administration’s crackdown on free speech in 2025. It was a target that arguably only made him more influential.

Khalil, who is a legal immigrant and green card holder, was arrested and nearly deported in March, apparently because his presence had negative implications for national securitysaid the administration. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio detailed in a note that it was Khalil’s beliefs that got him arrested, a clear violation of Khalil’s free speech rights. Khalil’s detention was met with widespread protests, and although the Trump administration was on the verge of deporting Khalil for disagreeing with its politics, it was finally released in June after three months in prison.

Khalil has not remained silent after his ordeal. Just a few weeks after being released from prison, I was in Washington, DC, demanding a change. In an interview with my colleague Akbar Shahid Ahmed after his release, Khalil did not hesitate to continue his activism.

“My arrest accidentally gave me this platform to increasingly advocate for Palestinian rights,” Khalil he told News themezone. “I did not choose to be in that position, but now that that position is thrust upon me, I will take that responsibility with pride.” —Nathalie Bautista

Responses have been lightly edited for style and clarity.