One gift that 2025 gave us is clarity: President Trump’s rhetoric bears no resemblance to the reality of what he is doing to our country.
We learned who really matters to Trump and the Republicans running Congress — the billionaire tech lords and big corporations that got huge tax cuts and lucrative contracts. It’s not the millions of Americans who are still struggling with high food prices and seeing their health care premiums double.
The president promised to put Americans first, but instead he’s focused on expensive monuments to himself — like building a golden ballroom or putting his name on the Kennedy Center. While many Americans face economic uncertainties, the Trump family’s fortunes have grown by billions of dollars under a system of corruption that’s bolder and more brazen than anything we’ve ever seen.
Far from ushering in a “golden era” for our country, the president’s chaotic policymaking is having the opposite effect.
Farmers are being devastated. Businesses that rely on international tourism are getting slammed. While the U.S. has long benefited from the world’s best and brightest choosing to study and settle here, Trump is turning away international students and forcing top scientists to accept offers from other countries to take their research overseas.
The administration has destroyed life-saving cancer research, wasted decades of public health investments, and welcomed the widespread return of dangerous diseases that we had virtually eliminated.
Trump said he would focus on getting rid of violent criminals and drug dealers. But he’s deployed an army of masked federal agents who kidnap parents picking their kids up at school, smash car windows, detain people based on their skin color, and violently abuse Americans, including religious leaders, who show up to defend their neighbors and communities.
The supposed champions of free speech at the White House are defining speech they disagree with as domestic terrorism. That makes all of us less free and more vulnerable to abuses of power.
The clarity we gained last year is not exactly comforting. It has come at great cost to people’s lives and our collective future. Still, there are at least two big lessons that can help us approach 2026 and prepare for this year’s elections.
One is the importance of the courts. Many federal judges, including many appointed by Republicans as well Democrats, are doing the job the Constitution gives them and acting as a check on lawbreaking by the executive branch. But so far those judges have been largely undermined by the Supreme Court majority, which invented a dangerous theory of presidential immunity that encouraged the president to act like he is above the law.
Trump is filling federal courts with political and ideological loyalists likely to let him rewrite the law and Constitution as he sees fit, undermining the legal protections that everyone in this country deserves. That should motivate us to work hard to elect senators (of any party) who are willing to say no to these abuses.
And that brings us to the most important lesson from 2025: we, the people, can still make a difference. Polls and November’s election results tell us that the truth about Trump is breaking through the lies and gaslighting.
We’ve seen what a future under Trumpism looks like: cruel, corrupt, cynical, less fair, and less free. But we don’t have to accept that as our fate. Millions of Americans rallied together last year and inspired one another to get and stay engaged. This year, let’s use the freedom we still have to shape a different future.
