That Was The Year That Was

The plaque below an image of an autopen signing former President Joe Biden’s signature, displayed in place of a portrait on Trump’s “Walk of Fame” at the White House.  Apparently, he has nothing better to do than to mock his predecessors and to put his social media screeds in bronze. (picture by Jessica Koscielniak of Reuters)

“The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God we always will be, a Christian nation.”

J.D. Vance on 21 December 2025 at the “Turning Point USA” national rally. As usual, a member of the Trump regime ignores the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment. The founding fathers clearly spelled out that there was no religious foundation to the Constitution.

Many of us prefer to look forward at the end of a year hoping that the new year will be better — regardless of whether the last year was personally good or bad. It is also a tradition to gather lists of key events, books, movies, songs and other notable achievements from the past year. I could not resist the temptation to do the same for the Trump regime and gather the ten worst things that they have done to our country. It was hard. Not because of a lack of anything to say. Rather, because there was so much to choose from. For example, Ron Filipkowski of Meidas+ posted the top 500 worst things that Trump did since taking office. There is a lot to choose from scanning the spectrum from trying to overturn the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship via an Executive Order (now before the Supreme Court) to turning the White House, the People’s House, into his own personal vision of Mar-A-Lago meets Versailles. In looking back, it is astounding how much our government has been corrupted in eleven months. I had forgotten some of his worst efforts because everyday we get more and more incredibly poor actions, decisions, and self-enriching “deals.” It is hard to keep track.

I am still at a loss as to how he got re-elected. The best analogy I have heard is to compare it to hurricane warnings and how people react. His first term was predicted to be a Category Five storm of destruction. For most people, it was only a Category Two. As they often due in the south, people evacuated for a “five” but would have ridden out a “two.” Predictions of a second Category Five storm are received skeptically since they survived and the predictions were wrong about the first one. No one believes the predictions. “It can’t be all that bad. We rode it out before.” And here we are.

Many of you may disagree with my list or the order of the rankings. Feel free to let me know where I went wrong. In order from bottom to top — the worst — is my list.

• Destroyed Valued Institutions. The Trump administration is systematically destroying or changing our military, cultural, educational, and other institutions. For example, the Smithsonian Institution has been directed to remove from The African American History Museum, The Women’s History Museum and the American Art Museum any exhibits that promote “divisive narratives” (discrimination and slavery) or that promote “improper ideology” (does not conform to Project 2025). It also means firing senior military officers and other officials that are women or minorities. By the administration’s definition, they only got to where they were because they are “DEI hires.” A potent indicator of the racist and misogynistic tendencies of this administration.
• Undermined the Rule of Law. Trump uses the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), two institutions that were the gold standard for justice and law and order throughout the world, as his personal tools of retribution. He has directed the prosecution of his perceived enemies from the former FBI Director Jim Comey to former President Barack Obama (yes, in order to prove the “Russia, Russia, Russia hoax” is really an ongoing conspiracy to rig elections.) On his first day in office he pardoned or commuted sentences for all of those involved in the January 6 attempted coup. Most of those pardoned had either pleaded guilty or were found guilty at trial for breaking the law and attempting to overthrow the government. They also injured 174 law enforcement officers, four of whom later died. Every FBI agent and federal prosecutor that had anything to do with investigating and prosecuting J-6 was fired.
• Used Grift and Graft to Enrich Himself. If you are a “crypto bro” or a billionaire, or a staunch defender of Trump and you broke the law, you have nothing to worry about. A “contribution” of a few million dollars and you can walk free. Pardoned of all crimes. Which also means you do not have to pay your victims the millions of dollars that you took from them in your schemes. They were all suckers anyway. Need approval from the government for a corporate merger? No problem. Just make a “contribution” to Trump’s PAC or ballroom or buy a few million of his meme coins. If you have a spare five million dollars you can get a Trump Gold Card and become a citizen.
• Destroyed Our Health and the Environment. The two are interlinked. First, get rid of the scientists. Whether it be health care or climate change, like everything else (these folks have a limited vocabulary) it is a hoax. No need to spend money on research to keep people healthy. It is all waste, fraud and abuse. Fire most of the experts at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Center for Disease Control (CDC) and replace them with non-doctors and influencers. Vaccines? No need to worry about that even though diseases we thought we eradicated are making a come back. Polio anyone? It is just natural selection. Hey! Look at all that land in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge (AWR) in Alaska. Perfect for drilling for oil and gas. Clean coal rules! Renewable energy is a hoax (again). Besides, wind turbines spoil the view. Deregulation is the way to go. Make toxic emissions great again!
• Demonstrated Incompetence with Signalgate. Is there is any better symbol of the incompetence, abrasiveness and contemptuousness of the Secretary of Defense than putting out tactical attack information over an unclassified network hours before pilots and others were going in harms way to attack the Houthis in Yemen than the scandal surrounding Signalgate? Hegseth checks all the boxes for what is wrong with this administration. And no accountability.
• Destroyed the Economy with Arbitrary Tariffs. The ups and downs and pure arbitrariness of this administration is fully on display with their policies around tariffs. Besides outright lies that the country of manufacture pays the extra money — they don’t, American companies and consumers pay the tax — it is the sheer lack of understanding or consistency that makes it worse. Trump seems to think that tariffs are some magic panacea to solve all of our problems. Recall that he earned his nickname of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) because one phone call — good or bad — changed what a country or industry would be charged that day. Tomorrow it could be different. Good bye strategic planning and hello chaos.
• Conducted Illegal Murders in the Caribbean Sea and East Pacific. Trump continues to murder people on boats at sea in international waters. Drug dealers or not, there are legal processes to deal with criminals. Extrajudicial executions where Trump is judge, jury and executioner is not how we, as Americans, roll. This is not about stopping drugs. As I have written before, this is not how the flow of drugs into the U.S. will stop. This is pure and simple a case of Trump throwing around his weight because he can and he wants to rule the Western Hemisphere. More money into his pockets and his buddies pockets from larger access to oil is a benefit. So far, the administration has provided no proof of anything that they are claiming is a justification. Indeed, the evidence points in other directions, especially when Trump pardons a convicted drug kingpin who is quoted as saying that he will “stuff the cocaine right up the noses of the gringos.”
• Expanded Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Raids. Trump and his minions continue to insist that they are only arresting and deporting the “worst of the worst” criminals who are not in the country legally. Somehow, as the publication ProPublica has been able to document, there are at least 170 U.S. citizens arrested in 2025 by ICE and the Border Patrol that we know about. Not arrested for interfering with legal arrests but swept up in raids because of the language they spoke or the way they looked. A year ago who among us would have thought we would have a paramilitary force on our streets, out of uniform with no identifying markings, driving unmarked cars, wearing masks, and that they would snatch people off the street without a warrant and spirit them away to a detention center in another state without legal representation? It seems to me that rhymes a lot with a form of national government that starts with an “f”.
• Undermined Allies and Hindered Ukraine. It is astounding to witness the degree that Trump will go to assuage Putin’s every whim. Putin is determined to restore the Russian/Soviet Empire. Trump, apparently, wants to help him or at least stand by with admiration at how powerful he is. He continues to denigrate NATO and our other allies and takes Putin’s side in every way. We can speculate as to why, but Trump, and now his administration, stand by a dictator that invaded a democracy rather than supporting that democracy. He continually pushes Ukraine to end the war by giving in to Russian demands and expects Russia to do nothing. Threatening Denmark over Greenland does nothing to dissuade our allies from their increasing realization that the U.S. has the worst possible motives. It fits Trump’s world view that only three leaders matter in the world today, Trump, Putin and Xi. They are powerful and everyone else is weak and therefore unimportant. Eighty years of a generally stable world order is fading away. We may never get it back. Even if a new administration tries to renew and strengthen our ties to Europe, Canada and elsewhere, the damage is done. Two Trump terms taught the world not to trust us. We are no longer a reliable partner and therefore they are going to look elsewhere to strengthen their security and economies. We will become ever more isolated.
• Shutdown US AID. In my view the shuttering of nearly every U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) program is the worst thing this administration has done on many different levels. It is amoral, it is un-American and it is short sighted. In practical terms thousands of people around the world have already died who could have been saved. Over the next few years hundreds of thousands will needlessly die from diseases and malnutrition that could have been prevented. Despicable. The U.S. has always been a force for good in the world. Now we are despised. It was also a symbol of soft power — giving people insight into America and its people and that we are basically kind. That can pay dividends in the geo-political world, the intelligence world and the peace keeping world. In a practical selfish sense, those programs also gave us access to and “eyes on” governments, movements and potential threats — natural, military or terrorist — around the world. That is lost. At home, thousands of people’s jobs depended on that aid as well. Farmers, truck drivers, shippers, dockworkers and others that depended on supplying those programs for their livelihoods. We should be ashamed.

If J.D. Vance thinks we are a “Christian nation” then he must be talking about a different Christianity than the one I know. This administration is perhaps the most un-Christian like in its policies concerning dealing with real human beings that I know about. What he really means are the principles outlined in their operating manual Project 2025. A white Christian nationalist nation ruled by powerful white men.

If asked on a scale of one to ten, with ten as doing great, how bad the administration has been to date, I would give it a three. It has been worse than I expected — not in what they have tried to do because they told us exactly what was coming — but because I did not think that they would be able to pull it off. I especially did not think that they would be able to do it as fast as they have. So, I give it a three because they are capable of doing even worse, more damaging things and I have to leave room to rank it. Call it the Trump Scale.

And yet. I believe in the United States of America. I believe that the majority of us see exactly what is going on, where we are headed and how bad it could be unless we raise our voices and register our dissatisfaction. I believe that Trump has built a house of fake gold gilded cards and that soon, it will come crashing down. How bad that crash will be is anyone’s guess, but from it we will restore our foundational values, put morality back in our policies and move forward as a renewed democratic republic.

Best wishes to all for a great 2026. As Sergeant Phil Esterhaus would say at the end of roll call on the television police drama Hill Street Blues, “Hey! Be careful out there!”