One year into the second Trump administration, we see reasons for hope amidst the rubble. As Isaac Gilles and Ian Bassin wrote:
[Trump] is losing the race against time and has failed to sufficiently consolidate power before becoming deeply unpopular, which was the recipe we knew would be necessary to prevent a full-on collapse into autocracy.
So while extreme danger still exists for our democracy, and many communities in our country still live in daily terror from the regime’s abuses, we can now see a path to defeating the autocratic assault and turning this crisis into opportunity.
The outcome of this race against time was not preordained. The advantage has shifted back and forth between the forces of autocracy and those of democracy. Here are some of the most important moments from this year — challenges, setbacks, and successes — in 11 pieces that are worth re-reading before we turn to 2026.
Despite opposition in his own party and from voters, on his first day in office, the president pardoned over 1,500 convicted Jan. 6 rioters, including Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
From day one of his presidency, aided by chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Trump took aim at the civil service. The authors of our Dear Civil Servant series saw through Trump’s strategy from the beginning.
Over the summer, a new front opened in America’s forever redistricting wars when the president directed the Texas legislature to carry out an aggressive, unusual mid-decade redraw and gerrymander of the state’s congressional districts. While this was an escalation, the only way to stop endless gerrymandering battles is to do away with our winner-take-all system, once and for all.
Another dominant story of the year was, of course, the Epstein files. In the political upheaval over the release of the files, Ben Raderstorf saw the bigger picture: The ongoing crisis and potential coverup at the DOJ was a near-inevitable outcome of politicizing law enforcement.
In July, President Trump sent Marines to Los Angeles. In August, he deployed the National Guard to “fight crime” in Washington, D.C. In September, he set his sights on Memphis. By the fall, he was openly attempting to occupy American cities, with Chicago drawing particular (and particularly violent) attention.
But Americans across the country pushed back. Learning key lessons from Chicago and other cities, they showed how principled, patriotic, and non-violent mobilization can defend our democracy.
In September, activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college campus. Predictably, the president and his allies attempted to weaponize that tragedy to escalate their efforts to clamp down on dissent. But we learned an important lesson about collective action when FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s efforts to jawbone ABC into canceling Jimmy Kimmel Live! failed.
Fall of 2025 saw the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But the real story behind the shutdown far preceded Congress’ failure to pass an appropriations bill. The administration’s unlawful attempts to withhold congressionally appropriated funding for vital programs started all the way back in January.
In October, President Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for a gilded, Mar-a-Lago-style ballroom — without congressional approval. The image was a stark contrast to the massive No Kings Day protests on Oct. 18, which were the largest protests in American history.
Perhaps most importantly, the 2025 elections were free and fair (not to mention, significant political losses for the authoritarian movement). Still, the administration attempted to lay the groundwork for future election subversion efforts.
Throughout the year, President Trump has weaponized the DOJ to go after his perceived political opponents — from Letitia James to James Comey to Adam Schiff. (Our Retaliatory Actions Tracker is the best place to go for up-to-date information on these efforts.) In doing so, Trump is committing one of the oldest abuses in human government.
Needless to say, it’s been a long year — with plenty of trials and tribulations that will each serve as lessons for the years ahead. We’ll be back in January with some of what we expect to see next year.
Things may get worse before they get better, and it will take all of us working together to defend our democracy.
I'm not sure how one can reasonably say our democracy survived 2025. The rule of law has been essentially destroyed. The President and his party have institutionalized corruption, dishonesty, racism, and cruelty for starters. History has been rewritten by the President and Republicans in a manner that would make the world's finest propagandists blush. The federal government has been dismantled and the 20th century is being repealed as we speak. Federal agents wear masks -- wear masks -- as they patrol our streets and look to deport as many immigrants as possible. The corporate media continue to cover Washington politics as if the Republican party and its leader are just the most recent version of previous Republicans. And the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a model of American government that ignores what we all learned in middle school social studies about checks and balances, limited executive power, and so forth and bases its most consequential decisions on a completely fabricated "unitary executive" theory of American government.
Other than that, and a few hundred other things I left out, our democracy is just fine I suppose.