Letter From An American by Heather Cox Richardson

December 20, 2025 (Saturday)

On November 19, 2025, Congress passed H.R. 4405, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and although there was none of the usual publicity and fanfare President Donald Trump enjoys around a bill signing, the White House said that Trump signed it the same day, making it a law. 

It required the United States Attorney General to “release all documents and records in possession of the Department of Justice relating to Jeffrey Epstein” no later than 30 days after the date the measure became law. It required that the Department of Justice “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys’ Offices, that relate to: Jeffrey Epstein including all investigations, prosecutions, or custodial matters…. Ghislaine Maxwell…. Flight logs or travel records, including but not limited to manifests, itineraries, pilot records, and customs or immigration documentation, for any aircraft, vessel, or vehicle owned, operated, or used by Jeffrey Epstein or any related entity…. Individuals, including government officials, named or referenced in connection with Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity or plea agreements, or investigatory proceedings…. Entities (corporate, nonprofit, academic, or governmental) with known or alleged ties to Epstein’s trafficking or financial networks.” 

It required the release of “[a]ny immunity deals, non-prosecution agreements, plea bargains, or sealed settlements involving Epstein or his associates” and  “[i}nternal DOJ communications, including emails, memos, meeting notes, concerning decisions to charge, not charge, investigate, or decline to investigate Epstein or his associates.”

It required the Department of Justice to produce “[a]ll communications, memoranda, directives, logs, or metadata concerning the destruction, deletion, alteration, misplacement, or concealment of documents, recordings, or electronic data related to Epstein, his associates, his detention and death, or any investigative files.” It demanded “[d]ocumentation of Epstein’s detention or death, including incident reports, witness interviews, medical examiner files, autopsy reports, and written records detailing the circumstances and cause of death.”

The law established that the Department of Justice could withhold only information that was classified or that contained “personally identifiable information of victims or victims’ personal and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”; images that “depict or contain child sexual abuse materials… [or] would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, provided that such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary”; images that “depict or contain images of death, physical abuse, or injury of any person; or…contain information specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order.”

The law required that the Department of Justice must justify all redactions with “a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress.”

Otherwise, it said, records could not be “withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.” 

The deadline for the release of that information was yesterday, December 19. 

In the afternoon, the department began to release the required materials. But despite the law’s specification that the department release ALL the records, it released just a fraction of the required materials, saying it would release more later. Missing were any of the FBI interviews with survivors or internal Justice Department memos about charging decisions. 

There are very few images of Epstein with Trump, despite their close relationship. Instead, the files focused on former Democratic president Bill Clinton, whose office responded with a statement saying: “The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton. This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20–plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be. Even Susie Wiles said Donald Trump was wrong about Bill Clinton.” 

And then there were the redactions. So much of the material was redacted that, in front of television cameras, Jake Tapper of CNN scrolled through an entirely-blacked-out 100-page document on his phone and said: “That’s the transparency we’re getting here.” 

Today observers caught that for all that the Department of Justice had omitted materials the law required they produce, Justice Department staffers had inserted unrelated material: a photo of former Democratic president Bill Clinton, pop music star Michael Jackson, and music legend Diana Ross, with children, suggesting that the three were associated with sex abuser Jeffery Epstein. The image was quickly identified by social media users not as a private image from the Epstein files, but as a publicly available image from a 2003 fundraiser. The children were not Epstein victims, but rather Jackson’s and Ross’s own kids.

Then it turned out, as Michael R. Sisak and David B. Caruso of the Associated Press reported, at least 16 files that had initially been posted on the Justice Department’s public website have disappeared without explanation, including one that showed multiple photographs of Trump with Epstein. 

Democratic lawmakers Representative Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, and Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, released a statement yesterday after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said that the Department of Justice would not meet the deadline for the release of the Epstein files established by law. 

“Donald Trump and the Department of Justice are now violating federal law as they continue covering up the facts and the evidence about Jeffrey Epstein's decades-long, billion-dollar, international sex trafficking ring,” the two wrote. “For months, [Attorney General] Pam Bondi has denied survivors the transparency and accountability they have demanded and deserve and has defied the Oversight Committee’s subpoena. The Department of Justice is now making clear it intends to defy Congress itself, even as it gives star treatment to Epstein's convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Courts around the country have repeatedly intervened when this Administration has broken the law. We are now examining all legal options in the face of this violation of federal law.”

Officials in the Trump administration have been treating members of Congress with contempt since Trump took office, deliberately flouting the 1974 Impoundment Act that prohibits presidents from unilaterally deciding to withhold funds Congress has appropriated, for example, and ignoring the 1973 War Powers Act that requires congressional approval for military actions that last more than 60 days.

Now, with their disregard for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, they are also treating voters, especially their own MAGA voters who stood behind Trump because he promised to release the Epstein files, with outright contempt.

December 22, 2025 (Monday)

This afternoon, President Donald J. Trump announced that the U.S. Navy will build two new “Trump-class” battleships. As Lara Seligman and Marcus Weisgerber of the Wall Street Journal note, Trump has complained for years that America’s warships are “terrible-looking,” and has been involved in the design of the new “Golden Fleet.” A former rear admiral who is director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies told Seligman and Weisgerber that the Golden Fleet is “exactly what we don’t need.” The last battleship in history to be built was the HMS Vanguard, completed in 1946; the last battleship commissioned by the U.S. was the USS Missouri, which was decommissioned in the 1990s. The proposed ships are, he said, “focused on the president’s visual that a battleship is a cool-looking ship.”

In an illustration of the new battleship provided by the White House, the vessel sports an image of Trump on its upper deck. 

Trump seems to be focusing on creating a golden legacy for himself as the MAGA movement falters.  

At a news conference today from Mar-a-Lago announcing the new Trump-class ships, Trump expressed concern that Americans were still talking about the Epstein files. “A lot of people are very angry that pictures are being released of other people that really had nothing to do with Epstein. But they’re in a picture with him because he was at a party, and you ruined a reputation of somebody,” Trump said. “A lot of people are very angry that this continues. A lot of Republicans,” he added.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act required the Justice Department to release all the files by Friday, but it has released only about 10,000 of what are apparently hundreds of thousands of documents, and those are heavily redacted. Department leaders are quite obviously covering up material, suggesting that what remains unknown is so hideous that Trump and his loyalists have concluded it’s better to break the law Congress passed to provide transparency, thus infuriating the MAGA base that voted for Trump because he lied that he would release the files, than to let anyone know what they’re hiding. 

Former president Bill Clinton issued a statement today demanding that the Department of Justice follow the law and “produce the full and complete record the public demands and deserves.” The material the department has released implies that a major perpetrator of abuse in the files is Clinton. Today he noted that the department’s actions make it clear that “someone or something is being protected.” Clinton says he needs “no such protection” and calls “on President Trump to direct Attorney General Bondi to immediately release any remaining materials referring to, mentioning, or containing a photograph of Bill Clinton.” 

In other words, as USA Today opinion columnist Michael J. Stern put it: “Bill Clinton just called Trump & Pam Bondi’s bluff.” 

MAGA leaders are now openly fighting over its future. At this weekend’s Turning Point USA AmericaFest, Erika Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk, announced her support for Vice President J.D. Vance for president in 2028, although Trump has been handing out Trump 2028 hats. As recently as last week, Brian Schwartz of the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has been talking with lawyer Alan Dershowitz about ways in which he could constitutionally serve a third term. (He cannot.)

As Andrew Howard of Politico reported, the conference featured infighting in which prominent podcaster Ben Shapiro called out right-wing influencers Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Steve Bannon, who have lately moved even further toward the Nazi far right as “frauds and grifters.” Meanwhile, prominent employees are leaving the Heritage Foundation after its right-wing leader, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson’s friendly interview with far-right Groyper leader Nick Fuentes. Many of those leaving Heritage are moving to former vice president Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom foundation, established in 2021 after Trump supporters called for Pence’s hanging. Pence’s shop rejects the trade walls, isolationism, and strongman rule of Trumpism. 

That split is showing elsewhere. Ewan Palmer of The Daily Beast reported today that Texas senator and podcaster Ted Cruz is bad-mouthing Vance as he considers a 2028 presidential run, and notably, the state senators in Pence’s home state of Indiana recently rejected Trump’s demands that they redistrict the state in Trump’s favor. 

And there is strong pushback to what appears to be last night’s attempt to censor the press. 

On Sunday the new editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss, pulled a 60 Minutes story about the Trump administration’s renditions of migrants to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador just hours before it was scheduled to air. The 60 Minutes story had undergone the normal process of vetting, fact-checking, and legal reviews. In an email to the newsroom, Weiss said she pulled the story, which focused on the torture the prisoners endured, because it did not present the administration's justification for sending 252 migrants to CECOT. 

Weiss took over the top editorship of CBS News in October after Paramount Skydance, owned by Trump loyalist David Ellison, bought her opinion website Free Press for $150 million. Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is currently in the midst of attempting a hostile takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN. Yesterday, billionaire Larry Ellison, David Ellison’s father, personally guaranteed that he would stand behind more than $40 billion in financing required for the deal. 

The 60 Minutes correspondent who reported the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, wrote in an email to her colleagues: “Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now—after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.” 

Alfonsi also noted that the journalists had repeatedly asked for interviews with administration officials, who did not answer. “Government silence is a statement,” she wrote, “not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.” 

But it turned out that the segment had already been distributed in Canada, and copies of it appeared in the U.S. this afternoon. Legal analyst Asha Rangappa watched it and explained that it “debunks the fundamental claim used by [the] Trump admin[istration] that the detainees it sent there are ‘terrorists’ and corroborates torture using clips from El Salvadorean influencers Bukele uses internally. Would be a shock to low information voters, probably.” Journalist Parker Molloy, who covers the media and culture, observed: “People are going to get to see a totally normal news piece that clearly isn’t biased against Trump and think, ‘She was afraid that THIS would upset the administration??’”

Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote commented: “Had Bari Weiss just ran the story, it would have been seen by a couple million people tops. The bootleg has now gone viral, and may end up being the most-watched 60 Minutes segment ever.” 

In a new YouGov poll conducted for The Economist, fewer than half of Republicans say they “strongly approve” of Trump, and only a third of Republicans approve strongly of his handling of inflation and prices.

All of this adds up to a president who thinks a lot about gold and his legacy. On Friday, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo observed that, these days, the political world around Trump “has a feeling of drift, spectacle and fragmentation. Trump’s ballroom epitomizes it—crass, stupid, vulgar, unacceptable and yet ultimately meaningless. It’s the full-size version of having his stacked Kennedy Center board, of which he is the chairman, rename the institution after him…. These all have the feeling of a man who is bored, tapped out, losing coherence and energy and who others are trying to keep distracted." 

Toria Sheffield of People magazine reports that at this weekend’s Turning Point USA AmericaFest, Fox News Channel host Jesse Watters told the audience that the ballroom President Donald J. Trump wants to build next to the White House is “four times the size of the White House.” According to Watters, Trump told him: “Jesse, it’s a monument. I’m building a monument to myself because no one else will.”

December 24, 2025 (Wednesday)

Happy holidays to you all, however you celebrate...or don't.

We are some of the lucky ones this year, with a roof over our heads, food on the table, and family and friends close to hand. We are blessed.

But it has not always been this way.

For those struggling this holiday season, a reminder, if it helps, that Christmas marks the time when the light starts to come back.

[Photo by Buddy Poland.]

December 26, 2025 (Friday)

On Tuesday, December 23, the U.S. Supreme Court made a preliminary finding that President Donald J. Trump’s deployment of federalized National Guard troops in the Chicago area beginning in October was unlawful. Six of the nine justices held that the law Trump invoked to send in National Guard troops requires that a president first send in the regular U.S. military to execute the laws, and that the National Guard can be deployed only if the president remains “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” 

But, they noted, the circumstances under which the president can use the military against U.S. citizens are “exceptional.” The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from executing the laws “except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” 

So, the justices concluded, “before the President can federalize the Guard…, he likely must have “statutory or constitutional authority to execute the laws with the regular military and must be ‘unable’ with those forces to perform that function. At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois. The President has not invoked a statute that provides an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.” 

In an opinion concurring with the five justices who signed onto the majority opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh added a footnote addressing what have become known as “Kavanaugh stops.” In September the Supreme Court majority allowed immigration officers to stop individuals on the basis of their apparent race or ethnicity, speaking in Spanish or with an accent, working in certain sectors, or being present at certain locations, like an agricultural site—so-called racial profiling. 

In his support for that decision, Kavanaugh wrote that when those individuals legally in the U.S. are stopped and questioned, “the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the U.S.” 

Since then, as Chris Geidner of Law Dork recorded, U.S. citizens have repeatedly been threatened, beaten, and detained. Currently, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is holding a 22-year-old Maryland woman, Dulce Consuelo Diaz Morales, for deportation, although she has produced a U.S. birth certificate and Maryland immunization records and her lawyer insists she is a U.S. citizen. ICE officials say the documents are not valid and she is in the country illegally.   

In his concurrence in Tuesday’s decision, Kavanaugh added a footnote saying: “The Fourth Amendment requires that immigration stops must be based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence, stops must be brief, arrests must be based on probable cause, and officers must not employ excessive force. Moreover, the officers must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity.” 

On Wednesday, December 24, the Department of Justice posted on social media that it might take “a few more weeks” to release the Epstein files after announcing that the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had just “uncovered over a million more documents potentially related to the Jeffrey Epstein case.” In fact, as Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote noted, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York were ordered to transfer all their files to Justice Department headquarters in January 2025.  

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded: “A Christmas Eve news dump of ‘a million more files’ only proves what we already know: Trump is engaged in a massive coverup. The question Americans deserve answered is simple: WHAT are they hiding—and WHY? Justice delayed is justice denied. Release the files. Follow the law.”

The Justice Department has not released many of the documents as required by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, but those few that have come out reveal proof that Trump has been lying about his involvement with the convicted sex abuser Epstein. 

As Sarah Fitzpatrick reported Wednesday in The Atlantic, Trump started his 2024 campaign with the announcement that he “was never on Epstein’s Plane, or at his ‘stupid’ Island.” He blamed any reports of such visits on Democrats who were, he said, smearing him to hurt him politically. 

But documents released on Tuesday show a January 7, 2020, email from a New York prosecutor saying that flight logs show that Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware), including during the period we would expect to charge in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case. In particular, he is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present…. On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old [redacted]. On two other flights, two of the passengers… were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case.” 

Emails from before Epstein’s 2019 arrest show investigators talking about “10 co-conspirators,” while a 2020 email suggests prosecutors had amassed considerable material to charge “co-conspirators,” but never did so. The document discussing those charges is redacted. 

Trump was mentioned more than 100 times in the documents released on December 23. 

And there is pressure on Trump coming from a different direction as well. On December 17, Khadeeja Safdar and Joe Palazzolo of the Wall Street Journal reported that senators led by Ron Wyden (D-OR), the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the Justice Department and asked officials to explain why law enforcement officials never interviewed Epstein’s longtime attorney Darren Indyke or his accountant Richard Kahn when the officers were investigating Epstein’s sex trafficking. 

The same Wall Street Journal reporters recently noted that the two men arranged fake marriages to keep women in the U.S., withdrew cash for Epstein in ways that avoided scrutiny, and sent payments to women who later claimed they had been sexually abused. As co-executors of Epstein’s estate, the men have control over the evidence in that estate and over Epstein’s more than $100 million in assets.

Representatives and staffers from the House Oversight Committee told journalist Fitzpatrick they are drafting subpoenas to learn more about the alleged co-conspirators. They are also drafting a resolution to hold Attorney General Pam Bondi in contempt for her failure to make sure that the Department of Justice complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and are moving ahead with articles of impeachment against her. 

Axios reported on December 23 that the White House has taken over the X account of the Justice Department, and on the same day, that account tried to undercut the new information by claiming that accusations in it are “unfounded and false.” But Trump’s behavior on December 25, Christmas, suggested otherwise.

Trump’s social media account posted: “Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, gave him bundles of money, went to his Island, attended his parties, and thought he was the greatest guy on earth, only to ‘drop him like a dog’ when things got too HOT, falsely claimed they had nothing to do with him, didn’t know him, said he was a disgusting person, and then blame, of course, President Donald J. Trump, who was actually the only one who did drop Epstein, and long before it became fashionable to do so. When their names get brought out in the ongoing Radical Left Witch Hunt (plus one lowlife ‘Republican,’ Massie!), and it is revealed that they are Democrats all, there will be a lot of explaining to do, much like there was when it was made public that the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax was a fictitious story—a total Scam—and had nothing to do with ‘TRUMP.’”

After misrepresenting the New York Times, he went on: “Now the same losers are at it again, only this time so many of their friends, mostly innocent, will be badly hurt and reputationally tarnished. But, sadly, that’s the way it is in the World of Corrupt Democrat Politics!!! Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas! President Donald J. Trump.” 

Bill Kristol of The Bulwark wrote: “Donald Trump, basically acknowledging that so far at least he’s losing the fight over Epstein.” MeidasTouch noted: “This is what's known as “consciousness of guilt.”

This evening, Trump posted: “Now 1,000,000 more pages on Epstein are found. DOJ is being forced to spend all of its time on this Democrat inspired Hoax. When do they say NO MORE, and work on Election Fraud etc. The Dem[ocrat]s are the ones who worked with Epstein, not the Republicans. Release all of their names, embarrass them, and get back to helping our Country! The Radical Left doesn’t want people talking about TRUMP & REPUBLICAN SUCCESS, only a long ago dead Jeffrey Epstein—Just another Witch Hunt!!!” 

“I love the smell of panic in the evening,” former representative and Trump critic Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) posted over Trump’s screed. “Smells like… victory.” 

Even before Trump’s evening post, in Meditations in an Emergency, Rebecca Solnit noted that it seems “clear that there is likely something in the files that further incriminates” Trump, an observation with which scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder agreed. He added: “Horrible as the facts at hand are, there must be something else, something verging on the unimaginable.”

The slow drip of the Epstein files, Solnit writes, is “undermining loyalty to Trump as nothing else has, and it is an important part of how the Trump regime and the Republican Party are falling apart before our eyes. This does not mean that the Trumpists are powerless,” she continues, “they are flailing and grabbing for all the kinds of power that they can.”

But “Trump appears to be disintegrating, rotting, collapsing before our eyes, mentally and physically, and Republicans in Congress—first of all with the vote to release the Epstein files—are breaking from him.”

December 29, 2025 (Monday)

In an appearance on New York’s WABC radio on Friday, President Donald J. Trump told billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis and co-host Rita Cosby: “We just knocked out—I don’t know if you read or you saw—they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.” 

Officials said Trump was referring to a drug facility in Venezuela. But as Tyler Pager and Julian E. Barnes of the New York Times reported, the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had no comment, and military officials said they had no information to share. Pager and Barnes added: “U.S. officials declined to specify anything about the site the president said was hit, where it was located, how the attack was carried out or what role the facility played in drug trafficking. There has been no public report of an attack from the Venezuelan government or any other authorities in the region.” 

The reporters also noted that Venezuela is not a major producer of narcotics. It primarily traffics cocaine from Colombia. Meanwhile, Max Bearak, Simón Posada, and Christiaan Triebert of the New York Times reported today that in the wreckage left behind by one of the U.S. strikes on what the administration calls “narco-terrorists” were bodies, charred fuel containers, life jackets, and packets, most of which were empty, although a few had “traces of a substance that looked and smelled like marijuana.” 

At Mar-a-Lago today, Trump said: “There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. They load up the boats with drugs. So we hit all the boats and now we hit the area, it’s the implementation area. That’s where they implement. And that is no longer around.” Trump declined to say who was responsible for the operation. “I know exactly who it was, but I don’t want to say who it was,” he said. “But you know it was along the shore.” 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who usually posts video of military strikes on social media, posted nothing about the strike Trump mentioned, although at 4:01 this afternoon, U.S. Southern Command posted that it had struck another small boat in the eastern Pacific, killing another two men. The new strike means that the U.S. military has killed more than 100 individuals in an operation widely condemned as illegal.

Tonight, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, and Jim Sciutto of CNN reported that earlier this month, the CIA struck a remote Venezuelan port facility with drones, the first known U.S. attack on targets inside Venezuela. The U.S. says the Tren de Aragua gang was using the dock to store drugs and then to move them onto boats for reshipment. No one was at the facility when it was hit. 

Sources told the CNN journalists that U.S. Special Operations Forces provided intelligence for the operation, but a spokesperson for U.S. Special Operations Command denied that allegation. The CIA declined to comment.  

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo commented: “It's a good commentary on 2025 that the US President announces a major military attack on a foreign country and even the straightest arrows think, 50% chance it's an attack, 50% chance president is on another cognition bender.”

Saturday morning, the day before Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky was scheduled to meet with Trump for talks on ending Russia’s war against Ukraine, Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. The missile and drone strikes damaged more than ten residential buildings, killed at least one person who burned to death, and wounded 27 more, including two children.

When Zelensky arrived in Miami for his trip to Mar-a-Lago, there were no U.S. officials on hand to greet the plane. This was a deliberate snub, especially when compared to the literal red carpet Trump had U.S. military personnel roll out for Putin when he arrived on U.S. soil in August, followed by Trump greeting him while clapping, a military flyover, and a ride with Trump in the presidential limousine. 

Trump’s preference for Putin was evident yesterday, too, when he posted on social media: “I just had a good and very productive telephone call with President Putin of Russia prior to my meeting, at 1:00 P.M. today, with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.” He later told reporters that he and Putin talked for more than two hours.

At the meeting itself, Trump later told reporters, the negotiating teams “covered—somebody would say 95 percent, I don’t know what percent—but we have made a lot of progress on ending that war.” He once again referred to his fictional claims of being a peacemaker, adding: “I’ve settled eight wars, and this is the most difficult one.” 

But, as Luke Harding of The Guardian noted, there is no sign that Putin is backing off from his extreme demands, including that Ukraine must give Russia much of its eastern territory. Trump’s negotiators suggest that such a concession would satisfy Putin, but skeptics doubt it. As White House chief of staff Susie Wiles told Chris Whipple in August in an interview for Vanity Fair,  “The experts think that if he could get the rest of Donetsk, then he would be happy.” But, she said: “Donald Trump thinks he wants the whole country.”

Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has lasted almost four years and, as Russian troops have routinely attacked civilian areas and civilian infrastructure, the damage to the country has been extreme. After meeting with Zelensky, Trump answered a reporter who asked whether Trump had spoken to Putin about the reconstruction of Ukraine: “I did. I did. They’re going to be helping. Russia’s going to be helping. Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. Once—it sounds a little strange but I was explaining to the president, President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine succeeding, including supplying energy, electricity, and other things at very low prices. So a lot of good things came out of that call today."

Quite literally, Russia invaded Ukraine and continues to smash it. As former Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) posted on social media: “With all this talk of how to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, and a cease fire, keep this in mind: If Ukraine ceases firing, Ukraine will cease to exist. If Russia ceases firing, the war will cease to exist.” 

In his comments to reporters, one passage perhaps shed more light on events than Trump intended. Defending the idea that Putin, who is bombing Ukraine in an unprovoked assault, wants peace, Trump said: “I saw a very interesting President Putin today. I mean, he—he wants to see it happen, he wants to see it. He told me, very strongly. I believe him. Don't forget, we went through the Russia Russia Russia hoax together. And he'd call me, I'd call him, I'd say, ‘Can you believe the stuff that they're making up?’ And it turned out we were right. They made it all up, and despite that, we didn't get into wars, or we didn't get into problems, but we weren't able to trade very much or any of that, which was a shame, because, you know, a lot of success could have been had by trading with Russia. They have great land, great minerals and other things, and we have things that they want very badly, but the Russia Russia Russia hoax, which was a terrible made-up fictional thing by crooked Hillary and by Adam Shifty Schiff and bad people, sick people. They made it up. It was all a made up hoax.”

But, of course, the idea that Russian operatives worked to put Trump into the White House in 2016 wasn’t a hoax. 

The Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by a Republican, unanimously concluded that “the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence…the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” Further, Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort’s close relationship with “Russia-aligned oligarchs in Ukraine” meant that his “proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services…represented a grave counterintelligence threat.” 

In 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would not consider lifting the sanctions placed on Russia after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea. Although Republicans at the time supported those sanctions, it was not clear that Trump was as firm. Lifting sanctions was part of the story of Russian support for Trump in 2016.

The Senate committee and Special Counsel Robert Mueller put more of the story together, explaining that in summer 2016, Manafort and Russian operatives “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Russian-backed Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.” The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” 

“All that is required to start the process is a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying ‘he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine’ and a decision to be a ‘special representative’ and manage this process,” wrote a Russian operative. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018.

Trump has continued to pressure Zelensky into accepting that plan, so far without success. But Trump’s statement to reporters also suggests that with Russia’s economy crumpling under the weight of four years of war, Putin is desperate to grab Ukraine’s industrial regions and get rid of the sanctions under which his country has staggered since 2014 and especially since his second invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In late November, Russia began to sell its gold reserves in order to fund its budget. 

Trump told reporters he had had another "very good talk" with Putin this morning, after his Sunday meeting with Zelensky.

Whether because of Trump’s or Putin’s weakening position—or both—both Trump and Putin appear to be eager to close the deal.

December 31, 2025 (Wednesday)

And so, the sun sets on 2025.

At the end of this very difficult year, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for this community and for all you have done for me, for each other, and for our nation. For my part, I could not have continued to do what I do without your support and encouragement, and I thank you for it.

If you are comfortable writing it down, I’d love to see in the comments what you did this year to help preserve American democracy and what you hope for 2026. Let's keep building our momentum.

I am entering the new year tired, I confess, but with high hopes and confidence that the American people can build a better future. 

Let’s take this new year out for a spin and see what we can accomplish. 

My best to you and yours for 2026.

January 3, 2026 (Saturday)

Today was the legal deadline for the Department of Justice to submit to Congress a written justification for any documents from the Epstein files that the department had redacted or withheld. But it seems unlikely the Justice Department met this deadline because it has missed the December 19 deadline for releasing the files themselves. Both of those deadlines were established by the Epstein Files Transparency Act, passed overwhelmingly by Congress on November 19, 2025.

Information from those files continues to trickle out. Those that have been released suggest the Department of Justice considered charging “co-conspirators” and that Trump traveled on Epstein’s private plane with Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, along with alleged victims, on several occasions. Mar-a-Lago routinely sent employees to perform massages and other spa services at Epstein’s home, where he exposed himself to those employees. According to Daniel Ruetenik of CBS News, video released on December 23 and 24, 2025, contradicts previous statements about the surveillance system in the prison in which sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in August 2019. 

Trump has taken a hit on his domestic policy lately, as well. After the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, Trump announced on December 31 that the administration is removing National Guard troops from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland. Then he claimed that the troops had “greatly reduced” crime in those cities and vowed to “come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again—Only a question of time!”  

“Donald Trump’s lying again,” Democratic Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted on social media. “He lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.” “If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops,” said Democratic Oregon governor Tina Kotek, “that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.”

And then, on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. The fact they chose to release it at a time when most Americans are not paying attention to the news tells you all you need to know about what Smith said. Republicans have insisted that Smith’s indictments of Trump were a sign that former president Joe Biden’s Justice Department was “weaponized” against Trump and MAGA supporters, but in his testimony—under oath—Smith said Trump was guilty. 

As Parker Molloy covered in The Present Age, Smith said that his office had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.” Smith told the committee that the evidence for the indictment came not from the president’s enemies, but from Republicans who had worked for Trump, campaigned for him, and wanted him to win in 2020. 

It is against this backdrop that the Trump administration launched a strike against Venezuela in the early hours of Saturday, January 3. Without consulting Congress, officials ordered the military to seize president Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, flying them to New York City to face federal charges newly announced by the Southern District of New York.

Trump insists that Maduro is working with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to attack the U.S. with illegal narcotics. This has been the justification for U.S. strikes on small boats, apparently from Venezuela, that the administration claims have been trafficking drugs to the U.S. The administration has implied the deadly drugs it claims the boats are trafficking are illicit fentanyl, although it has told Congress they were transporting cocaine, which it has now indicted Maduro for trafficking.  

But aside from drugs, Trump and his cronies have also increasingly emphasized their conviction that Venezuela “stole” oil from the U.S. and must return it. This appears to be a reference to the loss of U.S. rigs, pipelines, and other facilities when Venezuelan president Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalized the oil companies operating within its borders on January 1, 1976, although Trump might mean the expansion of those seizures under president Hugo Chávez starting in 2007.

This morning, Trump informed the American people of what had happened in Caracas by calling in to Fox & Friends on the Fox News Channel from Mar-a-Lago to describe the strikes and the extraction of Maduro and Flores. He praised the team and boasted that no other country could have done what the U.S. did. "I mean, I watched it literally like I was watching a television show. And, uh… if you would've seen the speed, the violence—you know they say that, ‘the speed, the violence,’ they use that term—it’s uh, just, it was an amazing thing, an amazing job that these people did."

In a midday press conference, members of the administration fleshed out the story of what they are calling “Operation Absolute Resolve.” Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to emphasize that the attack and extraction of Maduro and Flores were a law enforcement mission, Trump made it clear the goal was regime change in order to gain control of Venezuela's oil. The administration acted unilaterally, without consulting Congress, and in apparent violation of international law.

Slurring his words and repeating himself as he read from a script and occasionally wandered off it, Trump called the operation “an assault like people have not seen since World War II” and said it was “one of the most stunning effective and powerful displays of American military might and competence in American history.” 

Trump said the U.S. will “run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper, and judicious transition,” evidently not interested in supporting Edmundo González, the former diplomat who beat Maduro in the 2024 presidential election. 

Trump turned immediately to Venezuela’s oil industry, saying that it had been “a total bust…pumping almost nothing by comparison to what they could have been pumping.” He explained that “We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country.” “This partnership of Venezuela with the United States of America,” he said, “will make the people of Venezuela rich, independent, and safe.” 

If such a mission required U.S. troops on the ground in Venezuela, he said, the administration was not afraid of such deployment. 

The president launched into the language of his rally speeches—rote by now—before returning to oil. Although international law is clear that countries own the natural resources within their own territories, he claimed that Venezuela had “unilaterally seized, and sold American oil, American assets and American platforms, costing us billions and billions of dollars…. They took all of our property. It was our property. We built it…and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country, considered the largest theft of property in the history of our country.” 

And then he hit on the larger foreign policy principle his attack on Venezuela is designed to establish. “America will never allow foreign powers to rob our people and drive us back into and out of our own hemisphere,” he said. He said that the U.S. has now replaced the 1823 Monroe Doctrine—which he called “a big deal” that we “forgot” without explaining that it warned foreign countries from colonizing South America—with the “Donroe Document”: American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. 

After World War II, the United States and its allies and partners put in place a rules-based international order to prevent future world conflicts. Under that order, the members of the United Nations agreed they would not threaten or attack another country. Russian president Vladimir Putin has sought to replace that rules-based order with the idea that powerful countries will create spheres of influence in their regions. That new world order would justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now the U.S. invasion of Venezuela with the promise that the U.S. is going to “run” the country from now on, as part of its quest to dominate the Western Hemisphere, means the U.S. has abandoned the post–World War II international order and is siding with Russia’s vision.

“By proceeding without any semblance of international legitimacy, valid legal authority or domestic endorsement, Mr. Trump risks providing justification for authoritarians in China, Russia and elsewhere who want to dominate their own neighbors,” wrote the New York Times editorial board. That justification seems to be the point.

Trump warned Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro that he has to “watch his ass,” said “Cuba is going to be something we'll end up talking about,” and warned that “something will have to be done about Mexico.” “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” he said. Katie Miller, wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted an image of Greenland covered with an American flag and the caption “SOON.” 

When Maduro arrived in New York City tonight, official White House social media channels, including that of the president, showed him on his perp walk. 

By afternoon, though, the triumphal story seemed to be sagging. 

The New York Times reported that at least 40 civilians and military personnel were killed in the attack, which hit a three-story apartment building. 

Although Trump told reporters that Venezuelan vice president Delcy Rodríguez had been sworn into the presidency and that she seemed willing to work with the U.S. “to do what we think is necessary to make Venezuela great again,” Rodríguez insisted in a televised address to Venezuelans today that Maduro is the rightful president of Venezuela and must be released, and said the U.S. had “launched an unprecedented military aggression.” “If there is one thing that the Venezuelan people and this country are clear about,” she said, “it is that we will never again be slaves, that we will never again be a colony of any empire, whatever its nature.”

Ben Lefebvre, Zack Colman, and James Bikales of Politico reported that oil companies are leery of Trump’s plan that they will invest billions of dollars in rebuilding Venezuela’s oil industry. Two sources told the journalists that while oil companies would like reimbursement for the equipment and infrastructure they left behind in Venezuela when its government nationalized the oil fields, they are unenthusiastic about Trump’s demand that they invest heavily in rebuilding Venezuela’s destroyed petroleum industry in order to recoup their losses. 

They say they have no idea how badly the infrastructure has decayed, and little interest in investing when it is not clear who will be running the country in the future. The administration has failed to reach out to oil executives with a long-term plan, experts told the journalists. One source said “it feels very much a shoot-ready-aim exercise.” 

That lack of preparation appears to be in keeping with the overall post-raid planning. Trump told reporters today that administration officials were “designating various people” to “run” Venezuela, “and we're gonna let you know who those people are.” Tonight Robbie Gramer and Juan Forero of the Wall Street Journal said the administration is “racing to assemble an interim governing structure for Venezuela” but noted that “[t]he lack of details about what comes next led some U.S. officials to question why there was no detailed plan in place well before deposing Maduro.”

Gramer and Forero noted that Venezuela is twice the size of California and has 28 million people in it, millions of whom continue to support Maduro, whose government remains largely intact. Those supporters include armed cocaine-trafficking groups, some of whom fought as guerillas in Colombia, and an army of more than 100,000 soldiers. 

Current and former U.S. officials told the reporter that the next phase of Trump’s operation in Venezuela is full of risks and the potential for blunders.

January 5, 2026 (Monday)

Five years ago, on January 6, 2021, more than 2,000 rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to stop the process of counting the electoral votes that would make Democrat Joe Biden president of the United States. They tried to hunt down House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and chanted their intention to “Hang Mike Pence,” the vice president. They fantasized that they were following in the footsteps of  the American Founders, about to start a new nation. Newly elected representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) wrote on January 5, 2021: “Remember these next 48 hours. These are some of the most important days in American history.” On January 6 she wrote: “Today is 1776.”

In fact, it was not 1776 but 1861, the year insurrectionists who had tried to overthrow the government in order to establish minority rule tried to break the U.S. The rioters wanted to take away the right at the center of American democracy—our right to determine our own destiny—in order to keep Donald J. Trump in the White House, making sure the power of elite white men could not be challenged. It was no accident that the rioters carried a Confederate battle flag.

Since the 1980s, Republicans pushed the idea that a popular government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights crushes the individualism on which America depends. As cuts to regulation, taxation, and the nation’s social safety net began to hollow out the middle class, Republicans pushed the idea that the country’s problems came from greedy minorities and women who wanted to work outside the home. More and more, they insisted that the federal government was stealing tax dollars and destroying society, and they encouraged individual men to take charge of the country.

After the Democrats passed the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, more commonly known as the motor voter law, enabling people to register to vote at motor vehicle departments, Republicans increasingly insisted Democrats were cheating the system by relying on the votes of noncitizens, although there was never any evidence for this charge. 

As wealth continued to move upward, the idea that individuals and paramilitary groups must “reclaim” America from undeserving Americans who were taking tax dollars and cheating to win elections became embedded in the Republican Party. By 2014, Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) called Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his supporters “patriots” when they showed up armed to meet officials from the Bureau of Land Management who tried to impound Bundy’s cattle because he owed more than $1 million in grazing fees for running cattle on public land. 

The idea of reclaiming the country for white men by destroying the federal government grew, along with the idea that Democrats could win elections only by cheating.  In 2016, Trump insisted that his female Democratic opponent belonged in jail and that he alone could save the country from the Washington, D.C., “swamp.” Other Republican leaders who had initially shunned him began to support him when it became clear that he could mobilize a new crop of disaffected voters who could put Republicans into office. 

And they continued to support him, claiming initially that he could be kept in check by establishment Republicans like his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, who moved from leading the Republican National Committee to the White House for the first six months of Trump’s first term. In his first months in office, Trump delivered the tax cut Republican leaders wanted, as well as the appointment of one out of every four federal judges, including three Supreme Court justices, who would protect the Republican project in the courts.

But the idea that Trump could be kept in check fell apart in September 2019, when it appeared he was trying to rig the 2020 election. A whistleblower revealed that Trump had called the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in July 2019 to demand that Zelensky smear former vice president Joe Biden, who was beating Trump in most polls going into the 2020 election season. Until Zelensky did so, Trump said, the administration would not release the money Congress had appropriated to fund Ukraine’s fight against Russia, which had invaded Ukraine in 2014. 

The attempt to withhold congressionally appropriated funds in order to tilt an election was a glaring violation of the 1974 Impoundment Control Act codifying the executive branch’s duty to execute the laws Congress passed. In the congressional investigation that followed, witnesses revealed that Trump’s cronies were running a secret scheme in Ukraine to undermine official U.S. policy and benefit Trump’s allies. 

Republicans in 1974 had turned against President Richard Nixon for far less, but although Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said not a single Republican senator believed Trump, they stood behind him nonetheless. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues: “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing…. It’s about flipping the Senate.” 

But once acquitted, Trump cut loose from any oversight. He sought revenge and insisted that “[w]hen somebody is President of the United States, the authority is total.” “The federal government has absolute power,” he said, and he had the “absolute right” to use that power if he wanted to. 

As early as 2019, Trump had “joked” about staying in power regardless of the 2020 election results, and on October 31, Trump’s ally Steve Bannon told a private audience that Trump was going to declare that he had won the 2020 election no matter what. Trump knew that Democratic mail-in ballots would show up in the vote totals later than Republican votes cast on Election Day, creating a “red mirage” that would be overtaken later by Democratic votes. 

“Trump’s going to take advantage of it,” Bannon said, by calling the election early and saying that the later votes were somehow illegitimate. “That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” Bannon continued: “Here’s the thing. After then, Trump never has to go to a voter again…. He’s gonna say ‘F*ck you. How about that?’ Because…he’s done his last election.”

Early returns on Election Night 2020, November 3, showed Trump ahead. But, more quickly than anyone expected, Democratic votes turned the key state of Arizona blue, and the Fox News Channel called the race for Biden. Furious, Trump took to the airwaves at about 2:30 the next morning and declared he had won, although ballots were still being counted and several battleground states had no clear winner. “We won’t stand for this,” he told supporters, assuring them he had won. “We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop.”

But it didn’t, and by the time all the ballots were counted, the election was not close: Biden beat Trump by more than 7 million votes and by 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. 

Trump insisted a Democrat could not have won honestly. Over the next few months, his campaign demanded recounts, all of which confirmed that Biden won. Trump or his surrogates filed and lost at least 63 lawsuits over the 2020 election, most dismissed for lack of evidence. 

As legal challenges failed, Trump pressured Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have” to win the state of Georgia. Trump’s allies plotted for Trump supporters in seven battleground states to meet secretly and submit false slates of electors for Trump. Two slates would enable Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count the electors from the now-contested states, so that either Trump would be elected outright, or Pence could say there was no clear winner and send the election to the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote. Since there were more Republican delegations than Democratic ones, Trump would be president.

“This is a fight of good versus evil,” Trump’s evangelical chief of staff Mark Meadows wrote on November 24, 2020, to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, Ginni.

Determined to retain control of the government, certain congressional Republicans went along with the charade that the election had been stolen. Trump allies in the House began to echo Trump’s accusations and to say they would question the counts from certain states. Such challenges required a paired vote with a senator, and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who saw himself as a top 2024 presidential contender, and Ted Cruz of Texas, who didn’t want to be undercut, led 11 other senators in a revolt to challenge the ballots.

For weeks, Trump had urged his supporters to descend on Washington, D.C., for a “Stop the Steal” rally arranged for January 6, the day Congress would count the certified electoral ballots. Speaking at the Ellipse near the White House that morning, Trump and his surrogates told the crowd that they had won the election, and Trump warned: “We are going to have to fight much harder.” 

Trump claimed that Chinese-driven socialists were taking over the country and told the crowd: “We’re gathered together in the heart of our nation's capital for one very, very basic and simple reason: To save our democracy.” “You'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated…. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

And, knowing they were armed, he told them to march to the Capitol.

As Trump’s supporters attacked, lawmakers from their hiding spots begged the president to call off his supporters, but he did nothing for more than three hours. After 5:40, when the National Guard had been deployed without his orders, thus making it clear the rioters would be overpowered before either taking over the government themselves or giving him an excuse to declare martial law, Trump issued a video statement.

“I know you’re hurt,” he said. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now…. We love you. You’re very special.” He tweeted: “Remember this day forever!” 

When the House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump for a second time on January 13, 2021, for incitement of insurrection, only 10 Republicans voted in favor, while 197 voted no (4 did not vote). In the Senate trial, 7 Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, while 43 continued to back Trump. 

In a speech after his vote to acquit, McConnell said, “There is no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” but said he must answer for his actions in court. “Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office,” McConnell said. “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

In November 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. On August 1, 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump for four felonies associated with his attempt to retain power illegally. 

Trump fought back, arguing that he had presidential immunity for his actions. Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide the case immediately, but it waited until the last possible moment, on July 1, 2024, to decide Donald J. Trump v. United States, finding that presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. Trump himself had appointed three of the justices in the majority. 

A second grand jury returned a new indictment stripped of the actions now immune, but by then it was too late: Trump was reelected president, and the Department of Justice has an understanding that it will not indict or prosecute a sitting president. And so, five years after the events of January 6, 2021, we are learning what it means to have a president who has demonstrated his determination to overthrow our democracy and who does not have to answer to the law. 

Although he was elected with less than 50% of the votes cast, Trump claimed an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” As soon as he took office in January 2025, the president and his henchmen flouted the 1974 Impoundment Control Act again, seizing Congress’s right to control the nation’s finances. Trump used emergency powers to ignore the Constitution and deployed troops in Democratic-led cities. When Congress required the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files, the administration largely ignored the law. Today, more than two weeks after the deadline, it had released less than 1% of the files. Ignoring the rights afforded to individuals by the Constitution, Trump is seizing people off the streets and prosecuting his perceived enemies. 

Trump has taken on himself the right to go to war with another country in order to take its oil, and is openly working to destroy the rules-based international order that has stabilized the world since the 1940s. Today, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper: “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

That vision is a profound rejection of the principles of the rules-based international order, which was designed to use power for deterrence rather than domination. It is also a profound rejection of the principles of American democracy, a system of checks and balances to channel power into a government that could deliver stability and prosperity to all the people, not just a select few. 

In 1863, when that system was unraveling under pressure from those who wanted to base society on a system of enslavement that enriched an elite, Republican president Abraham Lincoln asked Americans to remember those who had died to protect a nation “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” 

Lincoln asked Americans to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion,” and to resolve that “these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”