The Weekly List

This week’s list has multiple examples of Trump’s continued efforts to rewrite the history of his first regime, and to seek retribution for lawsuits and other actions against him after. Much of his focus during his second regime has been towards establishing a new version of the historical record of these times, recasting himself as a victim and a hero, and obliterating the truth. He has been aide...

This week, on Election Day 2025, Democrats swept virtually every competitive election across the country, in a thorough rebuke of Trump and his policies. In two key governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, where candidates won by 13 and 15 points, every single county and demographic shifted towards Democrats. The election came as the country entered the longest government shutdown in U.S. histor...

This is the week when Trump’s ‘Let them eat cake’ era truly came to the forefront. Juxtapose Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing to construct a $300 million ostentatious ballroom with cutting off food stamps for 42 million of America’s neediest, who count on government assistance to put food on the table! Add to that hundreds of thousands of U.S. government and private sector workers e...

This week Trump ordered the demolition of the White House East Wing, which seems an apt metaphor for the state of our democracy. He has assumed unbridled and unprecedented power, and is acting on his worst impulses, while sycophants throw millions his way in an attempt to curry favor. Trump is very publicly pursuing his enemies using the apparatus of federal agencies, at which he has installed loy...

This week had the sharp scent of authoritarianism, as Trump and members of his regime continued to put forth actions to block free speech. Ironically, this comes after a centerpiece of the right’s complaints in the 2024 election, and prior, was being censored, and Trump’s myriad of lawsuits over the same. Wide-ranging examples of restricting free speech this week included castigating a singer for...

This week Trump and his White House budget director made dramatic threats of mass firings of federal workers if the shutdown continued, in an effort to get Democrats to capitulate. As the shutdown neared the end of its first week, and Democrats appeared to have the upper hand, Trump escalated, threatening to withhold to back pay from furloughed workers. Cracks began to appear, as air traffic contr...

This week we see an increasingly unbridled Trump, taking previously unthinkable actions in the light of day, and facing little or no pushback, nor consequence. Trump finally got his wish for retribution against former FBI director James Comey, with his newly installed U.S. attorney, garnering an indictment — although barely. Rather than retreat, Trump bragged to reporters that there would be more...

This was quite a week! What strikes me the most in summarizing one of the longest lists of broken norms so far is the lack of pushback that persists. Trump is by all accounts unilaterally making decisions on foreign policy, economic policy, healthcare issues, censorship, prosecutorial discretion, and more. He has become so brazen that he feels comfortable saying out loud, and repeatedly, that the...

The main story this week was continued political violence in the nation, as conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered while giving a speech on a college campus. While the killing was one in a long list of bipartisan violence and threats, Trump and his regime seized on it to baselessly promote conspiracy theories about a vast left-wing effort, including liberal groups, donors, and protestors....

This week, Congress is back in session, and so is the Jeffrey Epstein files story. Congress was greeted upon their return by Epstein survivors, who called for the release of files and accountability. This has been the one story Trump has not been able to spin or control, and he found himself, his regime, and most Republicans contorting themselves to respond, especially after his entry to Epstein’s...

This week Trump lost three major court cases, which could have major implications on the regime’s ability to enact his agenda. Perhaps the most consequential was a 7–4 ruling by a federal appeals court, finding that he had overstepped his authority by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in his trade war, a ruling that could impact the majority of his tariffs. The court noted t...

So much for what typically would be a slow news week in August. With Congress still on recess, this week it felt as if Trump was running the country on his own. He even mused at a half-day-long cabinet meeting about being a dictator! He certainly is increasingly acting like one, continuing a shocking and very public retribution campaign against his perceived enemies, taking control of D.C. and thr...

This week we continue the storyline of Trump’s efforts to rewrite history and manipulate data to fit his narratives, both hallmarks of authoritarianism. Last week Bureau of Labor Statistics data was under siege; this week Trump’s U.S. Attorney in D.C. launched a probe into so-called manipulation of violent crime data in D.C., when reality of the data didn’t fit the justification for Trump’s coup o...

What strikes me most this week is not the number of broken norms, but the nature of what Trump is getting away with. This week he assumed control of the nation’s capital; ordered a mid-decade census amid mid-decade gerrymandering; shook up the way the federal government collects job data; and unilaterally imposed an export tax on two U.S. chip companies that amounted to extortion. Even the conserv...

Noteworthy this week is that several of the most important stories received little media coverage and attention. Part of this is the continued gutting of U.S. journalism, not only in our public broadcasting, but also in mastheads taken private by billionaires. For example, the Washington Post , an important source of breaking stories about the first Trump regime, has been rendered a shell of itsel...

This week, the Epstein Files scandal continued to dominate the news, despite Trump and his regime’s best efforts to distract with shiny coins and conspiracy theories. Trump didn’t help himself much in the effort to change the subject, and he continued to bring up the topic while visiting Scotland. Notably, in Scotland he showcased his golf courses while conducting presidential business, something...

This week the Epstein files, which have turned into the biggest scandal of Trump’s second regime, continued to be front and center. As I wrote in my Substack article here , up until now, Trump has been extremely successful at throwing shiny coins to distract and change the subject. This scandal marks his first failure to control the narrative. In the early part of this week, both he and his regime...

This week, Trump continued to consolidate power within his regime, even as public opinion and parts of his MAGA base turned against him on key issues. On Trump’s signature issue, immigration, public opinion has turned sharply against him, with just 35% approving. Notably, the country is experiencing a broad shift in attitudes on immigration, with nearly 8 in 10 Americans now saying it is a good th...

This week we are seeing the impacts of Trump’s staffing cuts and selection of unqualified sycophants to run federal agencies. Tragedy struck in Texas, as flooding caused by a storm in Kerr County claimed more than 100 lives, with at least 173 still missing five days later. Questions arose about Trump’s and Elon Musk’s DOGE’s cuts to agencies and departments, as well as their current leadership. Al...

This week was a lot! The week opened with debate over Trump’s attack on Iran front and center, as increasing evidence came forward (I wrote more here ) that the strikes did not in fact “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear sites. Trump and his regime sought to change and control the narrative on Iran by attacking the media, and calling those who questioned the outcome various forms of unpatriotic. Trump’s ‘...

The biggest story of this week is Trump potentially taking us to war, after ordering strikes on Iran. I have urged readers of my Substack to follow the facts, and maintain a healthy amount of skepticism, because on face value, and knowing Trump’s patterns, a lot of things we have been told initially do not make sense. First off, was there any doubt after the way Trump has pushed boundaries and gra...

This was a troubling and chaotic week for our country. At home, political violence continued to unfold, as a Minnesota man carried out a gruesome assassination of a Democratic state representative and her husband, and injured another Democrat as well, both on his long list of targeted individuals. An act of political violence would normally be a moment for the president to call for calm and a lowe...

This week the country finds itself on the brink of the biggest crisis of Trump’s presidency, as he deployed both the California National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city of Los Angeles, amid anti-ICE protests. As protests also start to pop up in other cities across the country, the question becomes whether Trump will take things one step further and invoke the Insurrection Act or declare Martial...

This was one wild week! We are approaching the two-third mark for Trump’s 90-day pause of his Liberation Day. He and his regime, despite their weekly start-of-week promises that deals are close at hand, have yet to sign a single one! Negotiations will not be getting any easier, as this week, the U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s tariffs, and the next day, a federal court did as...

This marks the second consecutive week in which Trump’s pace of breaking norms slowed considerably. Trump finds himself on the losing end of a number of court cases, which are pausing or nullifying many of his early actions. Trump is still in search of wins of any kind, as he is failing or falling short on major issues including foreign policy, immigration, and the economy. Trump lashed out in fru...