The Weekly List

In a week when the country should have been coming together to celebrate our 250th anniversary, Trump instead chose to make the Independence Day celebrations highly partisan, and all about himself. He made speeches attacking his political enemies as “communists,” and made repeated baseless claims about the dangers they posed to the country. He continued to push unfounded claims about the infiltrat...

This week the theme of inequity continued to be front and center. While Trump refused to sign a housing affordability bill, which had rare bipartisan support, new disclosures revealed he had personally reaped $2.2 billion in 2025! Trump’s windfall primarily came from new businesses in cryptocurrency, but he also enriched himself in a bevy of other ways, unprecedented for a sitting U.S. president....

Trump just doesn’t care. That is a great takeaway from this week’s list. He views his power as absolute, saying in an interview that he has not been humbled by the Iran War, but instead learned that there are “no limits” to his power. He feels unbridled by public opinion or what is good for his political party approaching midterms. His concerns seem wrapped up in his legacy as a great conqueror ab...

This week, after days of strikes on Iran, which included a precision strike on a water plant serving 20,000 Iranians, Trump announced a “deal” with Iran on his 80th birthday. While Trump, and his front man on the deal, Vice President JD Vance, trumpeted the one-and-a-half page long memorandum of understanding, they also refused to release it publicly, even to members of the Gang of Eight, even day...

This was an unusually and notably slow week of broken norms compared to recent months. The news cycle has slowed considerably. Two factors stand out that may contribute. There remain lingering doubts about the state of Trump’s health after his most recent visit to Walter Reed, although our media is saying and reporting very little about it, as opposed to their daily and hourly obsession with forme...

This was a week full of setbacks for Trump, at home and abroad. The U.S. continued to be mired in Trump’s war of choice with Iran, which, by all appearances, the U.S. seems to be losing. As we pass the three month mark, Trump and his regime seemed to vacillate, day by day, on whether a ceasefire or escalation was near, or whether, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the war was over. On t...

This week the Republican Party at long last stood up to Trump. What did it take? Trump backing primary opponents of two of their own in the Senate, resulting in both losing, and another in the House. Trump’s $1.776 billion (yes, note the patriotic reference in dollar amount) so-called “anti-weaponization” fund hit roadblocks in the Senate, leading that body to adjourn for Memorial Day weekend, as...

The biggest stories this week center on the blatant, unprecedented corruption by Trump, his family, and his regime. What is shocking is not only the scope, but also Trump’s willingness, even eagerness, to flaunt his kleptocracy in the light of day, seeming to regale in the fact that no one in his regime or party would dare to challenge or in any way stop him. Notable this week was not only Trump’s...

Two story lines really stood out this week, in part because of their big implications for the state of things under Trump. First, bowing to pressure from Trump, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned. With that resignation, the Trump regime’s Department of Health and Human Services had no Senate confirmed FDA commissioner, CDC director, surgeon general, or NIH director. Notably, this comes amid an...

This week we continued down the slippery slope of the U.S. Department of Justice melding into Trump’s personal law firm. As acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seeks Trump’s nomination to run the agency, the DOJ has become unrecognizable. Any pretense of separation is gone as the gutted agency carries out Trump’s agenda and retribution campaign, however lawless. Trump’s Iran War entered its tenth...

This was another chaotic week, when our country seemed to skip from crisis to crisis, and Trump became increasingly unbound by past norms. As the Iran War entered its ninth week, and gas prices reached a four-year high, it became increasingly apparent that Trump had no plan to end his war. There was no movement toward any sort of resolution. Reporting this week continued to reveal there had yet to...

This week, as the country entered the eighth week of Trump’s Iran War, Trump appeared to be backed into a corner. He spent the week spewing false claims about the state of negotiations, the ever-changing objectives of the war, and on what had been achieved; but by the week’s end, amid all his bluster and bravado, he chose to extend the ceasefire for the fifth time, this time indefinitely. Troublin...

This week there were growing concerns about Trump’s erratic behavior and mental health, including from former allies and regime members. While Trump’s unpopular war with Iran entered its seventh week, already extending beyond his four to six week estimate, Trump started a new war of words with Pope Leo XIV, further enraging parts of his base. Things escalated when Trump posted an image depicting h...

This week started with Trump addressing the nation in a prime time speech on the Iran War, and escalated to Trump making genocidal threats against Iran as the week came to a close. Experts expressed shock that Trump was essentially threatening what amounted to war crimes, out in the open. Some of Trump’s statements and social media posts this week included: he would “bring them back to the stone a...

This week Trump and senior regime officials continued to give ever-changing objectives and endgames for his Iran War, which entered its fifth week. Trump continued efforts to game his beloved stock market, which at one point entered correction territory, with rosy statements ahead of markets opening. The price of gas rose above $4 a gallon, and the vast majority of Americans expressed disapproval...

This week was one of the longest lists of broken norms so far. The country is in chaos, and Americans are increasingly unhappy. The price of gas has risen by nearly a dollar a gallon, 72% said it was a bad time to look for a job, the cost of mortgages hit a five month high, and other measures of inflation showed Americans are suffering. Airport lines were hours long, highlighting government and Tr...

As Trump’s war with Iran neared the three week mark, he and his regime continued to offer contradicting rationales for entering the war, as well as its goals and objectives. While Trump claimed to be surprised that Iran had blockaded the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran had bombed its neighbors, reporting indicated that military officials had warned him of both. Though Trump started the war without...

This week started with Trump firing Kristi Noem from her role leading Homeland Security, after a disastrous performance in her Congressional testimony, as well as on the job. Before we get to Trump’s war of choice, it is worth pointing out that this week’s list is full of examples of the gross incompetence of the loyalists picked by Trump for senior roles, from Health and Human Services, to Energy...

I want to note the stories that were occupying the public’s attention before Trump launched a war of choice on Iran. There was a heavy focus on the Epstein files, after both Clintons testified, more coverage of missing files related to Trump, and more regime members becoming ensnared; reports on efforts to declare a “national emergency,” granting Trump power of midterms; stories of abject cruelty...

Host Amy Siskind discusses the last week of events leading up the February 24, 2026 State of the Union

I wanted to start this week by noting the cruelty we have normalized. During Trump’s first regime, after widespread protests and condemnation over his “zero-tolerance” policy of separating families, he rolled it back. During the second regime, the repugnant acts of cruelty and lawlessness far outdo those of Trump’s first regime, yet the public outcry is sporadic and hushed. Almost as if the countr...

In a week of chaos, so much happened it was easy to lose sight of the fact that Trump posted an image of former president Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes on Truth Social. He then deflected that it was posted by a staffer, took down the post, and refused to apologize. In any sort of normal time, that act, in and of itself, would be career ending. In the era of Trump, it’s Thursday. Trump di...

This week the Justice Department released three million more of the Epstein files, with three million still withheld. The timing of the highly redacted release, which included limited damning material on Trump, seemed like a shiny coin to distract from the rest. Yes, it was that bad! Trump continued to discredit past elections, this week escalating by using the FBI to seize Fulton County ballots....

What happened to Greenland? What happened to the Epstein files? That’s the story within the story this week: how effective Trump has become in driving the media, and hence the narrative, until he is not. What it took this week was another tragedy: federal immigration agents in Minneapolis murdered another U.S. citizen as part of their so-called immigration sweep or fraud sweep — the rationale for...

This week marked renewed escalation by Trump and his regime, both internationally and at home. Nothing feels safe or stable. One pollster found that 71% of Americans said the country feels out of control. As we hit the one year mark of Trump’s return, he finds himself increasingly unpopular and underwater on every issue, even on fighting crime. Unlike the start of the second regime, when Trump met...