Attribution: Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
Today is New Year’s Day, typically a time to look back at the events of the past year. This is a time when our triumphs, defeats, gains, and losses are examined, weighed, and measured. In many ways, 2025 might be a year we would not care to remember, but it is one we cannot afford to forget. One thing we do remember is that 2025 marks the 250thanniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. One thing we’d like to forget is the chaotic cruelty and incompetence of our present administration’s first year in office.
Over the past year, we have endured one of the most corrupt, short-sighted, inhumane, and downright malignant administrations in the history of our country, an administration that has wantonly ignored and arrogantly flaunted the rule of law. They have defied the will of Congress, the judgements of the courts, and the will of the people
Historically speaking (before now), the Nixon, Harding, and Grant administrations were the most crooked in our history. The Whiskey Ring, Teapot Dome, and Watergate were scandals that forever tarnished the reputations of these leaders, but these scandals pale in comparison with the brazen grifting and unrelenting greed of the Trump administration. This president who has destroyed or crippled dozens of federal agencies, laid off essential federal workers, and illegally granted himself gifts from foreign countries. Qatar gave him a $400 million dollar jet. Who knows what his other “allies” like Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu have promised him?
It’s difficult to get one’s head around the scope and the breadth of the corruption and cruelty in this administration. International humanitarian aid has been erased, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of souls. ICE has also been arresting and detaining hundreds of people, some of them citizens, in cruel and barbaric conditions without due process. Their contempt for the rule of law is simply monumental and their greed is horrifyingly epic. King Midas had nothing on Donald J. Trump.
DOGE’s attacks on Social Security and USAID seem like ancient history now. The ICE attacks on our cities seem as if they’ve been going on forever, but it’s only been a year. It’s hard to keep track of this president’s inappropriately criminal acts.
The Campaign Law Center has tracked every corrupt transaction the president has been involved in, ranging from favors like ambassadorships, pardons, and waivers of prosecution. Early in his administration, he pardoned every single one of January 6th rioters, even those convicted of assaulting police officers.
The corruption is only one aspect of the 2025 disaster. This last year, Trump has taken a robust economy and flushed it down the toilet. His illegal tariffs have caused consumer prices to skyrocket. Unemployment is up, inflation has not been stemmed, and the Trump administration has severely hamstrung industries like renewable energy which he does not favor.
Then there are his attempts to bully and cow institutions which stand in the way of his reach for unfettered power. He has tried (successfully in many cases) to coerce major law firms, universities, the tech industry, and the media to either shower him with favors or to do his bidding. Paramount and its subsidy CBS recently pulled a feature from their news program Sixty Minutes because the president didn’t care for the way it portrayed him. He has frightened the Republican Party into nearly total subservience. Except for a few notably courageous souls, these champions of our electorate have done nothing to help their constituents, even in the face of increasingly hostile town halls back home.
Our government became an international embarrassment in 2025. To call cabinet members like Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, and Robert F. Kenney, Jr. unqualified is the mother of all understatements. Hegseth’s mishandling of sensitive military information during a phone call, Noem’s shameless grandstanding at a maximum-security prison, and Kennedy’s anti-scientific conspiracy theory bullshit is putting everyone in our country at risk. The president also seems to have a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States in his pocket. Their decisions have consistently placed more levers of power within presidential reach.
Unbelievably, this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are undoubtedly dozens of other transactional acts and moments of idiocy we know nothing about. It’s been a tough year.
If we can set aside the disaster we call the Trump administration for a moment, we should still consider 2025 as a difficult year. We experienced devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, deadly flooding in Texas, the Myanmar earthquake, the continuing conflicts in the Ukraine and Gaza, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the dozens of mass shootings that constantly ravage American schools.
We lost some notable international figures in 2025, extraordinary talents like Jane Goodall, Pope Francis, David Lynch, Bob Uecker, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton, Tim Robbins, Gene Hackman, George Foreman, Jim Lovell, Dick Cheney, Jimmy Cliff, Brigitte Bardot, Rob Reiner, and many, many more. Their departures leave gaping holes in our social fabric.
We did, however, gain our first American pontiff, Pope Leo, a Chicago native and White Sox fan. Ken Burns’ newest documentary series The American Revolution also premiered. It seemed to me at the time that—witnessing the unrelenting attacks on our democracy—this program was a timely reminder of the steadfastness and stubbornness of the American social fiber. Not that we needed such a reminder.
As Trump, Elon Musk, and his other minions attempted to steamroll government agencies, human rights, and the rule of law, Americans rose up in protest. Thousands protested DOGE, Trump’s tariffs, and his attacks on the NIH and USAID. Seven million citizens across the country joined in October’s “No Kings” rally, protesting Trump’s bare fisted power grabs. These protestors—these patriots—recognized the dangers facing our democracy and they responded.
While some news corporations folded in the face of Trump’s bullying tactics, others stood—and are standing—against him. Harvard University has taken a stand against his efforts to extort the school by withholding federal funds. The American responded to ABC’s attempt to muzzle comedian and talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel by cancelling his show. Citizens boycotted ABC’s parent company Disney until they relented, reinstating his show a week later. Protests at Tesla dealerships crippled sales of Elon Musk’s signature product. He withdrew from his involvement in the administration after Tesla stock plummeted.
This has been a year of firsts. We have never seen our government under this sort of internal attack. Donald J. Trump is attempting to turn our country into a plutocratic kleptocracy with himself as leader. His pathetic (and tasteless) attempts to aggrandize himself only cause a greater furor in the country. Trump’s recent renaming of the Kennedy Center for the Arts has caused dozens of artists to cancel appearances there. His plans to build a gigantic garish ballroom, at the expense of the East Wing of the White House, has caused national outrage. His installation of insulting descriptive plaques under the portraits of former presidents in the White House is not only disgusting, it is embarrassing. No one wants to see a twelve-year-old in power.
In summary, 2025 is a year we may not want to remember but is one we cannot afford to forget.
We can never again allow one man to abuse power the way this president has.
We can never again allow the nerve centers of our government to be so vulnerable.
We can never again let unbridled greed create such gross income inequity in our country.
We must protect and revere the rule of law.
We should remember the elements of our society that stood up to this brazen attack on our democracy.
The courageous stands of the people, the courts, and the media against the threats, extortions, and intimidating behavior of this administration is remarkable, but not surprising.
After all, 2025 is the 250th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence.
Apparently, this is one fact Americans have chosen, and will always choose, never to forget.