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Weeks of December 19, 2025-January 1, 2026
Welcome to TRACKING THE CRISIS, a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Year in Review 2025: how media evaluated the sweeping changes under Trump 2.0’s first year in office. Since day one, Trump’s scandal- and controversy-filled second term brought a number of consequential and transformational changes to the federal government, world economy, and more. Much of it was telegraphed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document, which outlined a plan towards unraveling Constitutional protections, as well as many of the social gains of the twentieth century, and concentrating power in a quasi-monarchial ‘unitary executive’. David Graham, author of the book “The Project”, wrote in the Atlantic this week calling Project 2025 the “single most successful policy initiative of the entire Trump era.” He outlined how the Trump Administration’s policies have closely followed its agenda, from decimating the civil service to gutting civil rights protections; and rather than embrace the ‘small government’ ideal espoused in conservative rhetoric, it has effectively concentrated and weaponized the federal government against perceived enemies from the left. An analysis from the Independent notes that more than half of the Project’s policy agenda was implemented by the Trump Administration over the last year; Axios gives a blow-by-blow timeline of Project 2025 policies that were implemented in 2025. The Boston Globe notes its impact on higher education, and 19th discusses its implications for women and LGBTQ+ people. NPR notes that Project 2025, whose existence Trump did not acknowledge until October, contained pre-written executive orders that Trump enacted from his first days in office; and examined the outsized role of Project 2025 architect Russ Vought at the Office of Personnel Management. Paul Dans, another author on Project 2025, was quoted as saying the Administration’s realization of the plan was beyond his “wildest dreams.” Many Project 2025 contributors still hold high positions within the Trump Administration, and the group has unveiled an agenda for 2026 called “Restoring America’s Promise,” which emphasizes conservative pro-natalist ideas, ‘protecting the homeland’ through mass deportations and reform of immigration policies to drastically curtail the number of foreigners, strong-arming universities to bend to right-wing ideologies, and going further in ‘dismantling the deep state’.
Graham notes that despite the many ways in which the plan has been carried out – including a near-complete rollback of climate change related initiatives and research – its triumph has not been complete, due to competing currents and influences within the Trump Administration. Chief among these are the Silicon Valley tech giants, represented in government by AI/crypto czar David Sacks, whose partnership has greatly enriched the Trump family during the second term. Trump has extensively leveraged the use of ‘emergencies’, and the ‘states of exception’ that they create, to expand executive powers, undermine legal checks and balances and bypass Congress as much as possible – from using the Alien Enemies Act to enact mass deportations of immigrants labeled ‘narcoterrorists’, to bombing over 25 alleged ‘drug boats’ off the coast of Venezuela in recent months, to sending in the National Guard to quell protests in major U.S. cities. Congress did pass the ‘big, beautiful bill’ this year, which infused the Department of Homeland Security with a lavish budget of $30 billion, mainly for ICE’s deportation program but also to fund an extensive surveillance network being built by ICE and CBP, coupled with DOGE’s overhaul of federal agency data systems to facilitate the sharing of millions of Americans’ sensitive data for the purposes of surveillance. EFF observes that 2025 also marks the year states began to lean more heavily on surveillance infrastructure as well.
This year also marked the unprecedented push by DOGE to overhaul the federal government bureaucracy, resulting in the loss of over 315,000 federal jobs and the cutting of whole agencies such as USAID and CFPB, while the budget savings promised by the deep cuts failed to materialize. This included the scrubbing of data from thousands of government scientific webpages, plans to sell off or re-open federal lands to petroleum and mining companies, and the decimation of scientific research funding and agency support, especially the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the heart of federal climate science. 2025 was also the year the world passed the ‘safe’ threshold of 1.5C global warming and one of the hottest years on record. Several executive orders also impacted public health operations worldwide as well as domestically, and targeted women’s reproductive rights and gender-affirming care, as RFK Jr. drove this agenda at the Department of Health and Human Services with dramatic upheavals at the CDC and controversial reversals of vaccine policy amid record surges in life-threatening yet preventable diseases such as measles and whooping cough.
Trump’s first year of his second term also upended international relations across the globe, setting up major realignments and generating new questions for the geopolitics of empire, world trade and the financial infrastructure of global capitalism going into 2026. As open conflicts surged in Gaza, Ukraine, and Sudan (among other flashpoints) that imperiled journalists in record numbers, Trump took his self-styled ‘peacemaker’ persona out for several test drives this year with questionable results amid a global tariff war he started that turned its fire on longtime allies as well as competitors as it proceeded in fits and starts, giving rise to the Wall Street meme of the ‘TACO’ (Trump Always Chickens Out) trade. While his erratic moves make it difficult to predict the future order that will emerge, experts are at a consensus that a major rupture in the world order(s) that have held since WWII and the fall of the Soviet Union has occurred in 2025. Some observers note the economic interests that lie behind Trump’s ‘peacemaking’ efforts, especially towards securing access to critical rare earth minerals and resource extraction; others place his diplomatic approach in the context of a looming confrontation (or detente?) with China, the rise of BRICS as a geopolitical force and the overall decline/retreat of U.S. global hegemony. Some clarity on Trump’s intentions emerged in the last few weeks with the release of the National Security Strategy, which focuses on a renewed hemispheric influence experts have dubbed the ‘Donroe Doctrine,’ and expresses open support for the European far right, including a call for intervention that has upended the 80-year-old Transatlantic alliance and fueled a re-armament push across Europe.
Bombings hit Caracas as U.S. attempts regime change in Venezuela; Trump announces Maduro captured after weeks of escalating confrontation. Tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela ratcheted up another notch in recent weeks, breaking out into open conflict and regime change at the weekend. On December 20, the United States seized another oil tanker heading out of Venezuela under a Panamanian flag. The Washington Post noted that other than a record of it having been docked in Venezuela, “legal grounds for such a seizure and whether the vessel or any of its cargo was, in fact, seized were unclear.” Venezuela in turn denounced the “theft and hijacking of another private vessel transporting Venezuelan oil, as well as the enforced disappearance of its crew, perpetrated by United States military personnel in international waters.” Shipping experts determined that the ship was operating legally and was not on the list of sanctioned vessels, but was presumed to have been carrying a load of sanctioned oil from Venezuela; in any case, according to one expert, “this one is meant to scare the others away.” Foreign relations experts warned the seizures could undermine decades of maritime law and custom and create a slippery slope that could lead to the proliferation of conflicts on the open seas. As one legal expert noted, if the United States military can detain any legally flagged boat in international waters, it would set a ‘precedent’ that other countries such as China can ‘fall back on’ to do the same thing.
The seizure roused the attention of Russia and China, who echoed Venezuela’s position on Monday, December 22 denouncing the seizure of the China-bound vessel as a violation of international law. The Russian foreign ministry expressed “deep concern” over the escalation of Washington’s actions, which could have “serious consequences for the region and threaten international shipping.” After the warnings from Russia and China, a Trump Administration official told Reuters that the United States will focus solely on “exerting economic pressure” on the Maduro government; however, the very next day the U.S. military struck another alleged ‘drug boat’ in the eastern Pacific. U.S. Southern Command said the boat had been “transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Pacific” and thus was presumed to have been engaged in smuggling drugs, although no other evidence of smuggling activity was given. On December 30, a tanker being pursued by the Coast Guard and other U.S. forces painted a Russian flag on its hull in an attempt to claim protection; the next day, the boat had been officially renamed and entered on a Russian maritime register. The tanker was not carrying oil, but had been intercepted before entering a Venezuelan oil port for sailing without an official flag; refusing to be boarded, the tanker had been on the run for 9 days before the mysterious intervention. Neither the Kremlin nor the White House or Pentagon returned press requests for comment.
The Intercept also obtained new information pertaining to the controversial ‘double-tap’ strike on September 2; according to Admiral Bradley’s testimony and video of the incident, the survivors were in the water for approximately 45 minutes before the boat was hit again, and had held both hands up – a universal sign of surrender – before the strike, something that Bradley had not noted when consulting with the JSOC’s top lawyer before making his decision. The New York Times reported on detritus from a boat destroyed on November 6 that had washed up on a nearby shore, revealing that the boat operators had been carrying small packets of marijuana; according to those familiar with the region, such packets generally indicate small, locally based operations that would not have been associated with large cartels. The Washington Post also published investigative findings this week into the two known survivors of the boat attacks, whom the U.S. had taken into custody and immediately deported back to their home countries in October; by doing so, the Post found, the United States undermined their own case regarding drug smuggling by destroying the evidence and freeing the alleged traffickers to go to their home countries. One DEA official who is familiar with the process of detaining and prosecuting drug smugglers suggested that the Administration repatriated them to “avoid having to defend their policies and standards in court.” To round out the year, the United States conducted five additional ‘drug boat’ strikes on December 30, bringing the death toll from the extrajudicial killings up to 115.
On Tuesday, December 23, the United States moved “large numbers” of additional special-operations aircraft, troops and equipment into the Caribbean to give Washington “additional options” for military action in Venezuela, according to officials familiar with the matter. On Wednesday, December 24, a panel of UN legal experts issued a statement condemning the United States for the boat strikes and the oil blockade, noting that both actions are “expressly recognized as illegal armed aggression under the General Assembly’s 1974 Definition of Aggression,” and that the crime’s ‘universal jurisdiction’ gives any country the power to prosecute it; they also urged member states “to urgently take all feasible measures to stop the blockade and illegal killings.” On Monday, December 29, as the United States conducted its 30th strike on an alleged ‘drug boat’ in the eastern Pacific, CNN released information from inside sources who revealed that the CIA had carried out a drone strike on a port facility within Venezuela earlier this month. In a radio interview this week, Trump appeared to acknowledge the action while sidestepping when it had taken place or who was responsible. The following day, AP confirmed the information regarding the first known strike inside Venezuelan borders. Legal experts noted that such a strike would constitute a war crime “in violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and the Take Care Clause of the Constitution”; and that Trump had “casually disclosed” his knowledge of a classified action on a radio show was ‘highly unusual’. The Intercept later published additional details from a government source who confirmed that the attack had taken place on December 24 and that it was carried out by the CIA. Maduro, condemning the attack, warned of an Iraq-style ‘forever war’ and urged Trump to come to the table for ‘serious talks’ on curbing drug trafficking. On December 30, Venezuelan security forces announced the detentions of five Americans, some of whom may have been involved in drug smuggling, according to U.S. officials who are still attempting to collect information about the matter; at least one of the detainees has been identified as a 28-year-old Staten Island resident who had been traveling throughout Latin America.
(UPDATE): On the evening of January 2nd, at least seven explosions in Caracas were reported, along with reports of low-flying aircraft heard above certain neighborhoods. The Venezuelan government reported bombings at civilian and military installations in Caracas, Miranda, Aragua and La Guaira, including the mausoleum where Hugo Chavez was laid to rest in 2013; condemning “military aggression” from the United States, the Venezuela Foreign Ministry claimed the goal of the attack is to “take possession of oil and minerals.” As of this writing, the Trump Administration has announced a special military operation against Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, with the White House reposting an image from Trump’s account on Truth Social of Maduro held captive on the USS Iwo Jima. The Venezuelan government has declared a “state of external disturbance” in the country and called on all ‘social and political forces’ in the country to take to the streets and activate mobilization plans to “repudiate this imperialist attack.” Colombian President Gustavo Petro condemned the incidents on social media, saying that someone was “bombing Caracas in this moment”. Appearances from Vice President Delcy Rodriguez and Defense Minister Padrino Lopez on state television affirm that the Venezuelan government is still in place as of this writing. Rodriguez announced that Maduro’s whereabouts are currently unknown, but that she has assumed leadership and is demanding ‘proof of life’ for Maduro from U.S. forces. Trump used a press conference at Mar-A-Lago to state in bald terms a new Trump Doctrine based on the raw projection of American military power to secure declared economic interests anywhere in the Western hemisphere and beyond. In a rambling statement, Trump repeatedly spoke of the theft of “our” oil by the Venezuelan state and promised to run Venezuela in the interim, including management of its oil resources, the largest known reserves in the world. Live updates are available at CNN, the Guardian, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets.
China launches ‘war exercises’ near Taiwan after Pentagon announces news of $11bn arms deal. Simmering tensions between the United States and China escalated this week after the Pentagon announced on December 17 that the Trump Administration had approved an $11 billion arms deal with Taiwan, including ‘suicide’ drones, Howitzers, HIMARS rocket systems and numerous missiles presumably destined for Taiwan’s proposed “T-Shield” missile defense system, modeled on Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ and announced by President Lai Ching-Te earlier this year. Taiwan, whose political and international status has been contested since China’s capitalist government under Chiang Kai-Shek fled to the island after the 1949 Revolution, has always anticipated an eventual attempt at takeover from the PRC; and in recent years, since the election of pro-independence leaders and in light of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Taipei has been holding unofficial meetings with U.S. and European officials to plan for Taiwan’s defense as China built up its military capabilities, which have increased in urgency in recent months as Trump appeared more open to making deals with Xi that held the possibility of ‘selling out’ U.S. Cold War-era pledges to Taiwan.
In response to the arms deal, China imposed sanctions on 20 U.S.-based defense firms, announcing that they had “crossed the red line” of the ‘One China’ principle, and PRC was taking punitive measures, which included freezing any assets held within the country and blocking 10 defense executives from entry into the PRC. On Monday, December 29 Beijing launched “Justice Mission 2025,” a series of live-fire military exercises designed to test PRC’s capacity to rapidly coordinate a blockade of the island’s key ports, and intended as a “stern warning” to Taiwanese ‘separatist forces’’ and ‘external’ forces wishing to interfere with the two governments that for decades had contended over the claim to represent China. Trump initially downplayed the record deployment of Chinese forces, saying on Monday night that he “wasn’t worried” because China “does this all the time”; but by the third day of China firing live missiles into the Taiwan Strait, the State Department issued a statement calling on Beijing to “cease its military pressure,” saying the exercises “increase tensions unnecessarily” in the region.U.S. families brace for economic impact in 2026 as ‘K-shaped economy’ teeters amid job losses, healthcare premium spikes, cuts to federal services and wage garnishments on defaulted student loans. While the financial press marveled at the ‘surprising’ resilience of the overall U.S. economy in 2025 – GDP grew at a faster-than-expected pace of 4.3% in the 3rd quarter – many, if not most, U.S. households are not feeling the benefits of a robust stock market. Consumer confidence in December sank to its lowest level since Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs were announced in April; while holiday shopping numbers remained robust in the aggregate, data showed that consumers overwhelmingly gravitated toward low-cost centers such as thrift shops and off-price retailers; a PayPal report from October indicated that half of U.S. consumers planned to use “buy now, pay later” programs for their holiday purchases. Moderate-to-luxury consumer goods such as video games, hotels and restaurants have been hit the hardest by the slowdown; the Economist’s declaration of ‘peak wine’ underscores the secular decline in discretionary consumption that has spread even to generally more comfortable middle-income groups. According to a December CBS News poll, about 7 in 10 Americans said they were struggling to pay for food, housing and health care; also throwing a wrench in the mix are rising utility bills, which are up 12% on average from last year. About 14% of American households are experiencing food insecurity, according to latest polling. The job market also slowed significantly from last year as unemployment hit a four-year high of 4.6%, having held mostly in a ‘no hire, no fire’ pattern until the mass layoffs kicked certain sectors into recession territory in October. According to the November jobs report, nearly a quarter of unemployed people have been without a job for 27 weeks or more; and the U-6 rate (people who are unemployed or have gotten so discouraged they have stopped looking for work) jumped to 8.7% in November, its highest level since August 2021. Charts of various common indicators from CBS News, the Washington Post, and the Guardian underscore the more troubling trends that are set to persist into 2026.
The watchword for 2026, analysts say, continues to be the ‘K-shaped economy’ – in which spending from higher-income households support the lion’s share of aggregate economic growth and activity, while the bulk of lower-income workers and consumers find themselves struggling; which is ultimately a function of the unprecedented income and wealth inequality that has increased substantially since Trump’s inauguration and due to Trump’s economic policies that favor wealthy rentiers. Bloomberg reports that the 500 richest people added a combined $2.2 trillion to their wealth in 2025, while the average American household has had to bear $1200 more in essential costs since most tariffs went into effect. Caught between rising input costs due to tariffs and cooling of consumer spending in the low- and middle-income sectors, corporate bankruptcies surged in 2025 to a 15-year high; levels not seen since the aftermath of the Great Recession. Hardest hit by tariff policies were industrial and related sectors such as transportation; ironically the same sectors that the advent of Trump’s economic ‘golden age’ had been intended to benefit.
Policies going into effect in 2026 are expected to exacerbate the precarious position of many U.S. households as the ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill goes into effect, undermining social safety net programs such as Medicaid and SNAP through the implementation of new work requirements. Just before Christmas, the VA announced it would be eliminating tens of thousands of open positions across the agency in an effort to streamline staffing, cutting off job opportunities for thousands of veterans and their families. The Trump Administration also announced that the Department of Education will begin garnishing the wages of defaulted student loan borrowers beginning on January 7; the budget bill also eliminates several types of student loan deferments and places caps on how much parents can contribute. This is all even before ACA premiums are set to more than double on average beginning on January 1, when enhanced subsidies expire. The sunsetting of these subsidies, as well as the anticipated $1 trillion cut to Medicaid through the ‘big beautiful’ budget bill over the next 10 years, not only impacts individual health care but also the hundreds of rural clinics which may be forced to close absent federal funds. Days before the healthcare ‘cliff’, CMS administrator Dr. Oz announced the rollout of a special rural healthcare fund that contributes $10 billion toward keeping rural clinics open, and prioritizes funding to states that have implemented MAHA policies, such as banning soda and junk food from SNAP eligibility.
The growing affordability gap for household consumers and small businesses indirectly yet powerfully feeds into the overall vulnerability of financial markets going in 2026. Nearly all of the GDP growth reported over the last year came from debt-fueled capital expenditures on the buildout of AI data centers, which are being opposed by communities across the country for their impacts on water, electricity costs, and more. Only 5-25% of AI projects currently show a meaningful ROI for all this expenditure, leading Deutsche Bank to issue a warning to investors that “there may be no guaranteed return” in AI. Roughly 75% of the stock market’s record gains over the past year have been tied to the ‘Magnificent Seven’ tech stocks, again putting nearly all economic gains on the shoulders of “circular revenue” and debt-fueled relationships undergirding the AI industry, again with perhaps “no guaranteed return.” Big Tech is also imbricated in large part with the outsized and relatively opaque private credit and shadow banking sectors that also fuel the ‘buy now, pay later’ fintech consumer debt utilized by low- and middle-income households to fill the gaps in their essential spending. Given the weak return on AI so far, analysts predict that all of these markets are heading toward an AI ‘show me the money’ moment in 2026, which could burst the bubble with up to $20 trillion in exposures, signaling potentially severe consequences for the global economy.
Heavily redacted Epstein files released by the DOJ raises questions about document handling, implicating elites, and the extent of Trump’s involvement. On December 19th, the Justice Department began releasing thousands of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation as mandated by Congress. Initially, only a limited set of heavily redacted documents was released, prompting protestations from both sides of the aisle in Congress as well as Epstein victims. The Justice Department acknowledged the limitation and said that 200 attorneys are working on processing and redacting the rest of the documents, which are required to be released per the Epstein Records Transparency Act. The first batch of photos focused heavily on Bill Clinton, the Administration’s deflectionary go-to when asked about Trump’s involvement; some documents also recovered a child porn complaint filed by Epstein victim Maria Farmer in the mid 1990s that had been ignored by the FBI for over 30 years. Questions were also raised about 16 documents that mysteriously disappeared from the DOJ’s webpage less than a day after they were posted. On December 23, another tranche of documents was released by the DOJ, this time containing many more references to Trump, which the DOJ characterized as “untrue and sensationalist claims.” The documents reveal several instances of Trump flying on Epstein’s plane, including a solo trip with Epstein and a 20-year-old woman, as well as subpoenas that were sent to Mar-A-Lago during discovery for Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial in 2021. An Air Force veteran on Bluesky shared that he was able to see what was behind many redactions on the documents by simply cutting and pasting them into Microsoft Word; MSNOW revealed that the redaction was possible because the redactions were made in Adobe Acrobat, and DOGE budget cuts had forced the DOJ to use the free version instead of the paid Pro version that has a robust autoconnotation tool.
On December 24, the DOJ revealed that it had found “over a million additional documents” relating to the Epstein case, and that it could take several weeks for all of them to be processed; on December 30 the DOJ confirmed that it was seeking about 400 more lawyers to review and process over 5.2 million additional documents. After reviewing several key documents, former Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman speculated that it was “highly likely” that Trump may have been a confidential informant in the FBI’s first sex trafficking investigation into Epstein and Maxwell in the early 2010s, and was a possible reason for stonewalling the release. Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown told the Bulwark that the DOJ was stalling on the files to protect several MAGA and Republican donors. In a New York Times Magazine interview published on December 29, Marjorie Taylor Greene revealed that she had been called into the Oval Office in September after publicly promising to name the abusers in a Congressional hearing, where Trump apparently yelled at her, so loudly that staffers down the hall could hear it, that “many of my friends will get hurt.” A three-part series from Byline Times delves into the documents to explore the evidence connecting Epstein and key Silicon Valley founder figures, revealing the eugenicist contours behind the proto-technofascist ‘apocalyptic worldview’ that circulated among Epstein, Musk, Thiel and other Silicon Valley elites at the time, including discussions of population ‘culling’ during times of climate stress.Tracking the Money: 2025’s banner year in grift, corruption, and profiteering. The first year of Trump’s second term ushered in many ‘unprecedented’ features of a presidential administration; and prominent among them was the unprecedented degree of overt self-dealing, conflicts of interest, profiteering and a ‘pay-to-play’ economy of favors that made the customary lines separating government and private interest all but irrelevant. This week, the New York Times mapped Trump’s “tangled web of deal-making, policy, and riches” between the crypto, AI, real estate, defense industries and the White House that personally enriched the Trump family, and traced the lucrative favors granted to over 300 of Trump’s biggest campaign donors, from unprecedented access to the inner sanctums of power to nominations for positions in government to oversee the industries they represent. The Trump Administration boasts the wealthiest White House in modern history, as illustrated by Washington Post’s profile of Trump’s Twelve Billionaires who bring a combined net worth of $390 billion into the halls of power. Under Trump 2.0, enforcement of white-collar crime has effectively disappeared; in defending Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, Karoline Leavitt dismissed an entire sector of criminal offenses as a “victimless crime.” Trump has issued nearly 2,000 pardons in the first year of his second term, 10 times more than the total number of pardons he had given during his first four years in office; wiping out $1.3 billion in restitution owed by fraudsters and criminals off the government’s balance sheet and turning a power meant to resolve injustices into a mechanism for securing personal loyalties and ‘decriminalized corruption’. Powerful institutions of anti-trust enforcement and regulation, which flourished briefly under Lina Khan’s tenure, were transformed into a “marketplace where regulatory approval can be effectively purchased through campaign contributions, financial benefits, or legal settlements.” The technology sector has been a key power player in realizing the Trump regime’s repression and surveillance state apparatus, and has been rewarded with the dismantling of regulatory and consumer protection guardrails that had constrained Big Tech’s impulse to extract profits through ‘enshittifying’ the Internet and squeezing captive users.
The Wall Street Journal mapped the Trump family’s far-reaching global business empire, noting that the family has amassed over $4 billion in profits since Trump took office; and notes how it is “unprecedented for a president to have such far-reaching business interests while in office, including in areas his administration regulates.”Key to this expansion has been Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the White House’s top ‘dealmaker’ who was dispatched to draft and negotiate high-stakes diplomatic agreements such as the Gaza and Russia-Ukraine ceasefire agreements despite not holding an actual government job. In his unique role as a “double agent” unconstrained by accountability, he freely reaps the financial rewards for himself and the family through his dealings with sovereign entities. Trump’s two sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have also traveled the globe as emissaries of a particular brand of “patriotic capitalism” in order to build the family’s crypto empire. The blatant corruption on display this year has also at times veered into the absurd; Qatar Jet-Gate notwithstanding, noteworthy instances such as AG Pam Bondi firing the DOJ’s top ethics attorney with a misspelled email after accepting international gifts, and Trump’s appointment of Tom Homan as top border czar while he was under investigation for literally handing undercover FBI agents a $50,000 cash bribe in a paper bag.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
The Year in Resistance: Social movements, Rebel cities, and everyday folks rising up to resist authoritarianism. Just as this year saw new ground broken in corruption, overreach, and authoritarianism, people and communities across the United States rose to meet the challenge with a flowering of movements, organization, and tactics to resist deprivation, repression, and other impacts wrought by Administration policies – and are gaining strength through important wins and public opinion. Below is a listing of some major channels and modes of popular resistance that have developed in response to the Trump agenda, and notable highlights from each of them.
Community Defense: Neighbors defending neighbors against ICE raids and military occupation
As the Trump Administration, ICE, and DHS rolled out its mass deportation program across the country, communities across the country mobilized to defend their neighbors. Some were spontaneous uprisings of residents who were outraged at seeing longtime friends and neighbors abducted on the street; others were the fruits of longtime efforts by unions and community-based organizations. Over months, practices of resistance began to converge into a playbook that was shared with other communities facing the same threats in a grassroots manner.
How Los Angeles Defeated Trump: Longtime LA organizer Bill Gallegos tells the story of how ICE’s incursions in early June were met with fierce resistance and rapid mobilization. Fresh from the devastating fires that hit Los Angeles at the beginning of the year, the city’s defenders forged and re-forged bonds between community-based social movement organizations, unions, neighborhoods and elected officials that united in struggle.
When ICE Comes, the Bay Area Protects Their Own: Stories from San Francisco Bay Area communities that outline the development and practice of rapid response, including legal strategies, as a model to protect immigrants from immediate threats.
Portland’s Political Year: Frogs, Shelters and a New City Government: When Trump sent the National Guard to Portland to quell the threat of ‘violent Antifa,’ Portlanders kept it weird and responded in their own unique way as parents protected school kids and protestors disarmed the Trump narrative by wearing fun inflatable costumes and, at one point, nothing at all.
Chicago Under Siege: How Operation Midway Blitz Changed Our City – Grassroots journalists with Block Club Chicago share their insights and experiences over six months of daily resistance against Greg Bovino’s brutal repression tactics as neighborhoods rose up against ICE raids.
How Free DC Became the Face of the Anti-Trump Resistance: An organization that formed before Trump came back into power, Free DC came together in anticipation of the looming threat of a second Trump Administration and began educating and mobilizing folks in the city. When Trump deployed the National Guard to DC, the organization became the most prominent form of opposition, and is now expanding their fight from the streets into the avenues of policy and electoral campaigns.
Inside the Organized Resistance to ICE in Minnesota: As the federal government broadened immigration enforcement in the Twin Cities, a network of neighborhood activists ramped up pushback by keeping tabs on ICE agents and lending aid to families in hiding.
Anti-ICE Resistance Sprang Up Across Red States in 2025: How the immigrant defense movement reached deep into Trump country; in Texas, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and beyond, grassroots resistance to ICE is growing.
Rebel Cities: The meaning of Mamdani; Sanctuary City mayors step up
Zohran Mamdani: An opportunity to take on Trump and the Billionaires – what Mamdani’s victory means for socialism in America today, and staying strong in the coming struggle against capital’s inevitable backlash.
The Kitchen Tables behind Mamdani’s Campaign Strategy: Inside the grassroots organizing that mobilized record numbers for Mamdani; but Mamdani Still Needs the Movement he Built as he tries to enact a socialist agenda for New York City.
Sanctuary Cities 2.0: Mayors Fight Back Against Trump – Cities and states covered by sanctuary laws have learned to prepare for when – not if – ICE targets them. While community organizers are preparing to protest, city officials are also making plans.
How Local Leaders are Protecting Communities Under Trump: A compilation of local government actions and municipal ordinances that provided a shield for immigrant communities against ICE and the feds.
“We’re Not Going to Cower or Bend”: Chicago Mayor and CTU alum Brandon Johnson speaks with Democracy Now! about fighting ICE raids and the Trump agenda through a community support approach to policy.
Mass Mobilizations: No Kings and other National Days of Action brought new people into the streets
How #NoKings Seeded a Mass Movement Against Trump - The major protests in mid-June and mid-October, backed by organized labor, rallied millions in defense of immigrant workers and against authoritarianism. Activists discuss next steps.
The Potential Power, and Perils, of the #NoKings Protests – Whether, where, and how journalists cover these demonstrations – and how the public perceives them – carries immense consequences for our collective civic health.
The Rise of the Anti-Trump Folk Hero: How and why meme-worthy resisters like Portland Frog and Sandwich Guy can pull together a movement.
Boycotts: #TeslaTakedown, Target and anti-brand power
Lessons from America’s Largest Protest - Movement author Jeremy Brecher connects the history of boycotts to today’s Target and Tesla boycott movements, and reflects on the potential of the tactic to fight against the rising costs of food.
The Definitive Story of Tesla Takedown – In February, a Bluesky post caught the eye of Alex Winter. The result is a coalition of environmentalists, anti-Trump advocates, and federal workers that’s been hyping Tesla’s stock slide ever since.
How to Think About Boycotts – Two experts from South Africa and Palestine share their insights on the tactic of the boycott, the ethical dilemmas they create, and whether or not they work.
Boycott Smarter, not Harder: Lessons from 2025’s Wins and Fails – Examining the year’s multiple boycott attempts to extract what worked and what can be reevaluated to create a more effective boycott strategy.
Labor: Crucial victories against the War on Workers
Despite Trump’s War on Workers, Labor Movement Notched Crucial Wins in 2025 – In the face of potential obstacles, U.S. workers are still looking toward 2026 with the hope of building on the victories of 2025 and establishing the power necessary to counter the Trump regime.
How ICE Aggression United the Labor Movement – As Trump prepares to escalate attacks on unions and immigrant workers, the labor movement must build power to stop him.
2025 In Review: Stark Battle Lines, Big Potential – Federal workers held down the front lines against Trump’s assault on unions as the regime canceled union contracts for a million federal workers
The Surprising (and Unintended) Expansion of “Mutual Aid and Protection” under Trump – How a core doctrine in the NLRA can bolster both workplace organizing and immigrant defense.
LGBTQ+ Resistance: Fighting for existence
Queer and Trans People Were Under Attack in 2025. Here’s How We Fought Back – From ICE jails to public libraries to Instagram, queer and trans people battled fascism on every front this year.
In the Face of Anti-Trans Escalation, We Need More Than Legal Strategies – The swiftness with which Trump dismantled decades of meager, hard-fought protections exposed the limits of legal work.
Lawfare/Judicial Pushback: holding the line for the rule of law
‘Rogue president’: growing number of U.S. judges push back against Trump – U.S. district and appeals courts are increasingly rebuking Donald Trump’s radical moves on tackling crime, illegal immigration and other actions where administration lawyers or Trump have made sweeping claims of emergencies that judges have bluntly rejected as erroneous and undermining the rule of law in America – signifying that the administration’s factual claims and expanding executive powers face stiff challenges that have slowed some extreme policies.
U.S. Supreme Court Blocks Trump Bid to Deploy National Guard to Chicago – The Supreme Court decision on December 23 marked an important reining-in of the U.S. president’s efforts to expand the use of the military for domestic purposes in historic moves against a growing number of Democratic-led jurisdictions.
The Feds Keep Prosecuting Protestors Against ICE – And Losing – The Trump Administration is on a losing streak against some of its loudest critics, as federal cases targeting opponents of aggressive immigration enforcement fall apart in courts nationwide.
Judge Rules that Consumer Bureau’s Funding Cannot Lapse – A federal judge hands the latest blow to the Trump Administration’s attempt to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which acts as a guardrail for the safety of the financial system.
