Bob Sheak, Dec 22, 2025
Arlene Sheak, edits
Let me underscore a few of the sad effects of Trump and his policies in 2025.
1 – A decline in employment opportunities
“…the U.S. economy added just 64,000 jobs in November, the weakest monthly gain in more than four years and a clear sign that hiring is slowing” (https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/bad-jobs-data-delivers-another-hit-to-trump-s-economy-story/arAA1SGFYt?ocid=BingNewsSerp). This includes: “softer hiring trends and renewed strain in the manufacturing industry that had been central to Trump’s promises to blue collar communities. Those warning signs, detailed in a Dec labor analysis, suggest that November’s disappointment is not a one-off blip but part of a pattern that is increasingly hard for the White House to spin away.”
2 – The affordability problem
“Findings in a poll released Dec. 11 from the progressive think tank the Century Foundation, shared exclusively with USA TODAY, show rising costs are taking a heavy toll on the American family, with the working class bearing the brunt of what the group calls an “affordability crisis” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/87623654007).
“Nearly 3 in 10 of voters polled said they held off getting medical care over the past year because of costs. One-third said they have skipped a meal. Two-thirds of respondents said they are buying cheaper groceries or buying less food, while half said they dipped into savings to cover basic expenses.”
3 – ICE – a government-supported harassment of immigrants
“Neither Jose nor Josue [referred to in this article] have been convicted of a crime. The same is true of 73 percent of the more than 65,000 immigrants in ICE detention as of November, a record number of detainees [kidnapped people]. Nearly half of all immigrants in ICE detention have neither a criminal conviction nor pending criminal charges. Of the immigrants with criminal convictions, 5 percent have been convicted of violent crime such as murder or rape, according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank” (https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2025/12/19/how-ice-deports-refugees-and-migrants-despite-years-of-good-conduct).
4 – A self-glorifying, narcissistic president – Peter Baker reports the following (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/politics/trump-imperial-presidency.html).
“ He no longer holds back, or is held back, as in the first term. Trump 2.0 is Trump 1.0 unleashed. The gold trim in the Oval Office, the demolition of the East Wing to be replaced by a massive ballroom, the plastering of his name and face on government buildings and now even the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the designation of his own birthday as a free-admission holiday at national parks — it all speaks to a personal aggrandizement and accumulation of power with meager resistance from Congress or the Supreme Court.”
5 – His cruelty –
Henry Giroux writes here (https://truthout.org/articles/trumps-response-to-reiners-death-shows-the-cruelty-at-the-core-of-his-politics). On Trump’s cruelty.
“The endpoint of such brutalizing rhetoric is the colonization of consciousness, the normalization of state terror, and the steady march toward targeted persecution.
“After the September shooting of conservative commentator and close Trump ally Charlie Kirk, MAGA figures were relentless in condemning what they called ‘political and celebratory responses,’ weaponizing the tragedy to demand greater restrictions on free speech and to justify punishing liberal and progressive groups Trump despised. In this context, outrage was not about decency or respect for the dead, but about exploiting grief to expand authoritarian power.”
6 – The big lie – i.e., he won the 2020 presidential election
“Donald Trump is the only US president to deny electoral defeat, claiming that his loss in the 2020 presidential election was due to widespread fraud. We contend that belief in this “big lie” is deeply intertwined with devotion to Trump. That is, those who were already deeply aligned with Trump were not only more inclined to accept the big lie; its acceptance fostered ever deeper alignment with the former president. This alignment fueled other pro-Trump attitudes, related to both Trump’s felony indictments and his policy goals should he be reelected in 2024. These phenomena illustrate how the fusion of personal identity to a political leader can lead to acceptance of a single piece of misinformation that itself can serve as a base upon which other misinformation may propagate and insulate the original fiction against falsification. We begin by putting these phenomena into historical context.” This quote is from an article by Philip Money and William B. Swan, reported on Cambridge website, Jan 1, 2025.
7 – Trying to avoid his Epstein involvement
(https://the hill.com/opinion/white-house-5658590-epstein-scandal-bondi-trump-impeachment)
William S. Becker writes:
“Since the federal government got involved in the Epstein scandal in 2019, the case has been shrouded in mysterious leniency, cover-up and stonewalling. Now, with many of Epstein’s victims, the American people, and a virtually unanimous Congress calling for transparency, the scandal has become a confrontation that should end Attorney General Pam Bondi’s career — and Donald Trump’s presidency.
“Why Bondi? Because the nation’s highest law-enforcement official has violated the law with her willful contempt of Congress. It’s not just any law. Congress passed it 527-1, requiring the Justice Department to release all its files on the Epstein case by midnight last Friday. Eighty percent of American adults support it. So do many of the victims of Epstein’s alleged sex-trafficking operation.”
8. President is losing his grip on Republicans
“According to NBC News polling, the proportion of self-identified Republicans who align primarily with MAGA movement has plummeted by seven percentage points since April 2025 (https://www.newsweek.com/polls-show-donald-trump-losing-base-republican-party-maga-11248366).
“In the most recent survey conducted between November 20 and December 8, only 50 percent of Republicans said they identified more with MAGA, compared to 57 percent earlier in the year.”
9 – Surrounding himself with incompetent sycophants
Ross Rosenfeld reports on this (https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-circus-of-sycophants-opinion-2062218).
“And who in his inner circle is willing to go against the president, point out the lunacy of many of these plans, and make counterarguments? No one, of course—and few outside of it either. Because there is an atmosphere of fear. ‘We are all afraid, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said to her constituents last week.
10 – A convicted felon
“Yes — based on the reporting provided, Donald Trump remains a convicted felon: a New York jury found him guilty on 34 counts of first‑degree falsifying business records on May 30, 2024, and he was sentenced on January 10, 2025; the sentence was an unconditional discharge that imposed no jail time or fine, but it did not erase the conviction itself” (https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/is-donald-trump-a-felon-current-status-2025-46d6d8).
11 – A law-breaker
He has been impeached twice, indicted four times, convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual abuse and found liable for business fraud.
–Alexander Mallin also addresses the issue, ABC News, Dec 17,2025
“Former special counsel Jack Smith told lawmakers Wednesday he believed his investigations had gathered proof beyond a reasonable doubt that would have led to President Donald Trump’s convictions on charges of mishandling classified documents and seeking to unlawfully overturn his 2020 election loss, if he had not won last year’s presidential election.
“Smith’s testimony came during a closed-door hearing in front of the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee as part of the panel’s probe into Smith’s investigations.
Smith told the committee that his actions were “based on what the facts and the law required.”
“‘If asked whether to prosecute a former president based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether the President was a Republican or Democrat,’ Smith said, according to his prepared remarks.”
“Smith charged Trump with undertaking a ‘criminal scheme’ to overturn the results of the 2020 election in order to remain in power, and with mishandling classified materials after leaving the White House in 2021. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges in both cases, before both cases were dropped following Trump’s reelection due to the Justice Department’s long-standing policy barring the prosecution of a sitting president.
“‘The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts,’ Smith said in his prepared remarks.’”
12 – He hates his enemies
Here’s some of what Tyler Pager reports (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/us-political/trump-kirk-memorial-hate.html).
“As tens of thousands of people mourned the conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sunday, President Trump made a seemingly unscripted remark that summed up the retribution campaign that has come to define his second term.
“‘I hate my opponent,’ Mr. Trump told the crowd at the memorial in Arizona, ‘and I don’t want the best for them.’”
“Mr. Trump has used the full might of his political and executive power to express that mind-set in myriad ways, sparing no facet of American life. He has attacked law firms, universities, political leaders, government agencies, late-night TV hosts, news organizations and cultural institutions, and Mr. Kirk’s killing has only accelerated that campaign. Mr. Trump and his top advisers have signaled a broad crackdown on liberal groups, making the baseless argument that they are part of a violent conspiracy.
13 – Trump rejects science
Jeff Tollefson writes: “In just the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his administration embarked on making radical changes to US science (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-04051-y). He continues.
“Officials appointed by the new president started firing thousands of researchers and other government employees. At the same time, it cut billions of dollars of US support for global-health programmes, including dismantling the US Agency for International Development (USAID). It arrested some scholars from outside the United States as it stepped up efforts to restrict entry into the country and limit political speech. Over the next few months, the US government took steps to exert unprecedented control over universities by withholding federal research funding. The administration cancelled tens of billions of dollars in research grants to universities to force the adoption of policies on hiring and admissions, policing of campuses, curricula and other factors.”
14 – RFK, Jr.
Madeline Halpert writes the following for BBC ((https://www.bbc.com.news/articles/dcvgv1ggrzzjo).
“More than 750 current and former employees of the US health department have published a letter rebuking Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, saying his ‘dangerous and deceitful statements’ contributed to recent violence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters”)
“Officials say the man who fired hundreds of rounds at the CDC this month, killing a police officer, had expressed distrust in the Covid-19 vaccine.
“In their letter, the staff said the attack came as ‘politicized rhetoric
drives mistrust in institutions.
“They also said Kennedy had put Americans’ health in danger and hurt the country’s ability to respond to public health emergencies.
“‘Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information,’ they wrote in a letter addressed to both Congress and Kennedy and published on a site called Save HHS.
“The signatories were affiliated with the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, and Health and Human Services.”
15 – Trump seems drawn to autocrats –
Peter Baker reports on this (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/us/politics/trump-imperial-presidency.html).
“When President Trump hosted the crown prince of Saudi Arabia last month, he pulled out all the stops. To the traditional pomp of a formal White House visit, he added a few even fancier touches: a stirring military flyover, a procession of black horses and long, regal tables for the lavish dinner in the East Room instead of the typical round tables.”
16 – Enriching himself and his family – Baker: “The lack of checks on Mr. Trump has given him latitude that his predecessors did not enjoy, not just in policymaking but also in profit-making. While other presidential families have cashed in on the White House, none has been as successful or brazen as Mr. Trump and his clan. In the 11 months since he reclaimed the White House, the president’s family has made billions of dollars, at least on paper, through business deals around the world and cryptocurrency investments from people with a vested interest in American policy.”
Concluding thoughts
With luck, good evidence, effective organizing, electoral participation, and determined politicians, we may be able to tell a story of how Trump’s self-serving and anti-democratic policies were overcome in 2026.
Vital issues - challenging pol and econ power 