Hard to believe, but on June 16th, it will be ten years since Donald J. Trump rolled down that golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for US president, setting in motion a disruption in our political life as a nation the likes of which we’ve never seen before (to use one of Trump’s favorite catch phrases). As always, the moment encapsulates the future, crystalizing latent potential into manifestation.
By now, most Americans have heard of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran who was illegally deported from the United States on March 15, 2025, in what the Trump administration initially admitted was “an administrative error.” He was imprisoned without trial in the Salvadoran maximum security Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), despite never having been charged with nor convicted of a crime in either country, under an agreement to imprison U.S. deportees there, in exchange for payment. The administration quickly withdrew its mea culpa, defending Abrego Garcia’s deportation, and publicly accusing him of being a member of the MS-13 gang, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The accusation was based on a bail determination made during a 2019 immigration court proceeding, contested by Abrego Garcia.
Late April and early May 2025 witnessed two vital democracies elect new governments, in the teeth of a tense Mars/Pluto opposition, as Canadians and Australians lined up to cast ballots for the candidates of their choice. Both countries saw foundering incumbents, once thought to be sure losers, given new life and rescued from defeat to retain power. This was, at least in part, aided and abetted by a series of poorly chosen acts and statements from US President Donald Trump, whose trade war tariffs and belligerent rhetoric aimed at these erstwhile allies tarred his fellow conservatives with a brush so toxic that voters fled into the arms of their progressive rivals. Donald Trump, Making Democracy Great Again – everywhere but in America.
In the wee hours of Sunday, 13 April 2025, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family were awakened by state troopers pounding on the door of the official Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg, PA. An intruder had been spotted scaling the iron security fence surrounding the property, smashing a window with a small sledgehammer to gain entry, and starting a fire. The south wing of the residence was badly damaged, but fortunately the governor, his wife, four children, and several houseguests who had been celebrating the Passover seder there a few hours earlier, escaped without injury.
On 18 March 2025, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court John Roberts made a rare statement on the politics of the day, when he waded into a controversy over the deportation of hundreds of undocumented Venezuelan immigrants who had been characterized by the Trump administration as violent, dangerous gang members. The men were apprehended and removed from the country without due process, with no proof of guilt beyond the government’s say-so, then flown to a prison in El Salvador, which was paid to house them indefinitely.
Donald J. Trump’s particular genius for creating chaos and mayhem was on full display in the first month after his second inauguration on 20 January 2025. A flurry of executive orders mandating everything from the end of birthright citizenship (a constitutionally enshrined right which requires an amendment ratified by three-fourths of the states to alter) to the quixotic renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America” (and would you like Freedom Fries with that?) was just the beginning. Most of the heavy lifting of dismantling the federal government was consigned to Elon Musk and his fabricated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who has proceeded to reflexively fire or eliminate thousands of workers with civil service protections and close entire agencies without congressional authority. Freezes on funding, hiring, and dispensing approved funds have rounded out DOGE’s resume.
