The first year of the new Trump shakes the world

WashingtonThe spiral of anger The path Donald Trump had taken during the 2024 election campaign led him to the Oval Office. A year after returning to the White House, the tycoon has plunged the entire country into another spiral, far darker than the one that brought him to the presidency, and threatens to destabilize the entire world. The American experiment, which this year celebrates its 250th anniversary, is suffering. the most serious constitutional crisis since the Civil War and it increasingly shows signs of an authoritarian regime. With more than 221 executive orders signed since January 20, 2025, this is the United States that remains after the rise of the far right (high right) to power.

Trump's first action to rewrite the country's history. Amid the avalanche of executive orders the Republican signed in the hours following his inauguration was a pardon for the more than 1,500 people convicted or indicted for participating in the storming of the Capitol. A "full, complete, and unconditional" pardon for all his followers, including Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right group Proud Boys. The measure came as no surprise to anyone. Trump had promised to pardon them and had described the violent mob that stormed the Capitol at his command as an "act of peace and love." Beyond denying one of the darkest days in American democracy, the pardon also sets a precedent for impunity among the tycoon's followers. On January 6, the anniversary of the storming, the White House launched onenew website that historically reconstructed the day and defined the assailants as "peaceful protesters" who were provoked by the security forces.

Trump has subjected the markets and the stock exchange to a constant rollercoaster ride with his trade war. The tariff table he presented in April, with its universal import taxes, made headlines around the world. The tycoon had made tariffs one of his main diplomatic weapons before resorting to military force in 2026. Trump has threatened, imposed, paused, and withdrawn tariffs with a single tweet, as a show of power. China, Mexico, and Canada have been some of the president's main targets—they were the first three he hit with 25% tariffs—however, many of the trade attacks have been just that: attacks. After reaching the absurd figure of 145% in tariffs on Beijing, those currently in effect are at 40%, after both governments agreed to a truce. Although many of these tariffs have not yet been implemented, the impact of those already in place is being felt in the US economy, as well as the collateral damage. Farmers and ranchers, including a large part of Trump's rural base, are among the hardest hit. The Supreme Court is now set to rule on whether most of the tariffs Trump has imposed are illegal, as the appeals court decided in August after finding that he abused his emergency powers to implement them.

The campaign's flagship promise: to deport the estimated 10 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. After Joe Biden paved the way for Trump at the border during his final year in office, curtailing asylum rights and accelerating summary deportations, Trump has been able to focus on the interior of the country. Although the current president boasts about the decrease in border crossings, this number only began to fall in the final months of the Democratic administration. The Republican has deployed a campaign of terror against the immigrant community that has ultimately extended to all racialized people in the country. More than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained as part of these operations, and 32 people have died in ICE custody during 2025. Most of these deaths have occurred in detention centers, which are now overcrowded and rife with complaints of medical negligence. These events were reported on by both the ARA and British tourist Rebecca Burke, who was detained for 19 days, like Gabriel, who complained that They didn't even give him fever-reducing medication when he asked for it.

Despite authorizing raids inside schools and churches, invoking the Enemy Aliens Act, and deploying large-scale ICE operations in various cities across the country, Trump has been unable to meet his target of one million deportations per year. On December 19, nearly eleven months into his presidency, the Department of Homeland Security reported over 622,000 deportations. It also estimated that over one million people had self-deported, though it offered no further explanation of how this data was obtained or whether all migrants included in that category had used the CBP One program. Another measure taken by Trump was to transform this website, initially used to schedule asylum appointments from foreign countries, into a platform for reporting self-deportations to the government.

The flip side of these figures is broken families and hundreds of thousands of people living in fear that one day a group of hooded men will show up at their house and take them away. People like Maria, whom the His son says he fears he will one day return home and not find him there.a; the Sulma, who is just leaving the small apartment he shares to go to work; or Michael, who at 19 years old She has dropped out of school to go to work because her parents don't dare to leave the houseNow, the murder in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good—a white woman—at the hands of an ICE agent has brought into sharp focus the terror that has gripped the country for months. Since September, racial profiling has been legal, according to a Supreme Court ruling.

The militarization of the country has gone hand in hand with increased brutality against migrants. ICE has fallen into a gray area where it has abandoned its immigration enforcement functions.and to become the president's armed wing against all dissentThe new administration has launched a recruitment campaign that has already doubled the number of agents and is planning a budget for the next four years comparable to that of an army. The National Guard has gone from being a force admired by many Americans for its work during natural disasters to being degraded into just another puppet that the president uses at will to intimidate Democratic strongholds. In Washington, soldiers continue to patrol the streets despite a federal judge ruling in November that their presence was illegal. In Los Angeles, he deployed reservists against the wishes of the governor of California, in one of the many unconstitutional actions he has taken.

The transformation of the National Guard and ICE into Trump's personal armed forces is one of the many symptoms of the assault on the democratic system he is carrying out. The Republican has purged the administration of anything that could check his power, completely dismantled agencies like USAID, turned the Justice Department into his ministry of personal vendettas, and is now attempting to seize total control of the Pentagon while persecuting Democratic senators who reminded the military that they are not obligated to follow orders. To hijack a democracy, it is necessary to control three pillars: the intelligence services, the Justice Department, and the military. Congress, Controlled by the Republican majority, it has relinquished a large part of its powers. Faced with Trump's thirst for ever-increasing power, the subjugation of the legislature reflects the Republican's control over the party. Although some cracks have appeared at the end of this first year of his presidency due to the Epstein case, the Senate's failure to block future military attacks on Venezuela confirms how the party remains loyal to him. Trump kidnapped Nicolás Maduro without consulting the Capitol beforehand.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority has, for the moment, given Trump freedom in his campaign. Even so, it remains to be seen what it will do when ruling on the merits of certain cases, such as the tariffs or the executive order with which he attempted to revoke citizenship obtained by being born in the United States, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Even so, the tycoon already has a very important card to play: presidential immunity, which the high court recognized in the summer of 2024. "A king above the law," as Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in her dissenting opinion. He has also begun crossing names off his blacklist: he has opened investigations against the New York tax fraud prosecutor, Letitia James; against former FBI Director James Comey; and now against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Not to mention all the conflicts of interest between the tycoon's politics and his family businesses.

Ideological persecution continues It begins disguised as a culture war.It began as a pressure campaign against Columbia University for its pro-Palestinian demonstrations and quickly spread throughout higher education, targeting other institutions like Harvard. Trump has lobbied to interfere with universities' curricula, either through funding cuts (as at Harvard and Columbia) or bribery attempts, which many institutions have rejected. With the distortion of the label antisemitism Any opinion contrary to the Gaza war was persecuted. Under this premise, the government began announcing it would review the social media accounts of foreign students and visa applications in general. The culmination was the ICE detention of students Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Moshen Mahdawi for participating in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Now, the government requires that all foreigners seeking entry be allowed to have their social media accounts reviewed not only for pro-Palestinian posts but for any kind of "anti-American" content. Furthermore, Trump has designated antifascism as a terrorist organization. The White House has stated that Good, killed by ICE, was a victim of her "left-wing ideology."

Under the premise of "restoring the truth," the president is also attacking the mainstream media, which he callslegacy, as with the Temporary suspension of the Jimmy Kimmel showHe has also attacked large law firms that have filed cases against his administration's policies. At least eight firms have been directly targeted by the government. Some yielded and reached settlements to avoid retaliation, while others took their cases to court.

Trump has moved closer to Russia in an unprecedented shift in US foreign policy and has pressured Ukraine to cede territory under the guise of peace negotiations. From the Ukrainian saga, two scenes: The booing of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and the summit with Putin in AnchorageAlaska. Regarding the Palestinian genocide, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found an excellent partner in Trump. At the beginning of 2025, the Republican announced his plans to turn the Gaza Strip into a resort, and the year ended in Gaza with a ceasefire that Israel has continued to violate. However, Trump has already announced a technocratic government for the second phase of the plan to end the war in Gaza.

The Nobel Peace Prize nominee—which he now has in his collection thanks to María Corina Machado—has bombed seven countries: Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Nigeria, and the latest: Venezuela. The iconic image of the military intervention in Caracas is that of Maduro captured blindfolded and with his ears covered. Trump is keeping the possibility of new attacks on Iran up in the air and has set his sights on Greenland next. And Mexico, Cuba, and Colombia are also on the radar of this hyperactive imperialist campaign.