Political Glance
Donald Trump’s actions and incendiary remarks in the first year of his second presidential term have left many women, people of color and their allies in a tailspin.
Shortly after re-entering office, he released executive orders that attacked diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, and transgender rights. His January orders that called for an end to DEI and affirmative action led to thousands of cuts in the private and public sectors – and shake-ups within the journalism industry. One directive that banned access to gender-affirming care for youth under the age of 19 sent families into a flurry as they scrambled to ensure that their trans kids continued to receive treatment.
Another executive order directed his vice-president, JD Vance, to prohibit federal spending on Smithsonian programs or exhibits that focused on race. He also worked to suppress Indigenous history by again changing the name of the mountain Denali in the Athabascan language to Mount McKinley. And his mass deportation operations have torn families apart.
Along with his federal policies, Trump also shared racist, xenophobic and sexist comments during speeches, press meetings and on his social media platform, Truth Social, throughout the year.
Here’s Trump – in his own words – as year two of his second term looms.:
A federal judge has dismissed an indictment against a Los Angeles TikTok streamer who was shot by an officer during an immigration enforcement operation and accused of assault against a federal agent, citing constitutional violations.
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in, not inside City Hall on New Year's Day, but dozens of feet below it.
US senator Bernie Sanders amplified his recent criticism of artificial intelligence on Sunday, explicitly linking the financial ambition of “the richest people in the world” to economic insecurity for millions of Americans – and calling for a potential moratorium on new datacenters.
The FBI has deployed additional personnel and investigative resources to Minnesota to “dismantle large-scale fraud schemes exploiting federal programs”, director Kash Patel said on social media on Sunday.
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani (D) challenged Elon Musk for claiming that people will “die” over his appointment of a non-firefighter as the new head of the Fire Department of New York (FDNY).
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) set its sights on Chicago in September, Chicagoans sprang into action to protect their immigrant neighbors: teaching each other how to recognize and safely document ICE agents, setting up “know your rights” trainings, and distributing whistles en masse so people could loudly alert anyone in the vicinity when ICE was spotted.
