A year in review of Trump's America

Only if we all really (and I mean really) come together in 2026, will things be different.

Happy New Year, friends! I hope you can take a moment to pause and be present with your loved ones—and also with yourself. We all deserve some compassion and deep caring after what we just went through.

There are many things that people might want to leave behind in 2025. Bad habits, a job that was not serving you, a friendship or relationship that has run its course, whatever it may be. But alas, we cannot leave the vulgarity of the Trump administration in 2025—even though many of us would like to. If 2026 is going to be different, we must account for where we are right now, as bad as that might feel. We have to come together and demand a stop to it.

For now, let me thank you for your support and for sharing this newsletter with anyone who might be interested in learning legal basics and how the law is shaping our collective future. Through January 10, I am offering a 30% discount for new yearly subscribers to The Little Law School. You can take advantage of it here:

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Although there were too many legal transgressions in 2025 to list in one place, here are just a few of the biggies that I covered in this newsletter. If you want more of this kind of analysis in 2026, please upgrade and share The Little Law School so that I can keep it going strong!

First came the executive orders

Since returning to the White House, Trump has signed 225 executive orders. A majority of these came right after Inauguration Day. Many are blatantly illegal, including Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship in direct violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court is taking up that case in 2026.

For a refresher on what an executive order is under the Constitution, check out this Substack:

Then there was Elon Musk’s lawless power grab

In his early days, Trump anointed the unelected Elon Musk to oversee multiple agencies without any congressional or constitutional authority. He also created an entire department for Musk to run: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Congress creates agencies, not presidents. But Trump got away with it.

DOGE was responsible for weeding out “waste” in the government, which proved to be a farcical pack of lies that did not actually cut meaningful spending. The fake “DOGE head” position allowed Musk and his employees to access the personal data of millions of Americans—including information regarding income taxes and refunds, government services, back pay loans, social security retirement and disability payments, veterans’ benefits, wages for federal workers, social security numbers, birth dates and places, home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and bank information. The far-right, Trump-enabling Supreme Court majority greenlighted this invasion of individuals’ privacy rights in one of its so-called “emergency” rulings.

DOGE also sent out the notorious “Fork in the Road” memo to about 800,000 federal workers, giving them a choice to resign and retain pay and benefits for a few more weeks, or risk losing their jobs through downsizing and restructuring. Again, Musk did this all without legislative authority. Those people are still picking up the pieces, their stories buried under a deluge of more horrific news.

Here’s a back post on DOGE:

Inspectors General and Federal agencies came under attack

After firing the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Trump removed 16 more inspectors general without following the statutory ground rules for doing so. Coincidentally, the department was the same one that investigated Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink in 2022. Trump got away with this maneuver too.

Here’s a post on that story:

Violent and inhumane immigration practices still plague our country

Although Trump’s vicious, inhumane, and illegal immigration policies are ongoing, the Supreme Court majority has backed Trump’s detention policies in a number of so-called “emergency” orders. What on earth are the justices thinking (and feeling)? It is simply unfathomable.

Check out these three posts to learn more:

A corrupted Department of Justice

Attorney General Pam Bondi is getting a lot of pushback from Congress on how she has handled the Epstein files and for transforming the DOJ into a vindictive tool of Donald Trump.

When she first returned to office, she issued “14 ‘first-day’ directives” that included rolling back on foreign influence investigations (shocker) and creating “a task force to examine the ‘weaponization’ of the Justice Department.” This came after Bondi facetiously claimed at her confirmation hearing that the DOJ had become politicized under President Biden and that she’s here to start much-needed reform.

Although there’s much more to say about DOJ, here’s a bit on that ongoing saga:

Trump’s pardon power abuses have been taken to new extremes

The pardon power has become almost a comical tool of corruption and abuse. I published a book on this topic shortly before Trump took office and have since covered it in several posts, a number of which can be found here:

Free speech and the freedom of the press are in tatters

Trump attacked law firms, universities, and the news organizations for refusing to comply with erratic and coercive demands (such as dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion practices and referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America). He also targeted law firms that represent people and causes that get in the way of his plans, calling them “dishonest and dangerous.”

The message being sent is quite clear: if you disagree with the Trump administration, you'd better stay quiet, or else there will be consequences.

Here are a couple of posts on the destruction of core First Amendment protections:

The Supreme Court has enabled much of this

From the standpoint of the rule of law, the most galling aspect of 2025 was the Supreme Court’s cavalier tolerance of a range of illegal and unconstitutional behavior by the President of the United States. Hundreds of lawsuits were filed against the Trump administration last year. Almost every time they reached the Supreme Court on bogus claims that an "emergency” existed just because a lower court held that Trump couldn’t do what he wanted immediately, the majority reflexively sided with Trump—but not because the law required it. The vigorous dissents to these “emergency” rulings point to a troubling conclusion: six of the nine justices on the Supreme Court have apparently decided to trade in their sworn oath to the Constitution for an oath of loyalty to Trump.

I could go on and on about the problems with the Supreme Court. There’s much more to come in 2026. Here are a few columns to get you started:

What’s the takeaway?

The Constitution does not enforce itself. That’s a problem because Trump doesn’t care about the law. He also knows that if the law is not enforced, it is meaningless.

If American democracy is to have any chance of surviving 2026, it cannot withstand another twelve months of destruction and mayhem. Turning things around will take millions of Americans. Every single day.

I know what many of you are thinking: What can a regular person do? It starts by educating yourself, then educating each other, and then finding common ground.

Mostly, it will require more of us to care.

I know you care, so thank you all for your support. And thank you for staying strong.

I’m so glad you’re here,

Kim

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Check out my website for links to my books and speeches!

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Want to learn more about a particular legal topic that’s been in the headlines? I’ve covered the biggest ones for nearly a decade. You can find hundreds of my op-eds on Linktree!

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