The Weekly List

This is the longest list of broken norms during the second regime, so far. I would encourage you to read through the list in its entirety, because amid the chaos of the week, many stories that would normally garner broad attention received little or no coverage. Some mark escalations, like the regime serving a grand jury subpoena to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, while others, like the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery altering history, remind us that details matter.This is perhaps the most unhinged we have seen Trump during his second regime. Part of this feels like a continuation of a theme we have covered: the notion of his running out of time with midterms ahead, and his acknowledgment that in a fair election, Democrats will likely prevail. But this is also a new version of Trump, who by common sense should be listening to voters ahead of midterms (polls tell us they are overwhelmingly against what he is up to); either he does not care, or perhaps, cannot stop himself.I’ve been ruminating on a framework to understand Trump’s recent illogical, intemperate, unbounded behavior. That’s the thing — it doesn’t feel like he can regulate and stop himself, and as we’ve covered, he has surrounded himself solely with sycophants who will almost never tell him no or that he is wrong. I found an op-ed by Thomas Edsall that helped me make sense of things. Edsall writes, based on speaking to experts, that Trump is “showing symptoms of an addiction to power,” noting, “the size and scope of his targets for subjugation are spiraling ever upward.” One expert described to Edsall Trump’s malignant narcissism: “Because there is little internal capacity for self-soothing or self-valuation, he requires continuous external affirmation to feel real and intact.”This week we have stories indicating Trump is still consumed with his petty grievances, as he vents against federal attorneys and Attorney General Pam Bondi for being weak and ineffective. But in a broader sense, his statement to the NYT that the only thing that could stop him was “My own morality. My own mind” indicates a man who has increasingly lost touch with reality and its consequences. My guess is Trump is headed for troubled waters not far ahead, and a crash down to reality for him and his regime.

The main takeaway of this week’s list is what we are NOT discussing: the Epstein files, the five-year anniversary of Jan. 6, the affordability crisis and Trump’s tariffs exacerbating rising prices, rising healthcare premiums, the MAGAverse implosion, and of course, Trump’s health decline. Those story lines were the top themes amid his falling approval on every issue and overall, until he decided to orchestrate a coup — a classic ‘wag the dog’ operation.Trump has been, throughout both regimes, a master of distraction — of throwing shiny coins and having what remains of our media chase that story instead of the ones he did not want covered. We saw this earlier in the second regime, when he bombed Iran’s nuclear sites. He was itching for another story to drive the headlines from his considerable problems, and he got it.In what clearly was not a well thought out, if thought out at all, plan, Trump ordered the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In the days after, the regime teetered from claiming it was “running” Venezuela, to not running, to running again. When that story started to become stale, the narrative switched to seizing Greenland through military action, to buying Greenland, to all options are on the table. Trump, who ran both campaigns on an anti-interventionist “America First” platform, and claimed rights to the Nobel Peace Prize as the peacetime president, also threatened longtime U.S. allies Mexico and Colombia, as well as Cuba. He finds himself increasingly at odds with the MAGAverse, including notably his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who removed herself from the public discussion.The other big story this week is Trump’s visible efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, quite literally on the White House website, and in the MAGA ecosystem. The both-sides narrative also bled over to CBS News, whose owner seeks to win Trump’s favor in a proposed takeover of Warner Bros. This week Trump continued to publicly claim he won the 2020 election, although according to the testimony by former special counsel Jack Smith, we learn this week that Trump had privately acknowledged that he in fact lost.

As we close out 2025 this week there is a marked shift in sentiment, not only among the American people, but also by Trump himself. A year ago as I restarted this project, the conversation was, will he ever leave? We’re not having that conversation anymore.Not only do polls show that the American people are souring on Trump as the year comes to a close, the Republicans too are starting to turn on him, even if at the fringes, for their own self-preservation. One GOP member of the House mused this week that House Speaker Mike Johnson is “hanging on because Trump wants a weak speaker,” as the 2025 Congress was the least productive in modern history. By week’s end Rep. Lauren Boebert also spoke out publicly against Trump, after he retaliated against her, and the state of Colorado, for not freeing Tina Peters.Trump tried to play grown-up, or at least appear engaged, by hosting two world leaders at Mar-a-Lago, with little to show for either. But more notable was his lack of focus on what Americans want, and his unhinged behavior, back to rapid-fire posting onChristmas Eve, and striking out at his perceived enemies, including Boebert’s Republican-leaning district. This is the disorganized, scattered behavior reminiscent of his first regime. While Trump was able to follow the Project 2025 roadmap for most of 2025, now that the Heritage Foundation has, as conservative WSJ Editorial Board pronounced, “blown up,” Trump too seems rudderless.The mood of the country remains gloomy as the year comes to an end. Just 24% believe the country is heading in the right direction. The vast majority feel Trump and his billionaire beneficiaries are out of touch with the regular people. Trump increasingly is losing the tight grip of control he had for most of 2025. I wrote more about what I expect for 2026 here.

This week, Trump is continuing to lose not only broad-based American support as he did during the first regime, but for the first time of either regime, he is also losing support from within the Republican base. At the same time, the Republican Party is in turmoil, amid infighting over the party’s direction post-Trump. The once mighty Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025, is imploding, a notion that would seem unthinkable just a year ago. MAGA influencers are attacking one another, this week quite publicly at Turning Point USA’s annual conference. More prominent Republicans announced this week they would not seek re-election.Already there is a notable shift in Trump’s demeanor. During his address to the nation at the start of the week, he seemed frustrated and agitated that he even had to speak about affordability, or concerns of the American people. Although the question of a third term continues to be floated, Trump no longer speaks or acts as if this is a possibility. It is unclear if this is health-related or an unhappiness with the pushback he is feeling post-2025 election, and a sense that Democrats are likely to take control of at least part of Congress in midterms, but this is a different Trump. He is acting in some ways like he is running out of time. An example that continues this week is his frantically putting his name wherever he can, a sign of possible insecurity, and a manic effort to preserve what he hopes will be his legacy.In the meantime, this week is filled with examples of Trump’s abuses of power. It is almost as if the country has normalized these broken norms, and is just hoping to run out the clock until midterms. The Epstein files are not going away, despite Trump and his Justice Department’s efforts — in fact, they have been feeding the flames. Just as CBS News did by pulling the plug on a “60 Minutes” segment, seemingly to placate Trump. There are many more examples this week of a federal government in decline and disarray. And at long last, a Supreme Court ruling against Trump that could set back his efforts to send U.S. military troops to American cities.

There continues to be a notable shift this week of Trump losing his grip on power. First and foremost, the American people are unhappy with the economy, the cost of living, and increasingly even with his handling of immigration. They are showing their displeasure at the polls, in the polls, and speaking to their representatives. For the first time in either Trump regime, we see growing dissatisfaction with Trump from within his base, and a movement away from identifying as “MAGA” to “Traditional Republican.”Increasingly, Republicans are standing up to Trump. Not only in the House of Representatives, where his proxy and junior assistant, Speaker Mike Johnson, is losing control, but also at the state level. In Indiana, where Trump and his proxies tried bullying to get redistricting, it backfired, turning state Republicans against them. Trump threw in the towel on installing loyalists to U.S. attorney positions, as another resigned.Even members of Trump’s regime are beginning to see pushback from their base. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin saw blowback from MAHA Moms over his siding with the chemical industry lobby. Fox News started covering the alarming outbreak of measles under Health and Human Services Sec. Robert Kennedy Jr., in which they noted cases had increased by 14,608% since 2020! FBI Director Kash Patel continued to try to jump ahead of tragedies to take credit on social media, raising a chorus to criticize his incompetence.The week was already feeling heavy with sadness, after yet another mass shooting at a school in America, this time at Brown University, followed by an anti-Semitic inspired mass shooting in Australia. Trump again showed his inability to rise to the occasion, show empathy, or lead. In what was perhaps a defining moment of his second regime, after the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner by their son who struggled with addiction, Trump’s response on social media of blaming Reiner for having “Trump Derangement Syndrome” led to widespread blowback from Republican and conservative corners, many of which had previously been too fearful to speak out publicly against him. Conservative WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan wrote “Trump May Be Losing His Touch,” noting, “he’s surrounded by mood shifts, challenges and ominous signs.”