In the wake of Trump’s disastrous tariff policy that eliminated $2.5 trillion from the stock market, thousands of protests swept the nation, demanding change and the removal of Trump and Elon Musk from office. The “Hands Off” Protests amassed around three million participants–one of the biggest in the nation’s history. In under four months, Trump eliminated the Department of Education; imposed absurd tariffs on enemies, allies, and uninhabited islands; oversaw the outbreak of measles in Texas; threatened our closest allies with annexation and pushing our Pacific allies closer to China; started a gestapo-esque deportation campaign that sent US citizens to El Salvador and Venezuala and imprisoned immigrants simply for having tattoos; and cut funding across crucial government agencies like healthcare. Reflecting on these past couple of months, it’s hard to imagine how the country would survive four more years of Trump’s presidency; as Americans suffer through the worst presidency in US history, we have to ask ourselves: How did we even get here in the first place?
The story begins before Trump, with the concept of the Overton Window — a political science concept used to define, “the range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept.” This window shifts frequently over time, as new ideas are brought to the forefront of politics, and societal attitudes change to deem some actions acceptable while others become intolerable, such as same-sex marriage.
Trump, who has plenty of media experience throughout his business career, is an expert at weaponizing this tactic, bringing outlandish and dangerous ideas onto the center stage of politics. Vox documents this pattern, highlighting how “Trump makes extreme things look normal;” Trump was able to normalize far-right politics, adding figures such as Alex Jones, Peter Thiel, and prominent neo-Nazi groups into mainstream American politics. As a result, the gap between mainstream Republicans and Democrats–who were torn between progressives and moderates, widened, allowing Republicans to blame Democrats for anything they deemed remotely “woke” or “far-left” as a fear-based tactic, using racial undertones to appeal to white moderates and conservatives. This enabled Trump to target communities normally associated with Democrats, such as immigrants and LGBT communities, forcing Democrats on the defensive while the conservative-dominated media spews lies and dangerous falsehoods that put these communities at risk. At a certain point, it becomes politically unviable for Democrats to continue defending these communities, as exemplified by their rightward shift on immigration and transgender topics, costing them crucial votes from the progressive side of their party.
This all builds up to the 2024 presidential election between Harris and Trump. Analysis of why Harris lost is already very well developed, but the main takeaways are as follows: 1. Harris failed to capture the progressive sectors of the Democratic Party, which largely consist of young voters. Her stance on Israel-Palestine drove staunch progressives away from her campaign, while Trump saw an increase in votes from young men. 2. Harris continued to attempt to portray herself as a moderate candidate, in opposition to Trump’s outlandish politics, leading her to shift right on some issues in order to capture what she perceived to be moderate Republicans and losing some progressive voters in the process, which didn’t turn out so well (just 5% of Republicans crossed over to vote for Harris in 2024). 3. Billionaire donors spent almost $2 billion on the 2024 election, with less than 1/4th of the funds going to Democrats, highlighting an immense financial disparity between political parties. These all culminated in the catastrophic loss we saw in 2024, with all branches of government falling into Republican hands, along with a conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Thanks to the shifting of the Overton Window, much of Trump’s statements and attacks have become normalized in American society.
One dangerous normalization is his constant undermining of democracy and the rule of law, banning news networks he doesn’t like from the White House, arresting and deporting US citizens and suspected immigrants without due process, portraying himself as a king on the official White House twitter account, and taking over independent agencies such as the Federal Election Commission (FEC), all on top of his prior attempt in 2021 to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Surrounding himself with hardline conservatives and far-right politics, it is clear that he intends to exclude Democrats, progressives and even moderates from any form of federal decision-making. As if this weren’t enough, Trump’s partner, Elon Musk, has also undermined democracy through his efforts at bribery in the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court election, where he gave $1 million to two voters in an attempt to persuade Wisconsinites to vote Republican. All of these actions make Trump a very real danger to democracy in the US, and although some restraints have been put on him by recent Supreme Court rulings, Trump is still able to exercise tremendous power over federal politics due to his near-absolute control over the government.
Trump’s failures as a president go even further than his attacks on democracy; his mishandling of the economy has plunged this country into the risk of a recession*. Trump, who may or may not have used AI in designing this policy, instituted a tariff on nearly every country with the supposed intent to balance out trade deficits. Countries that export more to the US than they import from the US were hit with higher tariffs, which included staunch American allies such as Japan, the EU, Mexico, Taiwan, Canada, Switzerland, and France. Notably, Russia was excluded from the tariffs. Since items manufactured abroad and sent to the US tend to be cheaper, especially from poorer countries that can reduce the cost of labor, these same items will become exorbitantly expensive for consumers and businesses in the US, which could lead to massive job cuts and high unemployment to control for increased costs. These policy choices don’t seem to align with “making America great again”, but when your tariffs target penguin islands for some reason, don’t expect its results to be very well thought out for the American people.
In the geopolitical world, this nonsensical action has greatly undermined America’s place in the world, leading allies such as Japan and South Korea to pursue closer relations with America’s main economic rival: China. Trump’s isolation from America’s allies extends to Europe, with his hostile rhetoric towards Ukrainian president Zelensky, and negotiations with Putin without involving Ukraine or the EU. This has created a greater geopolitical divide between the US and Europe, reducing cooperation and strengthening Russia’s presence in the region. In the Middle East, Trump’s cabinet accidentally invited a journalist, Paul Lisnek, from The Atlantic into their Signal group chat, in which they discussed plans to strike Houthis in Yemen, the contents of which later got leaked and published by Lisnek. Though the strike had already been committed, this represented a dangerous security breach to US military capabilities and highlighted the unreliability of Trump’s defense team. With policies and decision-making such as these coming out of Trump’s administration in just his first three months, the American people are becoming increasingly threatened by their government’s actions and incompetence, painting a bleak road ahead for the remainder of his term.
With a president that has thoroughly disregarded the rule of law and is intending to serve a third term in office (which the Constitution limits to a maximum of two terms), it becomes more important than ever for the American people to stand up for democratic values and freedoms for all Americans. As elections continue to roll out for the next couple of years, it is paramount that voters demand that Trump and his far-right government be held accountable, abide by the law and Constitution, support their international allies in Europe, and pass policies that actually help the American people, not just Trump’s billionaire buddies.
*Trump has put a 90-day hold on tariffs with the exemption of China and is now being accused of insider-trading.