2025 has come and gone. In the world of politics, it was a year dominated, amid the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, by a bombardment of negative news cycles and the further descent into American authoritarianism.
It would take more words than most have time to read to thoroughly outline all that has brought us here over the past year, but here is a summary:
As promised on the campaign trail, the Trump administration has pursued, with no sincere concern for citizenship or alleged criminality, the mass deportation of Latino Americans.
In Tennessee, the GOP supermajority in the statehouse has put millions of taxpayer dollars behind that effort. Hamilton County Sheriff Austin Garrett has formed a partnership with federal authorities to institutionalize deportation locally.
Trump’s haphazard tariffs have upended the global trade system, contributing to the rising costs of goods and services amid the ongoing affordability crisis, one made all the worse in Tennessee with its regressive sales tax policy.