This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Donald Trump made it clear when he was reelected last year that he was in it for revenge, power and hate. Political pundits, elected Democrats and liberal voters collectively worried that his second term would take a wrecking ball to what was left of our country’s well-being.
But who could have predicted just how much and just how fast the loose collection of informal rules that keep America functioning would be blown up?
It’s been a long year, and you could be forgiven for having forgotten some of the norms that we used to abide by that have since been decimated by Trumpworld. The president himself has deployed the military to American cities against their will, turning communities into war zones. The Supreme Court, in its rush to bend over backward for the administration, has shrugged off the decimation of decades-old legal precedent. Department of Justice employees brazenly lie in open court.
Some of our country’s first-class agencies tasked with saving lives have been turned into a shell of their former selves — or dismantled altogether. Instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated against deadly diseases, federal public health agencies are now leading the anti-science charge. And our top foreign aid agency has been destroyed, threatening millions of lives around the world.
