Archives
Weekly Lists
Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things
subtly changing around you, so you’ll remember.
September 09, 2026
Week 96 — The Return
This week, as we passed Labor Day and head into the final stretch before midterms, Trump and his regime were frantically trying to find ways to impact voting. The regime filed two emergency applications with the Supreme Court, and ginned up involvement of federal agencies, including continual attempts to prove Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, and efforts to have a presence at polling places on Election Day.
September 02, 2026
Week 95 — The Return
This was one of the longest lists of broken norms during Trump’s second regime, despite it being late August, with Congress still out of session. I encourage you all to read through the list in its entirety, because there are so many important, shocking, and disturbing subplots all at once — the U.S. is at great risk both internally and externally.
After another senior military departure, the U.S. Army finds itself without a single Senate-confirmed civilian or military leader, at a time when the country is stuck in an endless war with Iran. Reporting indicates a mix of poor planning and mismanagement has left the U.S. homeland and our forces abroad at risk, with munition stockpiles low. Trump continued his strange bromance with Russia, even as Russia directly aided Iran, and Russian President Vladimir Putin openly encouraged other countries to challenge the U.S. — it is simply inexplicable.
August 26, 2026
Week 94 — The Return
This week Trump continued his inexplicable targeting of what were formerly some of the strongest U.S. allies, while coddling and cozying up to former adversaries. In what the WSJ Editorial Board dubbed “the dumbest trade war,” Trump escalated tensions with Canada, including threats to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America, while Vice President JD Vance mused that “Canada is a state.” Unlike during his first regime and earlier in his second, now countries are pushing back against his antics rather than being bullied into submission.
August 19, 2026
Week 93 — The Return
In a relatively quiet summer week, with Congress out of session, Trump pushed forward on his personal agenda, while the issues impacting most Americans got left by the wayside.
August 12, 2026
Week 92 — The Return
This week, as Trump’s failures mounted and his polling continued to fall, he tried a new tactic ahead of midterms: blame the Republicans. In an interview, he bragged that he had “already won” his race, and said of the American people’s discontent, “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.” The shift seemed to be a tacit acknowledgment of what lies ahead on November 3, and Trump preemptively looking to shift the blame.
August 05, 2026
Week 91 — The Return
This week Trump finds himself hitting all sorts of unenviable records for lowest approval, least public support for a war, and lowest approval on economic issues, even as midterm elections are now just three months away. Trump dismissed the polls as fake — a tactic he used during his first regime — but there is also a vast difference in his sentiment and approach this go-round. In his second regime, Trump does not seem to care about his polling data or Republican losses; rather, he has other priorities.
July 29, 2026
Week 90 — The Return
This was a disastrous week for Trump. Little is going his way, and the American people are increasingly turning against him. Trump continued to focus on his personal priorities, not issues that his party wants 100 days away from midterm elections, and not on what the American people want either. Nearly three-quarters of Americans said Trump was not paying attention to the country’s important issues, like the economy and affordability. Although Trump had promised his Iran “excursion” would last mere weeks, months later he is caught in an increasingly unpopular quagmire of a war.
July 22, 2026
Week 89 — The Return
While we are in the lazy days of summer, this week had story lines that made the country feel as if in chaos, with a much ballyhooed speech by Trump on the 2020 election, and an escalation of the Iran War.
Much to his chagrin, Trump’s prime time speech was not covered by all the networks, causing him to call for licenses to be revoked. The speech was a rehashing of past conspiracies, with Trump blaming the “deep state” for withholding the information he was about to release from him while, ironically, he was president during the alleged election fraud. Materials released after the speech fell flat, and the response was muted.
July 15, 2026
Week 88 — The Return
This week Trump pushed boundaries to new extremes, while the judicial branch pushed him back on others. In the aftermath of NYT reporting that Trump had switched Air Force One planes to return from the NATO summit in Turkey due to security concerns, federal agents showed up at the homes of some Times reporters with subpoenas, an extraordinary measure of targeting the press. At the same time, Trump and his regime suffered some dramatic losses and pushback from judges this week on his IRS settlement, his attempts to interfere with midterms, and his efforts to avoid payment to E. Jean Carroll, which this week he finally made.
July 08, 2026
Week 87 — The Return
In a week when the country should have been coming together to celebrate our 250th anniversary, Trump instead chose to make the Independence Day celebrations highly partisan, and all about himself. He made speeches attacking his political enemies as “communists,” and made repeated baseless claims about the dangers they posed to the country. He continued to push unfounded claims about the infiltration of others into our country, who were not only tainting the fabric of our country, but also secretly helping to elect Democrats.