Heather Cox Richardson's wrap-up of 2025

Click here for HCR's diary entry on December 30, 2025.

I just learned that Trump has declared nine different national emergencies (none of which was a true emergency), which allows him to take unilateral action. It's useful, of course, in the case of actual emergencies, allowing the president to take rapid action in response without having to go through a fractured congress; but it's not useful in the case of bogus emergencies, declared so that he can bomb boats off the coast of Venezuela or harass immigrants (e.g. renditioning people to the CECOT prison in El Salvador where they will be tortured.

I knew this had happened, but what I didn't know is that if the president declares an emergency and takes action, he can only proceed for 15 days; after that, the action must stop unless validated by congress. For instance, as HCR says, in April, Trump declared some kind of national emergency that allowed him to impose a broad, sweeping system of harsh tariffs. After the 15-day period, Democrats would definitely challenge the tariffs, since the imposition of tariffs is a right granted strictly to congress. Such a challenge would almost certainly succeed. However -- and he is allowed by House rules to do this -- Speaker Johnson declared that for the narrow purpose of the emergency actions, the remainder of the legislative session -- until the next election -- to be considered as one day. One day! Thus the 15-day mark could never be reached, and no one can challenge Trump's bogus emergencies. Preposterous. 

After recounting the highlights -- there were many, many more examples of Trump acting in an authoritarian fashion -- HCR ends on an optimistic note that I don't entirely agree with:

As we reach the end of 2025, it appears the law is catching up to an administration that began the year by acting as if the law and the Constitution didn’t exist.

More than that, though, over the course of 2025, the administration’s refusal to recognize the tenets of American democracy has roused the American people to defend that democracy.

It appears that as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when British colonists on the North American continent took the radical step of rejecting the idea not just of King George III but of all kings, and launched the experiment of government based on the rule of law created by the people themselves, the American people are reclaiming that history.