Some days it feels like a decade. Some days, even longer.
But it has been only one year. Just one year.
Tuesday marked the one-year anniversary of President Donald Trump’s second term in the White House. And what a year it has been.
Where do we even start? Well, for this newsletter, we start with Trump’s assault on the media.
He has banned the well-respected Associated Press from certain events simply over his pettiness about the name of the Gulf of Mexico. He has sued (and threatened to sue) media organizations such as CBS, The New York Times and the BBC. His administration has kicked reporters out of the Pentagon for refusing to report on anything except the force-fed propaganda of the Defense Department. His administration has defunded public media and tried to gut the Voice of America. His appointees have tried to silence late-night talk show hosts over jokes.
Trump, himself, has consistently and constantly insulted individual reporters and the media as a whole whenever he sees coverage he doesn’t like.
That’s just a portion of Trump’s battle with the press.
He and his administration have done so much damage that Poynter started something called the Freedom Press Watch just to track all the ways in which Trump has carried out his assault on one of the pillars of our democracy. Trump’s conduct appears to be following the blueprint of Project 2025. My Poynter colleague Angela Fu wrote about this at the end of last month: “Here’s how many of Project 2025’s media proposals were implemented in 2025.”
Meanwhile, so much else has happened that the news cycle for the past 12 months has become an overwhelming fire hose, leaving Americans constantly asking, “Did you see what Trump said/did/posted today?”
The Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Rector wrote, “11 stunning moves by Trump in his first year back in office.” (What, only 11?) The list includes pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters, deposing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, instigating tariff wars, declaring the end to birthright citizenship and the current Trump story du jour: threatening to take Greenland.
Mind you, this is just a handful of things Trump has done.
Rector wrote that Americans “have watched Trump once again take stunning and unprecedented action — sometimes in line with his campaign promises, other times in direct conflict with them.”
Meanwhile, The Atlantic published several pieces marking the first anniversary of Trump taking office. Most notably, Ashley Parker writes, is “Trump Exhaustion Syndrome.” Parker writes in her piece, “Among the greatest tricks Donald Trump ever pulled is convincing significant portions of the population that the slow erosion of their rights is not, actually, that big of a deal.”
Parker adds, “A year into Trump’s second term, the emboldened president’s maximalist strategy—pushing every norm to its most elastic, and then a bit beyond, and from that new breaking point pushing yet again—conjures the boiling-frog theory, in which a frog placed in boiling water will immediately hop out, but a frog placed in cool water that is slowly heated will complacently boil to death.”
OK, looking for some hope? There’s Quinta Jurecic with “Trump’s Attack on Democracy Is Faltering.” Jerecic writes that, yes, Trump has launched an assault on democracy.
“And yet,” Jerecic writes, “the prognosis for democracy in the United States is far better today than it was at the start of Trump’s second term, when Elon Musk’s DOGE was stripping the federal government for parts and even normally sober observers began talking seriously about the constitutional crises that would follow if Trump defied the Supreme Court. Since then, American democracy has started to show signs of life: The popularity Trump enjoyed after the election has vanished, protesters have marched in record numbers to oppose his one-man rule, and citizens have shown up to defend their neighbors from immigration enforcement and other federal forces. That bravery has helped encourage opposition politicians to take more and more forceful stands. District judges, meanwhile, continue to throw up roadblocks to the president’s plans.”
Jerecic adds, “None of this means that American democracy as we know it will survive—especially given the threat of Trump’s potential interference in the 2026 and 2028 elections—but it has a pulse.”
The Atlantic also published:
Checking out the fact-checking
Tuesday’s first anniversary of Trump’s second term also makes it a good time to check out these two important pieces from Poynter’s PolitiFact:
Making money
The New York Times’ editorial board has a stunning piece: “How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000.” The presentation is especially provocative, as are the board’s words.
The board details how Trump has collected so much money over the past year, adding, “A review by the editorial board relying on analyses from news organizations shows that Mr. Trump has used the office of the presidency to make at least $1.4 billion. We know this number to be an underestimate because some of his profits remain hidden from public view. And they continue to grow.”
The board concludes, “The demands of avarice gradually corrupt the work of government as officials facilitate the accumulation of personal wealth. Worse, such a government corrupts the people who live under its rule. They learn by experience that they live in a society where the laws are written by the highest bidder. They become less likely to obey those laws, and to participate in the work of democracy — speaking, voting, paying taxes. The United States risks falling into this cynical spiral as Mr. Trump hollows out the institutions of government for personal gain.”
Oh, one more
As I wrote earlier, so much has gone on during the Trump presidency that it’s hard to keep up. So here’s Politico with “25 Things Donald Trump Did This Year You Might Have Missed.”
Trump speaks
Trump spoke to the media Tuesday from the White House briefing room. He reflected on the first year of his second presidency in remarks that CNN called “meandering.”
He also talked about current events, such as Greenland and the latest actions involving U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minnesota.
Stephanie Grisham, who served as White House press secretary during Trump’s first term, tweeted, “This presser is bizarre even for him. It’s all the usual rambling, off-topic tales, half-truths, lies, ‘I’ve fixed everything - no one has ever seen anything like it’ stuff…but it’s low-energy & feels like he’s…mentally slipping. Congress-plz wake up. Plz. #EmperorHasNoClothes.”
Here’s Poynter’s PolitiFact with “Fact-checking Donald Trump’s marathon press briefing at one-year mark of second term.”
Meanwhile, CNN’s Daniel Dale said of Trump’s inaccuracies, “There are just so many. I’m struggling to keep track of it, you know.”
More on Bari Weiss and CBS
Seems as if every day there’s a new story out about CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. The latest is from Variety’s Brian Steinberg: “CBS News Veers Toward Dysfunction Under Bari Weiss Following Gaffes at 60 Minutes, Evening News.”
Steinberg points out all the stumbles CBS News has had in recent weeks, such as rushing Tony Dokoupil into the “CBS Evening News” anchor chair; airing a town hall with Erika Kirk without mainstream ad support; and Weiss yanking a “60 Minutes’” segment that was hours away from being set to air — a move that the “60 Minutes” correspondent, Sharyn Alfonsi, called “political.”
Sources familiar with the CBS News situation tell Steinberg that these blunders “have eroded CBS News’ value and credibility, and can only be fixed if producers and reporters challenge Weiss more regularly.”
Meanwhile, Weiss isn’t slowing down.
Steinberg writes, “By some accounts, Weiss is only getting started. She may be getting ready to focus on ‘CBS Mornings,’ mindful that host Gayle King’s salary — valued at around $15 million a year, according to one person familiar with the network — is no longer viable in a weaker media economy. King is said to be considering various options, including a special correspondent role that would have her making appearances on CBS News properties but not being a regular host, or another that might keep her on the air for another year but at a lower salary, giving her 12 full months to bid farewell to viewers. There are also some expectations Weiss might overhaul the news division’s streaming service, potentially relying more on talk-heavy podcasts.”
Netflix ups the ante
