Personal reflections on a Trumpian 2025

The implications of a year in Trump's new America and why I started tracking Trump - and why I'm not stopping.

Three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, I wrote my most-read substack of the year (by far) called “So this is how liberty dies”. Almost 11 months later, and it holds up pretty well - unfortunately.

In February, I wrote:

“Seeing the actions of the last three weeks as a whole, with signs of escalation in the coming weeks, it surely cannot be denied that the US is progressing rapidly along the path to an authoritarian regime”

The rush of authoritarian actions continued all year. Dissent increasingly comes with a cost and Americans’ civil rights are being eroded.

In just the last two weeks:

• the Trump administration has argued it is constitutional to withhold funding from Blue states based on partisan politics;

• The administration has removed funding from the American Academy of Pediatrics after it criticised Health Secretary RFK Jr;

• The Deparment of Defense has started a sham investigation into Senator Mark Kelly for participating in a video reminding the military that it does not need to follow illegal orders;

• Trump attacked the New York Times as a “TRUE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE” and said CBS should “Put Colbert to sleep” , threatening to sue the network;

• The administration has dismantled the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) which was one of the world’s foremost climate research institutes;

• The administration has halted construction of several wind farms citing ‘security risks’;

• and Vice President Vance echoed White Supremacist language in a recent speech, celebrating that “In America, you don’t have to apologize for being White anymore”. Meanwhile, the US is holding a record number of immigrants in detention and stepping up its deportation efforts.

Implications for the rest of the world

Thinking about the consequences for us watching in horror from the outside, I wrote in February:

“It seems unbelievable to state baldly that the US is a threat to the global economy, to global health and to global stability. But it is, and the sooner this is acknowledged the better.”

This remains true but what has changed is that this is no longer unbelievable. The global economy has been rocked not just by Trump’s tariffs, but by their unpredictable application. While originally touted as a way to ‘bring back American manufacturing’, instead they’ve become Trump’s bullying tool of choice, used to punish a country for an advert he doesn’t like (Canada), a court case he doesn’t like (Brazil), regulation he doesn’t like (the EU), or simply because he doesn’t understand that some countries are too poor to buy American goods.

Global health has been decimated, with millions projected to die in the coming years because of America’s defunding of USAid, HIV prevention (in Pepfar) and the international vaccine alliance (GAVI). The world is less stable as Trump has consistently sided with autocrats, undermined allies, launches air strikes at will and seems about to start a war with Venezuela.

What sadly hasn’t changed is the next thing I wrote.

“our political leaders seem paralysed, unable to talk about the US in the same language they use for traditionally inimical countries and hoping that the bully’s eye passes them over. Some international bodies and scientific societies are standing against Trump’s policies, but too many are quietly acquiescing.”

The US boot looms large over Western democracies. The US is not just pre-eminent in its economic might and military might, but America is at the heart of how our countries and economies function. For the UK, as for many other countries, the US supplies our military. It is American companies that do everything from powering the internet, to providing cloud computing, to providing the operating systems our computers depend on (like Windows or MacOS), to supplying the latest Large Language Models (like ChatGPT), even to running the GPS that powers our maps. We are in the horrible position of realising that our protector is actually running a protection racket and it will take years, if not decades, to build European independence and it cannot be done alone. I fear the UK will suffer greatly for its post-Brexit isolationism.

If this sounds alarmist, then you’ve not been paying attention. Individual judges serving on the International Criminal Court have already found themselves frozen out of daily life by US sanctions. One of them, Nicolas Guillou, explained that all his “accounts with American companies, such as Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal and others, have been closed...European banks, cowed by the threats of US Treasury officials in Washington, rushed to close his accounts. The compliance departments of European companies, acting as the valets of the US authorities, refused to provide him services.”

Implications for me personally

When I wrote the original February piece, I had logged and categorised 76 authoritarian-like actions of the regime. I ended the piece by saying

“Tracking these authoritarian moves in real time is overwhelming, but crucial for recognizing patterns. If people find it useful, I’ll keep my live table of actions updated in a Google Sheet”

Well, I did keep going. I was joined by volunteers like Sandy Laping who has steadfastly helped me keep track of actions - on weekdays, at weekends, on holiday, and even over Christmas. Some like Sheila Brooks have fact checked and are quietly working on categorising actions in other ways (e.g. by the US constitution). Others, like Pete Donaldson, built a website that allows people to view, search, filter and download the actions. We’ve been gradually improving the website - all in our spare time. The TrumpActionTracker now stands at over 2100 recorded actions and informs thousands of visitors every week.

Because of the Tracker, I’ve been asked to be involved in projects such as the Anti-Autocracy Handbook, I’ve given many talks and done many podcasts about what is happening, and I started a project in the UK to protect our own scientific institutions. Most recently, volunteers like Matthew and Ell have helped me break things down via YouTube to reach new audiences.

Honestly, I feel out of my depth - I’m a scientist and health services researcher, not a political scientist, nor an expert in authoritarian regimes or how to fight them. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. But I also can’t simply stand by when it feels like we’ve been catapulted back into the 1930s.

I started to track Trump’s actions to help me make sense of it, and then to help others make sense of it. I’m continuing because it’s become a contemporaneous record of what is happening - a bearing witness to the loss of American freedom, tolerance and democracy. It’s also there as a warning for us and the populist anti-democratic movements in our countries, that are also increasingly adopting the language and symbols of white supremacy.

As someone with German parents, who lived through the 2nd World War and grew up in a Germany grappling with the enormity of its crimes, I had believed that the imagery of the Nazi years was gone for good. Seeing it return via the US Department of Homeland Security social media feed has been horrifying.

So here I am, with my amazing group of volunteers, and we will continue to do our small part as 2026 unfolds. Thank you so much to the many subscribers who have taken the trouble to email or leave supportive comments - it honestly does mean a lot.

Wishing you all a very happy New Year!