The first year of President Donald Trump’s second term has been filled with absurdities. It began with a movie trailer-esque video plastered on the White House’s official website the day of the inauguration, complete with superhero music and a slow-motion shot of an eagle soaring.
It continued with the brief ban and subsequent revival of TikTok, which thanked Trump for his efforts in restoring the platform, according to ABC News.
Trump’s term only got increasingly weird and terrifying from there, with ICE raids, discussions of reopening Alcatraz and the deployment of military troops in American cities. It culminated in the capture of Venezuela’s president and attempts to acquire Greenland.
Given these unprecedented and seemingly nonsensical moves, my initial idea with this article was a “tier list” of the most absurd moments in Trump’s first year.
But with every breaking news notification I receive, an absurdity tier list seems simply tone deaf.
Every unprecedented headline distracts from the damage his policies are causing to real lives, both abroad and at home. Yet big corporations and law firms are bending the knee, and Congress seems to be failing us.
But I don’t need to harp on the bad — you only need to open any news app to see the horrifying results of this administration’s authoritarian tendencies.
So here’s a new angle: the first year of Trump’s second term told in stories of American resistance and resilience.
No Kings protests
According to a 2021 article published in the Journal of Democracy, there has been a steady retreat of democratic nations. In 2016, with the first election of Donald Trump, the United States became an “eroding liberal democracy.”
But Americans are pushing back against the rise of “would-be” autocrats.
In June 2025, as reported by the American Civil Liberties Union, five million people participated in planned protests nationwide to drown out the president’s military celebration scheduled for the same day.
Four months later, the second No Kings protest was even bigger. According to the official website, the movement drew over seven million protesters across 2,700 cities and towns, including our own little Lexington. With American flags, resistance signs and inflatable dinosaur costumes, the country took to the streets as a united front.
Lexington has seen other demonstrations outside of No Kings, according to previous reporting from the Phi. Every Friday since February, Hearts for Democracy, a small bipartisan and Lexington-based group, has gathered at the corner of West Nelson Street, equipped with “I Love Democracy” posters.
ICE Resistance
The two No Kings demonstrations are far from the only protests this past year. The nationwide resistance to increasingly frequent and violent raids and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers has made headlines.
According to The New York Times, resistance to ICE raids started small in Los Angeles in early 2025, then spread across the country.
Small acts of communities and individuals standing in defiance of armed federal agents have been truly striking.
The only tools the small groups and lone citizens have are orange whistles and phone cameras pitted against ICE agents dressed in masks and tactical gear, equipped with tear gas, pepper spray and — to recent devastating effects — guns.
Minneapolis has witnessed the latest of these clashes. Against the backdrop of the fatal shootings of Renee Good, a legal observer and protester, by a federal agent, the BBC reported that hundreds of Minnesota businesses have closed in protest of ICE presence in the state. And in the largest anti-ICE protest so far, thousands of people braved the minus-10-degree weather to march.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani
Throughout 2025, it was not hard to believe that hate is winning. But the election of the Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani as the first Muslim mayor of the most populous city in the country is strong evidence to the contrary.
Drawing on a base of young, first-time voters, Mamdani made history in November. As reported by NPR, the election drew the largest electoral turnout since 1969.
While a seemingly amicable conversation between Mamdani and Trump in November has been one of the oddest scenes to come out of the White House all year (no one is immune to the new mayor’s charm), Mamdani’s campaign and policies are in opposition to nearly everything Trump stands for.
His youthful platform has put a fresh face on the Democratic Party, which had its head hung since the major defeat of the 2024 presidential election.
The new generation is here, and — to the shock of nearly everyone — it is energized, engaged and ready to reverse the tide.
Untold stories
Small yet courageous acts of resistance at the individual level go unreported.
An epidemic of national ICE raids has turned the nightmarish possibility of being ripped from one’s family into an all-too-common reality.
Yet undocumented immigrants still get up every morning. They still move through their days. They continue to exhibit the extraordinary bravery necessary to simply exist.
As reported by the Human Rights Campaign, there have been nearly 400 fatal attacks against transgender people since 2013, yet the Trump administration has doubled down against gender-affirming care and the erasure of trans and queer identities.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order stating that the U.S. will only recognize two sexes. Not even a month later, in a move condemned by the Stonewall Inn, the Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative and the National Parks Conservation Association, the National Park Service website changed LGBTQ+ to LGB and removed any mention of the essential role trans women like Marsha Johnson and Sylvia Rivera played in the Stonewall Riots.
But trans Americans live proudly, even today, in secret or out loud. Trans kids go to school despite threats of bullying from other students. Trans women of color, who, according to GLAAD, fall victim to the majority of fatal crimes targeted at trans individuals, still hold their heads high and risk their lives every time they step out of their homes. Queer people continue to remember the pivotal role of trans women in their history and the importance of trans Americans to the community.
There are so many other stories like these: women who cross state borders to get access to safe abortions, doctors who perform necessary medical procedures in the face of losing their license, teachers who still uphold lesson plans that preserve truth and value inclusivity and librarians who keep banned books on their shelves.
So, yeah, this year has been more than challenging. Trump and his administration have threatened the lives of so many already marginalized communities, the very foundation of American democracy and the fundamental beliefs of this country.
Yet we have persisted. And I believe that we still can — for however long his reign continues — because no one wants a king.
