It’s hard to find much integrity or decency in the U.S. government in the past 11 months.
I hate to say that during what’s supposed to be a season of peace on earth and good will to all (yes, to women and children as well as men). Still, it’s important to remember not only what Donald Trump and his Project 2025ers have done to our country but also that many of the problems they caused and the threats they pose didn’t even exist a year ago.
They’ve set us on a path for more sickness and destructive climate change. They’re hamstringing crucial programs while showering the ultra-wealthy with tax breaks. They’ve stacked their administration and the courts with people who embrace their authoritarian agenda.
Trump has made good on his pledge to attack anyone who has disagreed with him or held him accountable. And in his actions as president, he’s more deranged than he was at his campaign rallies.
He’s lied ceaselessly for years, so it’s no surprise that we’re expected to believe that facts are false, war is peace, brutality and bigotry are spiritual, and evil is good.
In other ways, things have turned out even worse than I feared.
I expected xenophobia, though not the indiscriminate quotas, the masked ICE marauders and the torture chambers the administration calls detention centers.
I expected attacks on the media while thinking more of its most prominent CEOs would fight back.
I expected Trump to favor Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter what terrible acts of war they commit, but I never thought he’d meddle in foreign governments, talk about annexing Greenland and Canada, or agitate for a vanity war against Venezuela.
I didn’t think AI would be unleashed so soon, and I didn’t expect the GOP Congress to cede its power and responsibilities so easily.
These are just some of the reasons I dread the coming year. As Trump himself said at the Mount Airy Casino Resort earlier this month, “We have three years and two months to go. And you know what that is in Trump time? Three years and two months is called eternity.”
He was exaggerating as usual, but the past 11 months alone have seemed endless.
If there’s anything we should have learned this year, it’s that those in the Trump/Project 2025 orbit will stop at nothing to further enrich and empower themselves.
It’s up to us, any and all patriots who want to preserve and expand diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and to keep protecting and promoting truth, expertise and human rights. No matter what the Trump/Project 2025 administration says, those are the ideals and principles that made America great.
When historian/present-day chronicler Heather Cox Richardson interviewed Hillary Clinton and “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda last month, both went further back in history than Election Night 2024 to drive this point home.
Miranda praised the Broadway musical “Suffs” for its depiction of the conflict between the deferential lobbyists and the passionate demonstrators in the women’s suffrage movement.
But the lesson is that it took all of them, including “the folks in the street” and “the folks who have access to power” for women to get the right to vote, he said. “So it really is all hands on deck.”
Clinton said it’s a “sad commentary” that Trump and others are trying to whitewash U.S. history by eliminating or minimizing slavery, Jim Crow and other atrocities.
“What keeps me going is that people stood up and they spoke out,” she said. “We even fought a war over it, for heaven’s sake, and we kept, you know, trying to do better.”
More recently, she noted, 2021 Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa said that inspiration spreads as quickly as anger.
“But people have to do it, and do it effectively.” Clinton said.
She reminded the audience that we each have a voice as well as a vote, “and that voice needs to be lifted on behalf of the true, exhilarating, frustrating, triumphant history of the real America, not the version that some people want to impose upon us.”
It’s not just about history, either. As 2026 approaches, we must also raise our voices for the real America to keep this administration from imposing its version upon us.
If we don’t, who will?
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.
Image: Nano Banana
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Josephine
December 29, 2025 at 7:30 am
I agree. We all have to speak up and do something, even something small makes a difference. I too did not think it would be as bad as it has become. I remember trying to educate people about project 2025 during the 2024 election, and always ended the discussion with, “You won’t recognize our country by July”. This has proven unfortunately to be true. We can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines. As Senator Kelly has stated, “Stand Up.”
Howard Pryda
January 4, 2026 at 12:06 am
Looking forward to your next article praising Maduro.