On February 12, 2026, Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin stood in the Roosevelt Room and repealed the endangerment finding. The finding was a 2009 determination that greenhouse gases from cars, trucks, and power plants endanger public health. It was the legal foundation for nearly every federal climate regulation written since.

Trump's First Year Back: The World Tilts Toward Beijing

Central bankers do not sign public letters. They do not intervene in other countries' domestic politics. But in January 2026, twelve of them did exactly that to defend Jerome Powell. The dollar's dominance in global finance made the Fed's independence their fight too.

The US trade deficit narrowed to $29.4 billion in October 2025—the smallest gap since mid-2009 and a thirty-nine percent narrowing from September 2025. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected approximately $59 billion.

On Wednesday, 7 January 2026, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he had ‘determined’ the military budget for 2027 should be $1.5 trillion—not $1 trillion—for ‘the Good’ of the country in ‘these very troubled and dangerous’ times.

The year ended. The wars did not.

The inauguration was not a beginning. It was a consequence.

Nations have mechanisms to guard against the leader behaving like a king. In the case of the USA, courts and Congress must be the guards. But when they fail, authoritarianism slowly takes hold.