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Opinion: Donald Trump's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad second term

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Opinion: Donald Trump's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad second term

Millions of us are justifiably focused on seeing that Donald Trump is held to account for what he’s allegedly done in the past.

Scheming to flip the legitimate 2020 election result and resisting the peaceful transfer of power, a first for U.S. presidents. Making off with top-secret documents and conspiring to hide them from the feds. Falsifying business records to keep hush money paid to a porn star a secret from voters in 2016.

We mustn’t lose sight, however, of what Trump will do, if — despite all that baggage — he defeats Joe Biden to become president again. His fever dreams are no secret. He’s told us, and his henchmen have, too, in interviews and in exhaustive, scary detail in their so-called Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump term.

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Jackie Calmes

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Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

Among Trump’s first acts? Turning the historically independent Justice Department into his personal law firm, chock-full of taxpayer-paid Roy Cohns ready to dump the criminal cases against the boss.

And then, despite Trump’s arguments to the Supreme Court that presidents must have legal immunity (something no other president ever sought), he’ll sic his government prosecutors on Biden. As he told Time magazine for its recent cover story, “Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” What crimes? Trump doesn’t say and his Republican flunkies in the House have come up with bubkes after more than a year of investigation.

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Focusing on Trump’s plans is important in its own right. But it’s all the more crucial for voters given that accountability for his past acts is proving so elusive, thanks to Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and the rookie Trump judge handling the classified documents case in Florida. They’re indulging his sand-in-the-gears legal tactics and engineering their own. The hush money case could well be the only one to reach a verdict before November.

That Trump 2.0 hasn’t gotten more attention is a reflection of just how normalized his outrageousness has become — and how distracted voters and the media have been by the prosecutions of Trump 1.0.

In any other era, proposals like these would be big news: The National Guard, and perhaps the military, too, rounding up and deporting an estimated 11 million people who came to this country illegally, most of them years ago, and who now hold jobs, pay taxes and raise children who are citizens. Huge detention camps for migrants. National Guard troops policing city streets at presidential whim. A rollback of climate change programs to “drill, baby, drill.”

For voters not inclined to wade through the voluminous Project 2025, Time’s cover story provided a CliffsNotes version, “If He Wins…How Far Trump Would Go.” He sat for two interviews with the reporter, reflecting his longtime obsession with being a Time coverboy; pre-presidency, he had a fake cover created and hung framed copies in his clubs until the magazine asked that he remove them. (The truly “fake news” headline: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS…EVEN TV!”)

His second-term agenda reflects lessons gleaned from the first. Chiefly this one, which is how the Time piece begins: “He was too nice.”

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Trump unleashed would only hire advisors who agree that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He’d “absolutely” pardon every rioter convicted and charged with Jan. 6 crimes (more than 800 have pleaded guilty or been convicted by juries). He’d gut the civil service and revert to a spoils system of MAGA loyalists. He’d spend federal funds as he wanted, not as annual budget laws stipulated. And because “there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country,” he’d look into changing laws that are “very unfair” to white Americans.

Trump would almost certainly spur inflation by raising tariffs at least 10% on all imports and up to 100% on Chinese goods. He simply dismisses multiple analyses that found his earlier tariffs on steel and aluminum imports raised prices for U.S. manufacturers and consumers and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. Steel companies “love me because I saved their industry,” he said. In fact, whole operations shuttered and the number of steelworker jobs shrank over his term.

On foreign policy, Trump stood by his talk of encouraging the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies he believes aren’t spending enough on their own defense. He told Time he “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine unless Europe ponies up equally, which — contrary to Trump’s claims — it already is doing.

The former president fell back on his new states’ rights stance on abortion to dismiss all questions about the issue. Say red states want to monitor women’s pregnancies to police compliance with their abortion bans. “I think they might do that,” he said, and “it’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not” with that.

Yet Trump might not be as hands-off as this suggests. Project 2025 envisions federal regulatory agencies imposing anti-abortion policies and the revival of the 19th-century Comstock Act to criminalize mailing abortion pills, now the main method to end pregnancies. Trump’s silence about all that is how his allies want it; everyone knows the abortion-rights issue is a loser for him and Republicans in general.

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“I just don’t want him to shoot off his mouth,” one anti-abortion ally told the New York Times recently. “I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election.”

And the more we fixate on his current legal travails, to the exclusion of divining his future plans, the easier that cover-up will be.

@jackiekcalmes

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Video: Why Were These C.E.O.s in Beijing With Trump?

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Video: Why Were These C.E.O.s in Beijing With Trump?

new video loaded: Why Were These C.E.O.s in Beijing With Trump?

Some of America’s most powerful C.E.O.s accompanied President Trump to Beijing during his summit with President Xi Jinping of China. Our reporter Ana Swanson explains what they were hoping to gain from the trip.

By Ana Swanson, Nour Idriss, Nikolay Nikolov and James Surdam

May 15, 2026

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Senator John Kennedy introduces America to ‘Margaret,’ his elliptical trainer named after Thatcher

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Senator John Kennedy introduces America to ‘Margaret,’ his elliptical trainer named after Thatcher

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Margaret Thatcher once ran Britain. John Kennedy’s “Margaret” mostly runs him into the ground.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., is going viral after posting a tongue-in-cheek workout video introducing followers to “Margaret” — his elliptical trainer named after former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher — while wearing a red bandanna and speaking directly to the camera from his Louisiana carport.

“Hey X, I have somebody I’d like you to meet,” Kennedy says at the start of the minute-long video posted to social media Friday.

“This is Margaret. Margaret is my elliptical trainer. I named Margaret after Margaret Thatcher because both kick butt and take names.”

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ERIC SWALWELL’S ‘CRINGE’ WORKOUT VIDEO MOCKED FOR BENCHING LIGHT WEIGHT

Senator John Kennedy, R-La., posted the video showing his unconventional at-home workout routine with elliptical “Margaret” to social media channels Friday. (@SenJohnKennedy via X)

Kennedy goes on to explain that “Margaret” lives outside under the carport for three reasons: the machine is too heavy to move, his wife “won’t let” him bring it inside and because he enjoys getting in a workout during Louisiana summers.

The Senator said he enjoys working outside during Louisiana summers, a detail that drew disbelief from many viewers familiar with the state’s famously brutal heat and humidity.

“As you can see, Margaret, my elliptical trainer, is out here under my carport in Louisiana,” Kennedy says. “After Margaret kicks my butt, I look for air conditioning.”

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The surreal, self-aware clip quickly drew thousands of reactions online, with users roasting Kennedy’s bandanna look while also praising the senator’s everyman personality.

SEN KENNEDY PRAISES FETTERMAN AS A ‘TOTAL BANGER,’ WHO ‘DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN’ ABOUT ANGERING LIBERALS

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., talks to reporters in the basement of the U.S. Capitol on July 31, 2025, as Senate lawmakers work to finish legislative business before the August recess. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“You are rocking the dadgum crap outta that bandana,” one user wrote. “I thought you were representing the Bloods for a minute. Tell Margaret I think she’s cute but evil.”

Others praised Kennedy’s personality and down-home delivery style.

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“You are a gem to us normal folk Mr. Kennedy. Live long and prosper!” one supporter posted.

“Senator Kennedy is that kind of Southerner that makes you feel you’re sitting on the front porch having some bit of common sense enlighten you in that poetic Southern way,” another wrote.

The Louisiana Republican has long cultivated a folksy, humorous public image that often breaks through online with colorful one-liners and unconventional social media moments.

Sen. John Kennedy speaks before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 21, 2022. (J. Scott Applewhite/Reuters)

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Kennedy ended the video with a line that only added to the internet’s fascination.

“My work here is done,” he said. “And I can see myself out.”

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Supreme Court turns away Virginia Democrats seeking to reinstate new voting map

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Supreme Court turns away Virginia Democrats seeking to reinstate new voting map

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday turned down an appeal from Virginia Democrats whose new voter-approved state election map was canceled by the state’s Supreme Court.

The justices made no comment, and the legal outcome came as no surprise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has no authority to review or reverse rulings by state judges interpreting their state’s constitution — unless the decision turned on federal law or the U.S. Constitution.

But the Virginia ruling came as a political shock, particularly after 3 million voters had cast ballots and narrowly approved a new election map that would favor Democrats in 10 of its 11 congressional districts.

That would have represented an increase of four seats for Democrats in the House of Representatives.

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Even worse for Democrats, the court setback in Virginia came a week after the Supreme Court’s ruling in a Louisiana case had bolstered Republicans.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act and freed Republican-controlled states in the South to dismantle districts that were drawn to favor Black Democrats.

In the two weeks since then, the GOP has flipped seven districts in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida.

The Virginia Supreme Court decision pointed to a procedural flaw that turned on the definition of an “election.”

To amend the state Constitution, Virginia lawmakers must adopt the proposal twice — once before a “general election” and a second time after the election. It is then submitted to the voters.

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Last fall, Democrats proposed to amend the state Constitution to permit a mid-decade redistricting.

However, by a 4-3 vote, the state justices said the General Assembly flubbed the first approval because it took place on Oct. 31 of last year, just five days before the election.

By then, they said, about 40% of the voters had cast early ballots.

In defense of the Legislature, the state’s attorneys said the proposed amendment was approved before election day, which complies with the state Constitution.

But the majority explained “the noun ‘election’ must be distinguished from the noun phrase ‘election day.’ ”

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It reasoned that because early voters had already cast ballots before the constitutional amendment was first adopted, the proposal was not approved before the election.

The dissenters said the election took place on “election day” and the proposal had been adopted before that time.

The state’s lawyers adopted that view in their appeal and argued that under federal law, the election takes place on election day.

But the Supreme Court turned away the appeal with no comment.

The result is that a state amendment that won approval twice before both houses of the Legislature and in a statewide vote was judged to have failed.

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The state says it will use the current map, which had elected Democrats to the House in six districts and Republicans in five.

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