Jay Kuo provides a good wrap-up of 10 reasons why Trump's agenda is failing.
And why that should provide some hope:
1. The DOGE disaster is trying to be shoved under the rug, but the after-effects keep biting them in the ass
2. The Albrego Garcia fuck-up to the point where the DoJ is now under investigation changed the rules of engagment
3. The troop deployment disaster(s)...by now TrumpCo. likely pictures troops installed in all major cities in blue states to help enforce his power after a coup.
4. The failure of censorship and persecutions of 'enemies'...with courts striking down one after the other of the malicious prosecution cases
5. The Trump economy disaster...between tariffs and a total failure to understand how a consumer driven economy will work, Trump's decisions are likely politically disastrous.
6. TrumpCo. re-districting does not appear to be working out. Even red states see it as an authoritarian, anti-democratic attempt to render Congress as only a rubber stamp for the Executive branch.
7. Trump's failure to make Ukraine surrender as Europe and other allies step up and the US presidency is exposed more and more as a branch of the Kremlin kleptocracy
8. Trump's rapacious greed and narcissism is losing him support
9. Trump's MAGA is fracturing and losing supporters as his policies start to hurt them to the point of ruination.
10. Epstein, Epstein, Epstein
And I would add:
11. Trump's health is visibly failing at an almost measurable rate. We know he has had some strokes and that he is being treated prophylactically for either cardio-pulmonary issues or dementia
As we close out 2025, some reasons to feel hopeful—and to press our attack in 2026.
statuskuo.substack.com
I am not as optimistic about the upcoming year though.
1.0 DOGE, while a disaster for so many aid programs and research, has gutted agencies of expertise and experience.
2.0 Albrego is still a poster child with a target on his back and has obscured the other real horrors of the TrumpCo. deportation machine involving hundreds of detention/prison camps in operation
across the country. Extraordinary renditions continue to third countries only without the phot ops for politicians.
3.0 DC is still occupied by federal troops and TrumpCo. says other troop deployments are just being 'paused'
4.0 TrumpCo's hate list is long and broad. Defeats don't seem to mean anything. Expect Jack Smith to be charged with lying to Congress. He expects prosecution to follow his testimony.
5.0 Trump's core supporters think other countries pay the tariffs and the economy is Biden's fault. That isn't going to change. And all the signs point toward a huge correction in the markets this year and collapse
of more of the main street economy as the billionaires play the recession to acquire almost total control over fewer and fewer conglomerates.
6.0 There is nothing to actually point to an absolute shift in Congress to Democratic control...and US voters have made it clear they don't vote strategically at the federal level...so while in Canada, we would be looking to force a balance of power, Americans will continue to vote against their own best interests because....something something
7.0 The absence of the US support for Ukraine in order to let the Kremlin oligarchs keep the minerals, oil and gas in the regions they have stolen so that TrumpCo. gets a share is likely to mean that
Ulkraine will be forced to cede territory permanently...and will ultimately be invaded again by PutinCo. as part of the Kremlin's ;omg term strategy of regaining all Soviet empire territories. Even worse, TrumpCo.
is adopting this imperialist strategy to attempt to lay claim to neighbouring countries like Greenland and Canada. The division of the world into spheres of influence under the guise of ending war as
a few hundred trillionaire Plutocrats enjoy a global command of resources and markets is really such a medieval construct. The last times this happened, we had WW1 and then, as result, WW2.
8.0 The majority of US Americans still seem to have some bizarre notion that greed and narcissism are admirable. They all want to live vicariously through the celebrity and power and luxury people like Trump
and the obscenely wealthy exude. Until people really begin to understand that oligarchs do not create wealth, only consume it while laying waste to everything to try to sustain this narcissim and greed,
everyone else will sacrifice everything to them.
9.0 Until Trump is dead, MAGA will not cease to be a potent force for racism, repression and hate against anyone who is not white, US born, Cis het and at the core of it, misogynist as well.
10.0 Trump and most of the other super powerful men in the Epstein files will never be really exposed. Not even for the trafficking, money laundering or rape of children The release of another 'million pages' of records is designed to bury the crimes notexpose them.
And while I want to put my faith in chemistry and physics and be alive to see the collapse of the corrupted body of Trump...like most really evil men, he will live on to the point where he will unleash really horrible
actions designed to hurt as many people as possible when he sees the end coming. Although with luck, he won't see it.