SCOTT LUDWIG: Living through the Year of the Snake

According to the Chinese zodiac, 2025 was the Year of the Snake. What a coincidence. Here as well. Only our snake didn’t slither on the ground. Rather, it slid into the Oval Office.

Flipping through a recent issue of The Week, I was reminded of what the country had experienced in the first year of the new administration in the White House. One column in particular, The Year in Review, served as a road map that will take us through the past 12 months.

In January, the Biggest Snake of All, Donald Trump, took office as the 47th President of the United States — no thanks to me or the vote of any sensible person I know. Immediately after taking office, Trump signs a plethora of executive orders that includes (in no particular order): withdrawal from the World Health Organization; established DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by Trump’s biggest campaign donor, Elon Musk; and terminated DEI programs – diversity, equity, and inclusion – throughout the government.

But why stop there? Trump also pardoned almost 1,600 people who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; allowed ICE agents to raid homes and workplaces of suspected undocumented immigrants, and blamed the horrific crash of a military helicopter and an airplane on DEI.

February offered more of the same. Two of the most unqualified men for their jobs, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., become the Secretary of Defense and the nation’s Health Secretary, respectively. DOGE lays off thousands of government employees – many of whom were later asked to return to their jobs in a federal game of Whac-A-Mole – and cuts funding for a number of federal programs.

None of the cuts was more damaging than the shutdown of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is responsible for providing food and medical assistance to poor countries throughout the world. And Trump and his mini-me, J.D. Vance, embarrass themselves and an entire country teaming up to browbeat Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

In March, Trump places heavy tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada – although he gives Canada an out if it becomes our 51st state. Approximately 200 Venezuelan migrants are transported to CECOT, a terrorist confinement center in El Salvador, by virtue of Trump invocating the Alien Enemies Act. Hegseth uses a commercial messaging app and inadvertently shares details of U.S. military operations in Yemen with the editor-in-chief of a nationwide periodical. Trump declares English is our “official language.”

April brought about the inexplicable “Liberation Day” that initiates a sequence of tariffs, higher tariffs, and/or reduced tariffs, all depending on which way Trump’s hair is blowing on any given day (at least that’s how it appears).

In May, Trump accepts a gift from the royal family of Qatar, a $400 million Boeing 747 that he says will be used as a temporary Air Force One and will be (wink wink) “donated” to his presidential library after he leaves office. And Trump’s biggest campaign donor has the good sense to bid DOGE a fond farewell.

In June, Trump and Musk engage in a spat on social media (my personal favorite, Musk saying that Trump “is in the Epstein files.”). Trump fires back by threatening to end all government contracts with any company owned by Musk. Trump sends 4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines to the City of Angels to allegedly calm the daily protests against immigration raids that took regular citizens into custody along with hundreds of undocumented migrants.

Trump announces seven military bases will revert to names honoring Confederate soldiers. Health Secretary Kennedy fires every single member of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, replacing them with every Tom, Dick and Harry he could find who were critical of vaccines. Trump claims a clandestine bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites “totally obliterated” their nuclear program without producing any evidence to prove it’s true. The U.S. Agency for International Development is shut down.

To be continued …