One Year After Trump’s Second Victory, The Right Is More Emboldened Than Ever

A rhetoric of cruelty has become increasingly normalized.

It has been one year since President Donald Trump was elected to the Oval Office for the second time.

Even though only 12 months have passed since the Nov. 5, 2024, presidential election — and even less time since Trump actually took office — some of the most extreme factions in the country and the government have been given the green light to tear down public institutions, democracy and society as we know it.

Some of this is connected to whom Trump has in his inner circle and what lessons he learned from his first time around. The president has surrounded himself with advisers and officials whose requirements appear to be sufficient loyalty to him and willingness to enact the most extreme parts of his agenda.

Many of the most prominent Trump world figures have been pushing increasingly far-right agendas that would have been unthinkable just a year ago. There’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who openly shared a post from a right-wing pastor who doesn’t believe women should be able to vote. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has been the driving force behind an extensive anti-immigration policy that has swept up people for deportation on the thinnest of pretexts. And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doled out dangerous medical advice during a measles outbreak.

“In the first Trump administration, there were more people in government who were trying to slow down some of the most illegal policies,” Heidi Altman, the vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told HuffPost. “Those people are no longer in place.”