7 stories that defined America in 2025

The story that has certainly defined 2025 is Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47^th President of the United States. On January 20^th, Trump became the oldest person ever to be inaugurated president and set off a domino effect of events that subsequently shaped the next 11 months. Every single story that follows has Donald Trump at the root of it, and every single story we cut from this article involved Trump as well. Whether you want to argue that Trump’s impact on 2025 has been positive or negative, make no mistake, 2025 was the year of Trump, and unfortunately, it’s shaping up like 2026 will be the year of Trump 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Trump wasted almost no time implementing one of his most impactful directives: ICE deportations. Trump managed to force more than 32,000 ‘illegals’ out of the country during his first 50 days in office, and capped it off by signing off on a $170bn contract to fund the recruitment of new ICE agents. Of course, that massive rise in recruitment also saw a slashing of the list of requirements to become an ICE agent, thus leading to hundreds of complaints being filed against DHS for the use of excessive force. Trump’s deportations defined the summer and fall of 2025. According to POTUS, more than 600,000 people had been deported as of September, and an additional 1.9 million had ‘self-deported’. Nearly 50% of American agricultural workers, and 5% of the American workforce, are estimated to be undocumented.  

In a story that kind of came out of nowhere for most Americans, but ended up defining Fall 2025, the US began conducting airstrikes on naval vessels off the coast of Venezuela on September 2nd under the guise of ‘fighting narco-terrorism’. According to President Trump, the vessels were all transporting illegal drugs into the United States. He blamed cartels like the Tren de Aragua and labelled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as a narco-terrorist himself. Of course, most countries call into question the validity of Maduro’s presidency, but none are doing so in the same style as Trump. 

The US would go on to conduct an additional 19 strikes in the three months, downing 26 vessels and killing 95 people. It’s been confirmed that at least three of the vessels were not carrying illegal drugs, and one vessel was a fishing boat from Colombia. While some international stories fell by the wayside this year, Trump’s actions in the Caribbean Sea haven’t been washed away. The US has now surrounded Venezuela with the largest naval blockade ever seen in the Caribbean, and tensions with the country have never been tighter. Trump has done little to dispel rumours of war, confirming multiple times that the US would be willing to assert its force on the ground in Venezuela. 

If there are two names that could summarize the experience of reading the news in the US during 2025, they are certainly Trump and Epstein. Trump ran on a campaign promising to release the files associated with criminal rapist and sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein, but backtracked on those promises the minute he had the power to fulfill them. Donald Trump had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, having been photographed with the sex-trafficker dozens of times, and making some seriously disturbing comments on the Howard Stern show over the years.

After releasing a small batch of files in February, the Democrats from the House Oversight Committee released 33,000 files from the Epstein catalogue on September 8, 2025, including the infamous ‘birthday book’ created for Jeffrey Epstein by Ghislaine Maxwell. The files contained dozens of references to Donald Trump, and the release kept Epstein’s name above the fold over the Fall.

In what is my runner-up for the story of the year, notable pro-gun conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot at Utah Valley University on September 10, sparking a serious political divide amongst Americans on the subject of political violence. Donald Trump and the MAGA-verse immediately came to the table with anger and empathy for Kirk, something they have historically lacked for the victims of political violence. Charlie Kirk’s name came back into the headlines after the shooting of Hollywood director Rob Reiner. Trump released cruel and insensitive statements on Truth Social after Reiner’s murder, placing Trump himself at the centre of the story.

Charlie Kirk’s murder was an example of just how polarizing his politics were. Kirk survived on sensationalist comments and made a career touring College campuses to debate students much younger than himself. The fallout of Kirk’s murder showcased some double standards seen in partisan media and amongst committed members on either side of the political spectrum.

We didn’t mention this one earlier in the timeline, and it’s not because we missed it. With ICE acting like a violent Gestapo during the summer of 2025, Americans tried to show their government they were fed up. On June 14, more than 4 million Americans across more than 2,000 separate manifestations protested Donald Trumps actions as President of the United States. Protesters claimed Trump was acting as a king, cited his ‘Big Beautiful Bil’, and the violent mass deportations shaking communities across America. The protest was held in parallel to Trump’s ‘Flag Day’ parade, which just so happened to fall on the same day as Trump’s birthday. Trump chose to have a military parade to celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the United States Armed Forces. The parade cost an estimated $50 million, but it’s “peanuts compared to the value” of the event as a whole.

On October 18, America outdid itself, with more than 7 million Americans pounding the pavement at almost 3,000 events. The protests came as the White House continued to peddle Trump as a king, posting images on X portraying Trump as all-powerful royalty. In total, less than 100 arrests were made across the two days, making the protests some of the most powerful demonstrations of peaceful protest in American history.

The story that probably should have defined America this year was the government shutdown in October – the longest in American history. House Speaker Mike Johnson kept Democrats and Republicans out of office for eight weeks, with the shutdown spanning from October 1 to November 12. 43 days that saw federal workers sent home, and SNAP paused, causing serious strain on the almost 42 million Americans who rely on the social service. The government shutdown has seriously hurt Republicans in the polls, with Marjorie Taylor Greene recently claiming that Republicans would struggle in the midterm elections and that she doesn’t see Republicans winning the midterms right now.

With the shutdown and the Epstein files causing a rift in the Republican party, that might be the story of the year. With Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nancy Mace all championing the Epstein Transparency Act, there is a throng of elected Republicans who are putting their voters first, and as Greene said in an interview with CNN, “Republicans will go all in for themselves in order to save their own re-elections.”

Nobody knows what the biggest stories of 2026 will be, but it’s a sure bet that Donald Trump and his Republican caucus will be at the centre of most of them.