Donald Trump has obviously had a chaotic and damaging second term so far, and he’ll soon have completed his first year of it. From invading American cities with ICE and the military to the destruction of longstanding government institutions, there’s a lot to be concerned about, and it can be difficult to keep it all in perspective.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, has been closely following and documenting Trump’s abuses of power and his attacks on different parts of the federal government. He said there are a couple different categories of harm you can look at while tracking the damage Trump has done.
“I think there are two broad categories of injuries here. One is in terms of human life and misery,” Moynihan said. “One that is harder to categorize and measure, and is more long-term, is the damage to our institutions.”
Moynihan said in terms of injuries to human life and general misery, you first have to look at Trump’s dismantling of USAID.
“According to credible estimates, this will cause millions of people to lose their lives. We are already seeing people die from that, which seems inexcusable,” Moynihan said. “The scale of that here is almost unimaginable.”
Another major one in this category is “the assault on public health and vaccines,” Moynihan said, with RFK Jr. leading the way on that at the Department of Health and Human Services. This will have long-term effects on public health in America. The third thing in this category, he said, is the One Big Beautiful Bill, which dealt a serious blow to the social safety net.
“This feels like the most dramatic change to the American safety net since welfare reform in the 1990s, and actually potentially larger than that,” Moynihan said.
In terms of how our institutions have been harmed, Moynihan said the use of ICE and the military to assail American cities is part of that. This has truly changed the fabric of American society in significant ways.
“There are masked agents in unmarked vehicles grabbing immigrants or sometimes citizens,” Moynihan said. “They are yanking them from the streets or from their homes and putting them in places where their families can’t reach them. We are actually living through—it’s not an exaggeration to call this a police state.”
He said you also have to look at the Project 2025-style mass firings of civil servants. This was done through DOGE, with Elon Musk leading the way, but it’s also been happening beyond that.
“Trump has deeply damaged state capacity. We’ve lost a couple hundred thousand or more public employees in a very disorganized fashion, where I suspect the people who left were the most capable employees,” Moynihan said.
Finally, one of the greatest harms to this country that has occurred on Trump’s watch is simply how he’s made America seem like an irresponsible, cruel, untrustworthy ally on the world stage. That will also have lasting effects.
“If you look at America on the world stage now, we are simply a less credible figure than we were in the past,” Moynihan said.
It’s only been a year, and there will surely be more alarming things to document going forward, but a lot has happened in this year. So far, the public doesn’t seem too happy with what Trump has been doing, considering his abysmal poll numbers. Perhaps that will lead to him facing even more pushback as he continues to threaten people’s lives, their health and our democracy.
