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LOADINGERROR LOADING 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. Advertisement 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.” Advertisement But it’s not just government officials who have felt fortified in their beliefs in the last year: The constellation of right-wing groups seeking to push an anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-democracy agenda have been reveling in the last year, moving the goalposts further and further as they are increasingly emboldened by the rhetoric coming from the highest echelons of government. Conservative activists, red state governors and lawmakers are suddenly challenging long-standing policies and precedents that have been widely considered settled laws. Advocacy groups have been pushing to put the Ten Commandments in every public classroom, despite the First Amendment which bars the government from establishing a religion. Louisiana became the first state to implement such a law in 2024, and when Trump got reelected, several red states hurried to pass similar measures. Then there’s Florida’s move to end vaccine mandates for public school children despite the countless lives that vaccines have saved. Advertisement There’s even a movement to end the constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry, even though the Supreme Court’s landmark decision asserted the right barely a decade ago. “Not only are they getting what they want, they’re pushing for more,” Rachel Carroll Rivas, the interim director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told HuffPost. Trump and his supporters claim that his victory in 2024 means his ultra-conservative agenda for America is popular. Advertisement “The people of America gave @realDonaldTrump a crystal clear mandate for change tonight,” Elon Musk, who served as a special government employee from January to July 2025, posted on X on election night. “We The People made our voices heard by re-electing President Trump in a historic landslide to save our country,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a major Trump ally, said in a statement after Trump was declared the victor. The data, however, doesn’t support that idea. Trump won the national vote by only 1.5%, one of the smallest margins in recent history, and did not crack 50% of the popular vote. Nor are his policies popular: A March 2025 Pew Research poll found broad support for deporting at least some immigrants who are here without authorization, but those same respondents didn’t believe that immigrants with jobs or children who were born in the U.S. should be deported, a stark contrast to how the administration’s indiscriminate detainments and deportations are actually being carried out. Advertisement “If they think [mass deportations] are popular, they’re wrong,” Altman said. “Many people didn’t believe they were voting for this.” Trump has been vocalizing anti-immigrant sentiment since he first announced he was running for office. The administration implemented a myriad of harsh immigration policies, including what became known as family separations for undocumented migrants. Under the measure, adults crossing the border illegally would be separated from their children so the adults could be arrested and referred for prosecution. The public outcry at the time, fueled by photos of sobbing toddlers watching parents be arrested, put significant pressure on the administration, and Trump eventually walked back the policy. But his second term has been markedly different. When Trump was sworn in this time, law enforcement officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement quickly began an unprecedented operation. Viral videos of immigrants being snatched off the streets, reports of children being handcuffed and detained, and protesters being teargassed began to make their rounds. According to a report from ProPublica, at least 170 American citizens have been caught in the federal government’s dragnet. Advertisement Ahead of his second term, Trump acolytes attempted to replicate the incoming administration even before he was sworn in. In Oklahoma, former schools superintendent Ryan Walters in December 2024 proposed a rule that would allow the state’s schools to collect information about students’ immigration status, sending a ripple of fear through communities. Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that all children are entitled to attend public schools, regardless of immigration status, the move was seen as a way to identify and track down who was in the country without documentation — and send that information to the federal government. (Walters resigned his position in September to lead an anti-teachers union conservative organization.) Some of the most extreme members of the Trump administration are emboldening ICE agents to detain immigrants by any means necessary. “To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties,” Miller said during a Fox News interview last month. “And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony.” Advertisement “This is a workforce that is being encouraged to engage in acts of cruelty,” Altman said. “Stephen Miller is going on news broadcasts and telling ICE agents they have unlimited immunity to do whatever they want.” A rhetoric of cruelty has also become increasingly normalized when it comes to other frequent targets of the right-wing culture wars, like women’s rights and racial justice. “The other movement that’s really emboldened right now is the male supremacist movement,” Rivas said. “Meaning streamers and the influencers that aren’t necessarily group-oriented.” Advertisement “We’ve seen a lot of online influencers of young men, who are just saying really explicitly misogynistic things,” Rivas said. In the hours after Trump’s victory, celebrations from the so-called manosphere, a loose collection of influencers and podcasters that make content targeted toward young men, let loose with the misogynistic vitriol. “Your body, my choice. Forever,” Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist podcaster who dined with Trump in 2022, posted on X when Trump won. It was an inversion of the reproductive rights mantra, “My body, my choice.” Advertisement In the weeks after the election, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international research organization dedicated to combating extremism, found a massive increase in misogynistic language online. And as the administration eliminates DEI initiatives and Trump himself posts racist AI-generated memes on social media, the calculus of what is acceptable political discourse on race has changed. After Brian Butler, the chair of a local Republican committee in Massachusetts, posted a racist AI-generated video of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes on Facebook last week, a fellow committee member spoke up. Advertisement Tomas Etzold criticized the video in a statement, saying the GOP committee “condemns all forms of hate, racism and discrimination.” But four days later, he resigned from his position, telling local publication MassLive that other members of the committee were upset with his statement speaking for the group. Non-governmental groups that champion right-wing causes, according to Rivas, have been getting more explicit in their language. “They’re not moderating in how they’re speaking, and they’re using more language that is explicitly targeting different communities,” she said. Advertisement The Alliance Defending Freedom is a right-wing legal and advocacy group that has been pushing for anti-LGBTQ+ laws in the United States. “Women and girls should not be forced to sacrifice their privacy and safety in the name of promoting gender ideology,” Sara Beth Nolan, legal counsel at ADF, said in September after Texas passed a law banning trans students from certain locker rooms. “Allowing men to invade girls’ most intimate spaces—including locker rooms, sleeping areas, or restrooms—compromises their dignity.” The group has brought several cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has handed conservatives a list of wins in the last few years. Advertisement And now that Trump’s back in office, the group has five pending cases in front of the high court, including a case seeking to overturn a ban on conversion therapy, and a handful of cases looking to bar transgender women from participating on teams that match their gender identity. Then there’s the so-called parental rights groups that spent the entirety of the Biden administration attacking public school teachers and school board members for not being sufficiently conservative. The 1776 Project PAC, a right-wing political group which was founded in 2021, has sought to endorse far-right school board candidates in an effort to make the public school system friendlier to right-wing ideologies. Advertisement “That’s not about free speech; it’s about judgment and character,” he told Fox News. “These are cruel people, and it’s dangerous to have them in classrooms.”
