by Randy Shaw on December 15, 2025 (BeyondChron.org)
The Power of Resistance
2025 was a memorable year for America. Mostly for bad reasons. We learned that the United States Constitution’s heralded “separation of powers” provides no check on the Supreme Court. The Court freely ignores case precedents and the rule of law, and justices accept free plane flights with donors with cases before them.
We also learned that while “the power to tax is the power to destroy,” the President can unilaterally impose large tariffs. And refuse to spend money on programs funded by Congress.
We also learned that the President’s federal pardon power is unlimited. The President and his family/business allies can even put pardons up for sale.
A long list of uncomfortable truths about America were exposed in 2025. Fortunately, 2025 also showed the ongoing power of resistance.
Open Racism Returns
Racism has afflicted the United States since the first slaves arrived in 1619. But no President in the past century has been as overtly racist as Donald Trump in 2025.
Trump’s description of non-white Somali’s as “garbage” and non-white countries as “s_itholes,” his prioritizing white Afrikaner immigrants, and his promoting a risk to white European culture allegedly caused by non-whites returned U.S. racism to a pre-1960’s level.
2025 further confirmed that while Barack Obama’s election was touted as leading to a post-racial society, it actually revived a political agenda based on white supremacy. Trump defined the 2016 election as America’s last chance to save white culture.
In 2016 and 2024 Trump focused his racist attacks on immigrants, not native-born non-white Americans. But Trump’s racist agenda became more direct and explicit in 2025. Trump’s Supreme Court upheld the stopping of Brown-skinned people without cause. American citizens are routinely stopped by ICE and taken into custody despite having legal identification.
This wasn’t supposed to happen in America. But in 2025 it does.
We learned in 2025 that a President is free to disproportionately fire Black federal employees. And selectively cut programs with a negative disparate impact on non-whites. The government even feels free to bar funding from programs that use any words that support black Americans or non-white immigrants (Head Start was sent a list of nearly 200 words whose inclusion in grant applications would deny funding).
Republicans used to rely on indirect racist appeals. Recall Reagan’s opening his 1980 campaign in a city where three civil rights workers were killed. Or George H. W. Bush’s 1988 Willie Horton ads.
But Trump is the first president in the past century to make racism against Blacks and Latinos central to his agenda. He’s still angry over the government suing his father for racial discrimination in housing. Trump has become so hateful that he recently eliminated free admission days for National Parks on Martin Luther King, Jr Day and Juneteenth—the only Black-focused national holidays.
He replaced the free days with his birthday.
This is not a spoof. It’s true. Unlike politicians like Alabama’s Governor George Wallace, who promoted racism solely for political ends, Trump’s racism goes to the core of who he is.
Since World War 2 Germany teaches its kids about the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust. In contrast, American kids are taught that the Rebels fighting for slavery was “a noble cause.” Trump has prioritized restoring Confederate monuments because his chief goal as President is doing his best to restore the Confederacy.
The Media’s Failure
The other extremely troubling fact we learned about America in 2025 is the failure of legacy media to hold Trump accountable. Instead of using its power to protect democracy, most legacy media is content to report on Trump’s progress undermining it.
Nixon’s resignation after Watergate was said to prove the American system “worked” But the Washington Post that uncovered that scandal is now a Trump-cheering platform for owner Jeff Bezos to curry favor with the President.
CBS was once the icon of television news. From Ed Murrow to Walter Cronkite, CBS was the gold standard for national news. Under the new ownership of Trump ally David Ellison, CBC now operates like Fox News.
A New York Times that endlessly highlighted Hillary Clinton’s private emails and Biden’s poor health looks the other way for Trump. Why? It could be that its editors fear personal violence from Trump backers if they are seen as being “unfair”to the President.
Any day on Bluesky offers dozens of examples of how differently the legacy media treats behavior by Trump and his administration compared to any Democratic presidential team. Its more one-sided favoring Trump’s crowd than any Democrat President has ever seen.
The Power of Resistance
Fortunately, among all the terrible realities of American politics in 2025 there is one major bright spot: the power of resistance remained strong. From New York City to Chicago to Portland to Los Angeles along with too many cities to name, activists fought back against ICE terrorism and stopped the attacks. The No Kings marches were huge as were the Democratic Party turnouts in the November 2025 elections.
This resistance cannot stop every outrage. But Trump and his team now know their days of unprecedented power will soon end. Some Republican elected officials are finally turning against Trump, and even the legacy media is demonstrating a greater willingness to criticize.
It is the power of resistance that sustained America in 2025. And that propels a better future.
Randy Shaw is Editor of Beyond Chron. If you are looking for a fun holiday read with over 118 rare photos, pick up his updated new book, The Tenderloin:Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco.
Randy Shaw
<I>Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s new book is the revised and updated, The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco. His prior books include Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. </I>
