Editorial: Weakened and weary: America a year later

South Florida Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, South Florida Sun Sentinel on Jan 19, 2026

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President Donald Trump’s second inauguration one year ago found our nation more divided and apprehensive than at any time since the Civil War.

For his followers, it was a time for jubilation. For others, it foreshadowed grave danger for our republic.

The fears weren’t idle after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election he had lost and threatened retribution against those who thwarted him.

A better person would have taken his return to power as an opportunity to put the past aside and unite us. But Trump is everything a president should never be: petty, petulant, vindictive, vulgar, indifferent to unwelcome facts, addicted to lying, ignorant of history and pathologically egotistic.

He boycotted Joe Biden’s inauguration. He refuses to display Biden’s portrait at the White House. He recently replied to a heckler with an obscene gesture.

It was apparent almost from the moment of his second inauguration that he did not intend to keep his oath to uphold the Constitution. His conduct has been the worst that we feared, and then some.

In what seemed a joking remark (with him, you can never be sure), Trump recently told congressional Republicans that he would not try to block the 2026 election because people would then call him a dictator. It’s much too late for that.

Defining a tyrant

A president who prostitutes the Department of Justice to persecute or intimidate his perceived enemies, now including the chairman of the independent Federal Reserve, is a tyrant.

A president who demands absolute obedience from his party’s officeholders and who calls for their defeat when one crosses him is a tyrant.

A president who threatens to seize another nation’s territory “whether they like it or not” is a tyrant.

A president who orders states to redraw voting districts in a non-Census year to strangle the opposition is a tyrant.

A president bent on imposing his will on everything from the media to universities to international corporations to major law firms to the nation’s museums to how the states conduct their elections is a tyrant.

A president who trashes the people’s White House as if he owned it, and who plants his image or name on everything from National Park passes to a memorial for an assassinated predecessor, is a tyrant.

A president who makes war and orders extrajudicial killings on the oceans without so much as notifying Congress is a tyrant.

Contempt for the Constitution

Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and for any restraint on his conduct was on display throughout a two-hour interview with New York Times reporters Jan. 7.

“Is there anything that could stop you?” they asked.

“Yeah, there is one thing,” he replied. “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”

The words of a tyrant.

Pressed about Greenland, he said it “may be a choice” to seize it by force, even if that should destroy NATO.

He seemed to forget that he had promised the public $2,000 checks from his tariffs, then claimed the right to pay them without congressional approval. He spoke of replacing tariffs with “licenses” if the Supreme Court rules against him.

‘I won three times’: A lie

He would not commit to respecting the 2026 congressional election returns, insisting that “we have very dishonest elections” and that “I won three times.”

A better president and wiser Congress could eventually remediate the vast damage that Trump has done to the federal work force, civil rights, equal opportunity, scientific research, the environment, the national debt, public health, ethics in government, our diplomatic corps and the industries decimated by ICE’s inhumane arrests and deportations.

There are greater damages that will be far more daunting to repair.

He has shattered the respect our nation earned worldwide over 250 years as a beacon of democracy. He has encouraged authoritarian movements elsewhere, abetted Putin’s ruthless war, vandalized the international economic order and threatened NATO’s existence.

Why should our allies trust us? Why should any enemy respect us?

The worst of it is the repudiation of the bedrock American faith that ours is a nation of laws and that no one is above them.

A reckless Supreme Court

The Age of Trump has coincided disastrously with a Supreme Court majority predisposed to inflating the presidency at the expense of Congress, the Constitution and the public.

Chief Justice John Roberts’ ghastly opinion that a president cannot be prosecuted in connection with his official acts has emboldened Trump with a frightening sense of unaccountability.

Together, Trump, Roberts and the spineless Republican majority in Congress have exposed a potentially fatal weakness: The Constitution is only as effective as the good faith of those elected to uphold it.

America desperately needs a Congress able and willing to restrain the tyrant and to impeach and remove him. That, right there, is the overarching issue of the midterm elections.

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The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Opinion Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Opinion Editor Dan Sweeney, editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman, and Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.

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