Distrust, Frustration, and Anger

Many posts have discussed public trust in institutions and political leaders.

From Pew:

Just 17% of Americans now say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (15%).

While trust in government has been low for decades, the current measure is one of the lowest in the nearly seven decades since the question was first asked by the National Election Study, and it is lower than it was last year (22%).

 

Shanay Gracia at Pew:

We regularly ask Americans whether the federal government makes them feel basically content, frustrated or angry. Today, 49% say they feel frustrated. Another 26% say they are angry, and 23% say they are basically content, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 3,445 U.S. adults conducted Sept. 22-28 (just before the 43-day government shutdown)

Frustration is common across the political spectrum regardless of which party holds the presidency. But the shares of Republicans and Democrats feeling anger and contentment shift dramatically depending on who’s in the White House.

Still, the partisan gaps in these views are wider now than at any point since we first asked this question in 1997. The share of Democrats who are angry toward the federal government has hit a new high:

 

The News About the News is Still Bad

Many posts have dealt with media problems such as ghost newspapers and news deserts.

Zach Metzger at Medill Northwestern:

Our first State of Local News report, published in 2016, examined the local news landscape across America over the previous 10 years, taking data from 2005 as its starting point. Now, in the project’s 10th year, we are able to look back through the past two decades and see dramatic transformations in the ecosystem of local news. Almost 40% of all local U.S. newspapers have vanished, leaving 50 million Americans with limited or no access to a reliable source of local news. This trend continues to impact the media industry and audiences nationwide. Newspapers are disappearing at the same rate as in 2024; more than 130 papers shut down in the past year alone. Newspaper employment is sliding steadily downward. And although there has been some growth in stand-alone and network digital sites, these startups remain heavily centralized in urban areas, and they have not been appearing fast enough to offset the losses elsewhere. As a result, news deserts – areas with extremely limited access to local news – continue to grow. In 2005, just over 150 counties lacked a source of local news; today, there are more than 210. Meanwhile, the journalism industry faces new and intensified challenges including: shrinking circulation and steep losses of revenue from changes to search and the adoption of AI technologies, while political attacks against public broadcasters threaten to leave large swaths of rural America without local news.

 From the press release:

Key findings from the Medill study: 

• The number of news desert counties rose to 213 in 2025, a jump from 206 in last year’s report. In another 1,524 counties, there’s only one remaining news source. Taken together, some 50 million Americans have limited to no access to local news. Twenty years ago, there were about 150 news desert counties, with about 37 million Americans at the time living in news deserts.

• The rise in news deserts was accompanied by an increase in newspaper closures, which ticked up to 136 this past year, a rate of more than two per week. Medill tracked 130 in last year’s report.

• In a marked departure, most of this year’s closures came at smaller, independently owned newspapers — not those controlled by large chains — signaling that an increasing number of long-time family publishers are surrendering to economic pressures.

• Total jobs at newspapers slumped 7% in the past year. The industry has now lost more than three-quarters of its jobs since 2005.

• More than 200 newspapers changed hands in the past year, down from the number of transactions last year but still a torrid pace by historical standards.

• Nearly 300 public radio stations and more than 100 public television stations are producing local reporting. In nine counties, public radio is the sole news source, making those areas especially vulnerable to becoming news deserts in coming months.

• Utilizing predictive modeling created by the school’s Spiegel Research Center, the Medill team found 250 counties at high risk of becoming news deserts over the next decade.

• Web traffic to 100 of the largest newspapers has plummeted more than 45% in the past four years, according to a Medill analysis of data tracked by the media analytics company Comscore.

• The report counted more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support. The vast majority of those startups, however, are in metro areas, leaving rural and less affluent areas further behind.

• The number of local news sites that are part of larger national networks is continuing to multiply. This year, there are 849 sites across 54 separate networks, up 14% from the 742 individual sites across 23 networks. This growth illustrates the increasingly prominent role of digital network sites on the local news landscape.

Holidays, National Parks, and a Renamed Institute of Peace

Many posts have discussed the background of Thanksgiving and other holidays. April Rubin at Axios:

Free entry to National Parks will now be granted on President Trump's birthday but not on Martin Luther King Jr. Day or Juneteenth.

Why it matters: The Trump administration has almost entirely overhauled the list of free National Park days, favoring days that celebrate U.S. patriotism instead of traditional federal holidays.

The Department of the Interior, National Park Service and White House did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.

State of play: The June 14 free day falls on both Trump's birthday and Flag Day.Veterans Day is the only free day that was carried into the list for 2026.

Context: Calendar changes were announced on Nov. 25 along with international tourist price hikes, which the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called "America-first pricing."Beginning next year, free entrance on these days is only for U.S. citizens and residents. Nonresidents will pay the regular entrance fee and applicable nonresident fees.

And yes, the NPS notice specifically mentions Trump's birthday:

 Come experience the national parks! All National Park Service sites that charge an entrance fee will offer free admission to everyone (other fees, including timed entry or reservation fees, may apply). Mark your calendar for these entrance fee-free dates:

• February 16: Presidents Day (Washington's Birthday)
• May 25: Memorial Day
• June 14: Flag Day/President Trump's birthday
• July 3–5: Independence Day weekend
• August 25: 110th Birthday of the National Park Service
• September 17: Constitution Day
• October 27: Theodore Roosevelt's birthday
• November 11: Veterans Day

Beginning in 2026, free entrance on these days will be for US citizens and residents only. Nonresidents will pay the regular entrance fee and any applicable nonresident fees.

Michelle L. Price and Gary Fields at AP:

The Trump administration has renamed the U.S. Institute of Peace after President Donald Trump and has planted the president’s name on its headquarters despite an ongoing fight over control of the institute.

It’s the latest twist in a seesaw court battle over who controls the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonprofit think tank that focuses on peace initiatives. It was an early target of the Department of Government Efficiency this year.

On Wednesday, the State Department said it renamed the organization to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace to “reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history.” The new name could be seen on its building, which is near the State Department.

Not Following the News

Many posts have dealt with news media 

Naomi Forman-Katz at Pew:

The share of Americans who say they follow the news all or most of the time has decreased since 2016, according to nearly a decade’s worth of Pew Research Center surveys. This shift comes amid changes in the platforms people use for news and declining trust in news organizations.

Pardoning a Drug Trafficker

Previous posts have discussed the president's pardon power.

Marc Caputo at Axios:

From a U.S. prison cell, Honduras' ex-president secured a likely pardon for drug trafficking thanks to a letter he penned praising President Trump — whom he called "Your Excellency" — and a persistent lobbying campaign by longtime Trump pal Roger Stone.

Why it matters: The surprise announcement of Juan Orlando Hernandez's looming pardon is a window into the unorthodox, norm-shattering way Trump grants clemency.

Driving the news: Trump announced Friday that he planned to pardon Hernandez ahead of Sunday's elections in Honduras, where the White House backed the right-wing National Party that Hernandez led as president from 2014-2022.National Party candidate Nasry "Tito" Asfura is narrowly leading a center-right candidate as votes are being counted in a three-way race, according to the BBC.

Zoom in: Shortly after Trump took office in January, Stone wrote three separate Substack posts calling for the pardon of Hernandez, who was indicted the day he left office in 2022 and extradited to the U.S. to face cocaine-trafficking and weapons charges.

Stone cast Hernandez as a victim of leftist "lawfare" in Honduras and in President Biden's administration.Stone told Axios that on Friday he reached out to Trump and reiterated those points. Stone claimed a pardon announcement would energize the National Party and called Trump's attention to Hernandez's four-page letter begging for clemency.

Hours later, at 4 p.m., Trump posted on Truth Social that he'd endorse Asfura. Less than 20 minutes later, he posted that he'd pardon Hernandez.

"It was a Biden setup," Trump told reporters Sunday about the case against Hernandez, who's serving a 45-year sentence.

Except that the first Trump administration launched the Hernandez investigation:

Jonah E. Bromwich at NYT:

When President Trump pardoned the former leader of Honduras this week, he erased the crowning achievement of years of work by one of his own former criminal defense lawyers and top Justice Department officials, Emil Bove III.

Mr. Bove, a firm believer in the prerogatives of executive power, became known for defending Mr. Trump against several prosecutions, and his profile rose further when, at the Justice Department, he oversaw the firing of dozens of prosecutors and F.B.I. agents Mr. Trump perceived as enemies. In May, the president nominated him as a federal appeals court judge and the Senate confirmed him in July.

But before that, Mr. Bove was a hard-charging prosecutor in Manhattan bent on convicting members of a Honduran drug-trafficking conspiracy.

From 2015 to when he left the job in 2021, Mr. Bove helped lead the investigation that identified Honduras as a key conduit for cocaine shipments into the United States. The inquiry revealed the violence that had cleared a pathway for the drugs through Honduras, as the country’s officials mowed down anyone who sought to thwart them. And it ultimately led to the conviction in 2024 of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who prosecutors said had been at the center of the conspiracy.

 

Erasing Black History

"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute."   -- George Orwell, 1984

A number of posts have discussed presidential documents, official data, and government websites.

 Delano Massey at Axios:

1. $3.4 billion in grants for HBCUs, public health research and Black entrepreneurs have been cut or frozen, according to the Blackout Report, from the nonprofit Onyx Impact.
2. 6,769 federal datasets have been deleted, including those tracking maternal mortality and sickle cell disease, which disproportionately affect Black Americans, per the Blackout report. Also removed: data on workforce diversity and environmental exposure in historically redlined neighborhoods — information that directly informs racial equity policy.
3. 591 books by Black authors have been banned from Pentagon-run schools and libraries, Onyx Impact notes. The removed titles include works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Ibram X. Kendi.
4. The Trump administration is reviewing national museums, including the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture, after President Trump criticized the museums as being "out of control" and focusing on "how horrible our country is."
5. Government websites have deleted content related to Black history. Some deleted material — including National Park Service pages about Harriet Tubman and Medgar Evers — was restored after public backlash, but researchers say most erasures remain uncorrected.
6. The unemployment rate for Black women has risen sharply to 7.5%, according to the most recent government data. That's significantly higher than the overall unemployment rate, and is partly a result of Trump's cuts to the federal workforce, which have disproportionately hit Black women, Axios' Emily Peck reports. A backlash in the diversity, equity and inclusion space has also hit this group.
7. Colleges across the country have shuttered cultural centers, including those that are geared toward Black students, The Washington Post reports.

Silver Tsunami

 Many posts have discussed demographic trends, especially the decline of births and the aging of the population.

Emily Peck at Axios:

A silver tsunami is washing across our shores, as record numbers of Americans start hitting retirement age. The U.S. isn't ready.

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About 45% of Americans will experience retirement-funding shortfalls if they retire at 65, according to Morningstar's projections from last year.
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.Out-of-pocket medical expenses are escalating, the cost of in-home care is growing more than three times faster than inflation, and an increasing share of the elderly are spending more than a third of their income on real estate too.

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Only about 14% of Generation X (those ages 45-60) have a pension plan, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security.

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.On paper, retirement accounts might make older Americans appear wealthy. There are an increasing number of 401(k) millionaires, after all.

But with costs and debts rising — and lifespans lengthening — older Americans might run out of money, she says, or be forced to severely cut back spending. "We have shades of the retirement crisis right now."

Between the lines: There's massive inequality when it comes to retirement readiness — workers earning more than $150,000 a year contribute nearly 13 times more toward retirement than those earning under $50,000, a report out in November found.

...
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About 56 million Americans age 65 and older receive Social Security benefits, per federal data.

The lowest-earning workers rely on it. Social Security is the primary source of income for retirees with household incomes below $50,000, according to Transamerica's 2025 retirement survey.

A cut of 20% to 25% in Social Security benefits would have a devastating impact on retirees who rely heavily or solely on those payments," said Kristi Martin Rodriguez, who leads the Nationwide Retirement Institute. "61% of current recipients say missing even half of a payment would leave them unable to survive financially."