Has it only been a year? 12 months of all Trump, all the time

He's been everywhere.

In the year since his second inauguration, Donald J. Trump has been impossible to miss. Thanks to his sweeping assertions of power, his formidable persona and the explosive reach of social media, the 47th president has been a more ubiquitous presence in the daily lives of citizens than any of his predecessors.

That record extends beyond presidents and politicians. No actor or sports star or military general has so continuously commanded the nation's spotlight, prompting some Americans to scroll their phones with glee and others to dial back their consumption of the news.

Trump is not only regularly broadcast live on cable TV as he signs executive orders and gaggles with reporters. He is also the designer-in-chief for overhauls of the East Wing, the Lincoln bathroom and the Kennedy Center. He pops up at sporting events where no sitting president has gone before, from the Super Bowl to the FIFA Club World Cup.

For millions of people, his impact on their lives has been more personal and concrete − some in a good way, others not.

Nearly 300,000 federal jobs were cut last year, according to the Office of Personnel Management, the biggest drop in the federal civilian workforce since the end of World War II. The Department of Homeland Security asserted in December that more than 2.5 million foreign-born people had left the United States in 2025, though that number is disputed by others.

With Trump embracing the possibilities of cryptocurrency and AI, fortunes have been made, including by some in his own family. People with the highest incomes were the biggest beneficiaries of the tax breaks in the "Big Beautiful Bill," and investors broadly have made gains from record-setting stock markets.

But the number of Americans able to receive food-stamp benefits through SNAP has declined and the percentage of those without health insurance has spiked with cuts in Medicaid and the expiration on Dec. 31 of enhanced premium benefits for the Affordable Care Act.

All that impact and all that exposure haven't boosted Trump's job-approval rating. He started his second term at a tepid 47% in the Gallup Poll and has sunk to 36%, the lowest of any president at the one-year mark since modern polling began.

In a CNN poll taken Jan. 9-12, 58% of those surveyed said Trump's first year had been a failure.

Trump: 'I'm not a king'

"By the way, I'm not a king," Trump said in response to demonstrators across the country who have accused him of trying to seize regal powers. "I work my ass off to make our country great, that's all it is."

He's not the first president to revel in the spotlight, a trait shared by many in politics. "My father wanted to be the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening," Alice Roosevelt Longworth famously said of her father, the 26th president.

But Teddy Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1901, not only before the advent of social media but also before the invention of television. The first public wireless broadcast on radio wouldn't be made for another five years.

In contrast, Trump has carried his bare-it-all instincts from reality TV and "The Apprentice" to his new role in politics.

Social media has become a constant site for the president to reveal even the most serious of pronouncements as well as a stream of invective against Democrats, wayward Republicans, reporters and others. Even foreign leaders track the president's international intentions not through diplomatic channels but through the same Truth Social posts as everyone else.

To take a random day − say, Jan. 13, one week before the one-year anniversary of his inauguration − Trump delivered a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that wandered beyond the economy into his defense of the U.S. incursion into Venezuela, his depiction of former president Joe Biden as "a real dope," his criticism of Fed chairman Jerome Powell as "that jerk," and his description of the mosquitoes and snakes that populate the Panama Canal.

Beforehand, he answered questions from a gaggle of reporters. Afterwards, he did an interview with CBS News, then held another gaggle with reporters. On social media, he denounced congestion pricing in New York City, bemoaned the death of disgraced cartoonist Scott Adams, touted mixed inflation numbers as "LOW!" and urged "Iranian Patriots" to "KEEP PROTESTING," promising, "HELP IS ON ITS WAY."

Just another Tuesday.

Where are the competing voices?

One reason Trump has loomed so large in the public consciousness is that he hasn't had much competition.

Except for the tax bill he signed in July, the president has pursued his most ambitious and controversial initiatives not through legislation but through executive action.

The Republican-controlled Congress has rarely challenged him. Five Republican senators broke with the White House on Jan. 8 to back a War Powers measure on Venezuela, but two of them flipped their positions a week later. Trump has usurped Capitol Hill's Constitutional powers on spending money and waging war. He's acted on his own to impose the steepest tariffs since the 1930s. He ordered the construction of a gilded ballroom where the East Wing once stood without review by preservationists or planners.

His actions were consistent with established legal principles, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded when a reporter asked if Trump could "tear down anything he wants without oversight."

The president and his administration have been challenged by a flood of lawsuits. But the legal process is, by design, a slow and winding one. His efforts to end birthright citizenship, impose tariffs and more are only now making their way to the Supreme Court for a decision on their legality.

And Democrats?

After losing the White House in 2024 and failing to regain control of either the House or Senate, Democrats have united behind a commitment to protecting democracy and addressing affordability in health care, food and housing. But they lack a clear leader and a consistent ideology.

They may reclaim a platform for power in the midterm elections in November. After encouraging off-year elections in 2025, partisan hopes are high for winning a majority in the House, a relatively low bar, and perhaps even the Senate, a high one.

Still, the midterms aren't until November, and the officials elected then won't take office until January 2027.

America at 250 and the World Cup, starring Trump

Meanwhile, welcome to 2026.

The coincidences of the calendar have created new opportunities for Trump to be center stage.

He will be president for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July and during the FIFA World Cup competition across the United States, Mexico and Canada in June and July. The summer Olympics are set for Los Angeles in 2028, the last year of his term.

Trump takes credit for having drawn both sporting events to the United States during his first term.

"We got the Olympics and then we got … the World Cup. I got them both and I said, 'Man, I won't be president,'" Trump said last spring, addressing the board of what has since been renamed the Trump Kennedy Center. "I got the Olympics and the World Cup and I won't be president and they're going to forget that I got them; nobody's going to mention it because, you know, a little bit, that's the way life is."

But that wasn't the end of the story. He lost his bid for a second term in 2020, then prevailed in 2024, putting him in the middle of a historic national celebration as well as those two signature sporting events.

That's the way life is.