Photo: Alamy | Op-ed by Summer Lane
One year ago, President Donald Trump stood in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, flanked by his family members and some of the world’s most influential leaders, as he was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.
The journey back to the White House – a turbulent tale of overcoming and persevering – was a victory not only for President Trump, but also for the American people.
President Trump’s inauguration last year was the summit of a very long, hard-fought battle to regain American hope and sovereignty amid a catastrophic Biden presidency.
President Trump’s second term – more momentous and more emphatically sweeping than the first – was a signal to the world that Americans rejected harsh globalism, feckless tyranny, open border policies, and radical leftist failure.
It was a signal that America was serious about embracing greatness again, and in the one year that President Trump has been in office, there have been so many wins that it’s hard to keep count.
Immigration & law and order
The most important component of President Trump’s 2024 reelection campaign was his commitment to securing the border. Joe Biden’s horrific border policies – which facilitated the incursion of millions of illegal alien criminals – did serious damage to the fabric of America, and President Trump has worked fast to address those wounds.
In December 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced that more than 2.5 million illegal aliens had left the United States. There were also 605,000 deportations between January 2025 and December 2025. 1.9 million of those illegals voluntarily self-deported.
There has also been a hard push to crack down on crime in urban epicenters like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and, currently, Minneapolis.
“The whole problem we are having with criminals in our Country was caused by Sleepy Joe Biden and the Radical Left Thugs that surrounded the Resolution Desk in the Oval Office – And, of course, the Illegal Use of the Auto Pen!!!” President Trump said on Tuesday.
The Trump administration has worked at lightning speed to correct these wrongs, and they have had great success so far.
Tariffs and the economy
The president implemented tariffs last spring, beginning with the threat of reciprocal tariffs and then moving to negotiate individually with countries serious about accessing American markets.
Tariffs have proven, overall, to be an effective tool in asserting American dominance on the world stage, ensuring that countries that have been taking advantage of U.S. generosity for decades get a taste of their own medicine.
The U.S. pulled in $195 billion in revenue in FY 2025 due to tariffs, and that number is likely to balloon exponentially, provided the Supreme Court rules this year to uphold the president’s authority to levy tariffs.
Despite the damage done to the U.S. economy by the Biden administration, in just a handful of months, President Trump has managed to make headway on restarting the economic engine.
There was a 4.9 percent surge in labor productivity in the third quarter of 2025, as well as a 4.3 percent uptick in the GDP in Q3, signaling, perhaps, continuing favorable winds for the markets.
A late jobs report in November 2025 also showed very solid gains for American-born workers between January and September 2025. “In stark contrast to the disastrous Biden economy, almost all of these new jobs were in the private sector and went to American-born workers instead of illegal aliens,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Add to that the incoming tax cuts for American workers that were codified in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer (No Tax on Tips, Social Security, or Overtime), and the wins really start to add up.
2026 is also poised to potentially be a record-breaking season for tax refunds, as reported by RSBN. This is linked to the likely effect that these new tax reductions will have for filers, along with increased standard deductions for families and a parallel increase in the child tax credit.
A strong military & global respect
America must be respected if it is to lead on the world stage. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told prowling globalists at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, this week that America’s strength is necessary for the rest of the world’s security.
“When America shines, the world shines, because they all need to make sure America is strong and powerful to take care of them, God forbid,” he said.
He was correct. America’s strength is the only thing that holds the world together, or, from another perspective, it is the only thing standing in the way of a global dissolution into a one-world government apparatus – an apparatus where borders do not exist, sovereignty is a thing of the past, and the U.S. Constitution is considered a fossilized antiquity.
Thanks to President Trump, America’s sovereignty matters again. In his capacity as the chief executive of the country, he has gone after things that are good for America’s interests – like seizing the oil reserves in Venezuela, and now, his hard push to acquire Greenland for reasons of national security.
Under President Trump, America is the world’s reigning superpower, and NATO ally nations that dare shake their fists at the U.S. for protecting itself are silly at best, and hostile at worst.
“No single person, or President, has done more for NATO than President Donald J. Trump,” the president argued on Tuesday. “If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now!!! It would have been in the ash heap of History. Sad, but TRUE!!!”
Amid the highest level of military recruitment in over 15 years, along with an impressive military operation in Venezuela that, doubtless, rattled foreign countries with ill intentions toward the U.S., one thing is clear: America is indeed respected again on the world stage, thanks to President Trump.
Looking to the future
In just one year, the Trump administration has managed to effectively recalibrate America’s trajectory. The president and his cadre of cabinet officials have taken America from a waning superpower to a dominant, imperialist-minded giant that is bold enough to pursue new territories for the first time in modern history.
America First means America First.
It means protecting the Western Hemisphere from hostile incursion, beefing up the U.S. military, tariffing other countries that hate America behind closed doors, and unapologetically pursuing peace through steely strength.
If the first year of the Trump administration is any indication of what lies ahead, the second year may usher in the brightest future for America yet.
