1 year of Trump 2.0: How has the country changed?

Georgia Osier

One year into President Trump’s second term begs the question “what has changed?”

It has officially been one year and 14 days since Donald J. Trump took office for the second time. Yes, it’s only been a year. It’s felt like a decade, hasn’t it?  Ever since Donald Trump assumed office in the white house last January, countless people have voiced their concerns about the current administration’s decisions. Regardless of political affiliation, people on all sides are concerned and confused. 

Has President Trump truly fixed the economy as he promised? Have grocery prices gone down? Have utility prices decreased? Has he eliminated social security taxes? Has he safely and securely strengthened immigration policies? Has he made America great again?

Unsurprisingly, the answer to all of those questions is no. So, what things in America have changed since Trump took office?

In the 12 months since Trump’s inauguration, overall inflation has stayed in the 2.6% to 2.8% range, but the prices of certain necessities, like food and water, have seen a steep increase. During his campaign, Trump ensured that while under his administration, egg prices would go down. This much is true.  The cost of eggs has decreased on average by around 30 percent since last year. This is wonderful, but the price of other groceries has skyrocketed, and people don’t usually want to live exclusively on an egg diet.

According to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics. The price of beef has risen 16.4% over the last year. The price of coffee is up a whopping 19.8%. The price of lettuce is up 7.3%, and frozen fish is up 8.6%. 

Grocery prices are higher than ever, and show no sign of decreasing anytime soon.  It seems the president is either ignorant of, or refuses to acknowledge, these alarming statistics. While making a speech in Detroit, Michigan this year, Trump claimed with absolute certainty that “grocery prices are starting to go rapidly down.”

A 3.1% overall increase in grocery prices isn’t exactly what I’d call “rapidly going down”. 

What about utility and energy prices, though? Surely those have decreased, right? Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, they haven’t. Despite Trump promising to cut down utility and energy bills for all Americans, recent studies show that now more than ever, people are struggling to pay their energy bills on time.

The amount of unpaid and past due energy bills has increased by 9.7% in the past 12 months, which aligns with a 12% increase in energy bills this year.

“Consumers usually prioritize their utility bills along with their mortgages and auto debt”, said Julie Margetta Morgan, president of The Century Foundation. “The increase in both energy costs and delinquencies may suggest that consumers are falling behind on other bills, too.” 

Many northeastern states are suffering immensely from the increase in energy costs. They’ve had more snow and freezing temperatures this past winter than they’ve had in the past 5 years, and now more than ever, they need to bump up the heat and keep themselves warm. But with a 9.2% increase in heating and ventilation bills, many Americans are considering just piling on the blankets instead.

Energy prices have seen a major increase this year, mostly due to supply and demand, but the 3,000 new AI data centers certainly aren’t helping. Not only do these AI data centers require a large amount of power to work, but they also require large amounts of water.

Over the summer, the town of Mansfield, Georgia, found itself without water when META, the company that runs Instagram, Facebook, and Metaverse, built its newest AI data center there. A couple who lived just 400 yards from the data center reported that their water had not only rapidly decreased in quality, but also nearly ran out. People could not drink it or bathe in it for fear of contamination sickness. Just one of these AI data centers can consume over 300,000 gallons of water a day, and require an undisclosed large amount of energy to function. The people who live near these data centers are suffering because of it.

Another promise Trump made during his 2024 campaign was that he would lower the price of Social Security taxes, especially for seniors. This isn’t an especially complicated matter; it simply hasn’t happened. The tax actually increased, which is supposed to increase yearly in order to keep pace with average wages. It’s more odd that Trump planned to cut down the tax in the first place, as the whole reason it’s there is so that Social Security can collect funds to keep the program running. I also cannot think or find a single person whose biggest concern when it came to bills and taxes was their social security tax, of all things.

The policy that Donald Trump advertised the most while running his 2024 presidential campaign was the crackdown on immigration. He promised to run the largest mass deportation program in American history. This seems to be one of the only promises that the president has stayed true to, as the official Homeland Security website states that in President Trump’s first year back in office, “nearly 3 million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations.”

But what exactly is the Trump administration’s definition of “illegal alien?” Though some republican officials, such as Lauren B Pena, say that his new policies only apply to some immigrants, claiming Trump’s“ not meaning to go and deport every family that crosses the border, he means deport the criminals and the sex offenders”, but this is simply not the case.

Every day, more and more reports flood in of ICE detaining innocent people with citizenship, people with student visas, people who were promised temporary sanctuary, and so on. Just this past September, over 400 South Korean workers at a Hyundai facility were deported despite their active business visa and explicit permission to work within the country. They are not illegal aliens, they are not criminals, they’re not sex offenders, they’re not any other scary word brought up only to monger fear among the people; they’re human beings. 

Many have said that ICE does not care if you’re in the country illegally or not; ICE only cares if you’re not white, which holds to an extent. When talking about the crackdown on immigration, they seem overtly obsessed with deporting people of color, specifically Latinos and Hispanics. But don’t let that fool white people into thinking ICE can’t hurt them. In the past two months, two white U.S citizens have been shot and killed. 

One of the citizens, Renee Good, was a white woman in Minneapolis who was shot at point blank range by ICE agents while attempting to drive away. Good was unarmed during the encounter, and despite the ICE agents’ recorded threats and insults towards her, she remained calm throughout the entire encounter. When Good began to drive away, she was shot in the head by an agent, who claimed she was about to run them over.

The other, Alex Pretti, was on the sidewalk recording with his phone, and attempting to assist a woman who had been knocked down by agents when he was pepper sprayed, pinned to the ground and shot multiple times. 

In the year and 14 days since Trump’s second term started, utility prices have gone up, grocery prices have increased, water and electricity have become harder to access, and citizens and non-citizens alike are afraid of ICE. 

Overall, I can’t stress enough how much America does not feel great again. Though the slogan “Make America Great Again” implies there was something great we had that is now lost. What made us great? Slavery? Segregation? A lack of women’s rights? Anti-LGBTQ laws? How much more do the American people have to suffer until the senile 70-year-old failed business owner and reality TV star in office deems us great again?