Paper and clocks are associated with first wedding anniversaries, or so the gift guides say. As the United States reaches the one-year mark in its increasingly dysfunctional and abuse-laden political marriage with Donald J. Trump, though the President has made it clear that he will take almost any sort of gift—even, and maybe especially, someone else’s Nobel Peace Prize medal. The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado offered hers up to him last week, in a large gold-colored frame, ready for hanging. Although something of a pathetic gesture, given that the Trump Administration seems to have cut a deal with the remnants of Nicolás Maduro’s government (while Maduro himself is in a Brooklyn jail), it did earn her an upgrade. After Maduro’s arrest, Trump said that Machado was “a very nice woman, but she doesn’t have the respect”; post-medal bestowal, she was “a wonderful woman” and her gift “a wonderful gesture of mutual respect.” Those words might even get her somewhere, if only she had control over a lot of oil reserves. But clocks can make good gifts, too. After a group of Swiss businessmen arrived at the White House in November, bearing a desk clock in the form of an oversized Rolex, the country got a break on tariffs.
Those who aren’t trying to please the President might still keep clocks in mind this January 20th, because the country is in a countdown. Three hundred and sixty-five days of Trump means a thousand and ninety-six to go, including a leap year. (That’s not counting all the Trump first-term days, of course; this is a tragedy of remarriage.) We have aged so much in Trump years that the Biden Administration can feel much longer ago than it was. The brief era of Elon Musk running around the White House may now seem like a fever dream—he and Trump seem to have an off-and-on thing—but hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs in his wake or otherwise had their lives changed irrevocably, including recipients of U.S. aid around the world. On January 1st, millions of Americans lost their health-care subsidies. Immigrants, even legal ones, live with a new level of fear. So, too, do many academics, scientists, and even lawyers. There’s an undercurrent of political violence that wasn’t present in the same way a year ago.
Crucially, there are now only two hundred and eighty-seven days until the midterm elections, which have at least the potential to significantly change the balance of power in Washington. Republicans control both houses of Congress, but the margins are slim: 218–213 in the House of Representatives, giving the G.O.P. a hold so tenuous that the Majority Whip, Tom Emmer, has reportedly indicated that he won’t excuse absences for matters other than “life or death”; the margin in the Senate is 53–47. The entire House is up for reëlection, and it is more than plausible that the Democrats will prevail there; taking the Senate, where thirty-five seats will be contested, will be much tougher, though not impossible. Even before November, there will be special elections for four vacant House seats, including the one held, until recently, by the Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene. Her spinning away from the Trump majority—spurred by, of all things, the Jeffery Epstein case—may be an indication that this Administration is decaying more quickly than the calendar alone would indicate.
For at least some other Republicans, at this one-year juncture, the breaking point may be Trump’s uncannily serious talk of buying or seizing Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark. Some MAGA types love the idea, but, as Politico reported, the Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, said last week that there was “certainly not an appetite for some of the options that have been talked about or considered.” That statement came before Trump’s announcement, this past Saturday, that he will be imposing tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, has raised the possibility of invoking the War Powers Act, a tool that Congress has for reining in the President. Not incidentally, Tillis has said that he will not seek reëlection this year. His seat is open, and one of the top targets for Democrats, who have a strong candidate in former Governor Roy Cooper.
