With barely 12 weeks until the US midterm elections, commentators are looking forward to the lame-duck phase of Donald Trump’s presidency. Power tends to ebb away from the White House during an administration’s final years, particularly if – as often happens – the president’s party does badly in November.
Ronald Reagan battled the growing Iran-Contra scandal (involving illicit arms sales to Iran used to fund militants in Nicaragua) and his own cognitive decline. Bill Clinton’s presidency imploded in the Monica Lewinsky affair and his subsequent impeachment. George W Bush meekly left office amidst the shambles of the Iraq War and the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
The protracted theatre of the presidential election cycle can make second-term presidents seem like yesterday’s news, even with two years of their administration remaining. Candidates from the president’s party frequently distance themselves from the incumbent. Only one vice president has succeeded their boss via an election across more than a century: George HW Bush in 1988, who was then kicked out by the voters after a single term.
Why August is the worst month for drink driving
August is the worst month of the year for drink-drive crashes as summer events create “more opportunities” to get behind the wheel after consuming alcohol, according to new research.
What does the research show?
RAC analysis found an average of 721 people were injured or killed in drink-drive crashes in August between 2014 and 2024.
Before July, there was an average 704 casualties over the 11-year period.
December, which is often associated with drink driving, had an average of 663 casualties.
The expert view
Drink- is often seen more of a Christmas issue, but our shows collisions involving drivers who have consumed illegal levels of alcohol are actually far more common during the summer.
RAC head of policy Simon Williams
Williams added that warmer weather, longer evenings and “festivals and barbecues” create “opportunities and temptation” for people to drink and then get behind the wheel.
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How England could eliminate hepatitis C
England is “on the cusp” of becoming one of the first countries in the world to eliminate hepatitis C, health officials have said.
What have the health officials said?
Global health leaders have set out plans to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030.
NHS England said the nation is one of a handful of countries globally to have already exceeded the World Health Organisation benchmark of treating 80 per cent of all known cases.
It said that deaths from the virus have reduced by 36 per cent in the last 10 years.
What is hepatitis?
- Hepatitis C is spread through contact with blood infected with the virus.
- Many people have no symptoms but if it is not treated it can cause serious, and potentially life-threatening, liver damage.
- A treatment course of antiviral drugs for eight to 12 weeks cures more than 95 per cent of cases.
- NHS England said that since 2015, more than 100,000 people have been diagnosed and treated for hepatitis C.
The expert view
With C curable in more than nine out of 10 cases, we are committed to finding and treating everyone who needs support and would urge those at greater risk to come forward by ordering a free and confidential home-testing kit online.
Professor Frankie Swords, NHS national medical director
How much parents could save from new school uniform rules
A new law coming into force in September means parents in England will save money by having to buy fewer branded items of school uniform.
What does the new law mean?
From September, uniforms will be limited to three items with a school logo, like a blazer, jumper or sportswear – plus a tie for secondary schools.
The government says the changes will save some families “up to £50 per child”.
How will the law be enforced?
Who is affected?
Around 23 per cent of secondary schools will have to change their uniform lists by September.
How will it be enforced?
The education secretary has legal powers to direct schools to comply.
The rest of the UK
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do not have a cap on uniform items, but are encoureged to keep uniforms costs minimal.
Burnham to scrap Blair-era rule in ‘crackdown’ on new betting and vape shops
Andy Burnham has pledged to give councils more powers to block new bookmakers and vape shops in a bid to save Britain’s “hollowed-out high streets”.
The PM intends to scrap the “aim to permit” rule, which limits the ability of local authorities to prevent betting shops and 24-hour slot machine venues opening in their area.
Shake-up expected start of next year
- Planning permission will also be required for outlets selling e-cigarettes as part of efforts to give communities a greater say under the proposals.
- The formal definition of a vape shop will be tightened to stop businesses side-stepping the new rules by claiming to be a “convenience store or a retailer”.
- Adult gaming centres offering up to 24 hours of access will also require planning permission under the shake-up.
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What are closure orders?
Under proposals first announced by Sir Keir Starmer’s government, police will also be able to shut down “dodgy” barbers, vape shops and nail salons for up to a year.
The maximum length of so-called “closure orders” will be extended from six months to 12, to give officers more time to investigate premises linked to organised crime.
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Crackdown on ‘garish’ signs
- Officials said the Government would also set clearer expectations for the design of shop fronts, to pre-empt complaints about “garish neon signs”.
- It will publish “practical guidance” for councils on how to make town centres more attractive, they said.
The “aim to permit” policy was introduced when Sir Tony Blair’s Labour government, in which Burnham was a minister, liberalised gambling laws in 2005.
All of this suggests that the millions within and beyond the United States who are excitedly hoping for a post-Trump America may not have much longer to wait, and that the process of de-Trumpifying US politics might be natural. Despite Trump’s suggestions he could try to run in 2028, even the most powerful presidents are bound by the term limits of the Constitution, and virtually none have dictated the course of the president who succeeded them.
But Trump may not be sidelined as easily as other lame-duck presidents, and it may be wishful thinking to imagine that US politics will inexorably free itself from the President’s influence after November.
Just a day after Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral in Washington late last month, there was a sharp reminder that Trumpism and Maga may not go gently into the night.
Trump’s appearance at the funeral seemed a last hurrah for the imperial phase of his presidency. Graham had castigated Trump ahead of the 2016 election as a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” who would “kill my party”. He then spent 10 years helping Trump to remake the GOP as a race-baiting, xenophobic and bigoted party committed to “America First” and “Make America Great Again”.
In a nod to Trump’s bulldozing approach to foreign affairs, the two foreign leaders in attendance at the funeral were Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelensky. With the Middle East in turmoil and the battlefield tide turning against Ukraine, both leaders flew to Washington not simply to show their respects to Graham – a man who, in Trump’s typically off-message eulogy, “never saw a war he didn’t like”. They also recognised that Trump may soon lose his power to shape their respective struggles.
But the ugliness Trump has created no longer requires his presence to be enacted. A day after the funeral, the Fauci hearing offered a stark reminder of this. Over three excruciating hours, Republican senators subjected Dr Anthony Fauci, the scientist who oversaw the federal response to the Covid-19 crisis, to an extraordinary barrage of abuse. No matter that Fauci had worked for Republican and Democratic presidents across more than three decades of public service, or that Trump – in the final months of his first term – had initially accepted Fauci’s assessment of the crisis and the remedies required to address it.
Trump has fanned the flames of Maga’s obsession with Fauci – the White House set up a website on the topic soon after Trump began his second term – but the extent to which it has captured GOP members of Congress is extraordinary. (One Congressman at the hearing even screamed expletives at the 85-year-old former official.) “Why is he not cuffed?” observed Steve Bannon, Trump’s erstwhile chief strategist. “He should die in prison.”
Trump has always thrived on being written-off. In his speech at the 2011 White House correspondents’ dinner, Barack Obama pilloried Trump (who was in the audience) as a conspiracy theorist and a reality TV star, and then brought the house down with his punchline: “Say what you will about Mr Trump, he certainly would bring some change to the White House.” Obama’s mocked-up slide of the “White House Resort and Casino” seems a lot less amusing in the context of Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make way for his new ballroom.
If Trump’s ascent to the White House was unprecedented in its unlikeliness, it was his resounding defeat in 2020 which became the fulcrum of his return to office four years later. Excepting Grover Cleveland in the 19th century, Trump is the only US President to win two non-consecutive terms. His mastery of the media and sheer belligerence have made him US political culture’s main character, uninterrupted, since 2015, when he rode that golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his presidential run.
As many commentators have observed, the first year and a half of Trump’s second administration has been far more consequential – and destructive – than the four years of his first term. Trump has been extraordinarily bold in using executive power to bypass or bully Congress, with the backstop of a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court to consolidate his various fiats. He has not won every battle – his attempt to destroy birthright citizenship was blocked by some of his own Court appointees – but Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy has kept Democrats (and any Republican dissenters) on the back foot despite chaos at home and abroad.
While recent polling suggests that Trump is more unpopular at this stage of his second term than any president save for Richard Nixon – who was then on the verge of resignation over Watergate – his rewiring of his country’s political system will not be easily reversed. Trump’s 11-year stranglehold has normalised so much that is corrosive. Trump has driven all these changes, but in his second term he has also embedded them widely by promoting acolytes who share his vision and who will surely attempt to extend his legacy.
Unlike in 2021, we have the four years of the Biden presidency to draw upon in determining what works (and what doesn’t) in the effort to de-Trumpify America.
Trump managed to turn bipartisan outrage over the January 6 Capitol riots into a winning argument that he was the victim of partisan “lawfare”. When he was arrested for election racketeering in Georgia in 2023, Trump insisted that he was the victim of a witch-hunt and his supporters put his mugshot on campaign merchandise for the 2024 election. When his social media accounts were frozen by Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg et al, he created Truth Social before forcing the tech bros to reverse their bans and donate to his campaign.
The fact that Trump isn’t eligible to run in 2028 makes things a little easier this time around, but the work of de-Trumpifying America will require an active effort on the part of Democrats, civil society, and – most importantly – Republicans who know that the GOP can do better than Pete Hegseth, Sean Hannity and Laura Loomer.
Historians have written countless books about the forces in American society and culture that engineered Trump’s rise to the White House. In the coming months and years, Americans will need courage and common purpose to ensure that Trumpism is finally consigned to the history books.