President Donald Trump addresses a crowd at a rally inside Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 20, 2017. (Dreamstime/Joe Tabb)
A year ago, when the United States (and the rest of the world) adjusted to the fact that Donald Trump had been elected president of the United States, the immediate response (including in the Trump headquarters by some accounts) was shock and amazement. The campaign had been bitter and divisive, certainly among the most hostile and dirty in U.S. history.
The second response, among the progressive community, including many Catholics, was a series of calls to actions. Within a day of the election, women began organizing a march in Washington for the day after the inauguration. Many other groups and constituencies would issue and answer similar calls to action. Among those who felt defeated, surges of energy erupted, and that energy needed outlets. Even people who never would have described themselves as activists joined efforts to salvage immigrant rights, women’s rights and LBGTQ people’s rights. The poor, and advocates for the poor, banded together to keep their issues before the public.
As the one-year anniversary of the election approaches, the NCR staff wondered how much of that original urgency still remained. Furthermore, with Trump in the White House for nearly a year now, how have those spontaneously formed organizations fared? Have the issues that political progressives and Catholic progressives championed made any advances — or at least held their ground?
We identified several policy issues to explore — environment, foreign policy, women’s issues, poverty, immigration, health care — and asked NCR reporters to interview key players about what has transpired over the first year of the Trump administration. We collected these stories into a series we call: A Nation Under Trump.
[Dennis Coday was named editor of NCR Jan. 1, 2012. He has worked for NCR since 2003.]
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