It’s hard to define 2017 in a
few words. Some might call the last year a turning point or a
culmination of bottled feelings, but one thing we can agree on is that
2017 was a wild ride with some of the craziest news cycles in recent
history.
President
Donald Trump’s
administration began on Jan. 20, and with the new White House came a
maelstrom of polarization in the United States. Americans confronted
some uncomfortable truths about society this year, including deep-rooted
racism and sexism.
While the
country was facing cultural upheaval, it also was hit by horrific
tragedies. People came together to deal with natural disaster after
natural disaster, in an unyielding season of hurricanes and fires. And,
yet again, America suffered through another year of gun violence.
So pour yourself a heaping cup of
covfefe, make sure your
eclipse glasses and your
rain ponchos are properly secured, and take a wild ride with us down memory lane, the 2017 edition.
Harvey Weinstein And The #MeToo Revolution
It was more than nine months into the year when
The New York Times published its story on
decades of sexual harassment allegations against studio mogul Harvey
Weinstein, but the floodgates it opened in those final months became one
of the year’s defining stories.
The takedown of Weinstein, one of Hollywood’s biggest
names, broke the silence of hundreds of women across the world. Actress
Alyssa Milano
resurfaced the #MeToo slogan that was
created by black activist Tarana Burke in 2007, setting off a movement that reminded victims they weren’t alone and pushing society to address the problem.
Since the
Weinstein revelations, victims have been emboldened to speak out and
seek consequences against powerful figures. The lengthy list of men
ousted from their roles in the wake of allegations include actors
Kevin Spacey and
Louis C.K.; several
lawmakers, including Sen.
Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep.
John Conyers (D-Mich.); and news personalities
Matt Lauer and
Charlie Rose, among other household names.
The apex of that reckoning was perhaps the
downfall of Roy Moore,
the Republican nominee for Alabama’s U.S. senate seat who faced several
accusations of sexual misconduct with minors. Despite a backing from
Trump, who also stands accused of sexual misconduct by
19 women, voters instead elected Doug Jones, making him the first
Democrat to win a
U.S. Senate seat in the state in a quarter-century.
Women had already made their objections to sexual misconduct and other assaults on their rights clear at January’s
Women’s March,
in which hundreds of thousands of women and allies descended on
Washington, D.C., the day after Trump’s inauguration. Combined with
sister marches around the globe, the march was likely the
largest single-day demonstration on record in the U.S.
Momentum
has been moving in this direction for years, a result of the
frustration born of unheard and publicly litigated cases. By late 2015,
more than
50 women came out with accusations that, over decades, comedian Bill Cosby drugged and assaulted them. Gretchen Carlson
opened the floodgates with her allegations against Fox News and Roger Ailes in 2016 and faced internal retaliation that ultimately forced her out of the company.
Trump Reset The Clock
The Trump administration spent much of 2017
attempting to overhaul several Obama-era policies and usher in widely
challenged changes to immigration, LGBTQ rights and health care.
Days after taking office, Trump installed the
first iteration of his travel ban blocking people from seven
Muslim-majority nations ― Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and
Yemen ― from entering the U.S. The executive order went into effect
immediately and resulted in
chaos at airports before it was blocked by a federal judge.
When acting Attorney General Sally Yates said the Justice Department would not enforce the ban,
Trump fired her.
Trump
has since tried to push through two revised versions of the ban ― once
in March and again in September ― with adjustments to countries on the
list and relaxed restrictions on which travelers are affected. Earlier
this month, the third version of the ban was
blocked by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Trump took aim at immigrants again in September when he rescinded
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama program that
allowed some individuals who entered the country as
minors to obtain work permits and be protected from deportation. The decision has been met with several legal challenges and
a promise from Senate Democrats to fight Trump’s reversal next year.
In July,
Trump announced a reversal of the Obama-era decision to repeal the ban
on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. armed forces. That
executive order was also met with multiple legal challenges and
ultimately
blocked by multiple judges. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice
filed an appeal to that ruling.Last week, Trump also claimed that Republicans had “essentially”
repealed Obama’s Affordable Care Act through the GOP tax bill. While the tax plan does eliminate the ACA’s
individual mandate,
it leaves many essential parts in place. Trump’s proclamation comes
after Republicans’ several failed attempts to pass legislation
overturning the ACA outright.
In the final weeks of the year came the
repeal of net neutrality, pushed forward by FCC Commissioner
Ajit Pai. The
repeal rolls back Obama-era regulations that classified the internet as
a public utility and required internet service providers to treat all
of the data traveling on their networks equally.
Mother Nature’s Revenge
Maria tested Trump’s ability to respond to a full-on humanitarian crisis. While he gave himself a
10 out of 10
score on his handling of the situation, critics say that he has not
offered enough funding to the island’s rebuilding efforts and that his
sparring with local leaders was counterproductive and in poor taste.
Also widely considered to be in poor taste? When Trump
threw paper towels at struggling Puerto Ricans as if he were lobbing T-shirts from a cannon at a concert.
And while all this was happening in the southeastern U.S.,
wildfires raged in the West. It has been the worst fire year on record for California, with
7,042 fires burning at least 505,930 acres. Thousands of residents have been displaced as their homes and possessions turned to ash.
South of
the border, Mexico suffered a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on Sept. 19.
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto estimated the quake was felt by 50
million people,
Reuters reported. The death toll rose to
more than 360 after first responders spent days searching through the rubble of about 100 collapsed buildings.
In November, another
earthquake struck the Iraq-Iran border
and killed more than 400 people in Iran. The magnitude 7.3 quake was
the deadliest in the country’s history and also triggered several
landslides.
Despite these catastrophes, climate change
denial continues to occur in the highest levels of government. Trump
pulled the United States
out of the Paris Agreement in June, and his leadership on the issue has been a devastating blow to
decades of scientific research and
global unity on the climate fight.
The White House Revolving Door
Throughout the year, high-ranking officials
and members of the president’s inner circle were unceremoniously ousted
from or left the White House, while rumors about who’s headed to the
exit next
continue to spread.
February saw the exit of national security adviser
Michael Flynn,
who lied about his ties to the Kremlin and his role attempting to ease
U.S. sanctions against Russia with its ambassador weeks before Trump
took office.
White House press secretary
Sean Spicer left his post in July after reportedly objecting to Trump naming
Anthony Scaramucci
as White House communications director. Spicer had long struggled in
the role: His messaging often conflicted with that of Trump, he
frequently lashed out at members of the press and he made more than one
blunder downplaying the horrors of the Holocaust.
In July, Scaramucci left his job just 10 days
into the role after unleashing a profanity-laced tirade against other
members of Trump’s staff to a New Yorker reporter. Failing to speak off
the record, “The Mooch” called Chief of Staff Reince Priebus a “paranoid
schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
And let’s not forget this gem:
“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock,”
Scaramucci told The New Yorker. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
Shortly before Scaramucci’s exit,
Priebus also
stepped down. The former Republican National Committee chair reportedly
clashed with self-described “economic nationalist” and
anti-establishmentarian
Steve Bannon, whose newly created “chief strategist” position undermined some of Priebus’ authority.
But Bannon wouldn’t last much longer either.
The former head of Breitbart News left his role in August. Some linked
Bannon’s departure to him being blamed for Trump’s controversial
responses to the Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacy rally. Other
sources said Trump fired him because he believed Bannon to be the
source of recent leaks to the press.
Days later, controversial Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka left his post amid criticism about his ties to
far-right foreign political groups and his
description of Islam as an inherently violent religion. Although a White House official implied he’d been fired, Gorka issued a resignation letter.
In September, Health and Human Services Secretary
Tom Price resigned amid revelations that his frequent use of chartered and military flights cost American taxpayers more than $1 million.
White House aide
Omarosa Manigault Newman
left her position in mid-December. Newman, who rose to fame on Trump’s
reality TV show “The Apprentice,” and White House officials said she
resigned, but multiple sources reported that she was fired by Chief of
Staff John Kelly, Priebus’s successor.
The Emboldening Of White Nationalists And Racism
This was the year America could no longer deny that its seedy underbelly is full of racists and white supremacists.
Evidently emboldened by the election of a president who has hesitated to disavow their movement and has his own
lengthy history of racism, white supremacists and racists made their presence known in 2017 through violent
rallies,
viralracistrants and the rise of
once-fringe figures into White House roles.
Tensions came to a head in August when
thousands of torch-wielding white supremacists ― the largest such
gathering in more than a decade, according to the Anti-Defamation League
― gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia. One counter-protester,
32-year-old paralegal
Heather Heyer, was killed when a white supremacist plowed his car through a crowd.
While the rally was advertised as a protest
against the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, many
protesters came with a bigger agenda. “The Jewish media is going down,”
“The goyim know” and “We support President Donald Trump” were among
their signs.
Backlash to the rally set off a chain reaction. In cities across the U.S.,
counter-protestersthwartedother white supremacist and so-called “alt-right” events by drowning out their presence with much larger turnouts.
Others responded by demanding that their
cities remove statues honoring the Confederacy or, taking matters into
their own hands,
vandalizing or toppling the monuments.
While addressing the nation after Heyer’s
death, the president managed to deepen the nation’s pain by appearing to
normalize white nationalists. It took Trump days to condemn the
violence rally in Charlottesville, and his address to the country was
less than comforting. Trump refused to acknowledge the presence of white
nationalists and said there were
“very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville. The statement marked a lack of conviction on Trump’s part
to denounce racism.
In September, Trump also stirred racial tensions when he called for fans to
boycott National Football League games at which athletes knelt for the national anthem in an ongoing protest against
against racial inequality and police brutality. At
an Alabama rally that month, Trump implicitly called former San
Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the athlete who initiated
the widespread protests last year, a “son of a bitch.”
But racism is not just on the rise in the
form of large rallies. Individual hate crimes targeting ethnic and
religious minorities also are increasing. Data from the Center for the
Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San
Bernardino, found such incidents rose about 5 percent from 2015 to 2016 ―
with a dramatic spike during the election period ― and 2017 may prove
to be even worse. From January to September, America’s 13 large cities
saw, in total, a nearly
20 percent rise in hate crimes compared to the same period in 2016.
You can help HuffPost document hate crimes by clicking
here.
We Had The Deadliest Shooting In U.S. History ― Again
For the second year in a row, we saw the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
In October, 58 people died and 546 were injured when a lone gunman took aim at crowds enjoying the
Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas. It surpassed the death toll of the shooting at
Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub a year earlier, when a gunman claimed 49 lives and injured 58 others.
The horror of a new mass shooting record
being set so quickly reflects the frightening reality that mass
shootings are becoming both
more common and more deadly.
The October massacre was one of more than 330 mass shootings ― defined
as incidents in which four or more people are wounded or killed ―
tracked this year by the nonprofit
Gun Violence Archive.
Just over a month after the Las Vegas
shooting, a gunman walked into a Sutherland Springs, Texas, church and
killed 26 congregants and injured 20 others. The massacre knocked the
1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado ― an event so shocking
at the time it seemed inconceivable it could be overshadowed ― off the
list of
top 10 deadliest mass shootings in recent U.S. history.
Russia, Russia, Russia
The questions over how Russia meddled in the
2016 election, whether the Trump campaign was aware of it and whether it
did anything to cover it up lingered into 2017.
Rather than helping investigators get to the
bottom of the issue, Trump has continually discredited the institutions
investigating the subject and has not taken any action to ensure
meddling won’t happen in the 2018 midterm elections.
There are multiple investigations into
Russia’s involvement, but the one to watch in 2018 is being carried out
by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was brought on to conduct the
independent probe after Trump
fired FBI Director James Comey.
So far, Mueller’s investigation has resulted in indictments of former Trump campaign chairman
Paul Manafort,
his former aide Rick Gates and Flynn, who pleaded guilty earlier this
month to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian
government.
Foreign Agitations
Throughout the year, Trump managed to upset
several world leaders. Over the course of just a few days in late
January and early February, the president
picked fights with leaders from Australia, Mexico and Iran. He also reportedly enraged European allies at a
spring NATO summit with his flippant attitude toward the Paris climate accord and refusal to reaffirm commitments to key NATO pacts.
But the worst beef Trump ramped up was with
North Korea. As the isolated country has accelerated its nuclear weapon
and missile development programs, Trump has escalated his threatening
rhetoric toward leader Kim Jong Un, promising “fire and fury” if the
nation continues with its nuclear ambitions.
North Korea responded by threatening to fire
missiles at the U.S. territory of Guam, bringing the U.S. closer to a
nuclear standoff than it has been in decades.
In April, the U.S. conducted its
first military strike against the Syrian government, in retaliation for a deadly
chemical weapon attack on an opposition-held area. The attack was allegedly carried out by Syrian President
Bashar Assad’s regime.
Trump also stoked international tensions in December when he officially
recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and
directed the State Department to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel there
from Tel Aviv. The move threatens to further inflame the strained
relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, which both lay claim
to Jerusalem.
The one laughable moment? Trump became a meme on his trip to the Middle East when he stood before a
mysterious glowing orb with King Salman in Saudi Arabia.
You Didn’t Even Hear About These Stories, Did You?
One of the unfortunate side effects of all
the upheaval wrought by the Trump administration is that attention has
been sucked away from important global stories while we were lost in the
circus of “covfefe” in a Trump tweet and the shock of seemingly
never-ending national tragedies.
Yemen
has suffered under the weight of Saudi Arabian intervention and a
conflict that is starving families across the country. An average of 100
civilians a month are killed in Yemen, mostly from Saudi-led airstrikes
and shelling,
the United Nation estimates. The World Health Organization estimates
2,219 have been killed in the cholera outbreak, where the suspected amount of infections has hit 1 million cases. And Saudi Arabia announced the
closure of ports in Yemen in November that would put nearly 7 million civilians at risk of starvation.
The Trump administration has
embraced Saudi Arabia as an ally and pointed to U.S. arms sales to the nation as an American job-creator.
Meanwhile in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, violent
state-sanctioned persecution in the last four months of the year has
driven more than 655,000
Rohingya Muslims from the region. By Sept. 24, the crisis had claimed
at least 9,000 Rohingyas’ lives, humanitarian groups reported.
