Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.
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ATROCITY KEY
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia
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NOVEMBER 2025
- – November 1, 2025 – Accusing Nigeria of failing to protect Christians, Trump threatened to send the American military into the country and cut aid. “If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria,” the president wrote on social media. “And we may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities.” The post followed an earlier post in which Trump, after watching a Fox News report about Nigeria, claimed “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.” Nigeria has denied Trump’s accusations, and the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom concluded in 2024 that extremist violence from a variety of religious and secular groups in Nigeria has affected both Christians and Muslims alike.
- – November 2, 2025 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US military killed at least three people in another boat strike in the Caribbean Sea. Announcing the attack on social media, Hegseth posted a video that appeared to show an explosion. He said the vessel “was known by our intelligence to be involved in illicit narcotics smuggling,” but he did not provide evidence to support the claim. The attack raised the toll of the campaign to about sixty-five people killed. In a letter to the US government, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote, “Based on the very sparse information provided publicly by the US authorities, none of the individuals on the targeted boats appeared to pose an imminent threat to the lives of others or otherwise justified the use of lethal armed force against them under international law.”
- – November 3, 2025 – The Trump administration said that it would partially fund SNAP after federal judges in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ruled that the government must keep the food aid program running. Trump claimed via social media that he did “NOT want Americans to go hungry just because the Radical Democrats refuse to do the right thing and REOPEN THE GOVERNMENT.” The Department of Agriculture had planned to freeze payments to the program, which serves about one in eight Americans, due to the government shutdown. In October, Trump said that he had “identified funds” that would allow the government to pay members of the military during the shutdown, in addition to securing a $130 million donation from his billionaire friend, Timothy Mellon.
- – November 4, 2025 – Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the US military killed two people in yet another strike on boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It was the sixteenth strike in an offensive that began in early September and raised the death toll to at least sixty-seven people. The administration claimed that its policy is lawful because the president is “determined” that the United States is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. A wide range of specialists denounced the killings as illegal. “I can’t imagine anyone, no matter what the circumstance, believing it is appropriate to kill people who are clinging to a boat in the water,” said Michael Schmitt, a former Air Force lawyer and professor emeritus at the US Naval War College. “That is clearly unlawful.”
- – November 4, 2025 – Chief US District Judge John McConnell ruled that the Trump administration cannot withhold billions of dollars in transportation funding to states that refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement. Judge McConnell wrote in his ruling that the US Department of Transportation (DOT) “blatantly overstepped” their authority in attempting to link funding used to maintain roads, bridges, and highways to immigration demands. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by twenty states, led by California, after Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined the administration’s expectations for cooperation with immigration officials. After the ruling, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated, “If President Trump wants to stop losing in court, he should stop breaking the law.”
- – November 5, 2025 – Federal judge Robert Gettleman ordered authorities to improve conditions at the ICE facility in the Chicago suburb of Broadview. Gettleman’s order came after detainees sued the facility, saying they were kept in “inhumane” and crowded conditions. Detainees said they were forced to sleep on the floor or in plastic chairs, and that the toilets overflowed with human waste, which seeped into sleeping areas. Gettleman stated that he found the witnesses’ testimony “highly credible,” adding, “People shouldn’t be sleeping next to overflowing toilets. They should not be sleeping on top of each other.” Gettleman’s order also required that ICE agents allow detainees to call lawyers in private with no cost and provide them with a list of pro bono attorneys in English and Spanish. Agents were also barred from misrepresenting documents provided for detainees for sign.
- – November 5, 2025 – A mock-up of a sign reading THE OVAL OFFICE in cursive golden lettering appeared taped on the outside of the White House, mimicking Trump’s recent attempts to give the White House the same gilded flourishes as his hotels and clubs. The Oval Office sign inspired humorous responses on social media, with some joking that such a label helped people with dementia and others saying it would make even Marie Antoinette say, “Tone it down.” As part of the makeover, Trump previously tore up the Rose Garden grass and replaced it with stone pavers, turning it into a patio similar to his Mar-a-Lago property. He also added a “Presidential Walk of Fame” along the colonnade, which featured portraits of all former presidents, except Joe Biden.
- – November 5, 2025 – In response to Democratic election victories in New York, California, Virginia, and New Jersey, Trump posted on Truth Social more than thirty times in less than three hours. The posts veered wildly in subject matter. Posts included AI-generated videos of Trump standing in front of a podium in an unknown room, covering topics such as his recent meeting with the prime minister of Japan, his G2 meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping, and Walmart allegedly lowering its prices. “Walmart just announced that Prices for a Thanksgiving Dinner is now down 25 percent since under Sleepy/Crooked Joe Biden, in 2024. AFFORDABILITY is a Republican Stronghold.” Another video has Trump criticizing Obamacare for being “really bad healthcare” and a “disaster.” Moments later, Trump railed against Democrats, telling Republicans to take the “nuclear option” and end the filibuster. Minutes later, he pivoted again and started posting about the anniversary of his re-election.
- – November 6, 2025 – The Republican-controlled Senate voted down a measure requiring congressional approval for military action against Venezuela. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate armed services committee, had said before the vote, “If the administration intends to escalate towards conflict with Venezuela, Congress has a constitutional duty to declare and authorize such action. We cannot sleepwalk into another war.” Hours after the vote, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced another strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean. It was at least the seventeenth such strike in the region, bringing the total fatalities to at least sixty-nine. Last month, Trump had indicated that he would not seek congressional approval for military strikes against alleged drug traffickers. Instead, he had said, “We’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country.”
- – November 6, 2025 – ICE agents arrested a US citizen in the parking lot of a Los Angeles Home Depot store, then entered his car and drove away with his toddler, who was in the back seat. After Dennis Quinonez was detained by ICE agents and taken to an ICE vehicle, onlookers shouted, “There’s a baby in the back!” Moments later, a heavily armed and masked ICE agent got into the driver’s seat of Quinonez’s car and drove away. Quinonez’s daughter, who was not yet two years old, looked on, wide-eyed from her car seat. Later that morning, Quinonez’s mother, Maria Avalos, received a call from border patrol agents using an unidentified number and was asked to pick up her granddaughter. Avalos later said she was alarmed to learn that masked agents, who were heavily armed, could drive away with her granddaughter. “This is something very, very frightening, because it’s not clear who these people are.”
ICE Agents Arrest US Citizen in LA and Drive Off with His Baby in Car (The Independent)
- – November 7, 2025 – The Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s emergency appeal to temporarily block a court order to fully fund SNAP food aid payments amid the government shutdown, even though residents in some states had already started to receive the funds. The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that fast-acting states were “trying to seize what they could of the agency’s finite set of remaining funds, before any appeal could even be filed, and to the detriment of other States’ allotments.” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the court filing, “Once those billions are out the door, there is no ready mechanism for the government to recover those funds.” Every “fast-acting” state that distributed SNAP funds before the Supreme Court’s ruling on the emergency appeal had a Democratic governor.
- – November 8, 2025 – President Trump urged Republican senators to redirect federal money used to subsidize health insurance costs under the Affordable Care Act toward direct payments to individuals. On Truth Social, he posted, “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.” Trump and Senate Republicans seemed unable to grasp the fact that most consumers would still need to purchase plans from the same insurance companies they railed against.
- – November 9, 2025 – Panamanian officials confirmed that a three-year-old migrant had died on a new “reverse migration” boat route after the Trump administration effectively sealed the US border to migrants earlier in the year. The boat, which capsized off the coast of Colón Province en route to the child’s home country, Colombia, was following a new migrant route that sprang up after the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. Since late September, more than 14,000 migrants have ridden in small boats along Panama’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts to avoid the Darién Gap, which has effectively been sealed to prevent northbound migration. In February, an eight-year-old Venezuelan migrant drowned under similar circumstances.
- – November 9, 2025 – Writing in The Atlantic, Federal Judge Mark L. Wolf explained that he was stepping down to warn about the “existential threat to democracy” posed by the Trump administration. Describing Trump’s actions as “contrary to everything I have stood for in my more than fifty years in the Department of Justice and on the bench,” Wolf accused Trump of “using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.” In an interview, Wolf said he had resigned to speak more freely about his own views and those of his colleagues who were still on the bench. “I hope to be a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people.”
- – November 9, 2025 – Six more people were killed after the US military struck two more boats suspected of smuggling drugs in the eastern Pacific, bringing the total death toll from such strikes to seventy-six. “Under President Trump, we are protecting the homeland and killing these cartel terrorists who wish to harm our country and its people,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on social media without providing evidence for his claims, along with videos of the attacks. Many experts have denounced the strikes as illegal. Later in the week, The New York Times reported that a secret Justice Department memo approving the boat strikes relied heavily on unsubstantiated claims made by the White House.
- – November 10, 2025 – John Braun, a felon whose sentence Trump commuted during his first term, was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison for violating the terms of his supervised release. In 2011, Braun pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering, but his sentence was commuted in 2021 after his family leveraged connections to Jared Kushner; he had only served a little over a year of a ten-year sentence. While on supervised release, prosecutors alleged that Braun sexually assaulted a nanny, swung an IV pole at a nurse, threatened a synagogue congregant, assaulted a three-year-old, and made usurious loans, among other crimes. At least eight convicts granted clemency by Trump during his first term have since been charged with other crimes, as have several others pardoned for their roles in the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks.
- – November 10, 2025 – Trump pardoned Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, Sidney Powell, and other top allies who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. Though some of the pardoned individuals were named as unindicted coconspirators in the 2023 case filed by Jack Smith, none had been charged with a crime; the pardons were therefore largely symbolic, though they may also help protect the individuals from being charged at the federal level in the future. In a proclamation announcing the pardons, the Justice Department described them as a corrective to “a grave national injustice.”
- – November 10, 2025 – Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn a $5 million civil case that determined he sexually abused and defamed the writer E. Jean Carroll. The 2023 case concerned Carroll’s claim that Trump raped her in a department store in the 1990s and later called her a liar; Caroll also was awarded $83.3 million in 2024 after another jury found Trump defamed her about the same claims. In a filing, Trump’s attorneys claimed the district court made a “‘series of indefensible evidentiary rulings,’ improperly admitting highly inflammatory propensity evidence against President Trump,” such as testimony from additional women claiming Trump had committed further acts of sexual misconduct. Last year, an appeals court found that the trial judge had not violated Trump’s rights in allowing the prosecution to present this evidence, and earlier in the year, an appeals court also upheld the $83.3 million judgment, rejecting Trump’s claims that he was protected by presidential immunity.
- – November 10, 2025 – Trump threatened to sue the BBC over a 2024 documentary featuring an edited version of a speech he gave to supporters on the day of the Capitol attacks. “We’ll sue them for anywhere between $1 billion and $5 billion, probably sometime next week,” Trump told reporters. “I think I have to do it. They cheated. They changed the words coming out of my mouth.” During his speech on January 6, 2021, Trump said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.” Over fifty minutes later, he added, “And we fight. We fight like hell.” In the edited version, the clip shows Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol … and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.” The BBC apologized for the way the speech was edited but rejected Trump’s defamation claim, arguing that the documentary had not caused any harm, that it was not atypical to edit long speeches, and that opinions on matters of public concern and political speech are heavily protected.
Side-by-Side Comparison of BBC-Edited Trump Speech from Day of Capitol Attack with Original (The Guardian)
- – November 12, 2025 – The US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted nearly unanimously to condemn the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. In a rare group statement, the bishops wrote, “We oppose the indiscriminate mass deportation of people. We pray for an end to the dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement. We feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” As of this writing, the Trump administration had deported 400,000 people in 2025 and detained 60,000 others, including people who are in the country legally.
- – November 12, 2025 – Trump signed a funding package to reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in history, all but guaranteeing that the Obamacare tax subsidies would be allowed to expire. During the shutdown, while many went without pay or food stamps, Trump stayed away from the negotiations. His agenda included visiting six countries, hosting foreign leaders at the White House, speaking at a million-dollar-plate dinner, throwing a Great Gatsby–themed party at Mar-a-Lago, golfing multiple times, and beginning construction on his ballroom project. “President Trump continued to work night and day on behalf of American people—including mitigating many of the harmful impacts of the Democrat shutdown,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.
- – November 12, 2025 – House Democrats released three emails from Jeffrey Epstein in which the convicted sex offender alleged that Trump knew about Epstein’s abuse of minors. In an April 2011 email to his longtime confidante and fellow convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein wrote, “I want you to realize that the dog that hasn’t barked is Trump” and mentioned that Trump had spent hours at Epstein’s home with one of his victims. In a January 2019 email to the journalist Michael Wolff, Epstein…
