As 2026 Begins: A Data-Led Look Back at 2025
The totals behind a year of disruption and response.
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TL;DR: 2025 gave us paper trails to follow. Orders signed, cases filed, and policies pushed through unexpectedly in favor of project 2025. It also produced a counter-force, a movement, this movement and many groups joining forces to fight back for our country. Tens of thousands of protests and measurable electoral movement.
The White House
225 is the number of executive orders attributed to President Trump in calendar year 2025, per the Federal Register, Governing by override.
~1,500 The approximate number of Jan. 6 defendants pardoned/commuted at the start of the term (including high-profile leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy), per reporting roundups and case coverage.
$2.7 billion GAO’s estimate of the total taxpayer costs tied to January 6 (not just repairs), including Capitol damage, law-enforcement response costs, and security/investigations across federal agencies and D.C. (GAO-23-106625).
Immigration Numbers
622,000 Removals claimed by DHS for 2025.
1.9 million People DHS said “self-deported.”
Two important truths can coexist:
Those numbers are enormous, and
Numbers are not automatically legitimacy. “Fast” enforcement without guardrails produces the same thing every large system produces under pressure: errors, abuse, and collateral damage.
Lawsuit Count: Democracy in Court Filings
If 2025 had a soundtrack, it was the sound of PDFs hitting PACER.
552 is the number of legal challenges tracked in 2025 by Just Security’s litigation tracker (updated as cases evolve)
And if you want a parallel tracker focused on national-security-related executive actions, Lawfare maintains one here: Lawfare
When people say “institutions are failing,” remind them: courts don’t trend. They docket. And 2025 was a year of constant dockets.
How Many Times Did America Show Up?
A huge chunk of the national protest tally comes from compilation work using the Crowd Counting Consortium dataset and related reporting. K. Starling pulled those threads together into a single, readable analysis and she gave you the gift activists rarely get: a numeric mirror. Read K. Starling’s post here.
55,000+ A commonly cited estimate for the number of protest events in the U.S. in 2025 (event count, not attendance).
And for the protest moments many of you felt:
2,700+ locations The scale of the October 18 “No Kings” mobilization footprint (nationwide), as widely reported ahead of the day.
“Millions” Attendance estimates vary by methodology (as they always do), but the through-line is consistent across reporting: this was one of the largest coordinated protest waves in modern U.S. history, with June and October both landing in the multi-million range.
Elections
25 seats Democrats flipped 25 Republican-held state legislative seats in 2025 (out of 118 GOP seats contested), while Republicans flipped none, per Bolts’ analysis
The local sweep stories mattered too because local offices are the bench for everything that comes next. Example: Bucks County, PA row offices flipping was widely covered.
Erica Chenoweth’s research:
3.5% The “rule of thumb” from Erica Chenoweth’s research: sustained nonviolent movements that reach roughly 3.5% active participation have historically been extraordinarily hard for governments to ignore. It’s not magic, and it’s not automatic but it’s a useful benchmark:
Harvard Kennedy School, the 3.5% rule.
2025 proved capacity. 2026 needs to prove consistency.
What We’re Doing Next
2026 will be won by repeatable actions as we build a stronger foundation.
Show up for the Free America Walk Out
On January 20, 2026 at 2 PM local time, we walk out of work, school, and commerce. Not as performance. As public noncooperation. As proof of numbers. As a visible refusal to normalize the construction of a coercive state.
Do this today (2 minutes):
Commit here: https://www.freeameri.ca/
Put it on your calendar: Jan 20, 2026 2 PM local time
Text two people (two direct asks). Copy/paste this to them:
“Jan 20, 2 PM local. Free America Walk Out. I’m going. Will you?”
If this helped you feel oriented, share it. Someone you love is still drowning in “it’s all too much.”
And if you’re ready to move from reading to doing: watch this space. We’re planning more coordinated actions in 2026, and we are not backing down because the most dangerous lie is that resistance doesn’t work.
Question: Will you stick with us through 2026? Let’s make some good trouble.
We are swamped with technology. Data centers are draining our resources. There's not an infinite supply of the needs for over eight billion people on this planet. Musk seems to think it's his duty to personally increase the population as much as possible. Global warming is real, not a hoax. Humans face extinction, certainly, we are accelerating it every day with the ignorance that comes with hubris. Our problems multiply daily yet we carry on, fighting for the intelligence necessary to overcome the hapless people now planning the future. Don't give up should be the call of 2026 for all of us who value our freedoms over the amoral advocates for control who are now in power.
This walkout has to include cancelling media. Think Disney vs Kimmel. Think about what would happen if on January 20 we cancelled our subscriptions. Wouldn’t that send a bigly message?