It seems like I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my alternative history novel Restive Souls for about a decade. So it’s not surprising that a thought crossing my mind a lot as the New Year approaches is what our new year should look like, instead of the fact that we are about to enter year two of the biggest political farce in American history.
So with that in mind, here’s a fictional retrospective of Kamala Harris’s first year in office, as written by a fictional reporter for an unnamed news organization that has not turned to the dark side, and perhaps in this newly conceived timeline, never will.
I didn’t categorize this as fiction because something like this is really what should have happened in a sane country.
The highlights of Kamala Harris’s tumultuous first year as U.S. President
by Walter Cronkite III
Kamala Harris made history by becoming the first female president in U.S. history, squeaking by Donald Trump in a surprisingly close election that was later discovered to have been tampered with in several states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, and Arizona.
She began her term by declaring in her inauguration speech that she would operate like a one-term president.
“I’m sure I will run for a second term,” she told the massive throng at her inauguration speech to wild cheers, “but the declining tolerance in many democracies for extended terms is not lost on me. Rather than spending my working hours trying to assure a second term, I will act as if it won’t happen. This is the only way to govern in the modern era. Too often, politicians dial up their pollsters before every decision. I pledge to you today, I won’t do that.”
She apparently wasn’t kidding, as she quickly made several controversial decisions and statements, including her inaugural address declaration that hers would “not be a unity government.”
The possible exception to that was her appointment of former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger as Secretary of State, but there were never any questions about where his loyalties were during the election.
Here’s a look at several issues tackled in President Harris’s first term.
Voter fraud
New Attorney General Jack Smith, replacing Merrick Garland, went to work immediately, pouncing on Elon Musk for his alleged participation in a massive voter fraud effort in swing states. Smith’s written indictment began with:
At 9:32 p.m. on November 5, Elon Musk preemptively declared victory with a cryptic tweet: “Game, set, match.”1
Musk was indicted on January 25 in a sealed indictment, just five days following the election, in a sweeping election scandal set for trial late next year. The indictment was unsealed last week when Musk was formally arrested in absentia on federal charges after he fled the country. His whereabouts are unknown.
Smith said that a full investigation would take years, but that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would focus its first efforts on voting irregularities in Pennsylvania. Smith has been mum on details, other than saying, “88 toss-up counties in swing states flipped red, and not one flipped blue, a near statistical impossibility. If there hadn’t been an overwhelming turnout for Kamala Harris in other counties, she would have lost the election.”2
The Trump/Epstein Scandal rocks the nation
Smith also acted swiftly to act on the so-called Epstein Files, which Smith has said implicated prominent men from both major U.S. political parties, as well as celebrities, rock stars, and oligarchs.
But the big fish was, of course, Donald Trump. Smith issued an unsealed indictment within ten days of taking office, declaring:
“We have enough evidence to put him away for a hundred years, if only he’d live that long to serve out the length of the term.
“Sadly, many others are involved. No matter which political party they belong to, or the storied careers they’ve led, we will prosecute them to the full extent of the law.”3
For now, Smith says, the Justice Department will keep many of the files sealed during the Trump prosecution, thus keeping most of the other names under wraps, but rumors spread quickly when some celebrities and businessmen were visited by DOJ lawyers and warned not to leave the country.
Details on the scope of Trump’s indictment are expected to be released upon the former president’s formal arrest after he is released from Walter Reed hospital, where he is recovering after falling ill from a heart attack a week ago.
During his first few months in office, Attorney General Smith took on a decidedly more public stance than he had as an independent prosecutor.
Similarly, Kamala Harris quickly earned a nickname from her supporters, “Prosecutor Harris,” which she did not try to discourage.
“This is not going to be a reconciliation or unity government,” she said in a speech to the American Bar Association. “There is simply too much corruption associated with the Republican Party. We can’t allow the spiderweb to keep growing.”
In response to critics who accused her of a retribution campaign, Harris said, “If the American people agree with that assessment, at least they’ll know they have free and fair elections for their voice to be heard.”
The ruptured alliance with Israel and the F bomb heard around the world
One of Harris’s first acts was to redeclare the U.S. as a signatory to the Rome Statute of 2000, which had previously been withdrawn by President George W. Bush in 2002, partly, Harris said, because Bush wanted an unfettered ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
The Rome Statute was negotiated and signed by the U.S. under former President Bill Clinton to establish membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Harris’s swift action in re-establishing the United States as a signatory surprised pundits, who were unaware of the shocking developments to follow.
Harris took advantage of a slim majority in the Senate to then ratify the Rome Statute, finding 68 votes to acquire the two-thirds majority needed to ratify the agreement, which made the U.S. a member of the court. The urgency she applied to the effort was the first sign that something was afoot.
On January 23, after the Gaza Health Ministry announced that the Palestinian death toll in Gaza stood at 47,283, Harris’s CIA secretly worked out an agreement with Israel’s secret service agency, Mossad, to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and whisk them off to the Hague to answer a November 2024 ICC indictment for war crimes.
When word of the Harris administration’s involvement leaked to the press, angry hardline supporters of the Israeli war effort called for a congressional investigation, which gave rise to the world’s most famous F bomb during a heated press conference in Washington, D.C., when a Fox News reporter asked Harris if she was a supporter of Palestinian and Islamic “terrorists.”
“My husband is Jewish, for F*ck’s sake,” she replied testily.
Nevertheless, Republican Senators who voted to ratify the Rome Statute were outraged, claiming they were told by administration officials that the bill was necessary to prosecute international terrorists.
Asked by critics why she didn’t take a firmer stand as Vice President, she said, “Because I was following the law, and the order in the chain of command. But this stuff was all on the drawing board under Joe. Sometimes, these things take time.”
News of American involvement in Netanyahu’s arrest caused significant civil unrest in Israel. The American embassy in Jerusalem came under siege by angry right-wing militants and supporters of Gallant, a popular far-right figure in Israel. Israeli IDF forces and American Marines used tear gas to subdue the crowds.
In hastily called elections, Netanyahu was replaced as Prime Minister by another hardliner, Justice Minister Yariv Levin. Harris created yet another controversy when she said, “That’s not going to work for us.”
She later stated that the Israeli people would need to choose between “a future of warfare and the two-state solution worked on by Netanyahu’s predecessors. The best way to do that is to elect someone worthy of that region’s great history.”
When Harris threatened to cut off military aid if Israel didn’t abide by the November 2024 cease-fire terms, Prime Minister Levin fired back, saying, “We are fully capable of building whatever we need on our own.”
However, economic uncertainty and rising prices forced another election in Israel, and last week, a more moderate figure, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, has emerged to lead the polls.
The Battle for Texas and an expanded Supreme Court
When three Mexican families were killed by concertina wire in the Rio Grande River after Texas Governor Gregg Abbott redoubled efforts to inflict harm on migrants attempting river crossings, President Harris ordered the National Guard to take down the razor wire and other barriers put in place by the Abbott administration.
The Supreme Court immediately blocked Harris’s effort through the shadow docket, a procedure used to make emergency rulings before a more substantial formal ruling is made.
Harris followed up that ruling by triggering controversy a week later when Attorney General Jack Smith indicted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and billionaire GOP donor Harlan Crow on federal bribery charges one day after Harris urged Congressional leaders to expand the Supreme Court to twelve justices.
Even if Thomas is convicted, he’ll remain on the court until/if he is impeached.
Anti-corruption activists are urging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to at least temporarily lift the filibuster so that a bill expanding the court, called “The Anti-Corruption Supreme Court Act,” can be passed by a simple majority. So far, Schumer has resisted, insisting that “an ugly precedent would be established” if he did so.
Europe, Ukraine, the U.S. military, and the Russia challenge
Secretary of State Adam Kinzinger worked directly with Belgium to release nearly $250 billion in seized Russian assets in a European-based loan to Ukraine for its war effort against Russia. A Belgian sign-off was needed because most of the assets are held in Brussels.
Belgium was understandably concerned about Russian retribution, but Kinzinger offered direct guarantees from the U.S. and reaffirmed that the U.S. would honor the NATO treaty that states that an attack on one country is an attack on all.
Defense Secretary Michèle Flournoy also announced a comprehensive agreement to purchase drones from Ukraine, which has developed what many consider the world’s most sophisticated drone technology during its long war with Russia.
“As a military operational force, we need to get faster, smaller, and more agile,” Flournoy told the press in a briefing about the multibillion-dollar deal.
Republicans in the Senate denounced the deal, saying Ukraine could set up trojan horse technology to take out American assets. When questioned about that possibility during a Senate hearing, Flournoy laughed and said, “Next question.”
Other Republicans said the same technology should be built by American companies, but President Harris pointed out that the Ukrainian tech was battle-tested and that one of the goals of the agreement was to help Ukraine pay off war debts. “This isn’t a permanent commitment,” she said while announcing a simultaneous agreement with a Texas-based drone technology company.
The new funds have purchased significant new drone tech, rocket launchers, and Tomahawk missiles that have pushed Russia out of Donbas. For the first time, Russian protesters filled Moscow and St. Petersburg streets last July and August, but Putin arrested thousands in a crackdown and appears to still be firmly in control.
Kamala Harris goes to China
Most of the world was shocked after Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China agreed on the Thirty Year Plan for Reunification shortly after President Harris visited Chinese President Xi Jinping with a plan developed by Secretary of State Kinzinger.
Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley attacked Harris for “Giving away” Taiwan, to which Kinzinger replied during Senate testimony:
“It’s not ours to give. The United States has a significant interest in preserving the existing microchip and tech industry in Taiwan. If, as some fear, a Chinese invasion is inevitable,4 the microchip industry will be devastated by war, and it will cause untold damage to our economy. This treaty requires no action on the part of Congress. But the good senators are free to complain.”
The agreement between Taiwan and China is similar to the agreement between the British and China that relinquished control of Hong Kong to China. Taiwan will remain independent for thirty years but will merge its foreign policy with China’s in fifteen years, and become an “autonomous republic” within the PRC in 2056.
Xi and Harris also agreed to establish a working group of diplomats to discuss terms for a comprehensive commercial treaty that, according to a joint statement, “reflects the urgency of climate change and its impact on our important bilateral relationship.”
More on Climate Change
Calling climate change “the international emergency of our lifetime,” Harris said that, in addition to the funding established by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), further efforts were needed to address a climate emergency the administration says could flood coastal cities much sooner than expected.
In a speech given to the Sierra Club in March, President Harris noted the extensive damage being done to Antarctic ice shelves, saying that a report created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produced an alarming set of numbers regarding ocean salinity and conditions of the Antractica’s Ross Ice Shelf:
“I realize I’m preaching to the choir here, but most Americans are resistant to the changes we need to put forward to prevent the ice shelves from collapsing completely. Think of a glass of whisky on ice, and how quickly the ice melts. That’s essentially what is happening at our southern pole, but NOAA researchers are telling us there is no half glass full moment here. We are in dire straits.”
Harris has called on Congress to significantly increase funding for the NOAA to research storms, which will increase in intensity during the next decade. She also called for a commission to explore solutions for the insurance crisis, as insurance companies continue to abandon property coverage in storm zones.
The IRA currently already allocates $370 billion for clean energy transition projects and assistance,5 but Harris has recently called for a second major bill, along with a separate bill declaring a moratorium on AI data centers, which have begun competing with residential consumers for water and electricity.
The administration also recently announced that new EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) chief Pete Buttigieg will work with the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy to begin a program for transitioning energy workers in regions such as Texas’s Permian Basin, which is the largest oil-producing region in the U.S.
“We’ll keep extracting some oil out of there,” Buttigieg said, “but we’ll use it to build up our reserves for emergencies.” The idea, Buttigieg says, is to allow prices to better reflect “the danger quotient of this kind of fuel,” while ramping up production of hydroelectric power plants and windfarms.
In a speech at the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Brazil, President Harris urged members to reject corporate interests and “return to the roots of the climate healing movement.”
Environmental activists have expressed alarm at the growing infiltration of UN climate conferences in recent years by corporations and carbon-based energy companies.
The Economy
The economy has been humming along since Harris took office. Recent Labor Department data shows an unemployment rate of 3.7% and inflation under 3%. Harris was able to push through an unprecedented $35,000 home loan downpayment support program for first-time borrowers in the latest budget, $10,000 more than she promised during the campaign.
The “Humans First Budget Bill” passed by Congress in 2025 also featured a $40 billion fund to “support local innovations in housing supply solutions, catalyze innovative methods of construction financing, and empower developers and homebuilders to design and build affordable homes.”6
The new budget also restored the Child Tax Credit, which, before expiring in 2022, had provided a tax credit of up to $3,600 per child for low- and middle-income families, plus a $6,000 tax credit for new families having their first child.
Much of this was funded by the new wealth taxes developed by Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren, as well as a “loophole-free” new IRS tax bracket of 52% for individuals earning more than $50 million per year.
Harris’s “Humans First Housing” bill is a massive reform proposal that aims to take control away from corporate housing landlords and hedge funds that have taken over large swaths of the single-family home market. The proposal has met significant resistance from Congressional Republicans.
Meanwhile, FTC Chairperson Lina Khan, retained by Harris, has sued to break up Amazon into several pieces: AWS (Amazon Web Services), Kindle Publishing, Amazon Retail Services, Amazon Logistics Services, and Amazon Books. Khan has promised to work with Congress to reform antitrust law so that the government has more power to initiate antitrust policies, so that trust-busting doesn’t rely solely on government lawsuits.
Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, has proposed a “WPA 2.0” program modeled after FDR’s Works Progress Administration to help workers deal with what he referred to as “the stress of having to compete with high tech for work.”
Notes
Don’t be sad, my friends. Stay mad. Vote in the midterms and demand that the new Congress establish a Presidential Crime Commission. If he’s not still alive to answer for his crimes, his minions and enablers will be.
I didn’t cover everything a real article would have. I became both tired and a little sad. Do as I say, not as I do, I guess.
Thanks for reading!
Just a few days left for this special…
Want to take a deeper dive into alternative history? Take a look at this excerpt from my alternative history novel, Restive Souls:
An Alternative Christmas
This is a sample chapter from the first part of Restive Souls, an alternative history novel about a North America that sees slavery ended in the late 1700s and experiences no further indigenous ethnic cleansing from that point as a powerful Black nation rises in the Carolina Low Country. There may be some grammatical miscues and other minor mishaps in this version not in the final version targeted for publication.
Footnotes
This Will Hold. “She Won, Part III: The Devil Is in the Data.” Substack.com. This Will Hold, June 19, 2025. https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/she-won-part-iii-the-devil-is-in
This Will Hold, ibid
Fantasy quote!
Many military analysts expect China to be fully capable of mounting a successful invasion by 2028, if not before. Given the mental state of the man currently in the Oval Office, if I were Xi, who has committed to retaking the island, I’d take advantage of current American incompetence, and I might even accelerate the timeline, knowing the mad clown would not do anything to stop me.
Much of this has been gutted by the Republican Congress through the “Big Beautiful Bill” of Destruction, including important homeowner deductions.
Vargas, Lisbel. “Green Energy Tax Credits Ending under One Big Beautiful Bill.” AAFCPAs, September 16, 2025. https://www.aafcpa.com/2025/09/16/green-energy-tax-credits-ending-under-one-big-beautiful-bill/.
National Low Income Housing Coalition. “Harris Campaign Releases Plans to Lower Housing Costs,” 2024. https://nlihc.org/resource/harris-campaign-releases-plans-lower-housing-costs.
This would have been such a better world with everyone having a seat at the table, and not just the rich and corrupt.
Jack Smith is my pick for AG come January 2029. Some thoughts on nominations to the expanded SC, with three more justices, plus the other three openings after the impeachment and conviction of Thomas, Roberts, and Alito - Barrack Obama, Jamie Raskin, and surprise pick Joyce Vance.