A year ago, Donald Trump was riding high. The man who had lost the presidency four years earlier, then led a failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was now about to be inaugurated again after improbably winning a nonconsecutive second term. Almost everyone seemed to agree something seismic had just occurred. Trump was no longer just the leader of a powerful movement. He had “remade the electorate,” as CNN’s Harry Enten said in February: Republicans were surging not only with men—particularly those without college degrees—but also with young people and Latinos.

Armed with a supposed mandate from voters, Trump and his allies began the year with a wave of destruction—of immigrant communities, the federal government, foreign aid, and more. Democrats, cowed by the election results and terrified by the administration’s blitzkrieg, largely kept their heads down and wrung their hands over how to rehabilitate their........

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