

Snow swirls around President-elect Donald Trump as he disembarks his plane for a “Thank You Tour” event in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Dec. 9. The state was key in his surprise victory. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Politics turned on its head

There are rules in American politics, or so everyone insisted from before the Iowa caucuses in February until Election Day in November. Republicans wouldn’t nominate Donald Trump, until they did. Hillary Clinton couldn’t lose to him, until she did. All along, Trump’s rivals had the experience, the money, the ground organization, the facts and the discipline not to say things that would have doomed any normal politician’s campaign. In 2016, though, none of that mattered.



In a testament to his appeal, as many as 14,000 visitors per month trooped to the “Trump House” in Youngstown, Pa., to marvel at a 14-foot steel cutout of the candidate and the patriotic paint job. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)



Bernie Sanders prepares for a speech on June 16 after Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee. “The major political task that we face . . . is to make certain that Donald Trump is defeated,” he said. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Trump supporters and protesters clash at a Chicago rally at the University of Illinois on March 11. Trump canceled his appearance there amid security concerns. His Republican rivals accused him of encouraging violence. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)



Clinton leaves her Washington home on Sept. 17. Her campaign was faltering after her “basket of deplorables” comment and because a case of pneumonia fed concerns about her health. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)



Clinton talks to devastated campaign staffers and supporters in New York on the morning after the vote. “Please never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it,” she said in her concession speech. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

“We now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed, because if you succeed, then the country succeeds,” President Obama told President-elect Trump at the White House on Nov. 10. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

What is America?

Many of the big debates this year were about who we are as a country, and who we want to be. Immigration and the plight of the white working class dominated the presidential race. Black Lives Matter continued to push for police accountability — and against the aspects of Donald Trump’s campaign that resonated with white nationalists. Standing Rock protesters got the government to reverse course on permitting an oil pipeline near a Sioux reservation. And ranchers clashed with federal agents over public lands.



The Anderson sisters — Dakeria, 9, D’liyah, 6, and D’anyriah, 8 — protest at the site in Baton Rouge where Alton Sterling was shot and killed by two white police officers on July 5. The Justice Department is investigating the shooting, which, like others, fueled debate over the deadly use of force against black men by police. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)



At the Oregon capitol on March 5, a woman protests government regulation of grazing lands in the West. Objections over land use prompted a standoff at a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon in January. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

Marianna Richardson, 7, in her Brookland Manor apartment in the District. Residents are suing over a plan to eliminate family-size units. The book “Evicted” drew attention this year to the impact of losing a home. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)



Laredo, Tex., ranch hand Juan Ramirez, left, looks on as Webb County officials carry away the body of a migrant who probably died from dehydration while trying to enter the United States illegally. The county — which has a large Latino population — voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in an election that pitched her vision of an America that is more welcoming to immigrants against his call to build a wall. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)



Police use a water cannon on protesters near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota on Nov. 20. Two weeks later, protesters celebrated when the Army Corps of Engineers announced that it had denied a permit for the section of the Dakota Access Pipeline that was to pass close to the reservation. The tribe said the project threatened its drinking water and a sacred burial ground. (Stephanie Keith/Reuters)

Man vs. nature

Nature tested human resilience, and hubris, in 2016. As climate scientists had predicted, it was a year of extreme weather: drought, ﬂoods, ﬁres, earthquakes, hurricanes. A record snowstorm in the Northeast preceded the globe’s hottest summer on record. Meanwhile, scientists and public health officials raced to understand Zika: how it’s transmitted, how it might be treated and controlled, and how it’s linked to brain damage in fetuses and Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults.



A month after Hurricane Matthew blasted through southwestern Haiti on Oct. 4, people who hadn’t eaten in days clamor for sacks of rice, beans and dried herring from a truck that stopped in their village. The island nation will need months of emergency aid to stave off famine, according to relief groups and government officials. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)



As it worked its way up the East Coast, Hurricane Matthew pounded Lumberton, N.C., with 10 inches of rain on Oct. 8. Subsequent flooding disproportionately affected the town’s black residents. Scientists expect climate change to increase the intensity and frequency of such storms. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)



A 70-mile-long, 300-foot-wide crack cuts through the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen C ice shelf in this Nov. 10 aerial photo from NASA. Scientists say Arctic and Antarctic sea ice hit record lows this year. (Photo by John Sonntag/NASA/Photo by John Sonntag/NASA)

The singed remains of the Calhoun family’s apartment in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Fast-moving wildfires in the drought-stricken area destroyed much of the town Nov. 28. The Calhouns barely escaped; 14 people died. (Bonnie Jo Mount/Washington Post)



In Recife, Brazil, the heart of the Zika outbreak, Eloise Severina de Silva was diagnosed with microcephaly and epilepsy shortly after her birth. Officials in Brazil and other Latin American countries courted controversy with their advice that women avoid getting pregnant this year. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

A year of political upheaval

History may remember 2016 as a time of unusual political turmoil. A populist surge swept the West. Britain voted to leave the European Union; other countries threatened to follow suit. Turkey convulsed with an attempted coup and the government’s subsequent clampdown on dissent. The presidents of Brazil and South Korea were forced from office. The Cuban dictator who’d outlasted all his enemies ﬁnally died. And failed and failing states propelled the worst migrant crisis since World War II.



Migrants, mostly from Eritrea, jump from an overcrowded wooden boat during a rescue operation off the coast of Libya on Aug. 29. With almost 5,000 people dead or missing, according to the U.N. refu­gee agency, this was the deadliest year on record for refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean in their attempt to flee war, poverty and persecution. (Emilio Morenatti/AP)



A casualty of the Brexit referendum and a populist revolt, British Prime Minister David Cameron huddles with his family outside 10 Downing Street on July 13 before submitting his resignation to the queen. (Simon Dawson/Bloomberg)

Turkish soliders involved in the attempted coup surrender on an Istanbul bridge on July 16. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has since purged the military and judiciary, taken over schools and shuttered media outlets. (Gokhan Tan/Getty Images)



Damari Bravo, right, talks to her uncle Armando Ricardo Batista, as her grandmother Mercedes Batista watches news about Fidel Castro’s funeral in their living room in Havana on Dec. 1. The death of the longtime leader, at age 90, prompted fresh questions about Cuba’s future. (Enric Marti/AP)



The body of Romeo Torres Fontanilla, shot by two gunmen on motorcycles, lies in an alley in Manila on Oct. 11. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed by police or vigilantes since Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte took office June 30 and launched a brutal anti-drug campaign. The president has defended the killings, asking, “Do the lives of 10 of these criminals really matter?” (© Damir Sagolj / Reuters/REUTERS)

Terrorism and its victims

Over and over, 2016 presented us with horriﬁc acts of violence — and urgent questions. How can we prevent mass murder in public spaces? How do we identify people who might become radicalized? Can we end the wars in Syria and elsewhere, so that children can be children again? But while people were uniﬁed in their outrage, there was little agreement on what to do. And each time, the urgency quickly dissipated into predictable partisan debates and feelings of futility.



Thousands attend a vigil in Orlando the day after the June 12 massacre at Pulse, a gay nightclub. Gunman Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 others, making it the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. (Melissa Lyttle/For The Washington Post)

A woman visits a memorial to victims of the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France. Tunisian Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel killed 86 people and injured 434 when he drove a truck into crowds on the promenade on July 14. (VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images)



Children last month use pieces of debris to slide down the roof of a building destroyed by an airstrike in Qayyarah, Iraq. Iraqi security forces, supported by U.S. troops, earlier retook the town from Islamic State extremists. (Felipe Dana/AP)



Bombings on March 22 at the Brussels airport, above, and a metro station in the city prompted a counterterrorism crackdown and refocused attention on radicalization in Europe. (KETEVAN KARDAVA/AFP/Getty Images)

Photographs and video of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, rescued after an Aug. 17 airstrike on his Aleppo neighborhood, shocked the world and became a symbol of Syrian suffering — but produced little change. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)