The Trump Presidency Timeline

The US military, now proudly branding itself as the Department of War like it’s 1898 again, has seized yet another foreign-flagged oil tanker in the Caribbean to enforce Donald Trump’s personal embargo on Venezuela. Marines launched from the USS Gerald R Ford to board the Veronica, a Guyanese-flagged crude tanker accused of defying Trump’s self-declared “quarantine” of sanctioned vessels — because nothing says rules-based international order like helicopter raids on commercial shipping to protect a sanctions regime built on a presidential grudge.

This is the sixth known seizure of a foreign-flagged tanker since Trump had Nicolás Maduro snatched in Caracas and hauled to the US, and Southern Command is bragging about it on social media like it’s a Call of Duty trailer. The administration is openly “controlling the distribution” of Venezuela’s oil worldwide, which in normal human language is called using the US Navy as an armed cartel enforcement wing. But sure, it’s all about stopping “illicit activity in the Western Hemisphere,” not about running regime change and resource control at gunpoint.

In other words, Trump overthrows a foreign leader, rebrands the Pentagon like a Marvel supervillain agency, and starts interdicting commercial shipping on the high seas — and we’re all supposed to pretend this is just sanctions policy, not a live-fire seminar in how to turn a fading superpower into a full-time petro-pirate state.

In a heartwarming display of bipartisan delusion, a group of House members is politely asking Donald Trump to restore internet access in Iran—the same Iran where protests exploded after the US president ordered the bombing of three nuclear installations and helped usher in a wave of state killings. Because nothing says defending human rights like first escalating a regional war, then swooping in to offer VPNs as a consolation prize.

Democrats and Republicans alike want Trump to let the State Department team up again with the Open Technology Fund to help Iranians bypass regime censorship, effectively fast‑tracking a not-yet-passed bill, the very on-brand “Freedom Act”. They openly admit they’d like to skip that pesky legislative process and just have the executive branch improvise its own foreign cyber-ops policy—because if there’s one thing this administration has proven, it’s that nothing can possibly go wrong when Trump is given more unilateral power over shadowy tech tools abroad.

Meanwhile, human rights groups say around 2,500 people have already been killed in the crackdown, with some estimates hitting 12,000, and executions in Iran surged in 2025 after Trump’s 12-day war with Israel and those US-ordered bombings. Trump, for his part, has promised that “help is on its way” and threatened “very strong action” if Tehran executes protesters—this from the guy whose foreign policy strategy is basically sanctions, airstrikes, and Fox News hits. In other words: the guy who helped pour gasoline all over the region is now being begged to ship in fire extinguishers he’ll probably aim at the cameras instead of the flames.