The Trump Presidency Timeline

Donald Trump went on Fox News to explain that NATO has never really done anything for the United States, casually erasing two decades of allied blood in Afghanistan with the claim that they "stayed a little off the front lines." In other words: the guy who dodged Vietnam with bone spurs is now rewriting the history of a war where 3,500 coalition troops died, including 457 British service members, as if they were all just doing cosplay in Kabul.

British politicians across the spectrum, including Labour’s Emily Thornberry and Conservative Ben Obese-Jecty – who actually served in Afghanistan, unlike the TV president – called the remarks an "absolute insult" and "disgraceful." Former officers lined up to point out that Trump’s version of events bears no resemblance to reality, while politely not adding "because he’s making it up on live television again." But sure, let’s keep letting him undermine NATO’s Article 5 commitments on cable news, because nothing says "collective security" like a U.S. president publicly wondering if the alliance should even bother showing up next time America is attacked.

Trump also complained that the U.S. has been "very good to Europe" and that it "has to be a two-way street," which is an interesting take given that the only time Article 5 has ever been invoked was when NATO rushed to defend the United States after 9/11. Allies sent troops, fought, and died in a war Washington started – but in Trump’s telling, they basically took a scenic tour while America did all the work. It’s not just historically illiterate; it’s part of the ongoing project to delegitimize NATO so that when he guts it, his base will cheer and call it a "win."

The Trump administration is taking the classic Reagan-era "Mexico City policy" – the one that already blocks foreign groups from getting US funds if they so much as whisper the word "abortion" – and cranking it up to full theocracy. This time, it’s not just about family planning or even just global health funding; Trump is slapping a global gag rule on roughly $30bn in foreign aid, and extending it to anything that smells like DEI, LGBTQ rights, or recognition that trans people exist. Because nothing says "pro-life" like cutting funding to the clinics and programs that actually keep people alive.

Under the new rules, any international or US-based NGO operating abroad that uses American assistance can’t support "gender ideology" – which, in rightwing translation, means: no DEI work, no trans rights, no non-binary people, no complex thoughts beyond "there are only two genders, because Trump signed a piece of paper that says so". The administration is also re-upping its ban on funding anything it calls "abortion as a form of family planning", but won’t explain what that means, which is perfect if your policy goal is maximum fear, minimum clarity.

This is the logical next step in Trump’s crusade to purge DEI and trans people from federal policy: he’s already gutted DEI support at home, declared there are only two genders by executive order, and kneecapped research on racial and gender equity. Now he’s exporting the American culture war as a condition of foreign aid, turning US assistance into a loyalty oath to Christian nationalist ideology. In other words, if poor countries want vaccines, maternal health care, or development money, they have to sign up for "Make the World Straight and Cis Again". But sure, tell us more about how this is all about "freedom" and "human rights".

Jack Smith, former special counsel and current designated public enemy of Mar-a-Lago, is heading to Capitol Hill to explain to House Republicans why he committed the unforgivable Washington sin of trying to hold a president accountable for crimes. Smith oversaw two federal indictments of Trump — neither of which ever reached a jury because Trump did the most on-brand thing possible and just won back the presidency before the trials could happen. Because nothing says "totally innocent" like needing presidential power as your main legal defense strategy.

In a previously released deposition, Smith committed further heresy by stating the obvious: that Trump was "by a large measure the most culpable" in the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election and that the January 6 attack wouldn’t have happened without him. Smith’s prepared remarks spell out the radical position that "no one should be above the law" — a cute little civics notion that went out the window around the time 140 cops were getting beaten at the Capitol while Republicans were workshopping the phrase "tourist visit." Meanwhile, Trump is bragging at press conferences about having fired most of the DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on the case, listing the purge as an accomplishment, because nothing screams "rule of law" like turning the Justice Department into a loyalty program.

Trump, ever subtle, is calling Smith "deranged Jack Sick Smith" and a "sick son of a bitch," while openly fantasizing about criminally investigating him or kicking him out of the country — in other words, the standard authoritarian starter pack. Smith will also have to tiptoe around the classified-documents investigation, where the FBI found sensitive materials in the ballroom, the bathroom, and the office at Trump’s Florida resort, a.k.a. America’s least secure self-storage facility. The second volume of Smith’s report on that little mishandling-of-secrets adventure is being blocked from release by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who has apparently decided that the best way to restore faith in the judiciary is to act like Trump’s in-house compliance department.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has discovered a revolutionary new governing philosophy: massive Trump-branded spending and debt are totally fine, as long as Dear Leader says so. The same "hell no" Republicans who spent a decade shrieking about deficits suddenly found the courage to vote for short-term funding bills, a multitrillion-dollar package, and a giant debt ceiling hike—after Emmer handed them the political equivalent of, "That’s cute, now go tell Donald Trump to his face you’re voting no." In other words, fiscal conservatism died so the cult could live.

Emmer’s proud of it, too. He brags that he only counts Republican votes—Democrats don’t matter, the public barely matters, and the only real metric is whether Trump approves. When his whip counts come back with dozens of "no" and "maybe" responses, the tough cases get escalated to the new switchboard of American governance: Donald J. Trump, personal arm-twister-in-chief. Because nothing says "coequal branch of government" like members of Congress being told, essentially, "You can defy me, but then you’ll have to explain yourself to the guy your base worships like a golden calf in a red tie."

The result: a tiny GOP majority manages to pass spending bills on its own, Schumer blinks, Democrats fold during a 43-day shutdown, and the House Freedom Caucus—those brave warriors against Big Government—quietly votes for the very kind of giant debt-ceiling increase they used to call tyranny. Emmer and Speaker Mike Johnson call it a "revolution." They’re not wrong: it’s a revolution where Congress stops being a legislature and becomes a loyalty test to one man, while the "limited government" crowd lines up to rubber-stamp a "big, beautiful" mountain of Trump-approved debt.

The Eastern District of Virginia just put up a public job posting for "Interim U.S. Attorney" because Chief Judge M. Hannah Lauck has decided that, minor detail, the office is actually vacant — despite Trump’s Justice Department still insisting that loyalist Lindsey Halligan is totally, definitely, legally in charge. In other words, the judiciary is now subtweeting the executive branch with a USAJobs listing.

Halligan, you’ll recall, was already ruled to be unlawfully serving in the role, which led a judge to toss her politically motivated cases against top Trump enemies James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Since then, the Trump administration has tried — and failed, and then failed again — to get a grand jury to indict James on flimsy mortgage charges, a remarkable achievement given that grand juries usually indict ham sandwiches, not presidents’ political targets.

In the meantime, a senior EDVA attorney was fired for not being sufficiently enthusiastic about re-indicting Comey over 2020 testimony that is now past the statute of limitations, because nothing says "law and order" like firing career prosecutors when the calendar and the Constitution get in the way. Yet DOJ still refers to Halligan as "United States Attorney and Special Attorney," citing some secret OLC memo as if internal fan fiction trumps a federal court order. The judge has now invited literally anyone with a law license to apply for the job, because at this point, random LinkedIn applicants are more legitimate than Trump’s handpicked, experience-free hatchet woman.

The Trump administration just scored a temporary win in its ongoing campaign to turn ICE facilities into oversight-free black boxes. A federal judge in DC ruled that DHS can keep demanding a week’s notice before members of Congress inspect immigration detention camps — the same policy she blocked last month — because this time it’s funded with money from Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill.” In other words: same authoritarian policy, new checking account, so now it “facially differs.” Because nothing says checks and balances like “try filing a whole new lawsuit if you want to see what we’re doing to people in cages.”

While they were busy lawyering congressional oversight into oblivion, DOJ lawyers were also in Minnesota arguing that the state has no right to stop what its own attorney general calls a federal “invasion” — including warrantless racist arrests, targeting courts, churches, and schools, and the killing of an unarmed US citizen, Renee Good, by an ICE agent. The feds dismissed Minnesota’s lawsuit as an “absurdity” that would make the supremacy of federal law “an afterthought to local preferences,” which is a very polite way of saying: we get to terrorize your residents and you’re supposed to say thank you.

On top of that, the administration is appealing an injunction that told ICE and friends to stop doing a few tiny things like pointing guns at protesters, pepper-spraying crowds, and arresting observers in retaliation. Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem has already walked back her denial that chemical agents were used, now insisting they were necessary to “establish law and order” — because nothing screams “law and order” like lying about gassing people and then demanding the right to keep doing it. So to recap: block Congress from seeing the camps, tell Minnesota to sit down and enjoy the occupation, and fight in court for the constitutional right to menace protesters with weapons. But sure, tell us again how this is all about security and not about building a little domestic police state on layaway.

Trump’s second-term White House is being hailed as a model of stability because the staff turnover rate has dropped from a record-shattering dumpster fire to merely a routine inferno. According to Brookings’ Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, senior staff turnover is down from 35% in 2017 to a totally normal-for-a-banana-republic 29%. For context, past presidents averaged around 10%, but sure, let’s call this progress because nobody got fired by tweet this week.

The real innovation isn’t less drama, it’s better casting: out with the conflicted adults-in-the-room, in with the fully housebroken loyalists. Trump’s people openly credit the new ‘stability’ to hiring based on loyalty above all else—not expertise, not experience, just unwavering devotion to the guy at the Resolute Desk cosplay set. Promotions like Trump hype-man Sergio Gor becoming ambassador to India are described as wins, because nothing says serious foreign policy like rewarding your staffing czar with a diplomatic posting.

Instead of public meltdowns starring Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer, and the 11-day wonder Anthony Scaramucci, the exits this time are lower-profile apparatchiks quietly shuffled around the board. Less public chaos, more disciplined consolidation of power. In other words: the clown car is now a sealed bus, everyone on it has signed a loyalty oath, and the driver has stopped pretending there’s a brake pedal.