The Trump Presidency Timeline

Josh Shapiro is running for re-election in Pennsylvania, which in the Trump era means he’s applying for another four years of being the guy who sues the federal government every time Donald decides to use the state budget as his own personal punishment fund. The once-rumored Harris running mate is now doing the 2026 version of a presidential audition: win a swing state that Trump carried in 2024 while dodging both MAGA rage and progressive fury over his very enthusiastic support for Israel as Gaza is turned into rubble.

Shapiro’s pitch is basically, “I got more school funding, protected abortion, and didn’t set anything on fire, please clap.” His reward for this pragmatic-governor routine? Progressives yelling that he’s too cautious, Harris writing in her memoir that he wanted to be co-president, and Shapiro calling that account “complete and utter bullshit” because nothing says ‘unity ticket’ like publicly accusing the former VP of lying to sell books.

More relevant to our ongoing constitutional bonfire, Shapiro has been one of the few Democrats willing to say the quiet part loud about Trump’s foreign-policy-by-kleptocracy. He sued over Trump’s moves to withhold state funds, called his tariffs “reckless” and “dangerous,” and went on Pittsburgh radio to describe Trump’s kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro as “crazy” and basically a giant nation-building boondoggle whose main deliverable is Venezuela’s oil funneled straight to Trump’s friends. In other words: Shapiro is running for governor, but the actual job description is ‘local firewall against an increasingly unhinged, oil-thirsty federal crime syndicate.’

The Trump administration, led on this front by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, is reportedly workshopping a fun new concept in emergency management: what if FEMA just… didn’t exist? A leaked internal "workforce planning exercise" asked senior staff to identify which positions are essential and which can be tossed in the dumpster, accompanied by a spreadsheet targeting more than 50% staff cuts by October. FEMA’s public line insists this is just a "routine, pre-decisional" exercise, which is a very fancy way of saying: we’re only drafting the plan to gut disaster response, not swinging the axe on live TV… yet.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it exactly mirrors recommendations from Trump’s handpicked FEMA "overhaul" task force, which also wants to cut the workforce in half and scatter remaining staff out of DC. Meanwhile, roughly 2,450 FEMA employees have already bailed since Trump’s second term began, and the administration has been quietly kneecapping the Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams—the people who actually show up when entire towns are underwater or blown apart. As one longtime FEMA official put it, these decisions are being made by people who don’t know how anything works and don’t care, as long as they can prove maximum fealty to Trump.

Former FEMA and White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards calls the move an affront to the law and common sense, which is adorable because law and common sense are precisely what this administration is trying to defund. Training exercises at FEMA used to be about hurricanes, wildfires, and floods; now the scenario is, "What if we sabotage ourselves in the middle of a climate crisis?" In other words: the agency that’s supposed to help Americans before, during, and after disasters is being methodically hollowed out so Trump and Noem can brag about shrinking government—right up until the next Helene, Milton, Maria, or Irma hits and there’s no one left to answer the phone. But sure, tell us again how this is all just a spreadsheet drill.

The Trump administration has discovered an innovative new approach to combating alleged fraud in social programs: freeze $10 billion in childcare and basic-needs funding and see how many poor families you can push off a cliff before anyone finds the receipts. HHS abruptly blocked California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York from accessing money from three core safety net programs—CCDF, TANF, and the Social Services Block Grant—because they supposedly harbor “widespread fraud,” a claim helpfully inspired by a YouTube rant from an “independent journalist.” In other words, federal social policy is now being set by the comments section.

The catch: Trump officials are demanding extensive new documentation that states were never previously required to collect. If they can’t magically produce it on command, hundreds of thousands of families lose childcare within weeks. Experts are describing the impact as “catastrophic,” but sure, tell us more about fiscal responsibility while you detonate funding that keeps 1.4 million kids in care and helps millions more eat, dress, and survive. And just to make it extra punitive, every other state is being hit with new paperwork demands too—a de facto national freeze dressed up as an audit.

Childcare providers are staring down mass layoffs and closures because nothing says “pro-family” like forcing parents—mostly mothers—out of the workforce when their subsidized daycare vanishes overnight. Centers that already save empty paper towel rolls for art projects are now supposed to absorb a federal tantrum over unverified YouTube allegations about Somali-American daycares in Minnesota. The result: chaos, fear, and the potential collapse of childcare systems in multiple states, all because the administration decided that punishing blue states and low-income families is more urgent than, say, verifying basic facts.

So to recap: a right-wing outrage video, racialized fraud panic, and a White House that treats poor children as collateral damage in its ongoing war on Democratic governors. It’s not oversight; it’s governing by hostage-taking—and the hostages are kids who just needed somewhere safe to go while their parents work.

Donald Trump has finally achieved his lifelong dream of co-headlining with a dead Democrat: the Kennedy Center is now the "Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts," because nothing says living memorial to a fallen president like stapling the branding of a twice-impeached coup enthusiast on top of it. Trump fired members of the arts institution’s board last year, installed himself as chair via Truth Social, and then the newly compliant board helpfully voted to rename a monument that federal law explicitly designated as a memorial to John F. Kennedy. In other words: separation of powers is out, Dear Leader signage is in.

The move is already being challenged in court, with the Kennedy family pointing out the obvious: you can’t just executive tantrum your way into renaming a congressionally created memorial any more than you can wake up and decide the Lincoln Memorial is now the Elon Musk Freedom Portal. But while lawyers sort out whether this is technically illegal or just extremely authoritarian cosplay, artists are voting with their feet. Banjo legend Béla Fleck is the latest to cancel his performances, joining a growing list of musicians and composers who would prefer not to play backup for the Trump Monument Rebranding Project.

Kennedy Center president and professional grievance amplifier Richard Grenell responded by accusing Fleck of "caving to the woke mob" while insisting the newly christened Trump Kennedy Center just wants performers who "aren’t political"—a bold position from a guy running a building that literally just got renamed after the sitting president over the objections of the dead one it was supposed to memorialize. The stated mission is an apolitical home for free artistic expression; the actual mission is slapping Trump’s name on as many American institutions as possible before the courts or Congress remember how laws work. But sure, it’s the musicians who are making it political.

The Pentagon, now proudly rebranded as the Department of War under Trump’s favorite barstool colonel Pete Hegseth, is launching a six-month review to determine the “operational effectiveness” of women in ground combat roles. You know, those same roles women have been serving in for ten years, deploying, taking casualties, earning tabs and badges, but apparently not meeting the only standard that matters in this administration: ideological purity.

Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel Anthony Tata (because nothing says ‘serious military personnel policy’ like elevating a serial crank) has ordered the Army and Marines to cough up a decade’s worth of data on readiness, training, performance, casualties, and “command climate,” plus any internal studies on integrating women in combat that somehow never made it to Fox primetime. The memo makes a big show of demanding “sex neutral” standards — while being signed by political appointees who have loudly insisted, on podcasts and cable hits, that women shouldn’t be in combat at all.

Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson insists this is all just about keeping the force “lethal” and not “compromising standards to satisfy quotas or an ideological agenda” — which is an interesting way to describe a review launched by a Defense Secretary who literally said, “we should not have women in combat roles,” then mumbled something about equal standards to get confirmed. In other words, the guys who started with the conclusion are now demanding the data to match it, because nothing says ‘warfighting excellence’ like turning your own troops into props for a culture war rerun.

The Trump administration has once again bravely leapt into action to defend the most vulnerable among us: gas hookups in new California buildings. The DOJ filed suit against Morgan Hill and Petaluma, arguing that their local ordinances limiting natural gas in new construction violate a 1975 federal law on energy use standards—because nothing says "limited government" like Washington, DC suing small cities for trying to keep the planet habitable.

According to Trump’s lawyers, these local gas restrictions "impose crushing costs" on residents. Translation: they mildly inconvenience gas companies and homebuilders who might have to install electric appliances instead of subsidized fossil fuel pipelines. In other words, the administration has decided that federal preemption is sacred when it protects methane, but purely optional when it comes to things like civil rights, voting, or reproductive healthcare.

The lawsuit is just the latest front in Trumpworld’s war on anyone who dares regulate fossil fuels or disagree on DEI, abortion, or immigration. Petaluma and Santa Clara County are already suing the administration over culture-war-based funding restrictions and sanctuary city crackdowns, so this is less a legal dispute and more an ongoing federal retribution tour. The message from Trump and friends is clear: align with Big Oil and the MAGA agenda, or the Justice Department will show up to make sure your residents keep burning gas in perpetuity—climate crisis and local democracy be damned.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the boring little nonprofit Congress created in 1967 to fund NPR, PBS, and 1,500 local stations, has decided to do the only responsible thing it can do in Trump’s America: kill itself before Republicans kill it more. After Trump and his Project 2025 fan club leaned on Congress to cut $1.1 billion from CPB, the board finally voted to dissolve the organization entirely, ending nearly 60 years of quietly supporting children’s education, civic literacy, and actual journalism — all the things this administration sincerely hates.

Trump’s memo to Congress ranted that taxpayers had been forced to subsidize “radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news’,” which is a bold claim from a guy whose primary news source is his own social media rage-posts. He then threatened that any Republican who didn’t vote to defund CPB would lose his endorsement — and, shockingly, the courage of the GOP vanished faster than local newspapers in a hedge fund buyout. The result: CPB shut down operations in August, and now the board is pulling the plug entirely, saying dissolution is their final act to protect public media from being left defunded and permanently vulnerable to further political attacks.

Meanwhile, the people who actually use public media — especially in rural America and news deserts — are left with fewer trusted sources of information and more Facebook conspiracy groups. Over half of CPB-funded stations were rural, giving 99% of Americans access to public media. Now, an analysis says 15% of local stations could close within three years. Donors have gone on a $70m "rage-giving" spree to keep things afloat, but you can’t permanently replace federal baseline funding with tote bags and guilt. In other words: the government just kneecapped one of the last broadly trusted news systems in the country, all to own Big Bird. But sure, tell us more about how this is about fiscal responsibility and not killing-democracy one institution at a time.