The Trump Presidency Timeline

Hakeem Jeffries went on NPR to play the role of Responsible Adult™ and gently remind everyone that while Democrats are busy reenacting West Wing fan fiction about primaries, Donald Trump is still the guy with the nuclear codes, the Pentagon, and a large collection of unhinged House Republicans.

Pressed twice about how he’ll work with Democrats who beat his preferred candidates in New York, Jeffries basically replied: "I don’t care who wins the purity Olympics, we’ve got an actual authoritarian cosplay project to shut down." Instead of airing intra-party grievances, he pivoted back to Trump, the GOP agenda, and what he calls "MAGA extremism" — you know, the crowd that thinks elections are optional and laws are for other people.

Jeffries also slammed Trump’s decision to jump into the Middle East conflict — a "war of choice" that the White House apparently selected from the same menu where it orders culture-war outrage — and noted that House Democrats oppose it. At the same time, he’s cautiously optimistic Trump will sign a bipartisan housing affordability bill, presumably during one of the brief interludes when the president isn’t rage-watching cable news or threatening random prosecutors on social media.

And because this administration can never resist misusing law enforcement, Jeffries called out Trump’s team for wasting FBI resources to re-chase the already debunked 2020 election conspiracy fever dreams. While Trump tries to turn federal agents into his personal fan-fiction investigators, Jeffries is out here begging voters to focus on the guy abusing the machinery of the state — not just which Democrat gets to inherit the flaming wreckage later.

The sitting president spent his day not governing, but posting an AI video where he plays "Doctor Trump" curing celebrities of the fictional condition "Trump Derangement Syndrome"—a handy label his supporters use for anyone insufficiently thrilled by fascist cosplay and felony indictments. The video uses hyper-realistic deepfakes of critics like Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, Edward Norton, Julia Roberts, and Rosie O’Donnell, all digitally rewritten to beg forgiveness for ever doubting Dear Leader. Actual Rosie O’Donnell, tragically still bound by reality, responded by suggesting the 25th Amendment, which is not the punchline so much as the correct medical advice.

In the fake testimonials, AI De Niro weepily confesses that he was miserable and made everyone around him miserable—a bold narrative choice given that the only person visibly making the country miserable is the guy in the white coat and stethoscope pretending to be a doctor while he mainlines Diet Coke. The "treatment" for this invented brain disease? Turn off the news, say your prayers, and drink soda like Trump. So the cure for criticizing the president is to stop consuming information, embrace blind faith, and adopt his beverage regimen. Very normal, extremely healthy, not at all a cult.

This is not Trump’s first foray into AI-assisted messianic fanfic. He has already posted himself as Jesus healing the sick, as the Pope feuding with the actual Pope, and as a literal king on a fake Time cover. February’s contribution was a racist AI video portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, which he deleted but never apologized for, because racism is apparently just another content vertical in the Trump Media Strategy. The White House, doing its best impression of state media, waved it all off as the president’s "right" and insisted TDS had "rotted the brains" of his critics, declining to say whether anyone even bothered asking the depicted actors before hijacking their faces for propaganda.

So we now have a president openly using deepfake tech to fabricate repentance from his enemies, label dissent as mental illness, and market himself as both spiritual healer and monarch, backed by a taxpayer-funded comms shop calling it all a joke. The man who can’t handle a real press conference is very enthusiastic about a future where reality itself is optional—as long as every synthetic version of it ends with him in charge and everyone else apologizing for ever telling the truth.

Trump spent $14.7m turning the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool into a giant “American flag blue” campaign prop for the 250th birthday, handed the no-bid contract to some outfit he bragged had done the pools at one of his golf clubs, and then watched it turn algae green in a matter of days. Rather than admit the contractor might be about as competent as his legal team, he announced that shadowy saboteurs had carved a 300ft “gash” in the liner and demanded justice.

Enter David Hearn, a three-time US Olympian whose crime was apparently finishing a 52-mile bike ride, stopping to look at the tacky blue liner, and touching a piece that was already coming loose. For this act of extreme terrorism, he was arrested, handcuffed, and has now been indicted for “maliciously” damaging government property, while the administration promises photos and video evidence that somehow keep failing to materialize. The message from Trump’s America is clear: if the regime’s vanity project falls apart, someone is going to prison — and it definitely won’t be the no-bid contractor who turned a historic civil rights landmark into a failing MAGA splash pad.

Donald Trump’s latest attempt to convert the US Postal Service from a mail carrier into a democracy filter just got drop-kicked by a federal judge. Judge Emmet Sullivan blocked a USPS scheme that would have let the agency refuse to deliver ballots in states that didn’t hand over their voter rolls to the feds and reengineer their election procedures on command. Because nothing screams "free and fair elections" like, give DHS your voter list or we’ll hold your ballots hostage.

This brainwave came from a Trump executive order demanding "sweeping changes" to how elections are run nationwide, with USPS drafted as the enforcement arm. The NAACP pointed out that this not only trampled on voting rights, especially for Black voters who disproportionately rely on mail-in ballots, but also straight-up violated a 2021 legal settlement that forces USPS to take extraordinary measures to deliver election mail on time through 2028. The court agreed, extending what was already a multi-state injunction into what looks a lot like a nationwide "stop trying to rig the mail" order.

So on one side: a civil rights group, existing law, and a binding settlement requiring the postal service to help people vote. On the other: Trump, demanding that USPS create "roadblocks" to mail-in voting and threatening to strand ballots unless states cough up voter data to DHS. The administration keeps pitching this as "election integrity"; the courts keep translating it as "authoritarian trash." Turns out even in Trump’s America, you can’t openly conscript the mailman into your voter suppression squad. Yet.

Housing is now so expensive that the typical home costs more than five times the typical family’s income, construction is stalling, and Congress somehow managed a bipartisan bill to speed up homebuilding for the first time in 30 years. Trump took one look at that lifeline and decided it was “of minor importance” unless Congress first hands him a shiny new voter-suppression package: limits on mail-in voting and proof-of-citizenship requirements designed to shave off minority and poor voters. So yes, the president is literally ransoming the roof over your head in exchange for making it harder for you to vote him out. Democracy, but make it extortion.

This is just the latest entry in the “Trump lovingly sets his own base on fire” anthology. Gas prices exploded after his impulsive war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, wiping out the tax-refund sugar high from his One Big Beautiful Bill. He’s simultaneously jacking up power costs by kneecapping solar and wind while AI datacenters guzzle electricity like frat boys at a kegger. Health insurance premiums under the ACA are up 58% on average after he pulled subsidies, millions are projected to lose coverage, food assistance and Medicaid are cut, and farmers — his most loyal counties — get hammered by his trade wars, fertilizer spikes, and immigration raids that gut their workforce. Manufacturing jobs? Down. Male employment? Down by 1.5 million. But hey, at least the tariffs made imported stuff more expensive for everyone.

Now he’s threatening to blow up the USMCA trade pact with Canada and Mexico — even though nine of the ten states most dependent on that trade voted for him — which would invite retaliatory tariffs right on his voters’ heads. The pattern is clear: policy is just a weapon to enrich the Trump family, settle grievances, and lock in power, even if it means methodically wrecking the lives of the people wearing the red hats. Housing, health care, jobs, trade — all negotiable. The only non-negotiable item on the agenda is making sure fewer of the people he’s screwing over are allowed to vote about it.

The National Labor Relations Board, allegedly the top labor watchdog, is now functioning more like a corporate shredder for worker complaints. Since Trump’s second term began, the NLRB has jacked up dismissals of unfair labor practice charges to 34.7% for unions and a staggering 67.4% for individual workers. Apparently the new standard is: if you can’t union-bust legally, just refuse to process the paperwork.

This magic trick didn’t happen by accident. Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, then left the agency without a quorum for 345 days, because who needs a functioning labor watchdog when you’ve got CEOs to impress? While Congress hacks away at the budget, regional offices are understaffed by nearly a quarter, over 150 staff fled in 2025, and cases are evaporating thanks to glitches and technicalities in a broken docketing system. The backlog grows, the workforce shrinks, and management pops champagne.

To really put a bow on it, Trump’s handpicked general counsel, Crystal Carey – fresh from the union-avoidance factory at Morgan Lewis – has pushed "settlements" over litigation and jammed through new intake rules that demand workers cough up “substantial evidence” in just two weeks or see their cases tossed. Union election filings promptly fell 30% while the administration tries to cancel collective bargaining agreements for over a million federal workers. The NLRB declined to comment, presumably because "we’re dismantling labor protections on purpose" didn’t test well with the communications team.

Donald Trump, statesman that he is, has decided that US foreign policy toward Italy will now be conducted entirely through imaginary selfies. He told an Italian TV journalist that Giorgia Meloni “begged” him for a photo at the G7 in France, then doubled down on Truth Social, claiming she needed the picture to rescue her sinking poll numbers and that her real crime was not cheering loudly enough for his Iran war. El País helpfully pointed out that what really seems to have upset him was a video of Meloni appearing to scold him — lèse-majesté against the Mar-a-Lago Sun King.

Meloni, suddenly discovering the concept of dignity, released a video saying the whole thing was “made up” and noting that the US president treats allies worse than adversaries. She capped it with: “I do not beg, nor does Italy,” which is a strong line from someone who has spent years politely swallowing Trump’s tariffs, his quasi-abandonment of Ukraine and his general hostility to Europe. Her foreign minister Antonio Tajani even briefly canceled a US-Italy business forum trip, before everyone started frantically taping the alliance back together in time for Trump’s big 250th-birthday-for-America party at the US ambassador’s Rome compound.

The rift, of course, is less about geopolitics and more about everyone’s favorite topic: polling. Trump is furious she wouldn’t line up behind his Iran adventure; Meloni is watching her own numbers crater after voters torched her judicial reform in a referendum, the opposition parties are teaming up, and she’s getting outflanked on the hard right by General-turned-shouter Roberto Vannacci. Picking a fight with Trump — who is wildly unpopular in Italy — lets her cosplay as the proud nationalist who won’t be ordered around by Washington, while stealing oxygen from both the center-left and her even-more-feral rivals.

The best part? Europe’s political class, from Italian hard-righters to Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, rushed to express solidarity with Meloni after Trump tried to publicly humiliate her, basically confirming that yes, the American president does treat allies like disobedient interns. Meloni, meanwhile, is busily pushing changes to Italy’s electoral law to scoop up bonus seats and cling to power — because nothing says “defending Western civilisation” like fiddling with the rules while the world’s most powerful man throws tantrums over a photo that never happened.

Colorado Democrats just finished their version of a talent show where the only event was "Who can say lawless Trump administration with the most conviction?" Attorney General Phil Weiser, the supposed underdog, beat longtime Sen. Michael Bennet in the governor’s primary by pitching himself as the guy who actually sues Trump instead of just sadly shaking his head on C-SPAN.

Weiser’s big sell: Congress, including Bennet, has been a decorative plant while Trump runs a "lawless, bullying administration." Bennet tried to clap back by pointing out that Weiser sat out some of the early lawsuits over Trump’s child-separation policy, which is a fun reminder that the moral high ground in this race is basically, "I tried to stop the president from ripping kids from their parents slightly more than the other guy." Weiser counters with his 50+ lawsuits against the administration, while Bennet brings his proud record of voting for only eight of Trump’s Cabinet picks because nothing says resistance like approving part of the authoritarian staffing chart.

Both campaigns carpet-bombed the airwaves with anti-Trump ads, promising to protect Colorado from the same federal government Bennet is still going to be working in until 2029. Weiser heads into the general as the favorite in a state that hasn’t elected a GOP governor in over 20 years, while Bennet returns to Washington to continue bravely not checking the president he just spent months calling dangerous. American checks and balances, now available mostly in campaign commercials.

Acting attorney general Todd Blanche – formerly known as Trump’s personal lawyer and now apparently the nation’s chief document shredder – is under court order to cough up unredacted Epstein files about "Jane Doe 4", one of the only alleged Epstein victims to directly accuse Trump of assaulting her when she was a young teenager. Instead of complying, the Justice Department is frantically lawyering up and inventing new ways to pretend 2.5 million records are just vibes and "duplicates". The Biden-era FBI already sat on her allegations; the Trump-era DOJ is now treating transparency like it’s classified nuclear launch codes.

Meanwhile, Jane Doe 4 is "off the grid" and terrified of retaliation from the Trump administration, because nothing says "totally baseless accusations" like the alleged victim having to hide while the president’s fixer-turned-AG personally manages which files the public is allowed to see. A judge reminded DOJ that the Epstein Transparency Act doesn’t let them bury evidence just because it’s politically embarrassing, so Blanche’s team helpfully responded by… adding the department’s #3 official, Stanley Woodward, to the case to fight harder against disclosure.

Victims’ names and compromising photos were accidentally exposed in the chaotic 3-million-document dump, but potential co-conspirators and Epstein’s powerful pen pals? Magically retracted. The only people to see the FBI’s handwritten notes on Jane Doe 4’s interviews are a couple of reporters working off an unnamed source, while DOJ still refuses to release them as required by law. So the scoreboard reads: alleged child victim in hiding, Trump nominee in charge of the evidence, and a Justice Department arguing that protecting reputations somehow outranks the statute that explicitly says they can’t do exactly that. American justice is doing great.