The Trump Presidency Timeline

DC district judge Amy Berman Jackson just had to explain, in writing, that the Trump administration does not get to personally decide which laws and agencies exist, no matter how many Office of Legal Counsel memos they crank out to say otherwise. Russell Vought, currently cosplaying as CFPB acting director while trying to kill the agency, claimed the Federal Reserve was too broke to fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Jackson politely noted this "crisis" was completely manufactured by the defendants and that funding has been flowing just fine even while the Fed ran at a loss.

This is the second time in a year the court has had to block Team Trump from dismantling the CFPB and mass-firing its workforce, after the National Treasury Employees Union sued to stop the slow-motion execution of the only federal agency whose job is "stop banks from robbing people in broad daylight." Jackson spelled it out: the "only new circumstance" is the administration’s determination to erase a congressionally created watchdog "with the stroke of a pen" while the case is literally before the DC Circuit. In other words, the White House is trying to nullify Congress and the courts because nothing says "constitutional conservative" like pretending separation of powers is optional.

Elizabeth Warren, who helped create the CFPB, pointed out that the agency has returned $21 billion directly to Americans cheated by big banks and giant corporations—so naturally Trump’s people are desperate to shut it down before it can stop any more corporate looting. The judge’s order forces the administration to keep the money flowing so the bureau can, bare minimum, pay its employees and continue existing. The White House, having just been told it can’t unilaterally erase a law it doesn’t like, declined to comment—probably busy workshopping its next "novel workaround" for killing consumer protections without technically admitting it’s siding with the scammers.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts — once a monument to American culture — is now the Trump-Kennedy Center, because nothing says "arts" like slapping the name of a twice-impeached coup enthusiast on the building. In response, yet another act, the legendary jazz septet The Cookers, has bailed on their New Year’s Eve gig, politely reminding everyone that jazz was born from "struggle" and "freedom" — you know, all the stuff Trumpism keeps trying to stomp out.

They join drummer Chuck Redd, folk singer Kristy Lee, and Doug Varone and Dancers, all of whom decided they’d rather not help launder the reputation of a man and a board that saxophonist Billy Harper describes as representing "overt racism and deliberate destruction of African American music and culture." In other words: the talent noticed the fascist branding and headed for the exits.

Enter Trump-appointed Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell, who responded in the most on-brand way possible: by threatening to sue a jazz musician for $1 million for canceling a gig and calling it a "political stunt" and "classic intolerance." Because nothing screams "the arts are for everyone" like trying to financially crush a drummer for not wanting to play under a giant Trump sign. Grenell also ranted that previous leadership booked "far left political activists" instead of "artists willing to perform for everyone," which is a very elegant way of saying: no one good wants to play our new fascism-flavored arts center.

So now DC’s historic Black cultural scene — in the city that gave us Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, and go-go — is watching a once-respected institution get turned into a shrine to one extremely fragile ego. Artists are voting with their feet, the board is doubling down, and the Trump-Kennedy Center is rapidly becoming what it deserves to be: a very expensive, taxpayer-subsidized reminder that authoritarian branding and actual art do not mix.

The Republican Congress celebrated Trump’s second term by doing what it does best: shoveling money to the rich, militarizing everything that moves, and rewriting the rules to make sure nobody can stop them next time. Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill is now permanent, because nothing says fiscal responsibility like locking in a $4.5 trillion tax cut that disproportionately benefits the highest earners while everyone else gets the patriotic honor of paying for it later.

But wait, there’s more: the bill rockets the Pentagon over the $1 trillion mark and tosses in $170 billion to supercharge ICE raids and mass deportations, turning immigration policy into a federally funded terror campaign. To help pay for this, they took a chainsaw to Medicaid and clean energy funding—because if there’s one thing Republicans hate more than poor people getting health care, it’s the planet not being on fire.

Meanwhile, Congress went on a deregulation bender, using the Congressional Review Act like a legislative wood chipper to shred 22 Biden-era rules on everything from consumer protection to cybersecurity. Then Senate Republicans decided minority rights were cute but inconvenient, nuking rules to ram through Trump nominees in giant en-bloc batches and creatively redefining what 51 votes can do. In other words, they’re not just passing laws—they’re rebuilding the system so the next round of looting and authoritarian cosplay is even easier.

Donald Trump, standing next to Benjamin Netanyahu like it’s an Axis of Impunity reunion tour, used a press conference to call Fed chair Jerome Powell a “fool” and muse about firing him and suing him for “gross incompetence” – because nothing says independent central bank like the president threatening to can the guy who won’t juice the economy hard enough for your re‑election party. He again lied about the cost of the Federal Reserve’s building renovation, nearly doubling the real $2.5bn figure to $4.1bn, then declared it “the highest price in the history of construction,” which is an interesting take from a man whose own businesses have specialized in overbilling, underdelivering, and occasionally not existing.

Trump also forgot to mention the tiny detail that he was the one who first appointed Powell in 2018, instead blaming Biden for reappointing “a fool” – a convenient bout of amnesia from the self-proclaimed hiring genius whose administration was basically a revolving door of future defendants. He then contrasted the Fed project with his own “magnificent, big, beautiful ballroom” replacing the demolished East Wing, bragging that it’s “under budget and ahead of schedule” before immediately admitting the cost has jumped from $200m to $400m. In other words: Powell is incompetent because his numbers are real; Trump is a visionary because his numbers are made up on the fly.

Having now decided the new ballroom will host the inauguration, Trump blamed the doubled price on “all bullet-proof glass” and a “drone-free roof,” as if the Fed’s problem is not inflation but insufficient gold plating. Meanwhile, he keeps dangling the idea that he “might still” fire Powell and is openly salivating over picking the next Fed chair in January – presumably someone willing to run monetary policy off a Truth Social poll. But sure, tell us more about how the real threat to democracy is technocrats quietly trying to keep the economy from turning into a meme stock.

US media in the Trump era is apparently a group project between angry billionaires and a vengeful president, and somehow the only ones not invited are readers and the truth. While Murdochs, Bezos, Soon‑Shiong, and the very Trump‑friendly Ellison clan play Monopoly with newsrooms, they helpfully “guide” coverage so it aligns with their pet projects, personal feuds, and investment portfolios. Because nothing says “independent press” like your boss’s hobbyhorse turning into the editorial line.

On the other side, Trump is running his own quality-control department, where “quality” means “does it flatter me.” He’s using frivolous defamation suits and weaponized regulatory agencies to squeeze outlets that offend his delicate feelings: a giant settlement out of CBS over a banal Kamala Harris edit, a lawsuit against the New York Times for being mean in print, and an FCC chair threatening ABC’s broadcast license over a comedian’s joke. In other words, it’s not censorship if you just bankrupt or de-license everyone who laughs at you.

Under pressure from both their billionaire owners and Trump’s retribution machine, big outlets are dialing everything down to legally vetted mush—soft-pedaled coverage, hedged language, and opinion sections that read like hostage notes to shareholders and the White House. The result: worse journalism at the exact moment the country needs better. But don’t worry, The Guardian would like you to know that they don’t have a billionaire owner, they’re not pulling punches, and they answer to readers instead of oligarchs or the guy threatening broadcast licenses. Also, please click the big donate button to help fund this rare, non-captured corner of the press.

The Trump administration has discovered a bold new frontier in free speech: using the State Department to try to deport people who expose hate, lies, and extremism online. Imran Ahmed, head of the Center for Countering Digital Hate and a lawful DC resident with an American wife and infant daughter, was suddenly informed he faces removal from the US. His crime? Daring to hold social media and AI companies accountable, which so enraged Elon Musk that X tried—and failed—to sue his group, then apparently found a friendlier venue in Trump’s deportation machine.

Ahmed is one of five Europeans, including former EU commissioner Thierry Breton, slapped with visa bans for allegedly leading “organised efforts to coerce American platforms to censor…American viewpoints.” In other words: they pushed platforms to deal with hate speech, disinformation, and extremist content, so Trump’s people labeled that “censorship” and tried to throw them out of the country. A State Department official even bragged on X that if you “spend your career fomenting censorship of American speech, you’re unwelcome on American soil” — because nothing says robust marketplace of ideas like the government exiling critics at the request of billionaires.

A federal judge has temporarily blocked Ahmed’s detention or removal, but he spent Christmas separated from his family because, as he notes, others whose green cards were yanked in recent months have been arrested and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles away from their support networks. Meanwhile he calmly points out that this isn’t about partisan politics but about tech companies with “sociopathic greed” using their money and connections to corrupt the system so they can never be held accountable. Trump gets to cosplay as the defender of “American viewpoints,” Musk gets fewer pesky reports about rising racism and extremism on X, and anyone who documents the damage done by social media and AI learns that in Trump’s America, the algorithm doesn’t just shadowban you—it calls ICE.