The Trump Presidency Timeline

The Kennedy Center board has apparently decided that American arts history wasn’t humiliating enough and has voted unanimously to rename the iconic venue the Trump-Kennedy Center, according to the White House. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the move and praised the "unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building" — because nothing says cultural stewardship like stapling the name of a reality TV landlord to the memorial of a murdered president.

Leavitt then "congratulated" John F. Kennedy, assuring everyone this will be a "truly great team" going forward, as if we’ve just watched the Celtics trade for a backup power forward instead of witnessing a sitting president glue his brand onto a national performing arts institution. In other words, it’s the Trump era’s favorite genre: state-sponsored rebranding, where every public space is just another opportunity for a naming-rights grift and a little forced gratitude.

The move is expected to be wildly unpopular in Washington, DC, where the building has been an enduring landmark and memorial to Kennedy for decades — but sure, let’s pretend this is about "saving the building" and not about building the Trump cult into the architecture. Authoritarian regimes build statues; the Trump crowd just quietly rewrites the plaques and calls it a unanimous board decision.

The DNC has finished its much-hyped 2024 election ‘autopsy’ on how Kamala Harris managed to lose to Donald Trump, and has bravely decided the American public should never see it. DNC chair Ken Martin says releasing the report would be a “distraction” from winning, because nothing screams confidence in your conclusions like locking them in a drawer and throwing away the key.

According to officials, the review covers organizing, messaging, fundraising, and structural problems, and even notes that Democrats outspent Republicans at every level — in other words, they lit a mountain of cash on fire and still lost to a guy who tried to overthrow the government. But don’t worry, party insiders assure us they’re “already putting our learnings into motion,” which is consultant-speak for “trust us, we definitely read the PDF.”

The New York Times previously reported the autopsy was expected to tiptoe around the obvious questions: whether Biden should’ve run again, whether he should’ve dropped out sooner, and whether Harris was the right understudy to send onstage against a fascist game show host. A progressive group, RootsAction, released its own report blaming the loss on chasing moderates instead of energizing working-class, young, and progressive voters — so naturally that’s the one the party is ignoring while former DNC flacks celebrate the decision to keep the official findings secret as the “right call.”

So as Trump’s second-term clown car accelerates toward the Constitution, Democrats’ big takeaway from their last catastrophic loss is: no public reckoning, no transparency, just vibes and vibes-based strategy. But sure, nothing to see here — democracy will be fine as long as no one ever finds out who screwed up and how.

The Trump administration, with Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr proudly leading the charge, has unveiled its latest plan to "protect" children by cutting them off from medically recommended healthcare. HHS is rebranding gender-affirming care as "sex-rejecting procedures" — because when you can't win on science, you can always try focus-grouped slurs — and CMS will start rule-making to tell every hospital in America: if you want Medicare or Medicaid money, you don't treat trans minors. In other words, deny care or lose your funding. Very normal, very free-country behavior.

The proposal would also ban Medicaid and CHIP from covering this care at all, targeting the half of American children who rely on those programs, because nothing says "protect the vulnerable" like making sure only rich kids can even try to see a specialist. HHS is also sending FDA warning letters to breast binder manufacturers for allegedly "illegal marketing" to minors — turning basic, non-surgical support garments into a federal case, while pretending this is about safety and not about making trans kids' lives as miserable as possible.

Not content with that, HHS is moving to strip gender dysphoria of disability protections under Section 504, rolling back Biden-era recognition so schools and institutions can go back to ignoring or punishing trans students without pesky legal obligations. This all builds on Trump's earlier executive orders declaring there are only two sexes and threatening federal funds for hospitals that dare treat trans youth — a science-free culture war masquerading as policy. Meanwhile, the House, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, just passed a bill to criminalize parents and providers who follow mainstream medical guidelines, because when you can't run a country, you can always try running a witch hunt.

HHS even produced a handy "review" declaring the evidence for gender-affirming care in minors "very low", a conclusion that just so happens to contradict basically every major US medical organization. But sure, trust RFK Jr and Donald Trump over the American Academy of Pediatrics. This is not healthcare policy; it's a federally coordinated campaign to withdraw rights, weaponize poverty, and terrorize families — all under the banner of "protecting children" from their own doctors, their own parents, and themselves.

The White House now says America would be "lucky" to have Donald Trump for a constitutionally prohibited third term, because nothing says "conservative respect for the Founders" like asking if the 22nd Amendment is more of a vibe than a rule. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson bragged that no administration has done as much in less than a year, so naturally the next step is seeing how far they can punt the whole "peaceful transfer of power" thing down the stairs.

This latest authoritarian trial balloon comes courtesy of Alan Dershowitz, who apparently looked at the crystal-clear 22nd Amendment and decided, "what if it wasn’t?" He’s written a whole book—"Could President Trump Constitutionally Serve a Third Term?"—because in this timeline, trying to lawyer your way around term limits is just another grifty publishing opportunity. Dersh pitched his fanfic directly to Trump in the Oval Office, then workshopped it at a White House Hanukkah party with billionaire mega-donor Miriam Adelson, who responded like someone being offered a third season of her favorite reality show: "Oh my God, I hope this can happen."

Trump’s allies are doing the usual "who, us?" routine. Speaker Mike Johnson says he "doesn’t see a path," Chief of Staff Susie Wiles insists Trump "knows he can’t run again" and is just "having fun" with the idea—meanwhile, the Trump Store is already selling "Trump 2028" hats and the donor class is on stage chanting "four more years" while Trump jokes about getting another $250 million if he "thinks about it." In other words: they’re normalizing the premise, testing the messaging, and pretending it’s all a joke right up until the moment someone decides it isn’t.

But sure, tell us again how the real threat to democracy is college kids protesting and not the president openly shopping for legal theories to stay in power past the constitutional limit while his White House calls it America’s "good luck." Totally fine, very normal, no fascism here at all.

In a primetime address, President Trump declared the U.S. is on the brink of an economic boom and that prices are falling fast — a bold claim, considering the large number of Americans who apparently forgot to experience this miracle firsthand. Affordability is still a top concern for voters, but don’t worry, Trump says it’s all fine now, so clearly the problem is just your lying bank account and your disobedient grocery receipts.

This is the classic Trump economic strategy: if you can’t fix it, just announce on TV that you already did. In other words, the White House message is that the economy is great, the vibes are wrong, and if people can’t afford housing, healthcare, or food, that’s a perception issue — not a policy one. Because nothing says “booming economy” like a president insisting prices are falling while voters are still doing math in the cereal aisle.

Trump took to primetime TV to "ease economic anxieties" by doing what he does best: telling everyone they’re actually rich now if they’d just stop looking at their bank accounts. In a speech marketed as comfort for struggling Americans, he instead celebrated his own "achievements" since clawing his way back into office, because nothing calms a family facing eviction like hearing a 78-year-old billionaire cosplayer brag about the stock market.

The address was basically a live infomercial for trickle-down fan fiction: ignore the layoffs, ignore the prices, ignore the debt, focus on the vibes. Structural problems? Corporate price-gouging? Policy choices that shove more money upward and leave everyone else with a prayer and a GoFundMe? Not on the script. But sure, if you squint hard enough at the White House backdrop and mute the part where your rent is due, it was very reassuring.

The US government has graciously admitted that, yes, it did in fact have a tiny role in the midair collision near DC that killed 67 people, including a group of elite young figure skaters, their parents, coaches, and four union steamfitters. In a court filing, government lawyers acknowledged that the FAA and the Army both breached their "duty of care" when an Army Black Hawk flew into the path of an American Airlines regional jet near Reagan National—because nothing says "world’s most advanced country" like your capital’s airspace operating on vibes and night-vision goggles.

The filing says the air traffic controller violated procedures about when to dump responsibility onto pilots for "visual separation," while the Army helicopter crew managed to both fly too high and not see the giant passenger jet they were supposedly avoiding. This all unfolded in an environment where the FAA had already logged 85 near misses in three years around the same airport and somehow decided the appropriate response was… to keep doing the same thing. In other words, it wasn’t an accident so much as the logical endpoint of a policy best described as "let’s hope it works out."

The National Transportation Safety Board has already flagged a charming combo of errors: the helicopter flying 78 feet above its already razor-thin altitude limit, an altimeter reading 80–100 feet low, controllers "overly reliant" on visual separation at night, and crews wearing night-vision goggles while trying to spot airliners in a crowded corridor. The FAA has now, heroically, stopped that practice after dozens of people died. American Airlines, for its part, is in court arguing that everyone should really be suing the government instead, while insisting it’s been "supporting the families"—because nothing screams accountability like "please direct all legal liability to Washington, DC."

So the government admits it owed a duty of care, breached it, and "proximately caused" the country’s deadliest crash in more than 20 years. The families are "anchored in grief"; the agencies are anchored in lawyered-up passive voice. But sure, tell us again how we can’t afford regulation and oversight, and how the real problem in America is too much "red tape" choking our freedom to die in preventable disasters.