The Trump Presidency Timeline

Washington, DC continues its run as America’s least-fun theme park as a 45-year-old Texan, Michael Marx, allegedly strolls along the route of JD Vance’s motorcade with a concealed gun, runs from Secret Service, opens fire, and manages to shoot a teenage bystander instead of the agent he was aiming at. Law enforcement shoots him multiple times, at which point he reportedly responds with the extremely stable policy position: “F—k the White House” and “Kill me, kill me, kill me”. Truly the spiritual offspring of a political culture that treats armed rage as a personality type.

While all this is happening, the White House briefly locks down because Donald Trump is inside hosting a “small business event” — presumably explaining to mom-and-pop shops how to dodge taxes and monetize the presidential seal. JD Vance’s motorcade route, a random teenager’s leg, and the Secret Service all get dragged into the chaos, because in this administration, everyone is an unwilling extra in the world’s worst prestige drama.

US attorney Jeanine Pirro, now apparently cosplaying as the face of sober federal law enforcement, vows to pursue the “most serious charges” against the man who brought gun violence “steps from the seat of our government and the path of the vice-president”. This, from a regime that’s spent years mainlining gun worship, demonizing political opponents, and flirting with insurrection like it’s a networking opportunity. The state that helped cultivate the climate is now shocked—shocked—to find bullets in the air.

All of this comes barely a week after another guy allegedly tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Dinner armed with guns and knives and was charged with attempting to assassinate the president. So yes, the Trump-Vance administration’s great contribution to American civic life remains intact: a country where every political event is one unhinged man away from turning into a live-action security drill, while the people in charge keep pouring gasoline on the mood and calling it freedom.

Donald Trump is hosting Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at the White House to talk about the economy, tariffs, and organized crime, which is bold from a guy who just tried to run foreign policy like a Change.org petition for Jair Bolsonaro. The U.S. slapped a 40% tariff on Brazilian goods — on top of another 10% — and Trump later helpfully explained that his annoyance over Bolsonaro’s criminal charges was one reason for the economic punishment. Foreign policy, but make it personal legal grievance cosplay.

The two leaders have supposedly had a strained relationship, which tends to happen when the American president writes a letter demanding you go easy on your own country’s former far-right leader and then hikes tariffs when you don’t roll over. Now they’re meeting again so Trump can pretend this is about “shared economic and security interests” instead of his ongoing habit of turning U.S. trade tools into a loyalty test for fellow authoritarians and indicted buddies.

Trump claims he and Lula had “excellent chemistry” and that Lula “seemed like a very nice man,” which, given Trump’s track record, is somewhere between a curse and a threat. Lula shows up trying to talk about a pact against organized crime; Trump shows up having already used the U.S. economy as a pressure tactic to meddle in Brazil’s justice system. One of these is actual statecraft. The other is a guy running the White House like it’s a VIP lounge for embattled strongmen.

The Secret Service arrested an FAA contractor who allegedly used his work computer to Google "I am going to kill Donald John Trump" and how to sneak a gun into a federal facility, then politely asked IT to delete his search history like this was a bad day on Pornhub, not a federal crime. He also allegedly emailed the White House from his personal computer to announce his intent to "neutralize/kill" Trump, because subtlety is dead and so are competent plots.

On its own this is just one unhinged guy with three guns and zero operational security. The bigger picture: the DOJ says there have been three other prosecutions for Trump threats this week, including former FBI director James Comey being charged over an Instagram photo of seashells that prosecutors claim was a threat. So yes, we’ve hit the part of the authoritarian arc where the president’s Justice Department is hunting for coded messages in beach decor while bragging about "zero tolerance" and "maximum punishments" for speech, even as actual violent extremists marinate happily in the background.

Meanwhile, a South Carolina man was arrested after literally writing "Headed to Wsh to kill the pres" on his car like a rolling confession, and a Florida man pleaded guilty to threatening Trump and other officials. All this comes less than two weeks after a gunman stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner allegedly trying to kill Trump and other government officials. The country is spiraling, the temperature is off the charts, and the administration’s answer is to turn threat prosecutions into a loyalty spectacle where an ex-FBI director’s seashell post gets treated like the Zapruder film.

The Trump education department has decided that the real crisis in American schools isn’t guns, crumbling buildings, or student debt – it’s Smith College letting trans women exist. The Office for Civil Rights proudly announced it is investigating the women’s college for the crime of admitting, quote, “biological males into women’s intimate spaces,” because nothing says “limited government” like Washington micromanaging who can pee in a Northampton dorm bathroom.

Assistant secretary for civil rights Kimberly Richey helpfully clarified that Title IX’s single-sex exemption only applies to "biological sex difference, not subjective gender identity" – a legally creative way of saying: we will rewrite civil-rights law on the fly to match the vibes of the Christian right. Smith, which has admitted trans women since 2015 after, you know, actually talking to students and alumnae, is now being told that educating women of all kinds means it might not count as a women’s college anymore. Schrödinger’s woman: female enough for discrimination, not female enough for protection.

This latest stunt slots neatly into the administration’s ongoing project of driving trans people out of every public space: bans on trans military service, lawsuits against states that let trans kids play sports, attempts to kill gender‑affirming care, and passport rules that must match birth sex. Now, with an assist from rightwing group “Defending Education” – whose entire business model is screaming “indoctrination” at any school that acknowledges marginalized people exist – the federal government is using Title IX, a law meant to fight sex discrimination, as a weapon to enforce it instead. Truly a bold new era of civil rights: everyone is equal, as long as they’re the right kind of woman.

The State Department is discovering a fun new HR trend: when you replace career diplomats with golf buddies and campaign donors, the people who actually know how to run foreign policy start sprinting for the exits. Normally, about two-thirds of U.S. ambassadors come from the career foreign service; under Trump, that ratio has been flipped into a loyalty test with a flag pin.

Senior career diplomats, seeing their jobs handed to politically connected amateurs whose main qualification is writing big checks and praising Trump on TV, are taking the hint and retiring early. Why spend decades learning languages, negotiating treaties, and managing crises when you can be passed over for the guy whose main international experience is owning a condo in Cancun?

This isn’t just petty patronage; it’s systematic hollowing-out. By sidelining professionals in favor of donors and sycophants, the administration is turning the State Department from a diplomatic corps into a networking event for rich people who like ambassadorships more than tax brackets. American foreign policy gets weaker and more chaotic, but hey, at least the cocktail parties are great.

Donald Trump has now expanded the axis of evil to include: Iran, the pope, and Italy. After Pope Leo dared to condemn the US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump called the first US-born pontiff "weak" and "not doing a very good job" — bold words from a man whose spiritual practice consists of rage-posting and confusing an AI Jesus selfie with a medical headshot. He blasted out an AI-generated image depicting himself as Christ, then tried to claim it was actually him as a doctor, because nothing says humility like, "I’m either your savior or your surgeon, I forget which."

Vice-president JD Vance helpfully joined the clown mass, telling the Vatican to stick to "matters of morality" while also warning the pope to be careful when talking about theology and war — a neat trick that boils down to: talk about morality, unless it makes our war look bad. Meanwhile, Trump turned on one of his loudest European fans, Giorgia Meloni, threatening to yank US troops from Italy because her government wouldn’t cheerlead his Iran strikes or his tantrum at Leo. US basing rights and NATO posture are now just another item on the Mar-a-Lago grievance menu.

Into this holy tire fire walks Secretary of State Marco Rubio, dispatched to Rome to "thaw" relations with the Vatican and Italy — which is diplomatic code for, "Sorry the president screamed at you and compared himself to Jesus again." Rubio will privately meet Pope Leo and Italian leaders while pretending the administration’s foreign policy is something other than a loyalty test for worshipping Trump’s image, AI-enhanced or otherwise. The pope, for his part, says he doesn’t fear the US administration and will keep speaking out against the war, which in Trump’s America now counts as both a moral act and a national security risk.