The Trump Presidency Timeline

Mohammad Al-Saadi, an alleged commander of Kata’ib Hizballah, has been indicted on eight counts tied to nearly 20 attacks and attempted attacks across Europe, Canada, and the U.S. Prosecutors say he helped direct assaults on U.S. banks, synagogues, and Jewish communities — essentially running a global terror franchise with a very specific target demographic. Because this timeline is cursed, sources now say he also talked about wanting to target Ivanka Trump in Florida, presumably to avenge U.S. strikes on his mentors.

The Justice Department’s indictment somehow skips the part about the alleged Ivanka plot, leaving that detail to quietly leak out via reporters and the New York Post, which is what passes for a communications strategy in the Trump era: indict in formal legalese, leak the really explosive parts to tabloids, and let the rest of us connect the dots. The White House and Secret Service didn’t respond to questions — possibly busy workshopping whether this will be used to justify more crackdowns, more surveillance, or just more fundraising emails about how only Trump can protect the Trump family.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche vowed to prosecute Al-Saadi “under American law in an American courtroom,” which is a refreshing commitment to due process from an administration that usually treats the justice system like a personal Yelp account. Meanwhile, the same crew that screams about "weaponized DOJ" every time someone with an R after their name gets indicted is now suddenly thrilled to have federal prosecutors flexing their muscles — as long as the case can be framed as defending the royal family’s favorite influencer from a foreign boogeyman.

Google has reportedly signed on to let the Pentagon run its AI models on classified networks for basically “any lawful government purpose”, which is Washington-speak for: we’ll decide what’s lawful after we’ve done it. The deal includes Google helping the military tweak or dial down safety filters whenever the government asks, because nothing says "responsible AI" like handing the off-switch for guardrails to the same institution that brought you warrantless surveillance and forever wars.

The contract solemnly declares the AI system is not intended for domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weapons without appropriate human oversight — the kind of carefully lawyered phrase that will look great on the slide deck at the Hague. Google, now freed from its old promise not to build tech that causes "overall harm", insists this is all about national security, while also conceding it has no power to veto what the Pentagon actually does with the tools. The fox has signed a memorandum of understanding with the henhouse and agreed to provide premium analytics.

Inside the company, more than 600 employees are frantically waving little ethical red flags, begging Sundar Pichai not to let their work be used in "inhumane or extremely harmful ways" — a concern that was apparently edited out of the latest quarterly earnings report. This is the sequel to the 2018 Project Maven revolt, except this time Google didn’t walk away; it rewrote the rulebook so it wouldn’t have to. Meanwhile, Anthropic gets labeled a "supply-chain risk" for refusing to help with autonomous weapons and surveillance, which is Washington’s new term for "company that still has a functioning conscience."

The Pentagon quietly announced that Navy Secretary John Phelan is "departing the administration, effective immediately," which is a very polite way of saying Reuters heard he was fired and everyone else is pretending this is fine. His replacement, at least for now, is Navy undersecretary Hung Cao, who has the rare distinction in this administration of having actually served in the military instead of just on a yacht with a flag.

Phelan, a major Trump donor with zero prior military or serious civilian leadership experience in the Navy, somehow landed the top civilian job anyway, because under Trump the chain of command starts with the checkbook. His résumé highlight? Founding an investment firm and advising a nonprofit called Spirit of America – which is basically like listing "I watched Top Gun twice" under relevant experience. He’s being tossed overboard just as the U.S. Navy is running a blockade of Iranian ports during a "tenuous" ceasefire in the Iran war, so naturally, there’s no explanation given for why the guy in charge got yanked mid-crisis.

This is all part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ongoing game of four-star Whac-A-Mole, where he’s already fired the Army’s top officer, Gen Randy George, plus a growing list of generals, admirals, and senior defense officials for crimes such as "existing" and "having independent judgment." No reasons, no transparency, just a rolling purge of anyone who might remember that the military swears an oath to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump’s feelings.

Cao, for his part, is a 25-year Navy veteran and failed Virginia Senate candidate who once compared communist Vietnam to Joe Biden’s administration, so he’s got the combat experience and the Fox News audition tape this White House craves. The message from Trumpworld remains crystal clear: you can buy yourself a Cabinet job, but you can’t buy job security. The only truly stable thing in this Pentagon is the chaos.

The Trump White House just had a "productive and constructive" meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, which is a very diplomatic way of saying: the administration tried to kneecap his company for not handing over an all‑purpose surveillance and weapons bot, and now they need his new super hacker AI too badly to keep pretending.

Two months ago, the administration branded Anthropic a "supply chain risk" – the first US company ever publicly slapped with that label – right after Amodei refused the Pentagon's push for unfettered access to its tools over concerns they'd be used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly retaliated with the designation, a federal court largely agreed, and yet somehow the same agencies still quietly keep using Anthropic anyway. Regulation as performance art; procurement as addiction.

Trump, naturally, ranted that Anthropic was run by "left wing nut jobs" and vowed the government would "not do business with them again!" while his own bureaucracy continued doing business with them again, and again, and again. Now Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chief of Staff Susie Wiles are huddling with Amodei to "explore the balance" between innovation and safety, which appears to translate to: how do we get this Mythos model that "outperforms humans at hacking" without admitting we weaponised procurement rules to punish a company for not building us a turnkey surveillance state?

Asked about the CEO’s White House visit, Trump claimed he had "no idea" it was happening, which is either a lie or an accidental confession that the government is negotiating access to a world‑class cyber weapon behind the back of the guy who keeps screaming on social media that he’s in charge. Either way, the message is clear: refuse to build mass spying tools and killer robots, get branded a national security threat… until your tech is too good to blacklist, at which point everyone pretends this was just a friendly chat about "shared protocols" and not a hostage negotiation with the future of civil liberties.

America’s hospitals, airports, banks and transport networks are increasingly held together with duct tape, prayer, and 1990s code — so naturally, the Trump administration has decided the real threat is … the company trying to find the bugs. Anthropic’s new "Claude Mythos Preview" model is reportedly uncovering vulnerabilities in basically every major browser, OS, and even the Linux kernel — the digital plumbing that keeps everything from Netflix to your bank account from turning into ransomware performance art.

Security experts are calling this "Y2K-level alarming" and racing to use Mythos to patch the holes before some less ethical outfit ships a public version that lets script kiddies take down hospitals from a Starbucks Wi‑Fi. Apple, Microsoft, Google, banks, and regulators are quietly panicking and trying to harden their systems. The Trump White House’s contribution to this whole-of-society effort? Declaring war on Anthropic, banning federal agencies and the military from using its tools, and branding the company "radical left" and "woke" because it won’t turn its models into a turnkey mass-surveillance system for spying on Americans.

So while the Treasury secretary and the Fed chair are urgently warning Wall Street about AI-driven cyberattacks and bioweapon design assistance, Trump’s political brain trust is busy making sure the government’s already rickety systems cannot use one of the best tools to secure them. The administration would rather posture about culture-war purity than keep hospitals online and planes in the sky. Superintelligent AI might someday destabilize society, but for now the most dangerous algorithm in Washington is still the one in Trump’s head that maps "protect critical infrastructure" to "own the libs".

The Trump administration’s top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, has resigned, because apparently the War on Terror was no match for the War on Basic Competence happening inside this White House. NPR’s Steve Inskeep is talking to Kent’s co-author Marty Skovlund, presumably to answer the burning question: what finally broke him—policy disagreements, ethical lines, or just too many meetings where the president asked if ISIS could be solved with a tweet and a golf summit?

Yet again, the person in charge of keeping Americans safe from terrorists has decided that staying in Trump’s national security apparatus is somehow less safe than leaving it. At this point, the counterterrorism portfolio looks like a revolving door with a security clearance. But sure, sleep well, America—your terrorist threat matrix is being updated by whoever hasn’t resigned, been sidelined, or rage-quit on live TV this week.