The Trump Presidency Timeline

Maricopa County just had a judge decide which group of Republicans gets to sit closest to the election machinery, and Stephen Miller’s friends won. County recorder Justin Heap – a former GOP legislator who built a career gently fanning the ‘something’s wrong with our elections’ crowd without quite saying the magic words ‘stolen’ – sued the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors for daring to control key election functions. The judge agreed the board had “acted unlawfully” by seizing his office’s staff, systems, and equipment, and handed Heap more authority over early voting and other operations.

The board says it’s only ever wanted to give Heap the resources he needs and that “voters always come first,” which is a fascinating way to describe a knife fight over who gets to place ballot drop boxes and run early voting in a state where MAGA conspiracy theorists have been screaming about bamboo ballots for four years. The previous recorder, Republican Stephen Richer, says Heap “catered to the really ugly stuff” and helped feed the harassment and threats aimed at the elections office. Naturally, Heap’s lawsuit arrived with the enthusiastic backing of America First Legal, the “public interest” group founded by Stephen Miller, now helpfully stationed in the White House as deputy chief of staff to make sure this kind of thing scales nationally.

So in Arizona’s largest county, the lesson is clear: whip up distrust in the election system, ride that wave into office, then use your new job – and Miller’s legal machine – to claw back more direct control over how people vote. The board is talking about an appeal, but the damage is done: the 2026 races in one of the country’s most important swing states will be run by a guy who built his brand on telling voters the system is trash, now armed with a court order and a far-right legal shop cheering from Washington. What could possibly go wrong with that for democracy.

The US Senate has narrowly decided that Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness would look much better as a sulfide mining experiment, voting 50–49 to repeal Biden’s 20-year mining moratorium so Trump can sign it and call it patriotism. The big winner isn’t Minnesotans, or the millions who visit one of America’s most beloved wilderness areas – it’s Twin Metals Minnesota, the local costume worn by Chilean mining giant Antofagasta, which is itching to drop a copper and nickel mine just a few miles from the Boundary Waters.

Democratic senator Tina Smith helpfully pointed out that this is the exact opposite of "America First": the mine is owned by a foreign company, the ore will go to Chinese state-owned smelters, and the metals will be sold on the open market. So naturally, the GOP and a bare Senate majority raced to approve it, because if there’s one thing this era stands for, it’s handing US public lands to foreign corporations and calling it supply-chain security. Two Republicans, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis, voted against turning a national treasure into a chemistry set, while Josh Hawley simply didn’t bother to vote – presumably conserving his strength for more performative outrage on television.

Environmental groups are describing this as a "dark day" for the Boundary Waters and a warning for public lands everywhere, which is polite code for "Congress just put a ‘for sale’ sign on your favorite national forest." Twin Metals, meanwhile, insists it will "responsibly" mine the area and pass "stringent" environmental standards, which is exactly what every mining company says right before the river starts glowing. Legal fights and permitting hurdles remain, but the message from Trump’s Washington is unmistakable: if you’re a foreign corporation with a good lobbying team, America’s wilderness is your strip mall.

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new way to support crime victims: take their money and give it to white-collar criminals. Since returning to office, he’s issued 117 pardons and commutations that don’t just wipe convictions, but also vaporize the fines and penalties that are legally supposed to flow into the federal Crime Victims Fund. At least $113 million that should have gone to domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, child abuse treatment programs, and gun violence survivors has instead been converted into a loyalty rewards program for fraudsters and money launderers.

The crown jewel of this little experiment in upside-down justice is Trump’s corporate pardon of HDR Global Trading Limited, parent company of the BitMEX crypto exchange. The company owed a $100 million fine for ignoring anti–money laundering laws; Trump swooped in hours before the payment was due and signed a pardon that explicitly remits “any and all fines, penalties, forfeitures, and restitution.” That’s not mercy, that’s a $100 million smash-and-grab from the Crime Victims Fund, which was created under VOCA to help people pay for funerals, medical bills, and lost wages after violent crime.

The language here matters: “remission of any and all fines” is not standard pardon boilerplate. Trump barely used it in his first term; now roughly a third of his second-term pardons include this magical debt eraser for corporate criminals. Prosecutors are left wondering why they should spend years building complex white-collar cases if the president can just shred the financial penalties with a signature, while states scramble to plug the holes in victim services budgets because the guy who cosplays as the toughest man on crime keeps canceling the cash.

By comparison, Biden’s pardons interrupted less than $1 million in financial penalties, most of which had already been paid. Trump’s tally in just 14 months dwarfs that, and doesn’t even include the big fines that never got imposed because he pardoned people before trial. So the math is simple: corporations and rich defendants get their slates wiped clean; survivors of shootings and other violent crimes get shorter waitlists, fewer services, and state budgets duct-taped together to cover the federal betrayal. It’s a perfect encapsulation of Trump’s justice philosophy: protect the money, not the people who got shot.

The White House is asking Congress for a casual $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, with a separate "don’t worry about it" tab coming for the Iran war. Because if there’s one thing this government hates, it’s universal healthcare — and if there’s one thing it absolutely loves, it’s writing blank checks for forever wars and defense contractors who treat the federal budget like their personal ATM.

Lawmakers, who have spent decades rubber-stamping defense bills they didn’t read, are now bravely demanding “more transparency” about where the money is going. Bold stuff from the same institution that turns every conflict into a bipartisan jobs program for Lockheed Martin. So we’ll get a few hearings, some sternly worded questions, and then, once everyone has finished pretending to be shocked by the price tag, the war machine will get fed and Americans will be told there’s just no funding available for things that don’t explode.

The House just renewed one of the government’s favorite snooping toys, FISA Section 702, for a neat little 10-day grace period — because nothing says "serious constitutional oversight" like treating mass surveillance as a checkout-line impulse purchase. GOP leaders tried to ram through a five-year extension or the 18-month version Trump demanded, but both collapsed, leaving them to pass a stopgap by unanimous consent so no one had to be on record actually defending this mess.

For the uninitiated, 702 lets U.S. intelligence vacuum up the communications of foreign targets abroad and, as a fun bonus, hoover in Americans’ calls, texts, and emails that get caught in the same net. For almost twenty years, privacy hawks in both parties have begged for the bare-minimum reform of requiring a court’s permission before agents go digging through Americans’ data. The intelligence community, clutching its pearls, insists that having to get a warrant might slightly inconvenience their ability to read your email.

Weeks of House chaos produced only cosmetic tweaks that left civil-liberties advocates unsatisfied and the surveillance state essentially intact. Lawmakers now pretend they’re on the brink of some grand reform while quietly making sure the spying never actually stops — because if 702 ever truly lapsed, tech and telecom companies might sue, and we can’t have corporate America discovering it has rights ordinary citizens don’t.

Virginia voters are being handed the political equivalent of a mop and a prayer: a chance to approve a new congressional map that could give Democrats an edge in four more seats, letting them hold 10 of the state’s 11 House seats. After years of Trump-world Republicans lovingly carving districts like a deranged charcuterie board, Virginians now get to decide whether their votes should matter more than the state GOP’s artistic ambitions with county lines.

The potential outcome: one of the final nails in Trump’s redistricting fever dream, where minority rule is preserved by maps so warped they should come with a physics disclaimer. If this passes, Virginia would move further out of reach for Trump’s party, which has spent the last decade screaming about "election integrity" while treating fair maps like a personal hate crime. Turns out when you let actual voters weigh in, the gerrymander-industrial complex doesn’t look so invincible.

The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services department has bravely launched state-sponsored podcasting, starring Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr explaining to hungry Americans that food is actually affordable if they’d just stop being bad at grocery shopping. Joined by celebrity chef and military meal planner Robert Irvine, RFK Jr spends 45 minutes turning vendor-negotiation anecdotes and bulk-melon tips into a sermon about how the real problem isn’t Trump’s tariffs or labor-crushing immigration crackdowns driving up prices—no, it’s your failure to appreciate dark meat and un-chopped cantaloupe.

The show politely forgets to mention that Trump’s trade war and worker shortages have helped spike food prices, while HHS’s own press secretary Emily Hilliard calls the idea that costs rose under Trump “ridiculous” and instead blames Biden for inflation. She then points to SNAP as the magical solution, neglecting the tiny detail that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act has been quietly carving up SNAP benefits like a factory-farmed chicken. Whole foods are ingredients, not meals, but don’t worry, the administration thinks you can just intention your way through the produce aisle with less federal help and the same paycheck.

RFK Jr also wanders into pseudoscience, declaring that bipolar disorder and ADHD are caused by bad diets—claims that actual medical experts keep saying are not supported by evidence. But why let science get in the way when you can tell people their mental health is just a kale deficiency? The episode wraps itself in a “Make America Healthy Again” slogan, complete with a Super Bowl ad where Mike Tyson calls Americans “obese, fudgy people,” while the administration simultaneously makes healthy food harder to afford for the very people it’s lecturing. It’s a perfect Trump-era combo: weaponized stigma, junk science, and policy sabotage, all served up as a wellness podcast.