The Trump Presidency Timeline

American law enforcement just reenacted every neocon fever dream: an undercover DEA agent pretended to be an Iranian general in charge of Tehran’s nuclear weapons program, and a Japanese "Yakuza boss" – who may actually just be a garden-variety conman – tried to sell him heroin, meth, rocket launchers, and, oh right, weapons-grade plutonium. Because when you picture nuclear proliferation, you obviously think: Myanmar rebels, Golden Triangle drug routes, and a guy who calls uranium and meth "cake and ice cream" like he’s running a cursed Baskin-Robbins.

The US calls this a "resounding success" in nuclear security, which is one way to describe discovering that insurgent groups in Myanmar are apparently mining uranium while porous borders, weak customs, and nonexistent radiation detection let nuclear material wander around the planet like it’s backpacking through Europe. Experts are now stuck asking the fun question: if this random drug-smuggling side-hustler had weapons-grade plutonium samples, where did they actually come from, and how much more is out there? The official answer so far is: ¯\(ツ)/¯, but with more footnotes.

Meanwhile, the DEA’s sting relied on the classic Washington script: pretend Iran is buying nukes, then point to Iran to justify endless war talk about Iran’s nuclear program… while the real problem is unsecured material leaking from everywhere else. So yes, we’re bombing and sanctioning one country over a program it denies, while weapons-grade plutonium is apparently available via insurgent WhatsApp in Myanmar. Strong work, global nuclear order.

Federal Judge Patrick Schiltz just dropped a 210-count indictment of vibes on the Trump administration, cataloguing hundreds of times where ICE and friends simply treated court orders like unsubscribe emails: annoying, ignorable, and definitely not binding. His Minnesota opinion lays out 210 orders in 143 cases that the administration shrugged off, often without even bothering to invent a fake legal excuse. Meanwhile, Judge Jeffrey Bryan is over here scheduling show cause hearings because the government couldn’t manage the complex legal task of ‘give the person’s stuff back like I told you’.

Trump, naturally, has decided that court rulings – like elections – only count if he wins. After the Supreme Court smacked down his unconstitutional tariffs, he accused the justices of being "very unpatriotic" and controlled by "foreign interests," because nothing screams devotion to the Constitution like attacking the branch whose job is to interpret it. Attorney General Pam Bondi joined the tantrum, branding Virginia federal judges "rogue" for noticing that the administration’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan as U.S. attorney was, minor detail, illegal.

Legal scholars call this strategy "legalistic noncompliance" – using the language of law as camouflage while ignoring the actual orders. Judges threaten contempt, then mostly blink, turning Article III into an elaborate suggestion box. The rare time someone like Judge James Boasberg found probable cause for criminal contempt over deportation flights, an appeals court rode in to rescue the scofflaws. Yet when Judge Laura Provinzino slapped a $500-a-day contempt fine on a U.S. attorney until an immigrant detainee got his ID documents back, the government miraculously complied within 24 hours. Turns out the executive branch can obey the law; it just prefers not to unless the alternative is paying cash.

For centuries, courts have had the power to jail or fine people – including government officials – who treat their orders like spam. The Trump team has essentially bet that judges won’t use that power against them, and so far, they’re mostly winning. If the judiciary doesn’t stop playing polite debate club with an administration openly testing how much law it can break before anyone does anything, we’re going to find out the hard way what a constitutional system looks like when one branch decides the rules are optional and the referees are too scared to throw a flag.

Georgia’s GOP primary for governor was already a MAGA-themed demolition derby, and then billionaire health care executive Rick Jackson showed up, dumped a promised $50 million on the track, and asked voters if they’d like a second helping of 2016 Trump with slightly worse branding.

Jackson has spent nearly $16 million in a month introducing himself as a "straight-talking, Trump-supporting self-made outsider" who "doesn’t owe anybody anything" — a fun line from a man attempting to purchase the governor’s mansion with couch-cushion change. He launched his campaign by descending in a glass elevator to evoke Trump’s golden escalator entrance, because if you’re going to cosplay as an authoritarian-adjacent cult leader, you might as well commit to the bit.

While Trump has already endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Jackson is running a delicate little fanboy operation: he’s not touching Jones, but he is airing an ad calling Brad Raffensperger — the Republican who refused Trump’s request to help steal Georgia in 2020 — a "Judas" who "turned on his own kind." That spot conveniently aired in D.C. and West Palm Beach media markets, just in case a certain Florida resident needed his ego stroked between indictments.

The result: a billionaire oligarch trying to buy a governorship, a Trump-endorsed candidate, the state’s top law enforcement officer, and the secretary of state who once defended basic democracy all clawing for the same MAGA base. Georgia Republicans aren’t just running a primary; they’re holding auditions for who can best punish the guy who wouldn’t help Trump overturn an election — and who can spend the most to do it.

The Trump show has officially gone international syndication. A Pakistani man, Asif Merchant, has been convicted in New York of plotting to kill Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Nikki Haley at the direction of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as payback for Trump’s 2020 assassination of Qassem Suleimani. You remember that one: the bold, galaxy-brain strike that was absolutely not going to spark years of spiraling retaliation or turn US officials into walking targets worldwide. Flawless strategic foresight, as always.

The plot never got off the ground because someone Merchant tried to recruit did the thing the Secret Service wishes more Trump staffers would do: called law enforcement. Merchant claims he only joined the IRGC scheme to protect his family in Tehran, while Iran officially denies it targeted Trump or any US officials. Meanwhile, the trial conveniently kicked off just as Trump ordered a joint assault on Iran with Israel, which has already killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wiped out a chunk of the country’s leadership, according to Tehran’s UN ambassador. Six US service members and at least 10 Israeli civilians are also dead, because the Forever War doesn’t do refunds, just sequels.

So we’ve got: Trump’s first-term drone assassination of Suleimani; Iran-linked plots to assassinate Trump and other US leaders on US soil; and now a region-wide war with a mounting civilian body count. But sure, tell us again how blowing up senior officials in foreign countries is a tidy, contained policy tool and not a long-term subscription to global vendetta politics. The only thing transcending national boundaries here is the sheer volume of terrible decisions.

The Trump White House has apparently decided that if you’re going to run an authoritarian meme regime, you might as well drag Pikachu down with you. The administration posted an official meme using Pokémon imagery and a mini Pikachu to sell "Make America Great Again," prompting Pokémon Company International to clarify that no, actually, they did not sign up to be the cutesy mascot of ethnic cleansing and endless culture war. Spokeswoman Sravanthi Dev stressed that the brand’s mission is to bring people together, which is a bold contrast to an administration whose mission is to bring people together at ICE facilities.

This isn’t even their first offense. The same 30-year-old franchise already had to slap the Trump team’s hand for using the "Gotta catch ’em all" slogan over footage of border patrol arrests, because nothing says "family entertainment" like turning a deportation dragnet into a marketing crossover event. Now they’re apparently ripping art from the new game Pokopia, complete with MAGA text in a similar font, because why pay for ad creatives when you can just loot Nintendo like it’s a federal disaster fund?

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson proudly calls this "engaging posts and banger memes" that communicate Trump’s "extremely popular agenda"—which currently includes splicing war footage from Iran with stolen Call of Duty clips on official channels. Artists, comedians, and even Trump-friendly podcaster Theo Von are publicly telling DHS and the White House to stop using their work for deportation propaganda unless they’re going to, at minimum, cut a check. The administration, predictably, seems to believe that intellectual property law—like ethics rules, subpoenas, and international norms—only applies to other people.