The Trump Presidency Timeline

ABC just sued Brendan Carr’s Trump-era FCC for turning broadcast licenses into a political obedience test. The network says the administration forced its eight local stations into early license renewal as part of a long-running campaign to punish ABC for the unforgivable crime of airing journalism the White House doesn’t like. Apparently the first amendment now comes with an asterisk: void where Trump is mad at your coverage.

Former FCC officials from both parties have already sounded the alarm, warning that this stunt is meant to send a “chilling message” to every broadcaster: criticize the president, and your license suddenly becomes very theoretical. Meanwhile, conservative attack shops like the Center for American Rights and the Media Research Center have helpfully filed petitions urging the FCC to yank ABC’s licenses because its reporting is “politically biased” — which is rich coming from people whose primary contribution to media ethics is yelling “fake news” whenever facts are inconvenient.

So we’ve arrived at the part of the show where the federal communications regulator is allegedly being repurposed as a content police force, and license renewals hinge on whether your anchors sufficiently flatter Dear Leader. State TV without the efficiency, censorship without the paperwork, and a nice little message to every newsroom in America: your broadcast future depends on how generously you edit the president’s feelings.

Trump’s war on reality has officially reached the marmots. A 60-year ecological study tracking yellow-bellied marmots in the Rockies was about to be strangled to death after the administration froze more than $700m in science grants and installed a blacklist of forbidden words like “climate” and “women” — because nothing says ‘serious governance’ like turning the National Science Foundation into a vibes-based loyalty test.

So the scientists did what any responsible researchers in a collapsing democracy would do: they opened an OnlyFans. OnlyMarms features fully clothed marmots waddling around rocks while America’s president rakes in roughly $635m from his own meme coin and his science advisor, Silicon Valley bro Michael Kratsios, declares that real research money will go to AI and robots, not boring things like ecosystems or wildlife. When OnlyFans brought in a mere $6,000, an anonymous crypto cult spun up a marmot meme coin on Solana and, in two weeks, accidentally did more for long-term field biology than the federal government, coughing up another $88,000.

The result: about $100,000 to keep one of the world’s longest-running animal monitoring projects alive for a single extra year, while the marmots themselves are getting fatter in longer summers, then freezing to death in low-snow winters caused by the very climate crisis Trump has ordered his agencies not to mention. The researchers openly admit that begging the internet for horny-sounding subscriptions and riding meme-coin volatility is not a substitute for stable public funding — but under Trump’s science policy, it apparently counts as a happy ending.

The Trump White House, ever allergic to accountability, has now upgraded from screaming "fake news" to threat-modeling a reporter’s kids. CNN’s Kristen Holmes asked Donald Trump a basic question: respond to Jon Ossoff’s criticism that he’d rather swan around in his Qatar-gifted flying palace with Natalie Harp than do his actual job. Trump responded like any serious statesman: by calling Ossoff a "Pee-wee Herman lookalike" and barking "Quiet, quiet, quiet" at Holmes before defaulting to his favorite line of constitutional theory: "You’re fake news."

The White House “rapid response” account then heroically stepped in to defend the honor of the man with the nuclear codes, calling Holmes a "disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment" and labeling journalists "scumbags" for the crime of quoting a sitting senator to the president. Not satisfied with just professional smears, they went full authoritarian fan fiction, publicly telling Holmes that one day her children will find her "disgusting and inhumane question" and be "sickened and embarrassed" by their mother. Nothing says "confident democracy" like state power being used to intimidate a reporter by explicitly weaponizing her kids.

Communications director Steven Cheung, presumably paid with your tax dollars, joined the statesmanlike discourse by calling Ossoff "Jon Jackoff" and "the biggest cuck loser in politics" on social media, because apparently the administration’s official messaging strategy is now 4chan comments with a press badge. This all slots neatly into Trump’s long record of misogynistic attacks on women in the press corps—calling a Bloomberg reporter "piggy", branding CNN journalists "corrupt", and bailing on NBC’s Meet the Press after deciding the moderator was "crooked or stupid". The free press asks questions; the Trump White House responds by trying to publicly shame and endanger them. Truly, killing-democracy in real time, one tantrum at a time.

The Trump administration is once again holding a trade gun to an ally’s head, this time promising 50% tariffs on $20bn of Canadian imports unless Prime Minister Mark Carney agrees to Washington’s latest wishlist. The White House calls it a "factsheet"; everyone else calls it "economic blackmail with extra spreadsheets." Trump has already labeled Canada "nasty" on trade, because nothing says stable international leadership like screaming at your neighbor while holding their steel, autos, and lumber hostage.

On the U.S. side, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is demanding Canada scrap its retaliatory tariffs, loosen dairy supply management, and let American booze back onto provincial shelves, effectively telling Canadian provinces to hand over their domestic policy so Trump can brag about a "win" at his next rally. In return, Canada might get relief from the very tariffs Trump imposed in the first place, like a mob boss generously offering not to burn down your store if you sign the contract.

Back home, Canadians are predictably thrilled about being used as a punching bag in Trump’s re-election fanfic: 74% say they feel the impact of the dispute, over a third want more counter-tariffs even if it hurts, and a glorious 18% think maybe letting in American alcohol is worth it. Carney insists he won’t sign anything that isn’t a "good deal" for Canada, without defining what that means, while provincial leaders like Doug Ford and Quebec’s Christine Fréchette signal they’re not exactly dying to be extras in Trump’s trade reality show. The clock now ticks toward Wednesday, when Trump either pulls the tariff trigger or declares victory over the maple menace and moves on to his next self-inflicted crisis.

Donald Trump, noted expert in third-hand anecdotes, announced that the USS Abraham Lincoln is "beautifully maintained" and "beautifully taken care of" because an unnamed retired admiral allegedly told him so. Actual reporting from Navy Times and Stars and Stripes — you know, the outlets that talk to people who have actually been on the ship — describes water shortages, plumbing failures, and multiple sailors so desperate during this record-breaking deployment in the Strait of Hormuz that they’ve tried to go overboard. But Trump has "other people" (also unnamed, of course) who supposedly proved it’s all fine, so reality loses.

When a CNN reporter dared to ask about this tiny discrepancy between "everything is beautiful" and "my loved one is trying not to jump off a nuclear carrier," Trump snapped at her to "be quiet" and dismissed it all as fake news. The commander-in-chief’s message to sailors stuck at sea for over 250 days and their families watching them crumble under the Iran war’s strain is crystal clear: your mental health crisis is an inconvenience to his narrative.

Families of Lincoln crew members, who grew up being told to respect the military’s sacrifices, are now watching the president and defense secretary Pete Hegseth call their relatives’ experiences lies. One sister, speaking anonymously out of fear of retribution — always a great sign in a healthy democracy — says she’s "really angry" that the people with the power to help are instead pretending everything is fine. Trump gets his "beautiful" talking point, Hegseth gets to play tough-guy patriot on TV, and the sailors get to wonder how many more months they’ll be floating in a barely functioning metal pressure cooker so the White House can keep insisting nothing’s wrong.

The Trump administration has graciously decided to temporarily stop bulldozing Big Bend national park while the guy in charge of the wall, CBP chief Rodney Scott, flies in for an “on-the-ground evaluation” – also known as: looking at the damage and asking, “So how mad is everyone?” After ramming ahead with a border project that both parties somehow agree is terrible for a pristine, rugged stretch of Texas that already deters crossings on its own, Team Law and Order is pretending to discover the concept of “assessment” after the backhoes are already parked on the riverbank.

Congress handed the administration a $46bn wall allowance last summer to build from the Pacific to the Gulf, and the White House has been speedrunning the “ignore all the rules” category ever since, waiving environmental and other regulations like they’re spam pop-ups. Scott says he still expects to get the first layer of the wall done by the end of next year, but Texas landowners, conservationists, and basically anyone who’s seen a map of Big Bend are not thrilled about turning one of America’s most remote national parks into a monument to Trump’s anti-immigration cosplay. This “pause” looks less like a rethink and more like a PR coffee break before the next round of destruction resumes on schedule.

Jon Ossoff went to Atlanta and basically read out loud the crimes section of the Trump presidency like it was an audiobook. He torched Trump’s "uniquely despicable" Iran war — the one built on lies, padded with propaganda, and generously seasoned with record-length deployments for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln while the commander-in-chief complains they haven’t been stuck at sea long enough. The troops get exhaustion, mental health crises, and nine months on a floating anxiety attack; Trump gets tee times and a Gulf-funded flying palace for himself and Natalie Harp.

Ossoff then walked through the part where the president allegedly looked at the global economy and said, "How can I day-trade this?" Trump announces clown-tariffs, tanks the market, buys the dip, then magically cancels the tariffs right after telling his followers it’s a "great time to buy" — triggering a historic rebound and, coincidentally, padding his own portfolio. This is followed by the logical next step of any healthy democracy: a subscription service charging up to $100,000 a month for early access to the president’s thoughts on war and economic policy. The stock market, foreign governments, and defense contractors now get the premium tier, while the rest of the country gets whatever’s left after the whales cash out.

Ossoff’s pitch is basically: yes, American politics is corrupt and coin-operated, but Trump didn’t drain the swamp — he installed a VIP lounge, put the nuclear football behind a paywall, and turned the entire system into his personal options-trading side hustle. When the sitting president’s decisions on war and peace are delivered first to paying customers, that’s not just corruption; that’s a live demo of how to speedrun a democracy into a kleptocracy.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has apparently joined the elite club of world leaders who can’t tell the difference between a real Trump official and someone LARPing as one on their phone. Burnham traded a handful of messages with a person posing as Susie Wiles, Donald Trump’s de facto chief of staff, before someone noticed that maybe international diplomacy via mystery SMS isn’t a great national security protocol.

Downing Street is hiding behind the classic magic words — "we do not comment on national security matters" — which is a polite way of saying, "yes, this is embarrassing." Officials insist there were "no messages of significance" and that everything was "quickly reported" once it started to smell like a scam, which is exactly what you’d say if the prime minister just got punked by whoever currently has access to Trumpworld’s contact list.

This all traces back to Susie Wiles’ phone, which the FBI has been poking at since last year after an impersonator used her contacts to message US senators, governors, and business bigwigs. Wiles, a key Trump ally already targeted by an Iranian cyber espionage unit in 2024, is apparently running a one-woman demonstration of why giving these people power again is like handing your nuclear codes to the guy who still falls for "Your package is waiting" texts.

And because the Anglosphere loves a sequel, this follows former UK PM David Cameron getting duped by a fake Petro Poroshenko in 2024. The Foreign Office even pre-emptively released the details so they couldn’t be "manipulated" — a phrase that now doubles as a mission statement for anyone who manages to steal a Trump lieutenant’s phone and scroll through the global rolodex of Very Important But Apparently Extremely Gullible People.

Donald Trump hopped on Truth Social to announce that the US will "substantially reduce" joint military exercises with South Korea, because nothing says strong national security like weakening your most important Asian alliance to impress a hereditary dictator you once exchanged love notes with. The drills, scheduled to start Monday, are now apparently too "costly" and "hostile" toward Trump's favorite pen pal, Kim Jong Un.

Instead of talking to the Pentagon or, say, South Korea, Trump framed it as a customer service issue: America pays "as usual!" and Seoul had the nerve to decline to join his Iran "denuclearisation" cosplay, so he's now adjusting the U.S. defense posture like he's canceling a gym membership. Real presidents use joint exercises to deter nuclear-armed regimes; Trump uses them as a loyalty punch card and bargaining chip in his ongoing effort to convert U.S. foreign policy into a one-man reality show.

American foreign policy norms with North Korea were already on life support after his photo-op summit tours, but this is a fresh step: rewarding Pyongyang by dialing down allied readiness, while scolding South Korea in public for insufficient participation in his Iran fan fiction. The message to allies is clear: mutual defense treaties are now subject to the vibes of Trump's latest social media post and how many compliments he’s getting from dictators this week.

Jared Kushner, the real estate failson who once pitched peace in the Middle East as a kind of zoning variance, has resurfaced as Trump's "Middle East envoy" to personally fix Gaza. This time he's doing it under the banner of Trump's self-appointed "Board of Peace" — an "international organisation" that appears to consist of Trump, some letterhead, and whoever still answers Kushner's texts. The Board claims it has an agreement for the "complete disarmament" of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza, plus an Israeli troop withdrawal and a shiny new civilian Palestinian administration, which is a lot of words for a plan Israel has already publicly torched.

Undeterred by reality, Kushner held rare talks in Egypt with Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya, alongside Nickolai Mladenov and, because we apparently live in a cursed reboot of 2005, Tony Blair. They reportedly discussed how to actually dismantle Hamas's arsenal, get Israeli forces out, and rebuild a strip of land that has already seen more than 73,000 people killed and 1.9 million displaced. Israel's answer remains: no withdrawal until full disarmament first — and also a flat rejection of Trump's 15-point plan, just to really underline how much respect they have for America's new freelance peace corporation.

Meanwhile, eight Muslim-majority countries — Egypt, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia — issued a joint statement saying Israel's rejection threatens Trump's peace efforts, which is a polite diplomatic way of saying, "We are all pretending this Board of Peace is a real thing now, apparently." Trump, naturally, chairs this pseudo-institution himself, having expanded it from a Gaza project to a global conflict fixer, because when you've already broken American democracy, why not cosplay as the UN too? The ceasefire technically still exists, the IDF is still conducting strikes, Hamas is still accused of violations, and into this meat grinder strolls Jared Kushner, armed with vibes, spreadsheets, and his father-in-law's delusions of imperial grandeur.

The Trump administration has finally answered the age-old question, "How can federal health policy be even more vindictive?" By issuing a new rule that bans any federal Medicaid or CHIP dollars from covering gender-affirming care for trans youth, they’ve managed to turn the country’s safety net into a weapon. The affected group is tiny — an estimated 130,000 trans minors in states where care is still legal — so of course the White House focused its full attention on them, because nothing screams "strong leadership" like beating up the smallest, poorest, most politically powerless kids you can find.

One California mom, a lifelong Republican now on Medicaid after her husband’s company collapsed, gets to learn firsthand what "family values" actually means in Trumpworld: you can have your child’s medically recommended care or you can be poor, but not both. She’s so afraid of federal retaliation she won’t even use her full name, because this administration has made it perfectly clear that parents of trans kids are not just undeserving of help — they’re potential targets. Health law experts call the move "unprecedented" and "untested"; the administration calls it Tuesday. States can theoretically backfill the lost funds, but with red legislatures already racing to outlaw the care entirely, the plan is obvious: strangle access from Washington while the states finish the job.

So here we are: a federal government that has never before singled out a specific diagnosis and patient population to defund is doing exactly that, for no reason other than ideology and spite. Medicaid — a program literally designed so low-income kids don’t die for being poor — is now being rewritten so some of them can die for being trans, too. "Pro-life," of course.