The Trump Presidency Timeline

The Trump administration has decided the best way to deal with worsening fires, floods, and hurricanes is to defund the people who predict them. Russell Vought, still cosplaying as a budget hawk on X, proudly announced that the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder — a globally respected “crown jewel” of climate and weather science — will be dismantled for the crime of “climate alarmism.” Because nothing says “serious governing” like nuking your top atmospheric research lab while megafires and 1,000-year floods show up every six months.

Vought helpfully clarified that any “vital activities” like weather research would be moved somewhere else, which is bureaucrat-speak for “we’ll hand this to some loyal hack who thinks a supercomputer is when Trump remembers two talking points in a row.” The Mesa Laboratory will be shut, 830 staff thrown into chaos, and the NCAR-run supercomputing facility and research aircraft shoved into whatever political shredder passes for policy review in this White House.

Even conservative climate policy guy Roger Pielke Jr is out here saying NCAR is a “crown jewel” that should be improved, not shuttered — in other words, it’s so obviously stupid and petty that even the usual ‘both-sides’ crowd can’t spin it. Colorado governor Jared Polis noted that NCAR’s work on fires, floods, and severe weather literally helps save lives and property, but sure, let’s call it “woke” and pull the plug because one of their programs tries to make science more inclusive and they study wind turbines, Trump’s personal windmill-tilting obsession.

This all slots neatly into Trump’s ongoing crusade against reality: climate change is a “hoax,” NOAA gets a proposed 30% budget chainsaw, and any lab that produces inconvenient data gets labeled “green new scam research.” The message is clear: if your models show rising seas and stronger hurricanes, this administration will rise up to meet the challenge by destroying your funding, your lab, and probably your server farm. But hey, at least the billionaires building beachfront bunkers will get a tax cut.

Jack Smith showed up to Capitol Hill to explain the wild, radical theory that if you have proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a president ran a criminal scheme to overturn an election and hoarded classified documents, you should maybe, possibly, consider charging him. In other words, basic rule-of-law stuff — which of course means he’s now being hauled in front of Jim Jordan’s "Oversight and Retaliation Committee" for the crime of doing his job before Trump got back the nuclear codes and the DOJ.

Smith told lawmakers that the evidence "rests entirely with President Trump and his actions," which is very rude because the official MAGA line is that the real criminals are FBI lawyers, election workers, and that one Republican county clerk who didn’t "find" enough votes. Republicans are especially outraged that their phone records were subpoenaed, because nothing says "totally innocent" like panicking over who the prosecutor saw you calling on January 6.

The hearing is, naturally, closed-door — not because Smith wanted it that way (he volunteered for an open hearing), but because nothing says "transparency" like silencing the guy who investigated your dear leader while you publicly smear him as a "criminal" who should be "put in prison." This is the same justice system that recently tried to prosecute James Comey over old testimony with a prosecutor a judge later ruled was improperly appointed — because if you can’t jail the people who investigated Trump, you can at least prove the entire system now exists to deter anyone from trying again.

Congress is packing its bags for holiday recess and, in a bold new experiment in governing by neglect, is just going to let enhanced ACA subsidies expire. Because nothing says “Merry Christmas, middle class” like watching your health insurance premiums double or triple on January 1 so Mike Johnson can go on Fox and mumble about freedom. Millions of Americans are about to learn that the real preexisting condition is living under a party that thinks ‘market forces’ will cure cancer.

Instead of extending subsidies, House Republicans are teeing up a vote on their favorite zombie ideas: association health plans and tinkering with pharmacy benefit managers — the policy equivalent of replacing your seatbelt with thoughts and prayers. Rank-and-file members are still having “bipartisan talks,” which is DC-speak for “we’re going to do nothing and hope you forget who did this to you by November.”

Meanwhile, as these premium spikes land, Trump’s economic approval has cratered to 36%, his lowest in six years of Marist polling. The GOP’s old 16-point advantage on “who do you trust on the economy” has magically transformed into a Democratic lead, because it turns out people notice when their groceries, rent, and health care all go up while the administration’s big plan is… deregulating nuclear reactors and yelling about wokeness. In other words: the “greatest economy ever” is polling like a used timeshare scam.

But sure, keep telling voters that everything is fine and this is all Biden’s fault somehow, while you literally vote to make their health care more expensive. The leopards-ate-my-face caucus is about to find out what happens when the leopards start itemizing their medical bills.

Trump, flanked by nuclear industry executives in the Oval Office, has discovered a new thing that’s being mildly inconvenienced by safety regulations and therefore must be destroyed: the rules that keep nuclear reactors from turning into very expensive, very glowing craters. CEOs pitched him on a future of mass-produced small modular reactors, and Trump — a man whose construction legacy includes bankrupt casinos and collapsing Atlantic City real estate — was praised as “the best at building things.” Because nothing says long-term nuclear safety like the guy who couldn’t keep a steak brand alive.

The problem, Constellation Energy CEO Joseph Dominguez explained, is that pesky safety reviews and permitting delays “kill you” because you can’t get the plant online and start printing money. And like clockwork, Trump’s new executive order is aimed at speeding up approvals for reactors across the country, i.e., telling regulators to stop harshing the industry’s radioactive buzz. In other words: if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could just stop doing all that regulating, we could really get this fission party started.

So billions in private capital are now chasing experimental designs while the White House’s main concern is not “will this melt down?” but “will this cash flow fast enough?” The administration is selling it as innovation and clean energy, but the actual plan seems to be: hand the keys to companies whose top complaint about nuclear power is that there’s still too much nuclear safety in it. But sure, what could possibly go wrong when you combine advanced reactors, deregulation, and a president whose guiding philosophy is that any rule that slows a grift is tyranny?

Nonprofits across America are frantically scrubbing their IRS filings like it’s 1953 and Joe McCarthy just discovered the word “inclusion.” After Trump ordered his administration to root out “illegal” diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts — because nothing says law and order like threatening charities that help poor kids and sick people — more than 1,000 nonprofits quietly rewrote their mission statements to delete words like “disadvantaged,” “underrepresented,” and “racial equity.”

UNICEF USA no longer wants “a more equitable world for every child,” just a “better” one — whatever that means when the government has made “equity” a suspect word. The American Athletic Conference is still into “inclusion,” but apparently diversity and equity had to go live on a farm upstate. Community health centers now serve “all” instead of “medically underserved populations,” because if you don’t name the people being shafted, then surely the inequity disappears. Meanwhile, the Trump White House and IRS won’t even comment, while civil rights groups sue over these executive orders calling them unconstitutional and based on a “blatant and corrosive lie.”

In other words, Trump couldn’t repeal the Civil Rights Act, so he’s trying to intimidate anyone who notices racism still exists. Charities reliant on federal money — and even plenty that aren’t — are preemptively censoring themselves to avoid MAGA inquisitions into their HR trainings. But sure, the real “pernicious discrimination” here is a hospital hiring a DEI director, not the government using funding and investigations to scare organizations out of helping the people Trump’s base would prefer remain invisible.

NPR is apparently doing historical preservation now, inviting Leon Panetta — an actual former White House chief of staff from a functioning government — to talk about Susie Wiles and her interpretive dance version of the job in the Trump administration. Panetta once managed Bill Clinton’s West Wing; Wiles manages Donald Trump’s ego, legal exposure, and vendetta calendar — because nothing says "chief of staff" like doubling as the in-house retribution coordinator.

The segment teases a sober, institutional view of the role while Trump World treats it as a mix of concierge service, loyalty enforcement, and election-subversion logistics. In other words, Panetta is describing how the job works in a democracy, while Susie Wiles is busy showing us how it works in a personality cult that’s still mad the coup paperwork didn’t go through. But sure, let’s pretend this is just another normal chapter in American governance and not a live-fire stress test of whether the rule of law can survive a Mar-a-Lago guest list.

The Trump administration has decided that if at first your totally not a Muslim ban looks racist and authoritarian, you just double it and see who complains. Trump is expanding his travel restrictions to an additional 20 countries plus people traveling on Palestinian Authority documents, because nothing says "national security" like turning huge swaths of Africa and the Middle East into a no-entry zone.

Five more countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, South Sudan and Syria — now join the full-ban club, along with Palestinians whose crime is existing while Palestinian. Another 15 mostly African and Caribbean countries get slapped with "partial" restrictions, which is Washington-speak for "we’d like the xenophobia à la carte." This is on top of the 19 already targeted earlier this year, resurrecting Trump’s first-term signature policy of keeping the wrong kind of brown people out.

The White House insists this is all about "widespread corruption" and "unreliable documents" and "overstays," in other words: a grab bag of bureaucratic Mad Libs to justify collective punishment of millions of people who have never done anything wrong. The supposed trigger? An Afghan man accused — not convicted — of shooting two National Guard troops. So naturally, instead of dealing with gun violence, domestic extremism, or due process, Trump just bans more foreigners and calls it a win. But sure, tell us again how this is about "security" and not a long-running campaign to turn U.S. immigration policy into a Fox News comments section.

Elon Musk’s X has heroically won the right for Australians to watch grainy footage of Charlie Kirk being shot, because nothing says "defending civilization" like turning real-world political violence into shareable content for engagement metrics. Australia’s classification review board helpfully decided the video isn’t quite graphic enough to be banned, so it’s now rated R18+ – you know, like a normal movie, except this one is an actual assassination on a real campus in real life.

X argued the clip is a "neutral objective record" of a "notorious public event of historical and political significance" and even compared it to the JFK Zapruder film, because of course they did. In other words: it’s content, it drives discourse, and more importantly, it drives traffic. The minority on the board pointed out that this is very obviously a shareable video for entertainment and clout, but sure, let’s pretend this is all about noble civic engagement and not Musk’s endless quest for rage-clicks.

X’s government affairs account then declared that the company had fought to "uphold free speech" and "access to information" – translation: we will absolutely monetize your trauma in the name of liberty. Meanwhile, regulators gently remind platforms they now have to keep R18+ assassination footage away from kids, which is adorable in an ecosystem where the algorithm shoves the worst thing you’ve ever seen into your feed before you can find the settings menu.