The Trump Presidency Timeline

The Third Circuit just handed the Trump administration a nice little win in its ongoing campaign to make immigration law a catch‑all weapon against people it doesn’t like. A 2-1 panel reversed a lower court decision that had freed Mahmoud Khalil – a permanent resident and Columbia grad whose big crime is being a prominent pro-Palestinian activist – from ICE detention. The court’s message: sure, you might have a case that the government is acting unlawfully, but you can only complain about it after they finish trying to deport you.

Judges Thomas Hardiman and Stephanos Bibas serenely explained that Congress’s immigration scheme gives Khalil a “meaningful forum” later on, in a petition for review of a final removal order – because nothing says due process like “sit in detention and wait while we try to throw you out, then maybe you can sue.” They stressed that petitioners get “just one bite at the apple,” which is a cute way of saying that if the government locks you up for your politics, you don’t get courts involved until the deportation machine is done with you.

Khalil helped organize campus protests and encampments calling for a ceasefire and an end to US support for Israel, so naturally the Trump administration responded the way it knows best: immigration detention as a speech-management tool. Civil liberties groups called out the obvious crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech, but the administration now has appellate cover to keep him in the system. In other words, the message from Trump’s America is clear: you can have free speech, as long as you’re ready to exercise it from an ICE facility or another country.

The US military, now proudly branding itself as the Department of War like it’s 1898 again, has seized yet another foreign-flagged oil tanker in the Caribbean to enforce Donald Trump’s personal embargo on Venezuela. Marines launched from the USS Gerald R Ford to board the Veronica, a Guyanese-flagged crude tanker accused of defying Trump’s self-declared “quarantine” of sanctioned vessels — because nothing says rules-based international order like helicopter raids on commercial shipping to protect a sanctions regime built on a presidential grudge.

This is the sixth known seizure of a foreign-flagged tanker since Trump had Nicolás Maduro snatched in Caracas and hauled to the US, and Southern Command is bragging about it on social media like it’s a Call of Duty trailer. The administration is openly “controlling the distribution” of Venezuela’s oil worldwide, which in normal human language is called using the US Navy as an armed cartel enforcement wing. But sure, it’s all about stopping “illicit activity in the Western Hemisphere,” not about running regime change and resource control at gunpoint.

In other words, Trump overthrows a foreign leader, rebrands the Pentagon like a Marvel supervillain agency, and starts interdicting commercial shipping on the high seas — and we’re all supposed to pretend this is just sanctions policy, not a live-fire seminar in how to turn a fading superpower into a full-time petro-pirate state.

Trump is once again flirting with his favorite strongman fantasy: sending the U.S. military into American cities because people are mad that federal agents keep shooting them. After an ICE officer in Minneapolis shot a man in the leg, on top of killing Renee Nicole Good earlier this month, protests erupted. Trump’s response? A Truth Social tantrum threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act to crush what he calls “professional agitators and insurrectionists” attacking the “Patriots of I.C.E.” — because nothing says limited government like using 19th-century emergency powers to protect a rogue deportation squad.

The Insurrection Act, which lets a president deploy troops on U.S. soil without Congress, is supposed to be a last-resort, once-in-a-generation emergency tool. Trump, naturally, treats it like a standing promo code for martial law, having already floated using it last year in the name of “safe cities.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz describes what’s happening more accurately: an “organized brutality” campaign against Minnesotans by their own federal government, and an “occupation” that Trump and Kristi Noem could end at any time — but won’t, because the cruelty and the spectacle are the whole point.

All of this kicked into overdrive after conservative influencers latched onto allegations of daycare fraud involving Somali immigrants and turned it into the latest right-wing panic. The administration responded not with audits or investigations, but with a full-blown ICE crackdown that now has federal agents firing tear gas, pepper balls, and flash-bangs at protesters in Minneapolis streets. In other words, a social media outrage cycle escalated into a federal paramilitary show of force, and the president’s big idea is to federalize the National Guard to protect ICE from the people it’s been terrorizing. But sure, tell us again how this is all about “law and order” and not about crushing dissent.

The presidential failsons are back with a bold new innovation in American tech: a phone that doesn’t exist but will happily take your $100 anyway. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump rolled out Trump Mobile’s gold "T1" phone — allegedly "Made in the USA" — and then, like every other Trump business promise, it somehow got lost between the press conference and reality. The company quietly scrubbed the "Made in the USA" claim from its website and downgraded it to an "American-proud design," which is what you call something that’s absolutely being made somewhere else but still needs to trigger the base.

There’s now a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 10 other Democrats asking the FTC to look into whether this whole thing is, you know, fraud — including possible false advertising and "bait-and-switch tactics" involving deposits for phones that never show up. NBC News even put down a $100 deposit and was rewarded with a shifting series of ship dates (November, then December, now "sometime in Q1 2026") and an excuse that somehow involved the government shutdown, because nothing says "cutting-edge consumer electronics" like blaming Congress for your nonexistent supply chain.

Lawmakers are also very pointedly asking whether the FTC has actually done anything or spoken to Trump or his businesses about this little presidential side hustle, noting that how the agency responds will be a "critical test" of its independence. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom’s office has already skipped to the last page of the book and called it what it looks like: "like FRAUD!" In other words, the Trump brand has finally produced the perfect Trump product: a shiny, flag-wrapped, "Made in the USA" nothingburger that exists mainly to vacuum $100 bills out of supporters’ wallets — forever-grifting as a service.

The Senate just voted 51-50 to make sure Donald Trump keeps his favorite toy: the ability to start a war without Congress getting in the way. A bipartisan resolution by Sen. Tim Kaine that would have required Trump to seek congressional approval before striking Venezuela was cruising toward passage—until Trump publicly threatened the Republicans who supported it, and, like clockwork, Josh Hawley and Todd Young folded faster than a Trump casino.

Hawley and Young had already voted to advance the resolution last week, but after Trump raged that the five GOP defectors “should never be elected to office again,” they suddenly discovered new information: letters and “assurances” from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials that there are no U.S. troops in Venezuela and, pinky swear, they’ll totally come to Congress first if they ever decide to put some there. In other words: Congress just killed its own constitutional war powers based on a Marco Rubio promise, because nothing says serious oversight like trusting a guy whose geopolitical strategy is mostly Fox News clips and regime-change fan fiction.

The vote deadlocked 50-50, and Vice President JD Vance happily delivered the tiebreaker to sink the measure, cementing the Trump administration’s ability to treat the Caribbean like its personal live-fire sandbox while also “dialing up” threats against Iran and, naturally, Greenland. Chuck Schumer pointed out that the American people don’t want Trump sending troops into harm’s way without debate; Senate Republicans responded by making sure he can do exactly that. So yes, the Constitution technically still exists—but only as long as it doesn’t annoy Donald Trump.