The Trump Presidency Timeline

The Trump administration has finally found a way to cut unemployment: kick Daca recipients out of their jobs by not processing their paperwork. For 14 years, renewals took a few weeks; now people like Claudia and Cesar wait six months and counting, lose work authorization, and watch the careers they built since age four evaporate because some White House ghoul decided a backlog is a great deportation tool.

While Trump world loudly insists they’re only going after “criminals,” the numbers quietly rat them out: 77% of people shoved into deportation proceedings in 2025 had no criminal conviction. Hundreds of Daca holders have been arrested, some deported, all while USCIS spokesbot Zach Kahler serenely explains that Daca “does not confer any form of legal status” and that they’re just “safeguarding the American people” by more thoroughly vetting a group that already had to pass background checks and maintain spotless records.

Not content with weaponized delay, the administration is also trying to choke off any remaining livelihoods: proposed rules would block Dreamers from working unless their employers use E‑Verify and ban them from getting commercial driver’s licenses — because nothing says “strong economy” like sidelining half a million educated, fully integrated workers. Advocates call it a “mass delegalization effort”; the administration calls it Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Congress could pass the bipartisan Dream Act and end this bureaucratic hostage-taking, but why provide stability when you can let Trump methodically unravel temporary protections and push families back into the shadows? Dreamers did everything this country asked of them — study, work, stay out of trouble — and the reward is an “emotional rollercoaster” where the American Dream disappears the moment a renewal lands on the wrong desk at USCIS.

European judge Beti Hohler woke up one day to discover that the Trump administration had basically Thanos-snapped her digital life out of existence: Apple, Amazon, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal – all gone, not because she committed a crime, but because she had the audacity to serve as a judge at the International Criminal Court. Turns out in Trump’s America, your access to basic digital infrastructure is contingent on whether Washington likes your job description. Rule of law, but make it Terms of Service.

This is the same administration that cheers Elon Musk using X and Starlink as his personal foreign policy cosplay, leans on Anthropic to wall off advanced AI from foreigners, and openly talks about "cultivating resistance" inside Europe while sitting on the continent’s cloud, chips, and platforms. Europe’s big response? A "sovereignty package" that bravely declares it will sometimes, in very specific circumstances, consider the possibility of maybe not handing the most sensitive public data directly to Amazon and Microsoft – unless, of course, individual member states decide they’d rather not upset the White House or spook the investment fairy.

Brussels then completes the magic trick by adopting Washington’s own AI gospel: more, faster, bigger, screw the consequences. The Commission is racing to triple data centre capacity, bulldozing environmental and planning safeguards to create "datacentre acceleration zones" that just happen to be perfectly designed for the same US hyperscalers they claim to be weaning themselves off. Digital "sovereignty" apparently means asking Silicon Valley to colonise your grid and water supply slightly more quickly, but with European branding.

The result is a continent that talks about independence while still reading off the Silicon Valley cue cards that Trump’s people are happily weaponising. The administration gets to treat tech infrastructure like a sanctions joystick and a surveillance playground, while Europe debates what colour its handcuffs should be. Geopolitical vassalage, now available in cloud-native format.

Vice-president JD Vance has announced that he’ll decide whether to run for president in 2028 after the 2026 midterms, following a serious family conversation with his wife Usha and a less-serious reality show conversation with Donald Trump. He insists he doesn’t sit around plotting a White House run, which is adorable coming from a guy doing a book tour about his religious awakening while floating his presidential ambitions on national TV.

Vance says Trump will be "very supportive" of whatever he decides, which is a polite way of saying that the future of the Republican party will once again be determined by whatever mood the octogenarian strongman is in when Fox & Friends ends. He claims he never brings up 2028 with Trump, but says the president talks about it "a lot"—publicly and privately—because of course the man who tried to overturn an election is "very fascinated" by who gets to sit in his old chair next.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports Vance may delay deciding because his fourth child is due in July, reminding everyone that the would-be heir to Trumpism is busy expanding both his family and his political brand. On the shortlist of other 2028 hopefuls: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Donald Trump Jr, because nothing says "healthy democracy" like a dynastic primary between the son, the courtier, and the guy who converted to Catholicism and to Trumpism with the same fervor.

The Trump administration has finally found an immigration policy that works: driving Americans out of America. As Republican legislatures carve districts so aggressively that whole liberal neighborhoods basically vanish on paper, actual people with pro-democracy values are vanishing in real life too. At least 180,000 Americans voluntarily left in 2025, EU inflows are at record highs, and DHS proudly reports 2.2 million "self-deportations" – which now apparently includes U.S. citizens leaving with their undocumented family members. You know your democracy is thriving when the census starts to look like a before-and-after ad for authoritarianism.

The people heading for the exits aren’t random. They’re younger, more educated, more open-minded, and more committed to liberal democratic institutions – exactly the folks you’d want around when a twice-impeached, multiply indicted strongman is busy kneecapping checks and balances, gutting reproductive rights, and shrugging off sexual misconduct allegations against his pals. Women 15–44 are leading the Donald Dash, with 40% saying they’d move permanently if they could, while billionaires shop for golden passports and scientists ship their lab coats to countries that still fund research instead of culture wars.

Combine that with collapsing net migration, record numbers dreaming of leaving, and scholars of authoritarianism literally relocating as a group, and you get a neat feedback loop: the more Trump erodes democracy, the more the people most likely to fight back leave – which makes it easier to erode democracy further. It’s like gerrymandering the electorate by convincing your opposition to emigrate. The U.S. isn’t just losing brainpower; it’s bleeding out its democratic immune system, one visa application and Irish ancestry form at a time.

Donald Trump has finally unified the country: across parties, races, and ages, a majority of Americans now agree the United States is headed straight into the dumpster. The new NBC/More Perfect poll finds 56% of registered voters think America’s best years are behind it and nearly 80% say the American Dream is harder to reach than a Trump tax return. So yes, the self-described master dealmaker has apparently negotiated us down to collective pessimism and vibes-based decline.

Politically, Democrats hold a modest 5-point edge on the generic congressional ballot, which counts as a landslide in a system gerrymandered to within an inch of its life. Trump’s approval is down to 42% among registered voters — 39% among all adults — with independents bolting and young and Latino voters who flirted with him in 2024 now filing for a restraining order. Republicans are still mostly clinging to Dear Leader, but GOP approval has slid since March, suggesting that even some MAGA die-hards are starting to notice that four more years of chaos, corruption, and fascist fanfic might not be the path to national greatness.

Meanwhile, confidence in the federal government and Congress is circling the drain, which is what happens when one party spends a decade insisting that government is evil and then proves it every time they get the keys. So Democrats have a small but real advantage, Trump’s numbers are rotting like a Mar-a-Lago buffet shrimp tray, and the electorate is depressed, exhausted, and convinced the future is worse. Truly, the perfect environment for a man whose entire brand is selling grievance, fear, and gold-plated failure.

While the U.S. is at war with Iran, inflation tops 4%, and his approval ratings crater, President Donald Trump has decided the real priority is turning the South Lawn into a UFC theme park. Seven cage fights will be held on White House grounds under a hulking structure called "The Claw" to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday, which, by total coincidence, is also Trump’s 80th. Wartime leadership used to mean strategy meetings in the Situation Room; now it’s pay-per-view violence outside the Diplomatic Reception Room.

Because one deranged vanity project is never enough, Trump is also planning a mega-rally on the National Mall, an IndyCar race through D.C., a new ballroom where the East Wing used to be, an underground military complex, and a massive arch near Arlington National Cemetery. He keeps rambling about fixing fountains and building bridges like a contractor with nuclear launch codes, while the historian on duty politely notes that, sure, past presidents built things—but usually not while running live-combat cosplay on the front lawn.

The White House claims there’s precedent, citing Teddy Roosevelt’s boxing and Truman’s renovation. What they glide past are the tiny details: conflicts of interest, the monetization of the presidency, and the symbolism of a wartime president obsessing over fight cards and concrete pours instead of healthcare, Ukraine, or, you know, governing. The UFC gets the South Lawn, Trump gets the spotlight (and likely some sweet side benefits), and the rest of us get to watch American democracy slowly tap out in its own house.

Cory Doctorow sends Donald Trump an 80th birthday card that doubles as a geopolitical autopsy report. He politely thanks "Comrade Trump" for doing more than any US leader to blow up the dollar’s dominance, shove countries off fossil fuels, and convince entire continents that maybe letting American tech oligarchs run the internet was a terrible idea. The takeaway: Trump promised to make America great again and instead became the world’s most chaotic retirement planner for a post-American century. Stellar work, if your campaign slogan is "MAGA: But For China and the EU".

Then Piers Morgan shows up to polish the Dear Leader’s portrait. He lovingly recites Trump’s greatest hits: shot, prosecuted, impeached twice, divorced twice, financially face-planted, lost power, clawed it back, and is still somehow stomping around the White House like a particularly vindictive mall Santa. Morgan calls it "extraordinary resilience"; everyone else might call it a living indictment of a political system that cannot eject a man who keeps failing upward through every guardrail of democracy. At 80, Trump is being toasted by admirers and roasted by critics, but the real punchline is that the rest of the planet is now building parallel financial, energy, and digital systems just to survive the next time America elects a reality TV arsonist.

America turns 250, so naturally the president is celebrating the nation’s independence by hopping on a $400 million luxury jet gifted by Qatar and converted into a flying presidential palace on the U.S. taxpayer’s dime. The Pentagon graciously accepted the foreign donation last year despite bipartisan alarm bells about ethics and security, because if there’s one thing this administration loves more than authoritarian strongmen, it’s letting them pick up the tab for our symbols of state power.

The Boeing 747, now rebranded as the VC-25B "Bridge" like a Marvel character no one asked for, is being stuffed with top-secret systems that experts say could push the total cost north of $1 billion. Then, in a flourish of fiscal responsibility, the White House says the plane will be handed over to Trump’s presidential library foundation by January 2029—meaning we’re pouring classified tech and defense dollars into what is essentially a very fancy future museum piece for the Trump brand. All that sensitive gear will have to be ripped out again, of course, but who’s counting when it’s only public money?

To complete the spectacle, Trump is eyeing Mount Rushmore for the jet’s maiden presidential voyage, because nothing screams "republic of laws" like arriving at a carved mountain of presidents in a foreign-donated plane that doubles as a long-term in-kind contribution to your own foundation. The classic “Jackie Kennedy” livery has been swapped for a louder red, white, and blue paint job, presumably so it’s easier to spot the moment American soft power finishes auctioning itself off on the tarmac.