The Trump Presidency Timeline

Sen. Thom Tillis briefly cosplayed as a defender of Federal Reserve independence, blocking Trump’s Fed chair nominee Kevin Warsh while the Justice Department ran a sketchy investigation into current chair Jerome Powell. After weeks of righteous concern that DOJ might be used as a political bludgeon, Tillis emerged on Meet the Press to announce that, good news everyone, he got some “assurances” from the very DOJ he was worried about. Problem solved, nothing to see here, please enjoy your pre-approved Trump Fed chair.

The Justice Department conveniently dropped its investigation into Powell on Friday — an inquiry that had somehow inflated a headquarters renovation project into a federal case — and by Sunday Tillis was back on TV clearing the runway for Warsh’s confirmation “on time.” The message is crystal clear: as long as the executive branch promises it definitely isn’t weaponizing law enforcement against an independent central bank, the Senate is delighted to wave through the president’s handpicked money man. Checks and balances? No, just checks, and Trump’s friends will handle the balances.

As the 60-day War Powers Act deadline on Trump's Iran adventure lumbers into view, Congress is doing what it does best: holding conversations about maybe, possibly, at some indeterminate point, considering whether to assert the authority the Constitution already gave them. The law says they’re supposed to vote on this war. The political consultants say, "Have you considered a strongly worded bipartisan letter instead?" Guess which side is winning.

Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings are the other supposed safeguard, because when Congress refuses to check a president’s power, Gallup becomes the last branch of government. NPR politely notes what the polls say; the real story is that as long as his numbers aren’t subterranean, Republicans will keep handing him blank checks for foreign adventures, and Democrats will keep issuing outraged press releases like they’re legally binding documents. The War Powers Act remains, as always, more of a suggestion than a law.

The Trump Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, has resigned after a speedrun of scandals that somehow managed to combine alleged affair-with-a-subordinate drama, misuse of travel funds, grant-steering to political buddies, and a husband who got banned from Labor HQ over sexual assault allegations. Naturally, she took to Instagram and X to announce that none of this is her fault; it’s all a plot by “high-ranked deep state actors” and the “one-sided news media” who are, tragically, insufficiently appreciative of her efforts to annihilate worker protections.

Inside the department, staff describe “constant turbulence,” which is a very polite way of saying “hostile work environment run by people who think unions are Antifa.” Chavez-DeRemer reportedly never even signed the required harassment policy statement, while the agency shed about 20% of its workforce, gutted international grants, and issued threats to employees about talking to the press. When the department’s social media started echoing Nazi rhetoric, the solution wasn’t to rethink the messaging; they just transferred the staffer to Homeland Security, the bureaucratic equivalent of shuffling radioactive waste to the next building.

Labor experts say she sat by while the budget was slashed, unions were targeted, and worker protections were rolled back, including overtime and minimum wage protections for homecare and domestic workers, farmworker safeguards, and even a rule that would stop employers from paying disabled workers below minimum wage. But she didn’t leave over making workers poorer and less safe; she left because the scandal finally became too embarrassing for an administration that has a three-story portrait of Trump plastered on the Labor Department building like a dictator starter kit.

Chavez-DeRemer arrived in office on a glowing endorsement from Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, who praised Trump for “putting American workers first” by nominating her. Now that she’s resigned in disgrace, the Teamsters are suddenly very busy not answering questions. Workers are left with fewer protections, more insecurity, and a department whose leadership treats them as a shadowy conspiracy rather than the people actually doing the job. Deep state, meet cheap state: fewer staff, weaker rules, and a boss who blames you on Instagram while the building is still on fire.

The Trump administration finally noticed that Rwanda’s military has been doing war crimes like it’s a competitive sport in eastern Congo and slapped sanctions on the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) and senior officials. That instantly turned the Armée Patriotique Rwandaise Basketball Club – yes, the team literally owned by the sanctioned military – into a walking OFAC violation inside the NBA’s shiny Basketball Africa League. APR was quietly yanked from the tournament, replaced by the RSSB Tigers, because nothing says "clean break from authoritarianism" like swapping the army’s team for one owned by the state social security board.

The awkward part? The NBA has spent the last decade turning Paul Kagame into a courtside statesman, not a ruthless authoritarian who wins elections with 99% of the vote and exports chaos, massacres, and mineral plunder into the DRC. Kagame’s former aide Claire Akamanzi now runs NBA Africa, "Visit Rwanda" is slapped on the Los Angeles Clippers, and Kagame does the All-Star Game networking circuit while his army and proxy militias displace hundreds of thousands back home.

NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum has been insisting they just "follow the lead of the US government" on where to do business. The second that same government made the RDF legally radioactive, the league suddenly discovered that maybe the general’s team shouldn’t be in their feel-good Africa expansion project. For now, the NBA is technically in compliance, still happily partnered with the dictatorship itself, just not the bits of it Treasury has highlighted in red. The message: war crimes are bad, but if you move the logo from the army to the pension fund, we can still run the playoffs in Kigali and call it development.

Republicans finally did it: they owned the libs so hard that Planned Parenthood clinics are now running side hustles as Botox bars to keep the lights on. After Donald Trump and Congress jammed through a tax-and-spending package that blocks Planned Parenthood and any abortion provider from taking Medicaid for non-abortion care, the country’s largest affiliate in Northern California is plugging the budget crater with cash-only cosmetic procedures, IV drips for hangovers, and sedation upsells.

This is what "pro-life" governance looks like in practice: 75–80% of their patients are on Medi-Cal, but instead of letting poor women use their health insurance for Pap smears and IUDs, the federal government told clinics to go find some side gig in the gig economy. So now reproductive health providers are doing aesthetic injectables to subsidize birth control and cancer screenings, while the same politicians who caused the crisis will soon point at the Botox menu and shriek that Planned Parenthood is a frivolous beauty shop that doesn’t need funding. It’s not healthcare policy; it’s a long con where low-income patients pay the price and Congress pretends it’s fiscal responsibility.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams has done the unthinkable in Trump’s America: she’s asked if a lawsuit actually makes legal sense. Trump is suing the IRS and Treasury for $10 billion because a contractor leaked his tax returns, but there’s a tiny constitutional speed bump — he’s the sitting president, and the IRS is an agency he literally oversees. Williams dryly noted that courts need an actual “case or controversy,” which is hard to find when one side ultimately answers to the guy on the other side.

Both Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department have been trying to quietly hit the pause button while they “resolve” this, which sounds a lot like, “We’re workshopping how the president can bill taxpayers for his own embarrassment.” Trump swears he’ll donate any winnings to charity, a lovely gesture that somehow still involves vacuuming billions out of the public treasury because his tax records showed he paid $750 in federal income taxes and the nation laughed.

The complaint, filed by Trump, Don Jr., Eric, and the Trump Organization — truly the Avengers of reputational harm — claims the leak caused them financial damage and “public embarrassment.” The judge now wants both sides to explain by May 20 why this isn’t just the president staging a fake fight with his own government to get a giant check from taxpayers. The Justice Department, led by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, insists it can handle these “competing interests” ethically, which is a bold promise when the core issue is whether the president can turn the U.S. government into his personal GoFundMe.

Donald Trump, the man who once promised his supporters they’d be “tired of winning,” has finally delivered on that pledge — they’re exhausted from watching him lose. NPR sums up his recent stretch as a string of setbacks on everything from the economy to foreign policy, which is what happens when you campaign as an all-powerful dealmaker and then run the government like a reality show filmed in a shredder.

The White House sales pitch was endless, effortless victory; the reality is a highlight reel of faceplants, stalled agendas, and foreign leaders who have figured out they can just wait him out. Victory on all fronts has quietly been rebranded as “it’s the media’s fault” and “witch hunt season 12.” The strongman act looks less like 4D chess and more like a guy flipping over the board because he just discovered there are rules.