The Trump Presidency Timeline

Doug Burgum, Trump’s Secretary of Interior and part-time fossil fuel concierge, tried to require that every wind and solar project on federal lands and waters get his personal royal blessing before moving forward. A coalition of clean energy groups pointed out that this wasn’t "oversight" so much as a slow-motion execution, accusing Burgum of deliberately rewiring agency processes to shove renewables into "second-class status" while rolling out the red carpet for coal, oil, and gas.

Chief Judge Denise J Casper took one look at this little sabotage project and slapped it with a preliminary injunction, finding the plaintiffs were likely to win because the administration’s scheme appears to, minor detail, violate federal law and cause irreparable harm. Translation: you can’t just declare that all future wind and solar must pass through Doug’s Anti-Sunshine Veto Machine so they miss their tax credits and die quietly on a shelf.

The Interior Department, bravely refusing to comment on the lawsuit it is currently losing, instead issued a boilerplate brag that America does energy "cleaner, safer, and more reliably" than anyone else—while Trump’s second-term energy plan is to gut renewable tax credits, shovel federal support to fossil fuels, and sneer at "the Green New Scam" in executive orders. Courts keep telling them this is illegal; the administration keeps responding, "What if we tried the same thing, slightly dumber?"

Clean energy groups say this ruling is just the first step toward getting stalled projects back on track so people can have fast, cheap, low-carbon power. The White House, meanwhile, is still hard at work making sure your electricity bills stay high and your grid stays fragile—just so oil and gas donors don’t have to downgrade their third yacht to a second yacht.

The Trump family’s latest innovation in public service: a sitting US president co-founding a crypto firm that’s now being sued by one of its own billionaire superfans for alleged extortion. Justin Sun – who once thought buying $100 million of Trump meme coins was a good use of money and oxygen – now claims the Trump-backed World Liberty outfit illegally froze his WLFI tokens, stripped his voting rights, and is threatening to literally burn his coins. So the project is called “World Liberty,” and the first order of business is disenfranchising your biggest mark. On brand.

Sun says he backed the whole thing because of the Trump name and their shared love of unregulated digital monopoly money, only to discover that co-founder Chase Herro and friends were using that name as a "golden opportunity" to profit through fraud. Meanwhile, WLFI has cratered from 31 cents to under 8 cents, the firm is reportedly borrowing against its own junk token like a discount FTX tribute act, and Trump’s other great tech triumph, Truth Social, just fired Devin Nunes as CEO after the stock lost almost two-thirds of its value. The Trump presidency continues to be less a government and more a sprawling, publicly traded yard sale where every grift eventually sues every other grift.

Trump looked at the American education system, decided it wasn’t suffering nearly enough, and handed the Department of Education to Linda McMahon — the woman who used to get wheeled into WWE rings in a fake catatonic state while her husband made out with other women for ratings. Now she’s doing the same basic bit for Trump, except the humiliated prop this time is federal education policy.

According to Zach Helfand’s reporting, McMahon showed up to the Cabinet with zero education-policy experience but a rock-solid commitment to Trump’s dream of erasing the department altogether. Congress hasn’t actually killed it, so she’s doing the next best thing: systematically dismantling it from the inside, slashing about 50% of staff and scattering its functions across the bureaucracy like a busted folding chair. The collateral damage includes education research, student loan management, and programs for students with disabilities — you know, the stuff that actually helps people.

The wild part? She’s described as capable, kind, and empathetic — a “steady and effective leader” at SBA — which just proves that in Trumpworld, administrative competence is mostly valued as a tool for more efficient demolition. Wrestling taught the McMahons to blur the line between real and fake, heel and hero; now that same talent is being used to sell the public a feel-good storyline about reform while the department charged with expanding opportunity gets scripted out of existence. The crowd may be cheering, but the kids are the ones getting pinned.

Trump’s America is about to get a one-day trial run of what happens when the people who actually make the country function decide to stop doing that. May Day Strong is calling for a nationwide "no work, no school, no shopping" shutdown — a sort of democracy fire drill where workers demonstrate that the economy isn’t powered by Jared’s vibes and Elon’s memes, but by, you know, labor. The banner is subtle as a brick: "workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy". Somewhere, Stephen Miller just broke three teeth grinding.

Instead of quietly suffering through another news cycle about Trump’s latest tantrum, thousands of unions, DSA chapters, immigrant rights groups, reproductive justice orgs, and pro-democracy outfits are coordinating more than 3,500 actions — walkouts, rallies, teach-ins — all aimed at the quaint idea that people should be able to both defend democracy and pay rent. Chicago teachers even got 1 May declared a "day of civic action", which is a poetic way of saying "we’re done pretending everything’s normal while the government plays authoritarian cosplay with ICE occupying cities".

This year isn’t a full general strike (Taft-Hartley still exists, because of course it does), but it’s the warm-up act for 2028, when the UAW’s Shawn Fain has called on unions to line their contract expirations up like dominos on May 1. When those contracts — and their no-strike clauses — vanish, millions of workers might discover the wild, dangerous power of simply not showing up. Legal? Technically. Terrifying to Trump and his billionaire buddies? Extremely. As organizers keep reminding everyone: without workers, the world stops running. Without Trump, only his Truth Social account does.

After spending a year ghosting Congress like a deadbeat roommate, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suddenly embarked on a seven-hearing publicity tour, nominally about the 2027 HHS budget but actually about explaining why he turned federal health policy into a Telegram channel for anti-vaxxers. During his time off from oversight, Kennedy unilaterally rewrote the childhood vaccine schedule without outside advisers, presided over the worst measles numbers in three decades, and helped the Trump administration yank $250 million in Medicaid funding from Minnesota because it had the bad manners to be a blue state.

The funniest part is the Bill Cassidy subplot. Cassidy, a vaccine-supporting Republican doctor, cast the tie-breaking vote to make RFK Jr. health secretary, bragging he’d secured an “unprecedentedly close” working relationship, regular calls, and quarterly HELP Committee appearances. In reality, Kennedy blew off the hearings, shredded vaccine policy anyway, and treated Cassidy’s conditions like a software license agreement: click accept, ignore everything. Now Kennedy is back on the Hill, not because norms matter, but because the chaos finally got too loud to ignore — and Congress would like to know why the Department of Health and Human Services has been run like a Substack comment section with subpoena power.

US–Iran peace talks are stuck because Donald Trump has decided to conduct foreign policy like a bored uncle live-tweeting a family reunion. Pakistan is trying to mediate in Islamabad, Iran is at the table, and Trump is running a personal naval blockade while rage-posting up to seven times a day about how Iran has already surrendered, is about to surrender, or will soon be bombed for not surrendering correctly.

Iran’s negotiators keep getting two parallel realities: private messages saying one thing and Trump’s public brain-dump saying the opposite. When Iran signals it will ease some restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, the normal response would be reciprocal de-escalation. Trump instead goes on TV to declare total Iranian capitulation, refuses to lift the blockade, and then confidently announces they’ve agreed “never” to close Hormuz again. Iran’s response? Close it again the next day, because even they have limits to how much gaslighting they’re willing to swallow.

Diplomats are now reduced to screenshotting Trump’s last 24 hours of statements like a deranged group chat: thanking Iran for closures, threatening Iran, blaming China, praising China, bragging the blockade is airtight, admitting Iran got supplies through it, promising peace, promising bombs. An Iranian embassy dryly brands him a “one-man WhatsApp chat group,” which is polite diplomatic code for “this guy should not be near nuclear launch codes.” Meanwhile Trump tells reporters he “expects to be bombing” Iran while also insisting Iran will attend talks on Wednesday, wrapping threats of mass death in Hallmark-card nonsense about Iran’s “wonderful people” who are, minor detail, allegedly “bloodthirsty” and “based on death and horror.”

The net result: Iran is now insisting on irreversible enforcement mechanisms in any deal, because they’ve figured out that Trump’s signature is about as reliable as his daily narrative about who’s winning. The world is once again held hostage to the attention span of a man treating war and peace like a glitchy social media app, and the US military like a notification he’s itching to tap.

Tucker Carlson, a man who spent years mainlining Trumpism into America’s frontal lobe, has announced he is now "tormented" by his role in getting Trump back into the White House and into a war with Iran. After campaigning with Trump in 2024 and cheerleading the movement that treats the Constitution like a suggestion box, Tucker has arrived at the shocking realization that, actually, helping an aspiring autocrat regain power might have been bad. He’s now deeply sorry for having "misled people" — unintentionally, of course, just like all those totally accidental lies about Dominion and the 2020 election.

The epiphany comes as Trump is busy posting AI images of himself as Jesus, attacking the pope for criticizing the Iran war, and calling Carlson "Low IQ" on social media while promising a public enemies list of MAGA supporters ranked as good, bad, and "somewhere in the middle". Tucker, who just months ago compared Trump to a "slave" tragically constrained by shadowy forces, has upgraded his concern to asking if the president might be the antichrist. Apparently, launching an unplanned war in Iran that betrays a decade of promises and mocking the central figure of Christianity finally crossed a line that "kidnapped children in cages" and "coup attempt" somehow didn’t.

This is all coming from a guy who helped launder Trumpism into respectability, cashed out of Fox after the $787.5m Dominion settlement, then went on to platform white supremacist Nick Fuentes and promote testicle tanning. Now, with the Iran war raging and the president cosplaying Messiah while compiling loyalty lists, Carlson wants a national "moment to wrestle with our own consciences". The rest of us have been wrestling with the consequences of his propaganda for years; Tucker just discovered that when you help build an authoritarian cult, you don’t get to opt out when the idol starts demanding blood and better lighting.

Virginia voters are trudging to the polls to answer a very simple question: should Donald Trump be allowed to keep drawing congressional districts like a bored toddler with a crayon and a vendetta? This special ballot measure on redistricting could decide which party controls the U.S. House, because nothing says “healthy democracy” like a single state having to emergency‑patch the Electoral College’s favorite chaos gremlin.

Instead of quietly accepting Trump’s latest “what if we just rig the map” brainstorm, Virginians are being asked whether maybe, just maybe, voters should pick their politicians rather than the other way around. Bold concept. If the measure passes, it throws a wrench into Trump’s gerrymandering push; if it fails, the House map becomes one more custom‑built MAGA safe space where competitive elections go to die. Either way, the fact that democracy now depends on a random Tuesday special election is doing a lot of work for the term “world’s oldest constitutional republic”.