The Trump Presidency Timeline

The US government has apparently decided the real outbreak threat isn’t Ebola or hantavirus, it’s Americans attempting to exercise their basic legal right to come home. Instead of evacuating an Ebola-infected US doctor and exposed citizens to some of the world’s best biocontainment facilities – you know, the ones we spent millions of dollars building for exactly this scenario – officials are shipping them off to Germany and Czechia like defective Amazon returns.

Asked why the US suddenly forgot it’s a rich country with hospitals, CDC’s Satish Pillai muttered something about “expeditious” options and “conditions on the ground,” carefully avoiding the part where the White House reportedly didn’t want at-risk Americans back at all. Legal experts note that the law on this is “really simple”: US citizens and green card holders have a right to re-enter the country, and the written travel order even says it doesn’t apply to them. So of course the solution is an unofficial policy that does the opposite, because nothing says rule of law like doing it secretly.

Meanwhile, passengers from a hantavirus-stricken cruise ship are discovering that “home quarantine” actually means “you live in a Nebraska biocontainment unit now,” even after officials initially ruled out mandatory quarantine. Some tried to leave and isolate at home, which was adorable. The government responded with a “decision made across leadership” – always a comforting phrase – to keep them locked up anyway.

Public health experts warn this is a great way to ensure that next time there’s a deadly outbreak in Congo or Uganda, far fewer American doctors and nurses will volunteer, because they enjoy such luxuries as coming back to their families. But the White House once again channels 2014-era Trump logic: if you go help in an Ebola zone, you “must suffer the consequences.” The consequence, apparently, is discovering your passport now comes with an asterisk.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s health secretary and resident anti-vax oracle, just fired the two doctors leading the US Preventive Services Task Force — the group that decides which preventive care (mammograms, colonoscopies, depression screenings, statins, etc) must be covered by insurance for free under the ACA. So naturally, the administration’s response to a panel that quietly saves lives is to kneecap it and change the locks.

HHS had already spent a year slow-walking the task force into a coma, indefinitely postponing public meetings and freezing long-awaited updates on things like cervical cancer screening and maternal depression. Now Kennedy has yanked the chairs mid-term, praising their “leadership” in the same letter where he fires them and telling them they’re welcome to reapply, like contestants on some dystopian reality show where the prize is getting micromanaged by political appointees who learned epidemiology from Facebook.

Kennedy claims he’s bringing “transparency” and fixing a “lackadaisical” panel that already holds public meetings, posts all its evidence, and takes public comment. Translation: he wants a task force that will say what the administration wants it to say, just like the vaccine advisory committee he already replaced with less qualified loyalists. Former chair Michael Silverstein calls this an unprecedented level of government intrusion into scientific work; the administration calls it Tuesday.

The task force was designed with staggered terms so no one health secretary could blow it up overnight. Trump and Kennedy looked at that safeguard and treated it like a challenge. The result: a supposedly pro-life government purging the people in charge of preventing cancer, heart disease, and postpartum depression, because nothing says “freedom” like making it harder and more expensive to catch deadly diseases before they kill you.

Mark Carney, former central banker, UN climate envoy, Davos heart-throb and author of Very Serious Climate Words™, is now prime minister of Canada and has decided the best way to confront an "existential threat" is to, uh, set the climate plan on fire and throw a pipeline on top. Next to Donald Trump, he still looks like a responsible adult – which tells you more about Trump’s America than it does about Carney’s Canada.

After activists helped put him in power expecting a climate hawk, Carney’s first big move was to scrap the consumer carbon price and then systematically gut almost every meaningful mandate: methane rules weakened and delayed, a clean electricity standard pushed from 2035 to 2050 with new gas plants invited back in, the long-fought oil and gas emissions cap tossed, anti-greenwashing laws flagged for rollback, and zero-emission vehicle mandates kneecapped so hard EV sales cratered. It’s like watching someone take a carefully built climate Jenga tower and play it drunk, blindfolded, and sponsored by Suncor.

He’s also gone full petro-state cosplay: fast-tracking LNG terminals and pipelines, carving out deregulated "nation-building" zones, shoveling tax credits at carbon capture schemes that conveniently help frack more oil, and launching a so-called "sovereign wealth fund" that looks suspiciously like a public-money firehose for new fossil infrastructure. A windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies riding the Iran war to record profits? Absolutely not – can’t have the donors feeling pinched.

The climax came with a cozy deal with Alberta premier Danielle Smith – whose base includes a Trump-backed separatist movement – to clear the way for yet another bitumen pipeline while dramatically weakening Alberta’s industrial carbon price. The result: a carbon price that was supposed to hit $170/tonne by 2030 now limps to $130 by 2040, prompting even the mild-mannered Canadian Climate Institute to say net zero by 2050 is now fantasy. Carney’s defenders swear this is all 4D chess to keep Canada united; what it actually looks like is the familiar Trump-era formula: appease the loudest reactionaries, reward fossil oligarchs, and hope nobody notices the climate promises dissolving in a haze of PR and pipeline approvals.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated Cuba’s independence from Spain and U.S. military occupation by… urging Cubans to get right back under Washington’s thumb, this time under the benevolent guidance of Donald J. Trump. In a slick State Department video, Rubio tells the Cuban people that Trump is offering them a "new path" — which, coincidentally, begins right after the part where the U.S. topples Venezuela’s government, seizes its oil industry, and cuts off Cuba’s fuel like a landlord turning off the heat to win an argument.

Rubio gravely explains that Cuba’s 22-hour blackouts have nothing to do with an American-enforced oil blockade and everything to do with Raúl Castro and GAESA plundering the country. The fact that Washington just took control of the region’s gas pump and slapped a "no oil for Havana" sign on it is, apparently, a minor footnote. While the Trump administration slaps new sanctions on top Cuban officials and tightens the economic screws, Rubio beams in Spanish subtitles about freedom and a "new Cuba" — the kind of freedom that arrives packaged with U.S. indictments, embargoes, and strategic starvation.

So on the anniversary of Cuba’s independence from foreign rule, the top U.S. diplomat appears on YouTube to say: your government is corrupt, your lights are out because of them, and your best bet is to side with the people blockading your oil. It’s less diplomacy and more protection racket: nice little island you’ve got there — shame if anything else happened to your fuel supply.