The Trump Presidency Timeline

The leader of the free world has now formally entered a beef with the leader of the Catholic Church, because of course he has. Flying home from Florida, Donald Trump took a break from threatening Iran with annihilation to rage-post about Pope Leo XIV, calling the American-born pontiff "very liberal," "WEAK on Crime" and "terrible for Foreign Policy" — which in Trumpworld means Leo's main sin is suggesting that maybe waging a quasi-religious war in Iran fueled by a "delusion of omnipotence" is bad.

Trump, whose administration is currently justifying the Iran war in explicitly religious terms, then accused Leo of being fine with Iran having nukes (he isn't) and attacked him for criticizing the U.S. ouster of Venezuela's government, bragging that he's doing exactly what he was elected "IN A LANDSLIDE" to do. So we’ve got the president boasting about toppling foreign governments and threatening to wipe out "an entire civilization" while smearing the Pope as a radical leftist for quoting Isaiah about blood-soaked hands. Totally healthy democracy vibes.

Not content with screaming at the Vicar of Christ, Trump capped the night by posting an image of himself in biblical robes, glowing hands outstretched over a sick man, surrounded by eagles, a flag, and reverent onlookers — a sort of QVC knockoff of Renaissance religious art. Having already suggested Leo was picked "because he was an American" to deal with him, Trump helpfully clarified the theology of Trumpism: if he wasn't in the White House, Leo wouldn't be in the Vatican, God is apparently his campaign manager, and the presidency is now a part-time role moonlighting as messiah-in-chief.

Donald Trump is reportedly workshopping his final act as president: a radius-based group pardon for anyone who wandered within 200 feet of the Oval Office, like a war crimes Groupon. According to the Wall Street Journal, he’s been telling aides he’ll issue mass pardons at the end of his term, even fantasizing about a news conference where he announces them all at once. The room laughed; the justice system did not. The White House’s Karoline Leavitt insisted it was all a joke, then immediately reminded everyone that the president’s pardon power is “absolute”, which is a fascinating way to say, “We’re kidding unless we decide not to be.”

Trump has already handed out clemency like MAGA merch: more than 1,800 people so far, including 1,500 unconditional pardons on Day One for January 6 rioters, even those who assaulted cops. One accused pipe bomber is now arguing in court that Trump’s blanket Jan 6 pardons should cover him too, because his actions were “inextricably tethered” to the riot. When your legal system has to pause to ask whether the guy with the bombs is covered by the president’s vibes-based amnesty, things are going extremely well.

The pardon list doubles as a loyalty rewards program. Trump wiped the slate clean for Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, whose company conveniently processed a $2bn transaction from an Emirati fund through World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto toy, helping “legitimize” their digital currency. The White House called Zhao a victim of Biden’s “war on cryptocurrency”, which is one way to describe enforcing anti–money laundering laws when they’re not helping your family’s coin. He also commuted George Santos’s sentence after Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft, praising him because “he lied like hell” but was “100% for Trump”. Honesty may be optional, but devotion to the Dear Leader is non-negotiable.

So we now have a president openly joking about an end-of-term purge of accountability, after already turning the pardon power into a punchline stapled to a loyalty oath and a crypto side hustle. The message is clear: commit crimes, lie spectacularly, maybe help the family grift a bit, and as long as you orbit within the magical 200-foot circle of power, the law is just a suggestion.

Trump’s deportation shock troops in Minneapolis tried the classic play: shoot a guy, invent a heroic battle story, and let the federal government rubber-stamp the charges against the immigrant who somehow made the bullets attack him. Unfortunately for ICE, the apartment building had this new technology called surveillance cameras, and the footage promptly turned their tale of a three-minute broom-and-shovel brawl into yet another episode of "actually, that’s not what happened at all".

This case against Venezuelan nationals Alfredo Aljorna and Julio Sosa Celis joins a growing pile of collapsed prosecutions where ICE officers swore they were bravely defending themselves, only for video to show something closer to "reckless, armed cosplay". It’s now the third Minneapolis shooting where recordings shredded ICE’s self-defense narrative, following the fatal shootings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti – events so blatantly awful they forced the White House to reshuffle DHS leadership just to staunch the political bleeding from Trump’s year-long blue-city deportation crusade.

In a plot twist no one saw coming, the new ICE director Todd Lyons isn’t immediately canonizing the shooters as patriotic martyrs. Instead, the officers are on administrative leave and facing possible firing or even criminal charges for lying under oath – which, as an ICE spokesperson helpfully reminded everyone, is technically still a crime in this country. Policy experts are calling it "baby steps" toward accountability, which is a generous way of saying that after years of impunity, the bar has been lowered so far that "we might investigate our own lies" now counts as progress.

The big question is whether this is a real turn toward transparency or just a PR rebrand for an agency that spent the last year treating Democratic-led cities like live-fire training grounds. For now, ICE’s strategy appears to be: keep deporting, keep shooting, but maybe stop getting caught on camera blatantly fabricating assault stories. Bold reform.

The Trump administration has released new renderings for the "Arc de Trump," a 250-foot triumphal arch he wants to plop down at Memorial Circle by Arlington Memorial Bridge, because nothing honors America’s war dead like a giant gold-branded ego obelisk looming over their graves. The design features a 60-foot golden Lady Liberty, a viewing deck, and the phrase "One Nation Under God" stretched across the top, so we’re skipping straight past "subtle cult of personality" and going right to "Christian nationalist theme park."

This latest fever dream was sent to the Commission of Fine Arts, a body Trump conveniently cleared of all six commissioners last year and restocked with loyalists after they dared to have opinions about his White House ballroom. That same ballroom project? Approved by the new rubber-stamp CFA, greenlit by the National Capital Planning Commission chaired by Trump’s former lawyer, and then blocked by a federal judge after Trump had already demolished the historic East Wing. Governance as performance art: smash first, ask courts later.

The White House insists the arch will be "one of the most iconic landmarks" in the world and a "visual reminder" of American sacrifice, which is a poetic way of saying: we turned a site of solemn national memory into a backdrop for the world’s tackiest autocrat cosplay. As for the cost, that’s "still being calculated" and will be funded by a "combination of public and private funds"—so expect a glorious blend of taxpayer money, donor vanity, and maybe a naming rights deal if Trump can wedge "TRUMP" in 20-foot letters somewhere between "Nation" and "God."

Hunter Biden has announced that he’s "100% in" for a cage match against Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, which is probably the most honest bipartisan jobs program we’ve seen in years. The challenge came in a promo video for YouTuber Andrew Callaghan’s "Carnival" tour, because naturally the sons of two presidents now book their public humiliation through internet creators. Somewhere, the Founders are regretting not workshopping the whole "republic" thing a bit longer.

Under the clown makeup, though, the money story is doing laps. Hunter, fresh off a federal gun conviction, tax-evasion charges, and a very controversial pardon from President Dad, is broke enough that his own lawyers are suing him for unpaid bills while describing him in court as "impecunious"—which is lawyer for "cannot afford ring-side seats to his own meltdown." The Trump spawn, on the other hand, reportedly made hundreds of millions during Daddy’s second term, including from foreign-tinged crypto ventures that raise more conflict-of-interest alarms than a Mar-a-Lago membership drive.

So on one side: the pardoned, indebted son of a president hustling appearance fees on a YouTube freak-show tour. On the other: the sons of another president, quietly cashing in on global crypto schemes while still running the family business empire that’s welded to the Oval Office. The proposed cage match is the least corrupt thing happening here; it’s the only part where everyone would have to disclose what they’re actually doing in public, under lights, with a referee.

America’s hospitals, airports, banks and transport networks are increasingly held together with duct tape, prayer, and 1990s code — so naturally, the Trump administration has decided the real threat is … the company trying to find the bugs. Anthropic’s new "Claude Mythos Preview" model is reportedly uncovering vulnerabilities in basically every major browser, OS, and even the Linux kernel — the digital plumbing that keeps everything from Netflix to your bank account from turning into ransomware performance art.

Security experts are calling this "Y2K-level alarming" and racing to use Mythos to patch the holes before some less ethical outfit ships a public version that lets script kiddies take down hospitals from a Starbucks Wi‑Fi. Apple, Microsoft, Google, banks, and regulators are quietly panicking and trying to harden their systems. The Trump White House’s contribution to this whole-of-society effort? Declaring war on Anthropic, banning federal agencies and the military from using its tools, and branding the company "radical left" and "woke" because it won’t turn its models into a turnkey mass-surveillance system for spying on Americans.

So while the Treasury secretary and the Fed chair are urgently warning Wall Street about AI-driven cyberattacks and bioweapon design assistance, Trump’s political brain trust is busy making sure the government’s already rickety systems cannot use one of the best tools to secure them. The administration would rather posture about culture-war purity than keep hospitals online and planes in the sky. Superintelligent AI might someday destabilize society, but for now the most dangerous algorithm in Washington is still the one in Trump’s head that maps "protect critical infrastructure" to "own the libs".