The Trump Presidency Timeline

Minnesota just got a front-row seat to the Trump administration’s favorite pastime: militarized immigration theater. After Trump’s so-called Operation Metro Surge dumped more than 3,000 immigration officers into Minneapolis, ICE managed to do what it does best — kill two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti — and then spark weeks of protests while the White House congratulated itself for being “tough.”

The result? Minnesotans are now even more polarized than the rest of the country on immigration, because it turns out watching armed federal agents roam your streets and shoot citizens tends to clarify your views. Democrats and independents in the state overwhelmingly think ICE has gone too far and want it reformed or abolished. Republicans, especially outside the Twin Cities, are more supportive of Trump’s ICE than Republicans nationwide — because nothing says law and order like backing the guys who just shot two Americans.

Curiously, Republicans in Minneapolis and St. Paul — you know, the ones who actually had to live near the raids, protests, and gunfire — are several times more likely to say ICE and Border Patrol tactics went too far. It’s amazing what seeing federal power up close does to your “back the blue no matter what” energy. Meanwhile, independents are split between supporting Trump more than their national peers and blaming his administration for the clashes in the streets. The administration has essentially run a human-subjects experiment in authoritarian policing and discovered that, yes, deploying an occupying force into a U.S. city radicalizes people. Who could have guessed.

Marco Rubio flies to the Munich Security Conference as Trump’s slightly more house-trained emissary and delivers a speech about defending "white, western, Christian civilisation" from allegedly contaminating brown people. European elites respond by giving him a standing ovation, because nothing says "we learned from the 20th century" like politely clapping along to civilisational race talk in a German conference hall.

Rubio coats the message in soothing words about "sovereignty" and border protection, but the core is the same old white-supremacist fever dream that powered the war on terror: Muslims and migrants as the existential threat, Europe and America as a fragile, superior club under siege. Meanwhile, the Trump State Department is reportedly gearing up to bankroll "policy-aligned" European thinktanks and charities, so Washington can export Maga brainworms directly into EU policy circles instead of just relying on Fox News clips and Orbán fan mail.

While Spain’s Pedro Sánchez tries the radical approach of acknowledging migrants as human beings with rights, Brussels fixates on "simpler and more effective return procedures" – bureaucratese for EU-wide ICE cosplay, complete with raids, surveillance, and offshore dumping of undocumented people. European leaders, who allegedly know something about where dehumanizing rhetoric leads, are mostly too busy nodding along to Rubio’s flattery about their glorious colonial past to say: "We’ve heard this script before, and last time it didn’t end great."

The punchline: language that once would have been recognised as explicitly racist and dangerous is now treated as respectable statesmanship, provided it’s delivered in a blazer and not a red hat. Trump and Rubio get to launder Maga’s xenophobic ideology through NATO cocktail hours, and Europe’s political class, terrified of losing Washington’s favor, smiles, applauds, and pretends this isn’t how democracies rot from the inside.

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, now moonlighting as the Department of Fragile Male Feelings, has filed its first lawsuit targeting a workplace diversity program since Trump returned to office. The alleged civil rights emergency? A Coca-Cola Beverages Northeast networking event that let about 250 women go to a Connecticut casino for two days of team-building, speakers, and not having to listen to Steve from sales explain Bitcoin.

This is the test case for Trump-world’s new religion: DEI is discrimination. EEOC chair Andrea Lucas and friends have been loudly insisting that common diversity, equity and inclusion programs are actually “reverse discrimination”, and now the agency is putting federal muscle behind that narrative. They’re already investigating Nike and Northwestern Mutual, and demanding DEI data from 20 big law firms; the Coke bottler suit is just the first time they’ve decided that a women’s networking retreat is the line where civil rights must be heroically defended.

Acting general counsel Catherine Eschbach announced that excluding a protected class like men from an employer event is illegal and that the EEOC is committed to “equal access” for everyone. Fascinating how that fierce commitment to equality mainly kicks in when it’s time to kneecap programs designed to help historically excluded groups. Under Trump, the civil rights agency isn’t dismantled; it’s repurposed as a precision tool to make sure corporate America understands that the only discrimination this government truly cares about is the kind that inconveniences the already comfortable.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council and full-time reality-denial specialist, has decided that Federal Reserve economists should be "disciplined" for the high crime of doing math. Their New York Fed paper found that about 90% of Trump's tariffs are being paid by US firms and consumers, which is awkward when the official White House line is "foreigners are paying, don't look at your grocery bill."

Hassett went on CNBC to declare the paper "an embarrassment" and "the worst" in Fed history, which is a bold statement from an administration that treats numbers the way Elon treats NDAs. He insisted consumers are actually better off because prices fell, inflation dropped, and "real wages" rose, a miraculous outcome where Americans somehow get richer by paying more for imports. The economists who pointed out this basic incidence-of-tariffs problem, he says, should be punished for producing analysis that "wouldn't be accepted in a first-semester econ class"—a fascinating critique from the political team that thinks the deficit is just a vibe.

This is all unfolding while Trump is already pressuring the Fed to slash interest rates, cheering on a criminal investigation into Fed Chair Jerome Powell over building renovations, and trying to push out Fed governor Lisa Cook. Meanwhile, every serious analysis—from the Kiel Institute to the National Bureau of Economic Research—confirms the same thing: the US is paying almost all the tariff costs. So naturally, instead of rethinking the policy, the White House is floating professional consequences for economists whose charts don't worship the Dear Tariff Leader. Independent central bank? Cute 20th-century concept.

The Trump administration has finally released $127m in overdue federal funds for the New York–New Jersey Gateway rail tunnel, plus another $127m on top, after a federal judge basically reminded them that "president" is not a synonym for "ransom broker." Construction on the country’s largest infrastructure project can now restart, because the White House temporarily stopped treating a critical tunnel used by 200,000 daily commuters like a prop in a reality show.

This sudden burst of compliance comes after Trump spent months withholding $205m in reimbursements, running the project out of cash and forcing work to stop. During his little funding hostage situation, he allegedly demanded that Washington Dulles airport and New York’s Penn Station be renamed after him in exchange for unfreezing the money. So yes, the sitting president tried to swap essential infrastructure funding for personal branding opportunities, like a discount Mussolini with a merch store.

Governor Kathy Hochul and Chuck Schumer are calling it a huge win for workers, commuters, and the regional economy, because when the bar is on the floor, "the president obeyed a court order and stopped sabotaging a rail tunnel" now counts as a triumph. Trump, naturally, is still raging on Truth Social that Gateway is a future "boondoggle" and "financially catastrophic" — which is rich coming from the man who thinks the real emergency is that there aren’t enough buildings and airports named after him.

The bottom line: a century-old, Sandy-damaged tunnel finally gets repaired not because the administration cares about safety or transit, but because a judge and a political backlash briefly made it more painful to keep breaking things than to let one project proceed. Rule of law 1, petty autocrat 0 — at least until the next appeal.

Pollsters have discovered a new scientific benchmark for American politics: Donald Trump is now less popular than spiders and ants, but still doing better than wasps and mosquitoes. So congratulations to the president – he’s officially performing somewhere between household pest and bloodsucking biohazard. Naturally, this historically unpopular guy with a 61% disapproval rating is insisting on Truth Social that these are the "highest poll numbers" he’s ever had, because reality is for losers and non-felons.

The 2026 midterms loom, and Trump is reportedly telling Republicans behind closed doors that if they lose the House, Democrats will "find a reason to impeach" him. That’s not paranoia so much as a confession with stage fright. A Democratic House could slow-roll his agenda and actually investigate all that "government overreach" the article politely tiptoes around, which is why he’s suddenly discovered the concept of consequences.

Of course, unlike ants, Trump has a few advantages – namely, a firehose of billionaire cash. The RNC is sitting on $95m, Democrats are rummaging in the couch cushions with $14m and some IOUs, and Trump’s Maga Inc super PAC is parked on about $304m like a particularly litigious dragon. Overall, Republicans have over $600m ready to burn on the midterms, while Democrats limp in under $200m, and outside groups are projected to drop another $5bn. It’s not an election so much as a hostile takeover funded by 100 very rich families who spent $2.6bn in 2024 to make sure the rest of us keep arguing about bugs while they buy the government.

So as the midterms approach, America faces a stark choice: let a deeply unpopular president backed by a mountain of oligarch money keep rewriting the rules, or see if voters like democracy more than they dislike spiders. Polling suggests ants, at least, still have a better reputation than Congress.

After spending a week LARPing as the Department of Essential Oils, the FDA has abruptly remembered that its job is to, checks notes, review vaccines. The agency has now reversed course and agreed to consider Moderna’s mRNA-based flu shot after initially refusing to even look at the application — a snub that set off alarms across the medical community and delighted the "Make America Healthy Again" anti-vax fan club.

The original rejection landed right after Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr — yes, the guy whose brand is yelling about vaccines on podcasts — helped kill a $500m federal contract for developing mRNA vaccines against bird flu and other nasty strains. FDA commissioner Dr Marty Makary dutifully claimed Moderna just didn’t follow guidance, while a senior FDA official called the trial a “brazen failure” at a press conference, because nothing says sober, science-based regulation like talk-radio adjectives.

Now, under heavy fire from health experts who see this as part of Trumpworld’s broader anti-vaccine crusade, the FDA has agreed to review Moderna’s updated filing, with a target decision date of 5 August. If approved, seniors might get access to a new flu shot before next season — assuming the administration doesn’t decide that preventing disease is too "woke" and replace the vaccine with a Maha-branded immunity prayer candle instead.

America’s first openly aspiring banana-republic landlord has discovered a fun new constitutional innovation: sue the United States for hundreds of millions, then win the election so your own appointees get to decide how big a check the Treasury should write you. Trump has filed massive claims saying Justice Department investigations and the leak of his tax returns "hurt" him, and now Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ has to decide whether to settle with their boss using your tax dollars.

This isn’t a metaphorical conflict of interest; it’s the literal scenario ethics professors use as a joke on the first day of class. Conservative legal veteran Edward Whelan is out here saying this is "outrageous" and a "glaring conflict of interest," which is lawyer-speak for are you people kidding me. Meanwhile, Trump is onstage bragging about how he’ll "negotiate with myself" over a $230 million claim related to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents search and the Russia probe, like a game show where the prize is the U.S. Treasury.

Normally, people who say the government wronged them file claims that are quietly evaluated by civil servants. Under Trump, the claimant is also the president, the alleged wrongdoing includes investigating possible crimes, and the decision-makers are his loyal political appointees whose careers depend on keeping Dear Litigant happy. It’s not government anymore; it’s a long-running grievance lawsuit with a nuclear arsenal attached.

CBS just gave a masterclass in how to be a media giant with the spine of a overcooked noodle. After Stephen Colbert taped an interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico, the network’s lawyers allegedly swooped in to say it couldn’t air on broadcast because it might trigger FCC equal-time rules. Then they reportedly told Colbert he couldn’t even talk about the decision on air. The interview ended up on YouTube, safely outside the FCC’s reach, because nothing screams "land of the free" like having to flee to a Google platform to escape your own government’s speech cops.

FCC commissioner Anna Gomez, the lone Democrat on a Trump-stacked commission, politely translated this mess for the public: this looks like “corporate capitulation” to an administration running a broader campaign to censor and control speech. She also reminded everyone that the FCC has no lawful authority to pressure broadcasters for political purposes, which is adorable given that the whole point of Trump-world is to blur the line between "lawful authority" and "things we can get away with if executives are scared enough." CBS, of course, insists it merely offered "legal guidance"—the corporate equivalent of saying you weren’t pushed, you just tripped over all that regulatory intimidation.

As a bonus subplot in the war on inconvenient speech, Trump is still pursuing his $10bn defamation suit against the BBC over a Panorama program, with a Florida judge now setting a 2027 trial date. So on one side, you’ve got a president weaponizing libel law to punish journalism; on the other, a major network preemptively muzzling its own star host over a Senate candidate interview. Call it the new First Amendment: you’re free to say whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t upset the guy who controls the regulators and the people who own the studios.