Foreign policy and international relationships
After Iran fired missiles at U.S. forces on July 28, Trump told Fox News that Iran was 'going to get a beating' and ordered a 'heavy wave' of strikes on dozens of Iranian military targets — reigniting a war he started in early 2026 and again waged with no new authorization from Congress.
Temporary Protected Status ended on July 27, 2026 for more than 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, exposing people who fled earthquakes and civil war to deportation back to countries the State Department still warns Americans not to visit.
U.S. forces struck five Iranian targets on Trump's order, Iran's Revolutionary Guard hit U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain in response, and Trump posted that 'the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist' if it doesn't yield — collapsing the Islamabad memorandum he had announced weeks earlier.
One week into a fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire, Trump ordered U.S. Central Command to strike Iranian missile, drone, and coastal radar sites in retaliation for an IRGC drone attack on a Singapore-flagged cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump declared from the Rose Garden that the U.S. is now 'negotiating from a position of pure strength' — a familiar pattern in a presidency that has treated war as both leverage and spectacle.
In a 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Doe, the Supreme Court let the Trump administration terminate Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, holding that federal courts cannot meaningfully review the Homeland Security secretary's decision. Justice Kagan dissented that Trump's own statements about Haiti 'fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones,' that race drove the policy.
The White House sent Congress a supplemental spending request of $87.6 billion, the bulk of it for the Iran war Trump launched in February, just hours after he had screamed at Republican senators in a closed-door lunch over their votes on a war powers resolution. The package bundles Pentagon money for an unpopular conflict with farm bailouts and Ebola aid, daring members to vote against any of it.
The Senate voted 50-48 to direct Trump to halt military action against Iran without congressional authorization — the first time a war powers resolution has cleared both chambers of Congress in the 53-year history of the statute. Four Republicans crossed the aisle to rebuke the president after his unauthorized strikes on Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.
The U.S. Trade Representative proposed 10–12.5% tariffs on 60 trading partners — including the EU, China, Japan, the UK, and Canada — under a Section 301 'forced labor' rationale, the administration's new legal vehicle for restoring tariffs the Supreme Court struck down.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ruled that ICE 'likely illegally' deported Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata to the Democratic Republic of Congo after the Congolese government had explicitly notified ICE in writing that it could not accept her because she required medical care for diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and hypothyroidism. The judge ordered the administration to bring her back.
Trump arrived in Beijing with Elon Musk, Tim Cook, Jensen Huang, and a dozen other CEOs in tow, asking Xi Jinping to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz Trump's own war had closed — while leaving a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan unsigned on his desk.
Trump called Iran's latest peace proposal 'garbage' and 'totally unacceptable,' threatened a resumption of major combat operations, and declared the ceasefire 'on massive life support' — as the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively closed for the 73rd consecutive day, trapping over 600 tankers and choking 20% of the world's oil supply.
Trump killed Iran's counter-proposal to end the 10-week war he started, dismissing it in all-caps as 'TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE' — sending Brent crude over $100, the U.S. pump price to $4.52, and the Strait of Hormuz back into a deadlock with no diplomatic path forward.
Three U.S. Navy destroyers came under sustained Iranian missile, drone and small-boat attack while transiting the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. retaliated with strikes on Iranian military sites, then Trump publicly dismissed the exchange as 'just a love tap' while threatening to hit Iran 'a lot harder, and a lot more violently' if it does not sign a deal.
Back-to-back U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific killed five more people across May 4 and May 5, bringing the confirmed death toll from Operation Southern Spear past 190 since September. The Pentagon has still produced no evidence the targeted vessels were carrying drugs.
On the eve of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's first Vatican meeting with Pope Leo XIV, Trump publicly attacked the American-born pope as 'endangering' Catholics and falsely claimed Leo wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. The attacks extend a year-long campaign by Trump to discredit the first U.S.-born pope, who has emerged as one of the most prominent religious critics of the Iran war.
After launching a military operation in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, Trump paused it within 24 hours and threatened on Truth Social that 'the bombing starts' at 'a much higher level' if Iran doesn't accept his peace terms.
A new executive order builds an Iran-style secondary sanctions regime targeting Cuba, exposing any foreign company or financial institution that does business with the Cuban economy to U.S. blocking sanctions. The order layers on top of an embargo that has failed to topple the Cuban government for more than six decades.
Trump joined Israel in nearly 900 strikes on Iran in 12 hours, killing Supreme Leader Khamenei, opening an undeclared war that he later told Congress he didn't need their authorization to wage.
On June 22, 2025, Trump ordered Operation Midnight Hammer — the first operational use of GBU-57 bunker-busters and the largest B-2 strike in US history — to attack Iran's Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear facilities. He did not seek congressional authorization. He notified Republican leadership before the strikes and Democratic leadership only after. He then claimed on Truth Social that Iran's nuclear program had been 'completely and totally obliterated.' His own Defense Intelligence Agency concluded within days that the strikes had set the program back only a few months.
The Trump administration formally accepted a $400 million Boeing 747-8 luxury jet from the Qatari royal family to be retrofitted as Air Force One and, after Trump leaves office, transferred to his presidential library foundation. Reporting later showed the Pentagon — not Qatar — initiated the request; Attorney General Pam Bondi (a former registered Qatar lobbyist) signed off on the legal memo blessing the deal; and the retrofit cost has been hidden inside a nuclear-missile modernization program, with internal Air Force estimates running as high as $1.5 billion.
Pope Francis died on April 21, 2025. On May 8, the conclave elected Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost — the first U.S. pope in history — who took the name Leo XIV. Within weeks, Trump began the year-long campaign of public attacks on the new pope that would still be ongoing in May 2026.
In a Rose Garden ceremony on April 2, 2025, Trump declared a national emergency and imposed the highest US tariff regime since 1909 — a 10% baseline on every trading partner plus 'reciprocal' rates of up to 50% — under a formula his own economists could not defend. The S&P 500 lost 12.4% in two trading sessions. Seven days later, after the bond market revolted, Trump paused most of the tariffs for 90 days. Stocks jumped 9.52% in a single afternoon — the biggest one-day rally since 2008.
National Security Adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic's editor to a Signal group where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was sharing the targets, weapons, and timing of imminent U.S. strikes on Yemen — and Trump's first instinct was to defend everyone involved.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to fly Venezuelan men — and at least one Maryland man with explicit court protection from removal — to El Salvador's CECOT prison, then defied a federal judge's order to turn the planes around and a unanimous Supreme Court order to bring one of them back.
Plainclothes ICE agents arrested Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil — a lawful permanent resident married to a U.S. citizen — at his apartment in Morningside Heights and shipped him to a Louisiana detention center for participating in last year's Gaza protests. Secretary of State Marco Rubio personally signed a memo invoking a McCarthy-era provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act that lets him deport non-citizens whose presence is deemed to have 'serious adverse foreign policy consequences,' opening the first major test case of Trump's deport-the-protesters program.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to Washington to sign a U.S.-Ukraine critical minerals agreement. Instead, an Oval Office press appearance descended into a shouting match with Trump and Vice President JD Vance accusing him of ingratitude, of 'gambling with World War III,' and of disrespecting them on television. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz then walked into a side room and told Zelensky to leave. The deal was scrapped, the joint press conference was canceled, and the visiting head of a wartime democracy was sent home without lunch.
Trump imposed or threatened sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, roiling global markets and sparking fears of a trade war, before pausing some tariffs after last-minute negotiations with neighboring countries.
Within hours of taking office, Trump signed dozens of executive orders targeting immigration, withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, ending federal DEI programs, and declaring a national emergency at the southern border.
Trump ordered a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, as he left Baghdad International Airport. The administration's claim that the strike preempted an 'imminent attack' on four embassies fell apart within days — Defense Secretary Mark Esper publicly contradicted it. Iran retaliated with a ballistic missile barrage on al-Asad Airbase, inflicting traumatic brain injuries on at least 109 U.S. service members that Trump initially dismissed as 'headaches.' Iraq's parliament voted to expel U.S. forces.
The House of Representatives impeached President Trump on two articles — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — making him the third U.S. president to be impeached.
A whistleblower revealed that Trump had pressured Ukraine's president to investigate political rival Joe Biden during a July phone call, while withholding military aid, leading to Trump's first impeachment by the House of Representatives.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 448-page report documented a 'sweeping and systematic' Russian interference operation that the Trump campaign 'expected to benefit from,' identified ten separate episodes in which Trump may have obstructed justice, and explicitly stated it did 'not exonerate' him. Attorney General William Barr spent the morning of its release publicly mischaracterizing it before Congress and the public could read it.
After Saudi agents murdered and dismembered journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Trump refused to hold Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman accountable, prioritizing arms deals over human rights and press freedom.
Standing beside Russian President Vladimir Putin at a joint press conference in Helsinki, Trump sided with Putin's denial of election interference over the unanimous assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies, stunning allies and drawing bipartisan condemnation.
The Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' immigration policy resulted in thousands of children being forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, with some families never reunited, provoking widespread outrage and comparisons to internment camps.
On June 12, 2018, Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader, posing for handshake photos with Kim Jong Un in front of equal-status U.S. and DPRK flags at Singapore's Capella Hotel. In exchange for a vague joint statement that committed North Korea to nothing it had not already promised in 1992 and 1994, Trump unilaterally suspended joint U.S.–South Korean military exercises without telling Seoul, then went home and told a rally crowd that he and Kim 'fell in love.'
Trump unilaterally pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — the multilateral agreement that had verifiably halted Iran's nuclear weapons program — over the explicit objections of his Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, National Security Adviser, and the U.S. intelligence community, all of whom had told him Iran was complying.
During a bipartisan meeting on immigration, Trump asked why the U.S. was accepting immigrants from 'shithole countries' in Africa and Haiti rather than from places like Norway, laying bare the racial animus behind his immigration agenda.
In a Rose Garden announcement built on fabricated economic numbers, Trump pulled the United States out of the global climate accord, abandoning the only nonbinding framework the world had agreed on for limiting warming. He framed the withdrawal as standing up for 'Pittsburgh, not Paris' — a city whose mayor immediately reminded the country it had voted 80 percent against him.
At a rally in Florida, Trump referenced a nonexistent terrorist attack 'last night in Sweden,' baffling the Swedish government and drawing international ridicule. He later claimed he was referring to a Fox News segment.
National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak regarding U.S. sanctions.
As multiple officials confirmed intelligence intercepts showed Michael Flynn lied about discussing sanctions with Russia's ambassador, senior White House aides refused to defend him on national television and Trump remained conspicuously silent.
Just one week into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order banning entry from seven Muslim-majority countries, triggering immediate chaos at airports and a wave of federal court challenges.
At a press conference, Trump publicly called on Russia to find Hillary Clinton's deleted emails, saying 'Russia, if you're listening,' in a moment that would become central to investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and campaign chair Paul Manafort met at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and an ex-Soviet intelligence operative after an email pitched the meeting as 'part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump.' Trump Jr. replied 'I love it.'
The Trump Organization continued pursuing a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, engaging in negotiations with Russian developers that would extend secretly through the 2016 presidential campaign.
Donald Trump brought the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow in partnership with Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, an event that deepened Trump's financial ties to Russia and later drew scrutiny from federal investigators.
