Hiring, firing, and administration staffing
John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser turned critic, pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully retaining classified information — the first conviction in Trump's stated campaign of retribution, prosecuted under the same statute Trump himself was indicted under in 2023 before his case was dismissed.
A 224-page draft report from Trump's hand-picked Religious Liberty Commission — staffed almost entirely with conservative Christians — declares the separation of church and state a 'legal error,' recommends federal agencies post 'Know Your Rights' religious-liberty notices, creates new presidential medals for religious activists, and treats government promotion of religion as a constitutional mandate. Trump received the report in the Oval Office and told a Faith & Freedom Coalition crowd, 'We saved religion.'
Postmaster General David Steiner told the Senate that under a proposed USPS rule, the Postal Service will refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in any state that declines to give the Trump administration its voter list. The policy formalizes a federal threat to disenfranchise voters in states the White House cannot otherwise force into compliance with its election-overhaul agenda.
Trump signed an executive order formally converting roughly 8,000 senior career federal employees — including agency division heads, regulation writers, policy attorneys, and chief information officers — into at-will workers who can be fired without notice or appeal, a long-planned scheme to replace nonpartisan expertise with loyalists.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House appropriators the Justice Department was abandoning the $1.776 billion fund Trump had extracted from his own DOJ in a self-dealing IRS settlement, but the part of the deal barring the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses remains in force.
Sen. Bill Cassidy — one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump after January 6 — became the first GOP senator in nearly a decade to lose renomination, finishing third in the Louisiana primary behind Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and state Treasurer John Fleming.
The DOJ Civil Rights Division concluded a year-long investigation by formally accusing Yale School of Medicine of intentional racial discrimination against white and Asian applicants, the second elite medical school targeted in eight days. The action is part of a sweeping Trump administration campaign weaponizing civil-rights enforcement against universities, and follows similar threats to UCLA, Stanford, UC San Diego, and Ohio State.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned after Trump personally berated him for resisting pressure to approve fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. The agency, days earlier, had reversed course and authorized 45 flavored vape products — a policy reversal driven by Trump's desire to court young MAGA voters and demanded by the tobacco industry, over the objections of FDA scientists who warned of the risks to children.
The White House released its 2026 National Counterterrorism Strategy, the first of Trump's second term. The 16-page document elevates drug cartels and 'violent left-wing extremists' — including groups it describes as 'radically pro-transgender' and 'anarchist' — to the center of U.S. counterterrorism priorities, while stripping out the Biden-era focus on white supremacist and far-right violence.
Trump-backed challengers unseated five Republican Indiana state senators who had voted against his demand to redraw the state's congressional maps, in a $13.4 million primary spending blitz that demonstrated the cost of crossing the president.
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.
After ICE raids in downtown LA triggered street protests, Trump invoked 10 U.S.C. § 12406 to federalize 4,000 California National Guard troops without Governor Newsom's consent — the first such federalization over a governor's objection since Lyndon Johnson sent troops to Alabama in 1965 to protect civil-rights marchers — and ordered 700 active-duty Marines into the city. A federal judge later ruled the federalization illegal.
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.
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.
In a single Friday-night announcement, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — Gen. Charles Q. 'C.Q.' Brown Jr., only the second Black chairman in U.S. history — along with the first female Chief of Naval Operations, the Air Force vice chief, and the top uniformed lawyers of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. To replace Brown he picked a retired three-star, Dan 'Razin' Caine, who had to be recalled to active duty and granted a statutory waiver to take the job.
Trump fired USAID Inspector General Paul Martin one day after his office reported nearly $500 million in food aid was at risk of spoiling due to the administration's gutting of the agency.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) launched aggressive efforts to slash federal spending and reduce the government workforce, generating controversy over its access to sensitive government systems and the legality of its actions.
The Trump administration launched an unprecedented effort to drastically reduce the federal workforce, firing probationary employees en masse, offering buyout packages, and reclassifying civil servants to strip employment protections.
Four days into his second term, Trump dismissed 17 of the federal government's independent inspectors general by mass email late on a Friday night, citing 'changing priorities' and ignoring the 1978 Inspector General Act's 30-day notice requirement to Congress. A federal judge later ruled the firings unlawful but declined to reinstate the watchdogs, leaving cabinet departments responsible for trillions of dollars in spending without independent oversight at the start of the most aggressive remaking of the federal government since the New Deal.
Two days after his Senate acquittal, Trump fired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in apparent retaliation for their testimony during the impeachment inquiry.
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.
After Trump falsely tweeted that Alabama would be hit by Hurricane Dorian, displayed a NOAA forecast map crudely altered with a black Sharpie to support his claim, and refused to retract the error, the Commerce Department forced career meteorologists at NOAA to issue an unsigned statement disavowing the Birmingham National Weather Service's accurate forecast — a textbook case of political pressure overriding scientific judgment in a public-safety agency.
Trump shut down the federal government for 35 days — the longest shutdown in U.S. history — after demanding $5.7 billion for a border wall Mexico was supposed to pay for. Roughly 800,000 federal workers went without paychecks, TSA officers visited food banks, the economy lost an estimated $3 billion, and Trump ended the standoff with nothing to show for it but a fake national-emergency declaration.
The day after the 2018 midterm elections, Trump forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign, punishing him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation and installing a loyalist as acting attorney general to oversee the Mueller probe.
Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the Supreme Court by a 50-48 vote nine days after Christine Blasey Ford testified that he had sexually assaulted her in 1982. The 'supplemental FBI investigation' the Trump White House cited as exonerating him was, a 2024 Senate report concluded, tightly controlled by that same White House — the 4,500-tip public tip line was forwarded straight to Trump's lawyers without investigation, and key witnesses were never interviewed.
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.
Seven months into his presidency, Trump issued his first pardon — to former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had been convicted of criminal contempt for defying a federal judge's order to stop racially profiling Latino drivers. Trump skipped the DOJ pardon review process entirely, pardoned Arpaio before he was even sentenced, and set the template he would use to pardon Manafort, Stone, Flynn, and ultimately the January 6 defendants.
President Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey while the FBI was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties to the Trump campaign, triggering a constitutional crisis.
Trump cleared the Oval Office of other officials and asked FBI Director James Comey to end the investigation into Michael Flynn, telling him 'I hope you can let this go' — a request Comey documented in a memo that became central evidence in the obstruction of justice case.
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.
