Story highlights
Trump is the 45th President
January 20, 2018, is his one-year anniversary
It will be impossible to adequately explain in decades to come just what it was like to be alive in the exhausting first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
From the moment he trampled the unifying conventions of the inaugural address by decrying “American carnage,” Trump shattered political normality, tearing at racial and societal divides, the limits and decorum of his office, even raising doubts about his fidelity to the nation’s founding values.
Trump is like a raging storm that never blows itself out, as his early morning Twitter rants injected into the nation’s central nervous system trigger outrages that obliterate traditional political debate and make days feel like weeks, weeks feel like months and months feel like years.
Here’s everything that happened during Trump’s first year:
January
January 20
- Trump signs his first executive order to start rolling back Obamacare
January 21
- The Women’s March comes to Washington, and millions rally around the world
- White House press secretary Sean Spicer takes no questions but slams the media over their coverage of Trump’s inauguration crowd sizes
January 22
- Kellyanne Conway defends Spicer, saying he was giving ‘alternative facts’
January 23
- Trump signs an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership
January 24
- Trump signs executive order to advance Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines
January 25
- Trump signs two executive orders directing the construction of a US-Mexico border wall
January 26
- Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancels a meeting with Trump over the wall
January 27
- Trump signs the executive order that came to be known as the travel ban
January 30
- Trump fires acting Attorney General Sally Yates for ‘refusing to enforce’ the travel ban
January 31
- Trump nominates Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court
February
February 1
- Trump marks Black History Month, talks Frederick Douglass
February 3
- Judge blocks Trump’s travel ban
February 7
- Pence casts tie-breaking vote, confirming Education Secretary Betsy DeVos
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren is silenced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prompting him to say, ‘Nevertheless, she persisted’
February 8
- Sessions confirmed as attorney general
February 9
- Trump slams Warren to Dems: ‘Pocahontas is now the face of your party’
February 12
- North Korea test fires ballistic missile
- Trump, Japanese PM conduct open-air North Korea strategy session at Mar-a-Lago
February 13
- Michael Flynn resigns as national security adviser
February 15
- Trump asks Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to slow West Bank settlements
- Trump calls Flynn ‘a wonderful man’
February 22
- The Trump administration withdraws federal protections for transgender students
February 25
- Trump tweets he won’t be attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
February 27
- Trump unveils first budget: $54 billion in cuts, defense spending boost
February 28
- Trump delivers well-received speech to joint session of Congress
March
March 1
- Reports surface that in 2016, Sessions had two undisclosed meetings with then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak
March 2
- Sessions recuses himself from Justice Department’s Russia investigation
March 4
- Without evidence, Trump accuses Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower
March 6
- Trump signs a new travel ban, exempting Iraq
- House GOP unveils a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare
March 10
- Justice Department fires 46 US attorneys, including New York’s Preet Bharara
March 15
- A Hawaii federal judge blocks Trump’s new travel ban; White House prepares appeal
March 17
- Trump meets with German Chancellor Angela Merkel; they don’t shake hands
March 20
- FBI Director James Comey confirms that the bureau is investigating alleged Trump campaign ties to Russian election meddling
- He also says there’s no evidence that the Obama White House wiretapped Trump Tower
March 22
- US officials tell CNN the FBI has information that indicates associates of Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives, to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign
March 23
- House Freedom Caucus rejects Obamacare repeal plan
March 27
- House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes confirms to CNN that he was on White House grounds before he suggested that Trump’s transition communications may have been swept up in surveillance of other foreign nationals
March 29
- Ivanka Trump makes her White House job official
March 30
- Flynn offers to testify on Russia for immunity
April
April 4
- The White House blames Syria’s chemical attack on the Obama administration
April 5
- North Korea fires ballistic missile as Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping prepare to meet
April 6
- The US launches a military strike on a Syrian government airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed dozens of civilians
- During the strike, Trump dines with Xi at Mar-a-Lago
- Nunes steps aside from the House Russia investigation
April 7
- Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court
April 11
- Spicer invokes ‘Holocaust centers,’ then apologizes after saying Adolf Hitler ‘didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons’
April 12
- Trump reverses his position, says NATO is no longer “obsolete” while meeting with NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
April 13
- The US military drops America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb – a MOAB – on ISIS targets in Afghanistan, the first time this type of weapon has been used in battle, according to US officials
April 17
- The Trumps host their first Easter Egg Roll at the White House
April 18
- Sessions says he’s ‘amazed’ a judge ‘on an island in the Pacific’ can block Trump’s immigration order
April 20
- US prepares charges to seek arrest of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange
April 21
- The FBI gathered intelligence that suggests Russian operatives tried to use Trump advisers, including Carter Page, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, US officials say
April 23
- A pair of polls show Trump approaching his 100th day in office with the lowest level of support for any modern president
April 24
- Flynn did not properly disclose payments from Russia and may have broken the law, lawmakers say
April 25
- White House officials insist that Trump was not backing down on his wall, despite his comments
- A federal judge blocks part of Trump’s sanctuary cities executive order
- German crowd hisses and boos Ivanka Trump as she defends the President in Berlin
April 27
- Documents show Flynn was warned by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 against accepting foreign payments as he entered retirement
April 28
- Trump, reflecting on his first 100 days, says he thought the job would be easier
- The EPA removes most climate change information from its website
- Congress averts a shutdown hours before deadline and voted for a weeklong extension
April 29
- Trump leaves the door open for military action against North Korea, hours after Pyongyang launched a missile test
- Trump invites Philippine strongman Rodrigo Duterte to the White House
April 30
- Joe Biden returns to New Hampshire as 2020 rumors swirl
May
May 1
- In an interview, Trump discusses the origins of the Civil War: “Why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
May 2
- Trump tweets that the country needs a ‘good “shutdown”’ and advocates for changing Senate rules
- Clinton: ‘If the election had been on October 27, I would be your president’
- Trump seemingly slams the judgment of his own FBI director
- Jimmy Kimmel tackles health care, choking up while talking about his son’s heart surgery during a monologue
May 3
- Obama’s former national security adviser Susan Rice declines a Senate request to testify on Russian hacking
- Comey says the tarmac meeting between Clinton and Lynch was the moment he decided that the Justice Department was not capable of an independent investigation into Clinton’s email server
May 4
- House Republicans pass an Obamacare replacement bill
- Trump signs an executive order to ‘vigorously promote religious liberty’
- Ivanka Trump’s new book gets reviews – and they aren’t good
- Navy SEAL is killed in action in Somalia
May 6
- White House announces Trump’s first foreign trip as President: Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican
May 8
- Obama warned Trump about hiring Flynn, former White House officials say
- Ex-AG Sally Yates testifies on the Russia probe
May 9
- Trump fires FBI Director James Comey
- Grand jury issues subpoenas in the FBI’s Russia investigation
May 10
- Trump meets with Henry Kissinger
- The Russian government trolls the White House, posting photos of a meeting between Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the US
May 12
- Trump threatens Comey on Twitter, suggesting there are possibly recorded conversations between the two men that could be leaked
- Comey is not worried about any tapes of conversations between him and Trump, a source tells CNN
- Source: Comey was taken aback by Trump request for loyalty pledge
May 14
- North Korea launches a ballistic missile
- Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says US institutions are under assault from Trump
- Miss USA: Health care ‘a privilege,’ not a right
May 15
- Trump shared highly classified information with the Russians a White House meeting, sources say
- Supreme Court declines to hear challenge to ruling striking down North Carolina voter ID law
May 16
- Comey memo: Trump asked FBI director to end Flynn investigation
May 17
- Justice Department appoints former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the Russia investigation
- Democratic Rep. Al Green calls for Trump’s impeachment on the House floor
- Chelsea Manning is freed. The former Army intelligence analyst was behind one of the largest leaks of classified information in history
May 18
- Trump says he did not ask Comey to end the Russia investigation
May 19