Key Timeline

• 2017: Neil Gorsuch appointed to the Supreme Court

  • Hurricanes cause devastation to the Gulf Coast and Puerto Rico

• 2018: President Trump withdraws from the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran

  • The United States, Mexico, and Canada lay the foundation for the USMCA trade agreement to replace NAFTA

  • Hurricanes cause severe damage in the Carolinas and the Florida Panhandle

  • The Democrats recapture control of the House of Representatives

• 2019: Robert Mueller releases a report that finds no conclusive evidence that the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with the Russians

  • House Democrats launch an impeachment inquiry over President Trump’s dealings with the Ukraine

• 2020: President Trump is acquitted by a Senate impeachment trial

  • The COVID-19 pandemic spreads to the United States

  • The death of George Floyd leads to antipolice riots

  • Amy Coney Barrett appointed to the Supreme Court

  • Joe Biden wins the 2020 presidential election

• 2021: A mob of Trump supporters storms the Capitol building to protest the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory

Domestic Affairs

• Donald J. Trump had few government or media allies when he entered the White House.

  • Trump, a rich businessman and entrepreneur who had been a celebrity for three decades, ran for government as an outsider, pledging to shake up the system.

  • Most political analysts didn't take the bumptious host of The Apprentice seriously during the election, believing Hillary Clinton would easily win.

  • Many couldn't accept his surprise triumph.

  • The Resistance was formed by government and non-government officials who refused to acknowledge an illegal president.

• Opposition was fierce from the start.

  • Protests occurred as Democrats stalled executive department nominations.

  • Over 90% of mainstream media reports were critical of the president and his administration.

• President Trump did nothing to reconcile his opponents.

  • After years in the spotlight, his manner was self-congratulatory and combative.

  • During his presidency, he was unorthodox.

  • He bypassed his press office and other news channels to engage with his supporters on Twitter.

  • He regularly outraged people with his colorful and vituperative speech.

  • These tweets offered him a quick connection with his millions of followers, but even some of his most faithful admirers hoped he would exhibit more rhetorical moderation.

  • Donald Trump was a larger-than-life figure for adversaries and friends throughout his administration.

• Democratic allegations that his campaign cooperated with Russia to influence the election followed President Trump into the White House.

  • In turn, Trump believed the Obama administration had spied on his campaign.

  • Due to his discontent with the Russian collusion probe, Trump fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017.

  • After the outrage, the Justice Department appointed former FBI director Robert Mueller as a Special Counsel to investigate Russia.

  • For two years, Trump's administration would be plagued by the Mueller probe and Democrat claims that Russian involvement had helped him win in 2016.

• President Trump issued executive orders that revoked Obama's.

  • He fought to abolish rules that slowed economic progress.

  • In addition, Trump issued an executive order prohibiting refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, many of which were rife with terrorism.

  • This enraged many people, and federal courts temporarily halted the decree.

• Trump vowed to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border to keep out illegal immigration.

  • Illegal immigration plummeted in 2017, even though Trump's wall wasn't funded.

  • A Supreme Court vacancy awaited the incoming president.

  • Trump's first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, was approved by the Senate in April.

• During the election, Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

  • Though the Republican House approved a healthcare measure on a party-line vote, Republican differences in the Senate hindered its passage.

  • Trump pledged to let the Affordable Care Act fail.

  • Next, the president advocated tax cuts.

• The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was approved in December.

  • This comprehensive law slashed corporation, individual, and estate taxes to 21%.

  • These tax cuts and Trump's deregulatory actions boosted economic activity and corporate confidence.

  • President Trump's first year saw a stock market boom.

  • Unemployment dropped below four percent by mid-2018.

  • Women, Hispanics, and African Americans had record-low jobless rates.

  • The US became energy independent in 2019 thanks to oil and gas output.

• In the 2016 election, Donald Trump's vow to nominate conservative judges helped unify Republicans.

  • President Trump delivered a constant stream of judge nominees to Capitol Hill.

  • By early 2021, Senate Republicans confirmed over 230 circuit and district court justices.

  • Politically, this was crucial, but Trump's followers valued the Supreme Court.

• Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in June 2018. Although conservative, Kennedy was considered a "swing" vote on the high court.

• Trump's nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, a constitutional "originalist" federal judge, raised the political stakes.

  • Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation hearings were heated, with most Senate Democrats opposing him.

• Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced during the public hearings that Professor Christine Blasey Ford had accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school months earlier.

  • Judge Kavanaugh disputed this and stated that Professor Ford had no witnesses.

  • Ford's claims sparked a Senate hearing, an FBI investigation, and political outrage. The press covered other women's less plausible complaints.

  • Those who believed Ford viewed Kavanaugh as a privileged abuser of women, while those who believed him saw him as the victim of a political witch hunt.

  • Judge Kavanaugh was approved 50-48 by the Senate.

• Leading up to the 2018 midterm elections, the Kavanaugh confirmation process exemplified political rancor in the US.

  • As the election neared, immigration divided Americans.

  • The Trump administration was condemned earlier this year for separating children from illegal immigrant parents.

  • In October, hundreds of Central American migrants neared the US border.

  • President Trump dispatched soldiers to help the border police, calling this an invasion.

  • His actions were applauded by some Americans but criticized by others as cruel.

• The approaching elections were important to both parties.

  • Democrats pledged impeachment hearings if they took control of the House.

  • If Democrats took over Congress, President Trump and Republicans knew their agenda would stagnate.

• Government impasse resulted from the 2018 elections.

  • By winning 41 House seats, Democrats regained control.

  • The Senate GOP gained two seats.

  • President Trump and freshly strengthened House Democrats clashed over building a Mexican border wall.

• In December 2018, the government shut down for 35 days.

  • No financing for the president.

  • To build parts of his wall, he would use military funding.

• President Trump's alleged cooperation with the Russians was a heated subject after the midterm elections.

  • While many Democrats claimed that Trump had ties to the Russians, Republican Representative Devin Nunes, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, released a report charging that Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation that began in 2016, relied on questionable information from Christopher Steele, a British operative working for the Clinton campaign.

• In March 2019, Robert Mueller presented his findings on Russian election involvement.

  • The study found no evidence of Trump campaign-Russian collusion.

  • Mueller's team did not exonerate the president of obstructing their probe.

  • According to the report, Attorney General William Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein found no evidence to prosecute the president with obstruction of justice.

  • In July, Mueller testified before Congress.

  • Though some House Democrats still regarded the Mueller report as grounds for impeachment, no bombshells emerged, ending the extended drama over Trump campaign-Russia ties.

  • Attorney General Barr appointed John Durham, a federal prosecutor, to examine the 2016 Trump campaign spying.

• In December, Michael Horowitz, the Department of Justice Inspector General, released a report criticizing the Justice Department and FBI for providing misleading material to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court to legitimize their inquiry.

  • The FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign was cast into question by documents given during the discovery process in General Michael Flynn's case.

  • The FBI may have known about Trump's exoneration before Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller inquiry, according to some analysts.

• A whistleblower allegation regarding President Trump's phone chat with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky sparked a fresh crisis between Trump and House Democrats in September.

  • The whistleblower said that Trump conditioned American military assistance to Ukraine on Zelensky's agreement to probe former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who had acquired a lucrative seat on the board of a Ukrainian oil firm under investigation for corruption.

  • The president seemed to be leveraging his connections with a foreign nation to gather dirt on a future political competitor.

  • Trump published an altered version of the phone conversation and denied any collusion.

  • When it was revealed that the whistleblower had contacted congressional Democrats before filing his complaint and that his allegations were permitted to proceed despite his lack of direct knowledge of the phone conversation, he blasted this claim as a political hit job.

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the president's claims were serious enough to trigger an impeachment probe by several House committees.

  • These committees started conducting closed-door hearings with witnesses.

  • Republicans in Congress protested about these hearings' secrecy and said the president was being denied due process.

  • On a party-line vote, the House established impeachment inquiry criteria in October.

Foreign Policy

• Trump's "America First" foreign strategy differed from his predecessors'.

  • The president said that the US will no longer respect the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change because he considered it economically unfair to the US.

  • Despite ecological protests, the US withdrew from this multilateral deal.

• Trump ordered a missile assault on a Syrian air base after the Syrians used chemical weapons on people to boost American credibility abroad.

  • He escalated the fight against ISIL, allowing his commanders greater freedom to target airstrikes. ISIL lost much of Syria and Iraq by late 2017.

• In 2019, American special forces murdered ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

  • The new regime first fought the Taliban in Afghanistan.

  • Trump approved covert Taliban discussions to end a seemingly interminable war.

• In December 2019, these discussions resulted to a peace deal in February 2020 that called for the removal of American and NATO forces in exchange for Taliban-government talks and a prohibition on Taliban assistance for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

• Trump revoked Obama's Iran nuclear deal.

  • Trump and his advisers distrusted Iran's leaders and claimed that their backing of the Syrian government, Yemen's Houthi rebels, and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas showed that they sought Middle East hegemony.

  • Trump sanctioned Iranian officials and entities after ballistic missile testing.

• In May 2018, President Trump withdrew the US from President Obama's Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran on the Iranian nuclear program.

  • Saudi Arabia fought Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen with Trump administration assistance.

• After Iran's provocations in 2019, President Trump eschewed military reprisal.

  • He intensified Iranian sanctions.

  • Trump removed the few American soldiers from the Turkish-Syrian border after Turkey informed the US that it would assault a Kurdish-controlled territory.

  • Critics called this a betrayal of US-Kurdish partners who helped destroy ISIL.

  • Defenders of the president viewed this as another evidence of his reticence to oppose a NATO partner and risk unneeded military deployments elsewhere.

• After Iranian-backed Iraqi militias attacked the American embassy in Baghdad in January 2020, President Trump ordered a drone strike that killed Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Major General Qasem Soleimani.

  • Soleimani led Iran's elite Quds Force in Middle Eastern special operations for years.

  • The president rejected a bipartisan war powers measure to restrict his ability to attack Iran.

• In December 2017, President Trump defied Palestinian resistance and recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, showing his support for Israel.

  • In April 2018, he US Embassy in Jerusalem opened.

  • In March 2019, Trump declared Israeli control over the key Golan Heights.

  • Israel's Arab neighbors became closer due to their common opposition to Iran's activities in Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.

  • The Trump administration recognized this new reality after patient diplomacy.

• In September 2020, the Abraham Accords repaired Israel-UAE and Bahrain ties.

  • Sudan and Morocco repaired relations with Israel later that year.

  • These accords allowed additional Arab nations to recognize Israel.

  • Trump called them a big step toward Middle East peace.

• North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile tests and threats to strike the US raised tensions early in the presidency.

  • Kim Jong-un and Trump argued.

  • Trump and his national security staff said they would not let North Korea develop nuclear weapons.

  • Quiet diplomacy followed public vitriol.

• In June 2018, President Trump and Kim Jung-un met in Singapore after preliminary conversations.

  • This meeting reduced Korean peninsula tensions.

  • In 2019, the leaders met again without success.

  • North Korea sometimes tested missiles, but conflict became less likely.

• China tensions rose.

  • Starting in the Obama administration, the Chinese built artificial islands to dominate the South China Sea.

  • Chinese military increased throughout Taiwan and accelerated its armament buildup.

  • Chinese and Indian armies clashed in the Himalayas in 2020.

  • Global Chinese economic activities raised concerns.

  • Some observers speculated about a new US-China cold war that may escalate into war.

  • Trump raised military budget to prepare for this.

  • Trump created the US Space Force in December 2019.

• China's trade imbalance replaced strategic concerns.

  • Trade bonded Trump to his working-class base.

  • His followers thought, like the president, that trade partners were unjust to the US.

  • Trump promised to cancel or renegotiate US trade deals.

• NAFTA with Mexico and Canada was one of his local targets.

  • The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was negotiated by the Trump administration.

  • This NAFTA successor was approved in 2020.

• Trump also targeted the US-China trade deficit.

  • He questioned Chinese trade and intellectual property abuses.

  • China retaliated against Trump's tariffs.

  • Trade war fears shook the stock market in the fourth quarter of 2018.

  • Trump predicted a good trade deal with China.

  • A December agreement was signed in January 2020.

  • The "Phase One" trade accord reduced American tariffs on Chinese imports in return for Chinese promises to buy more American goods and solve property rights concerns.

2020

• As 2020 began, the economy was robust, but the political establishment was fixated with President Trump's impeachment.

  • On December 18, 2019, the House of Representatives impeached the president for abuse of authority and obstruction of Congress for his contact with the Ukrainian president concerning the Bidens.

  • All Republicans and three Democrats opposed impeachment.

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn't present the articles of impeachment until January 16.

  • House prosecutors and President Trump's defense attorneys argued in the Republican-controlled Senate.

  • There were no witnesses or subpoenas.

  • On February 5, the president was acquitted.

  • Except for Republican Senator Mitt Romney, who voted against Trump on the abuse of power accusation, the votes were predictably contentious and fell short of the two-thirds majority required to convict.

  • Due to fresh issues, the impeachment crisis was quickly forgotten and did not affect the autumn election.

• While Congress and the president fought over impeachment, a deadly epidemic spread in Wuhan, China.

  • By January 2020, US health authorities were worried that COVID-19 might spread.

  • On January 29, President Trump created a White House Coronavirus Task Force, and on January 31, he imposed contentious travel restrictions to and from China. These sanctions were eventually extended to other nations.

• Despite this, the US virus spread.

  • Elderly and immunocompromised persons were at risk.

  • The president advised against needless travel and big meetings in March to reduce COVID-19 instances in hospitals.

  • State governors closed companies and schools.

  • Churches, sports stadiums, restaurants, specialized stores, and other public areas were closed or severely restricted in attendance.

  • Masks and social distance become normal for Americans.

  • 20 million people lost their jobs in the first shutdowns, resulting in an unemployment rate of around 15%.

  • It was the greatest employment loss since the Great Depression.

  • Many tiny enterprises closed.

  • The government spent 2.5 trillion dollars for COVID-19 assistance.

• Later in the year, the economy recovered.

  • In the summer, some shutdowns were removed, but a fall illness increase tightened restrictions.

  • States like Florida and South Dakota had less COVID-19 shutdowns than New York, California, Illinois, and Michigan.

  • By 2020, the CDC recorded over 300,000 COVID-19 fatalities in the US.

  • In May, President Trump established Operation Warp Speed, a government-private sector cooperation to produce COVID19 drugs.

  • By December, two COVID-19 vaccines were approved, and the first shots were given on December 14.

• A spate of police shootings during the COVID-19 outbreak raised racial and socioeconomic tensions.

  • Breonna Taylor was killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police during a nighttime search warrant in March.

  • In late May, a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer choked George Floyd to death.

  • The killings of Taylor, Floyd, and others sparked summer unrest throughout the US, which lingered in some areas like Portland, Oregon, into the autumn.

  • 19 individuals died in the fighting.

  • In Minneapolis, property damage reached $200 million.

  • Protests were typically led by BLM and Antifa.

  • A nationwide anti-racism campaign grew.

  • Many activists advocated defunding the police and funding other social services.

  • Numerous police took a lower profile, which may have led to a rise in crime in many locations.

  • Chicago had 800 murders at year's end.

• Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on September 18, 2020, after a protracted battle with pancreatic cancer.

  • Despite Democrats' objections, President Trump and Senate Republicans named a successor.

  • Amy Coney Barrett was nominated by the president.

  • This conservative judge was opposed by Democrats and backed by most Republicans, as expected.

  • She was confirmed on October 26, with pro-choice Republican Susan Collins voting against her.

  • Trump's third Supreme Court nominee was Barrett.

• Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination easily.

  • Mike Pence was his running partner.

• The most electable Democratic presidential contender, former Vice President Joe Biden, emerged from a crowded field.

  • He picked Senator Kamala Harris for vice president.

  • Harris was the first Jamaican-Indian woman nominated for this high post. Campaigning was disrupted by COVID-19.

• At 77, Biden was especially susceptible to the infection.

  • He conducted a front porch campaign from his house and sometimes appeared elsewhere.

• Trump addressed enormous throngs of passionate fans.

  • He had the infection but recovered rapidly.

  • The candidates spoke nothing positive about one other.

• Trump caused the pandemic's suffering.

  • Biden was called crooked and old by the president.

• The 2020 election was strongly impacted by the epidemic.

  • Mail-in voting increased vote counting and verification issues due to concerns about conventional voting's safety.

  • The election was tight in key battleground states.

  • President Trump received more votes than in 2016.

  • He fared better than any Republican presidential contender in winning African-American and Hispanic votes.

  • Down ticket, Republicans won many House seats and state legislative seats.

  • The Republicans initially maintained Senate control, but a January run-off election in Georgia gave the Democrats authority there.

• As significant counting delays, Joe Biden won after Trump's early advantages disappeared.

  • Trump earned 232 electoral votes against Biden's 306.

  • Trump and millions of his fans believed fraud cost him the election.

  • Numerous but unproven claims regarding late-night vote dumps, questionable conduct by certain Democratic election workers, and extraordinarily impressive Biden vote totals in Democratic strongholds in crucial battleground states strengthened this notion.

  • Democrats noted that Trump had exceptionally high unfavorable ratings with various groups and that they had turned out their votes better.

  • Trump's legal objections, primarily procedural, were rejected by the courts.

• President Trump did not concede defeat until the electoral vote certification on January 6, 2021.

  • In Washington, DC, he told tens of thousands of his supporters that he would never give up.

• The certification procedure was disrupted when hundreds of protestors stormed the Capitol.

  • Capitol police shot a lady, killing five.

  • After clearing, the structure was secured.

  • Many blamed President Trump for the Capitol assault, even though he asked his fans to go home quietly.

  • Despite Republican protests, Congress validated Joe Biden's election early on January 7.

• 2021 began with uncertainty in the US.

  • Joe Biden would lead a fractured country still recovering from COVID-19.

  • Donald Trump's reluctance to capitulate and language that led to the Capitol break-in alienated many Americans, but he still had millions of committed and outraged fans.

Summary Reviewer: AP US History