Early in President Trump’s first term, McSweeney’s editors began to catalog the head-spinning number of misdeeds coming from his administration. We called this list a collection of Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes, and it felt urgent to track them, to ensure these horrors—happening almost daily—would not be forgotten. Now that Trump has returned to office, amid civil rights, humanitarian, economic, and constitutional crises, we felt it critical to make an inventory of this new round of horrors. This list will be updated monthly between now and the end of Donald Trump’s second term.
– – –
These lists, along with everything McSweeney’s publishes on this site, are offered ad-free and at no charge to our readers. If you are moved to make a donation in any amount or subscribe to our website’s Patreon, please do. This will help support this project and our other work.
– – –
ATROCITY KEY
– Authoritarianism
– Constitutional Illegalities, Collusion, and/or Obstruction of Justice
– Environment
– Harassment, Bullying, Retribution, and/or Sexual Misconduct
– Lies and Misinformation
– Musk Madness
– Policy
– Public Statements and Social Media Posts
– Trump Family Business Dealings
– Trump Staff and Administration
– White Supremacy, Racism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Transphobia, and/or Xenophobia
– – –
– – –
May 2026
- – May 1, 2026 – In the months since Congress let Obamacare subsidies expire, many have dropped their health care coverage. Enrollment fell by 1.2 million, and insurers estimated that approximately 5 million had lost their coverage. The Wakely Consulting Group estimated that marketplace coverage would fall by 26 percent this year compared to last year. Despite the massive coverage losses, Trump administration officials continued to paint a rosy view. “The marketplace remains strong and resilient, continuing to provide millions of Americans with access to high-quality, affordable health care coverage options,” said Chris Krepich, an official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
- – May 1, 2026 – Making good on Trump’s earlier threat, the Pentagon announced it would withdraw five thousand troops from Germany in the next year, with Trump promising further withdrawals. The announcement came several days after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the war in Iran. Republican chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees said they were “very concerned.”
- – May 1, 2026 – Trump mocked a transgender weightlifter in a speech delivered to a Florida retirement community. After performing an impression of the weightlifter, Trump admitted that the first lady had asked him not to do it. “She hates it when I do the thing on weightlifting,” Trump said. “She says it’s so unpresidential.”
Donald Trump Seen Mocking and Mimicking Transgender Weightlifters (News18)
- – May 1, 2026 – Construction to expand Trump’s border wall bulldozed an ancient tribal site in the Arizona desert. Ignoring environmental laws and other protections, the construction crew damaged a more than two-hundred-foot-long ground etching resembling a fish that was thought to be at least one thousand years old. “There are very few intaglios in this area, so by losing part of it, it’s a big deal,” said Sandra Martynec, an archaeologist who discovered the intaglio in archaeological surveys of the area along with her husband, Richard Martynec, also an archaeologist. “Those things were made by our ancestors, and it’s hitting home.… For me, it’s an emotional subject,” added Lorraine Marquez Eiler, an elder of the Hia C-ed O’odham Indigenous people.
- – May 1, 2026 – In its push to create a national directory of health care providers, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services exposed providers’ Social Security numbers and other identifying information. The information was publicly available for several weeks. “The more we learn about how the Trump administration handles the people’s most sensitive data, the clearer their incompetence becomes,” said Democratic Representative Richard E. Neal, who called on Republicans to launch an investigation.
- – May 1, 2026 – Trump posted multiple AI-generated photos to Truth Social, including an image of himself, his face visibly superimposed onto a more muscular body, floating shirtless in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and an unidentified bikini-clad woman. In another post, Trump shared a photo of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, and called Jeffries “low IQ” and a “thug.”
- – May 3, 2026 – Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the Trump administration’s prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. Comey had posted a photo of seashells spelling out “86 47,” a phrase prosecutors characterized as a threat to remove or kill the forty-seventh president. Blanche conceded that the phrase was “posted constantly” and said, “Every one of those statements do not result in indictments.” He declined to describe the additional evidence that made Comey’s case different.
- – May 4, 2026 – The Trump administration ordered federal lands across the country to eliminate dozens of hunting and trapping restrictions designed to protect visitors, habitats, and wildlife. Critics said the move appeared to violate the National Park Service’s duty under the 1916 Organic Act to conserve park resources “unimpaired” for future generations. The memo directing the changes did not call for analysis, public engagement, or review of whether the rollbacks would leave parks unimpaired, while the rules targeted for repeal included restrictions on firing weapons near trails, leaving animal carcasses, and cleaning game animals in public restrooms.
- – May 4, 2026 – The Department of Homeland Security publicly attacked a federal judge for releasing an immigrant detainee whom the agency later said was wanted for homicide in the Dominican Republic. Government lawyer Kevin Bolan later revealed that ICE had instructed him not to disclose the overseas charge to the court before the hearing, even as the administration subsequently publicized the same allegation to attack the judge’s ruling. Calling the episode “a serious breakdown in the ethical codes,” Judge Melissa DuBose said there had been “a decision made not to be truthful to the court.” Internal emails later showed that an ICE lawyer had explicitly directed Bolan to “not confirm or deny the existence” of the warrant.
- – May 4, 2026 – Fulton County, Georgia, revealed in a court filing that the Justice Department had subpoenaed the names, positions, email addresses, and personal phone numbers of thousands of people who helped administer the county’s 2020 election. The county moved to block the subpoena, arguing that its purpose was to “target, harass, and punish” Trump’s perceived political opponents. The filing noted that Trump had “obsessively propagated the debunked conspiracy theory that Fulton County ‘stole’ the 2020 election from him” and had called for Ruby Freeman and top Georgia officials to be prosecuted for “the political crime of the century.” Two days later, a federal judge declined to order the return of roughly 660 boxes of 2020 election records seized by the FBI from Fulton County in January, allowing the Justice Department to retain ballots, voter rolls, and scanner images while its investigation continued. The judge described aspects of the case as “troubling” and “unprecedented” but ruled that the county had not shown the government acted with “callous disregard” for its constitutional rights.
- – May 4, 2026 – Senate Republicans released an immigration-enforcement bill that included $1 billion for security upgrades tied to Trump’s East Wing renovation. The money was added to a roughly $70 billion package for ICE, border patrol, and related enforcement spending, even though Republicans had sought to keep the bill limited to immigration measures so it could move quickly before Trump’s June 1 deadline. The funding could help clear legal obstacles to Trump’s planned ballroom, which a federal judge had ruled required congressional approval, despite Trump’s earlier claim that the project would be privately funded.
- – May 4, 2026 – At a Small Business Week event the White House billed as “the extraordinary revival of Main Street under his America First agenda,” Trump said tax and regulation cuts had produced “record business” and declared that the economy was “roaring.” At the time, gas prices had risen by more than a dollar per gallon from the previous year, diesel prices were up by roughly two dollars per gallon, and debt held by the public had surpassed the size of the entire US economy for the first time since World War II. The Congressional Budget Office projected that Trump’s tax package would add trillions to federal deficits while increasing interest costs by another $551 billion over the next decade.
- – May 5, 2026 – Trump paused Project Freedom, the US mission to guide commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz, a day after announcing it. The reversal came hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the mission, saying Iran’s control of the waterway was “completely illegal, completely illegitimate, and completely unacceptable” and that the US military was “putting an end to these efforts to hold the global economy hostage.” Before Trump suspended the operation, only three ships had made the passage under US military protection, compared to roughly 130 vessels a day before the war, while roughly 1,600 vessels remained stranded.
- – May 5, 2026 – Palm Beach County approved a licensing agreement with the Trump Organization to use the name “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” clearing the way for the renaming of Palm Beach International Airport. The Trump Organization had previously trademarked the airport name, along with the proposed airport code “DJT,” and sought trademark protection for related merchandise. While the agreement barred the Trump family from profiting off merchandise sold at the airport itself, it did not prevent the company from profiting from such merchandise sold elsewhere. The deal also gave the Trump Organization control over biographical material presented at the airport and required officials to select merchandise vendors from a list approved by the company. A trademark lawyer described the arrangement as “extremely unusual.”
- – May 5, 2026 – The White House marked Cinco de Mayo by posting an AI-generated image of House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wearing sombreros at the US-Mexico border. The two were depicted drinking margaritas beside tortilla chips, dip, a potted cactus, and a sign reading, “I LOVE ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.” The image was captioned, “Happy Cinco de Mayo to all who celebrate!” It echoed a 2025 Trump video that depicted Jeffries with a fake mustache and sombrero while mariachi music played in the background. At the time, Vice President JD Vance had joked that “the sombrero memes will stop” if Jeffries helped Republicans reopen the government.
- – May 6, 2026 – The White House released a new national counterterrorism strategy drafted by adviser Sebastian Gorka that omitted far-right extremism entirely. The strategy instead elevated “violent leftists” to a threat on par with foreign terrorist organizations, despite federal authorities having for years identified white-supremacist and other racially motivated extremists as among the country’s most active and lethal domestic terrorist threats. The document described Christians as “the most persecuted people on Earth” and called for the “neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”
- – May 6, 2026 – Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick spent hours before the House Oversight Committee defending his ties to Jeffrey Epstein after Justice Department records contradicted his previous public statements. Lutnick had said in 2025 that after an uncomfortable encounter with Epstein in 2005, he was never again “in the room” with him socially, professionally, or philanthropically. But records released from the Epstein files showed that Lutnick and his family visited Epstein’s private island in 2012, four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor, and continued to have other contacts with him. House Oversight Committee chair James Comer acknowledged that Lutnick “wasn’t 100 percent truthful” about whether he had been on the island. Weeks later, campaign finance filings revealed that Lutnick had donated $5 million to a super PAC backing House Republicans after agreeing to testify before the committee and before his May 6 appearance.
- – May 7, 2026 – ProPublica found that at least seventy-nine children had been harmed by tear gas or pepper spray during Trump’s immigration crackdown, including children exposed while walking to school, sitting in cars, and sheltering inside their homes. Federal judges in multiple cities had described ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers’ use of chemical weapons as excessive, with one judge writing that “tear-gassing expectant mothers, children, and babies shocks the conscience.” The Department of Homeland Security defended its agents, laying the blame on “agitators” and parents who brought children into dangerous situations.
- – May 7, 2026 – A White House panel appointed by Trump recommended overhauling FEMA by shifting more disaster costs and responsibilities to states, limiting the agency’s role in long-term recovery and housing assistance, and privatizing the National Flood Insurance Program. The panel rejected Trump’s earlier suggestion that FEMA should “go away” altogether but argued that federal disaster aid should be reserved for “truly significant events” and that states had become too reliant on federal funding. The recommendations came as forecasters warned that a developing El Niño could increase the risk of extreme weather in the months ahead.
- – May 7, 2026 – Tennessee Republicans approved a new congressional map designed to eliminate the state’s last Democratic House seat by splitting majority-Black Memphis among three districts. Governor Bill Lee signed the map after a special session he called at Trump’s urging, part of a broader Republican redistricting push ahead of the midterms. The map was the first enacted after the Supreme Court weakened what remained of the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial gerrymandering; State Representative Jason Zachary said the goal was an all-Republican delegation: “We’re taking advantage of that as the supermajority in this body.”
Tennessee Democrats Lock Arms in Protest as State Lawmakers Vote for New Congressional Map (PBS News Hour)
- – May 7, 2026 – The Trump administration lifted a ban on the use of “cyanide bombs” on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The devices, also known as M-44s, spray a lethal dose of sodium cyanide when triggered and are used to kill coyotes, foxes, and other predators that threaten livestock. The Biden administration had banned them in 2023 over safety concerns, citing several incidents in which the devices harmed people and pets. In one 2017 incident in Idaho, an M-44 placed on public land four hundred feet from a family’s home killed their dog and temporarily blinded a fourteen-year-old boy.
- – May 7, 2026 – Trump pushed to have the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building painted white so it would better match the White House and his planned ballroom. Painting, cleaning, and preserving the granite building, which was constructed between 1871 and 1888 and houses hundreds of federal workers, would cost an estimated $7.5 million. During a public comment period, the proposal drew overwhelmingly negative feedback, including from Margo Steinberg, a historic preservation official who called it “an absolute disgrace” and “such a stupid idea.” Trump had previously displayed a rendering of the building on Fox News, saying, “Look at that, how beautiful that is with a coat of paint,” and adding that “gray is for funerals.”
- – May 7, 2026 – The Justice Department subpoenaed NYU Langone Health for information about patients under eighteen who received gender-affirming care between 2020 and 2026, as well as the names of medical staff members who provided it. The subpoena came from the US attorney’s office in the Northern District of Texas, even though NYU Langone is based in New York, where state law required the hospital to notify the attorney general before complying. Trump had previously signed an executive order describing transition care for minors as “maiming and sterilizing” children, and last year the FBI asked the public to report doctors who “mutilate” children “under the guise of gender-affirming care.”
- – May 8, 2026 – The Postal Service moved to allow handguns to be sent through the mail after Trump’s Justice Department declared a 1927 law restricting the practice unconstitutional. The proposal would let people ship unloaded, securely packaged handguns under the same rules that apply to rifles and shotguns. Attorneys general from twenty-one jurisdictions objected that the administration had no authority to set aside a law passed by Congress.
- – May 10, 2026 – The Washington Post reported that the US deported a twenty-eight-year-old woman who had fled genital mutilation in Togo to neighboring Ghana. Although a US judge had ruled that the Trump administration could not deport the woman to Togo, she was eventually taken there after spending two weeks in Ghana. The Post found that the Trump administration had also deported hundreds of others to countries they were not from in what are known as “third-country deportations.” “I know God is with me, but I’m tired. I’m a human being. I have to live, like everybody else,” said the woman, who was in hiding.
- – May 10, 2026 – Kevin Gonzalez, 18, died hours after seeing his parents, who were released just a day earlier from immigration custody. Earlier this year, Gonzalez was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer in Chicago, where he remained to receive treatment. When his parents crossed the border from Mexico to see him in mid-April, they were detained and moved to an immigration center in Arizona. Gonzalez subsequently went to live with his grandmother in Mexico as a legal battle unfolded to secure his parents’ release. After his parents were granted an expedited release on May 8, they raced to see their son, who died just hours after the family was reunited.
- – May 11, 2026 – The Wall Street Journal said it had received Department of Justice subpoenas on March 4 for its reporters’ records in connection with media leaks related to the Iran war. The subpoenas referred to a February 23 Journal article that stated General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other Pentagon officials had warned Trump about the risks of war with Iran. The Journal’s parent company, Dow Jones, called the subpoenas “an attack on constitutionally protected newsgathering.”
- – May 11, 2026 – In a flurry of late-night Truth Social posts, Trump reposted several posts by other users baselessly accusing former President Barack Obama of treason and calling for his arrest. One post called Obama “the most DEMONIC FORCE in American politics in decades”; another said that Hillary Clinton should be deported to Haiti. Others made false claims about the 2020 election, called for other political opponents to be jailed, and attacked The New York Times.
- – May 12, 2026 – When asked whether Americans’ dire financial situations were motivating him to negotiate a deal…
