Donald Trump

What it is

Donald Trump is the 45th and 47th President of the United States, born June 14, 1946, in Queens, New York. He is the only person in US history to serve non-consecutive presidential terms in the modern era, a distinction last held by Grover Cleveland (22nd and 24th president) in the 19th century. His first term ran January 20, 2017 to January 20, 2021; his second began January 20, 2025, following a decisive Electoral College win over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. He commands the Republican Party's populist-nationalist wing and governs from a theory of expansive executive authority that the US Supreme Court has, in significant part, affirmed during his second term.

History

Trump graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and built a Manhattan real estate portfolio under the Trump Organization. NBC's "The Apprentice," where he served as executive producer and host from 2004 to 2015, extended his brand into mass media. He announced his presidential candidacy in June 2015 and won the 2016 US election, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton 306 to 232 in the Electoral College. His first term produced the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, three US Supreme Court appointments (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett), and US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris Agreement, and the Iran nuclear deal. The US House impeached him twice: December 2019 on Ukraine-related charges and January 2021 on incitement following the January 6 assault on the US Capitol. The US Senate acquitted him both times. He lost the November 2020 election to Joe Biden by 232 to 306 Electoral College votes, declined to concede, and returned to win the 2024 US election by a wider margin.

Current state

In his second term, Trump imposed a baseline 10% tariff on all US imports effective April 5, 2025, with higher reciprocal rates applied to targeted trading partners, most consequentially China. He established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by executive order on January 20, 2025, which conducted sweeping federal workforce reductions. In June 2026, the US launched military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities; US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner conducted ceasefire negotiations in Doha that concluded July 2. The US Senate passed a defense reconciliation bill June 30, funding the war supplemental. The US Supreme Court has also ruled in his favor on presidential removal authority over independent agencies, birthright citizenship, and campaign finance law.

Relationships

Trump's principal interlocutors in his second term: Vice President JD Vance; Witkoff and Kushner as diplomatic envoys; Senate Majority Leader John Thune, whose Republican caucus passed the defense supplemental over Democratic objections. Relations with NATO allies are under strain. Trump publicly accused European partners of failing to contribute combat forces during the Iran strikes, a dispute that frames the NATO summit in Ankara, July 2 to 3. His administration's relationship with the US judiciary is structurally cooperative: six conservative justices on the US Supreme Court, three appointed by Trump himself, have delivered repeated rulings expanding executive and Republican-party authority.

What to watch

• Whether the Iran ceasefire holds and what terms Washington accepts on uranium enrichment, which will define the strategic outcome of the June 2026 strikes.
• The Ankara NATO summit: whether Trump uses the gathering to extract formal burden-sharing commitments from European allies or accepts a face-saving compromise.
• Lower-court implementation of the US Supreme Court's birthright citizenship ruling and the legal challenges expected to follow.
• Final passage of the defense reconciliation package through conference committee, which will set US military spending levels for the remainder of the second term.