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Every Year Around This Time, Breaking News Breaks Us
A timeline of the worst news period of the year, starting in 2016
It’s not just you. For the past four years, the kind of breaking news that wakes you at 4 a.m. and makes your heart drop has taken place in late September and early October.
But recently, it’s all seemed so much worse, right? Here’s a trip down memory lane of the soul-crushing news events that seem to happen, like a curse, every year around this time. And yes, it all began in 2016.
2019
September 24: Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the House of Representatives will begin a formal impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. A whistleblower alleged that the president withheld $400 million in aid to Ukraine in a quid pro quo move to pressure the Ukrainian president to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden.
2018
September 27: Christine Blasey Ford testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about her sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
October 2: Journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered by Saudi assassins at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.
October 6: The Senate votes to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
2017
September 20: Hurricane Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico.
September 25: The Trump administration adds eight new countries to an indefinite travel ban: Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen.
September 26: Roy Moore wins the GOP Senate primary in an Alabama runoff election.
September 26: The Senate GOP abandons a vote to replace Obamacare.
September 28: Trump unveils his plan for tax reform.
October 1: Stephen Paddock opens fire on the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas strip, killing 60 and wounding 411—the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in American history.
October 4: Trump visits Puerto Rico for five hours two weeks after Hurricane Maria made landfall; he throws paper towels to a crowd at a relief center.
October 5: Harvey Weinstein investigation published in the New York Times.
