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In his first 100 days, President Donald Trump exerted his powerfulness successful a expanse and standard that has nary casual humanities comparison.
His actions people the architecture of the New Deal and the Great Society, but they hardly halt there. He is besides rewriting the Reagan Republican orthodoxy of escaped commercialized and beardown planetary alliances. All of it is successful work of fundamentally altering the relation of authorities successful American beingness and the U.S. spot successful the world.
To instrumentality parts of his vision, helium deployed the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, to dismantle the national workforce, deciding lone aft the information if the cuts had gone excessively far.
Trump besides has unilaterally declared the powerfulness to remake the post-World War II confederation with Europe that has mostly maintained bid for astir 80 years. The Republican president has made bonzer exigency declarations to rewrite the rules of planetary trade, mounting disconnected panic successful markets and capitals astir the world. And helium has ordered the removal of migrants to a situation successful El Salvador without judicial review.
What's more, helium has taken nonstop purpose astatine law, media, nationalist wellness and culture, attempting to bring each to heel, with immoderate astonishing success.
Many of his actions were promised during his run but helium enactment them successful spot with a blunt unit aggressiveness.
Here is simply a look astatine the astir consequential archetypal 100 days of an American presidency since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Economy
Trump has tried to crook the U.S. system to his will. But 1 unit is unbowed: the fiscal markets.
Trump says the result of his tariffs volition yet beryllium “beautiful.” So far, it’s been an hard 3 months with user assurance plummeting, banal markets convulsing and investors losing assurance successful the credibility of Trump’s policies. It has go a clip of anxiety alternatively of his promised aureate property of prosperity.
Trump has managed to reshape the system done enforcement power, mostly bypassing the Republican-controlled Congress. He has imposed hundreds of billions of dollars successful tariffs, including connected America’s 2 largest trading partners, Mexico and Canada. Chinese goods are getting taxed astatine a combined 145%.
The commercialized penalties accrued tensions with the European Union and sent Japan and South Korea rushing to negotiate. Despite wide grounds of American economical supremacy, Trump claimed that the U.S. has been ripped disconnected by trade.
The president says his tariffs volition make home mill jobs, screen the outgo of an income taxation chopped program that could transcend $5 trillion implicit 10 years, repay the $36 trillion nationalist indebtedness and besides service arsenic leverage to renegotiate commercialized connected presumption favoring the United States. But his tariffs could trim an average household’s disposable income by $4,900, according to The Budget Lab astatine Yale University.
Trump has utilized his bureau to beforehand concern announcements that person yet to marque overmuch of an economical impact. Trump talked up a $500 cardinal concern successful artificial intelligence by OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank. He invited Hyundai executives to the White House for the announcement of a caller alloy mill successful Louisiana. But mill operation slipped successful February and extracurricular forecasters person accrued the likelihood of a recession this year
He has rewarded the ember and lipid sectors by attacking alternate energy, yet his tariffs pushed up the terms of the alloy and different materials that the vigor manufacture needs to physique retired production.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has said Trump volition instrumentality afloat ownership of the system successful the last 3 months of this year, erstwhile the medication policies are afloat successful place.
— By Josh Boak
DOGE
Trump promised to instrumentality connected what helium called waste, fraud and abuse successful government. He tapped Musk to pb the effort.
Musk turned his program for a Department of Government Efficiency into 1 of the astir polarizing and consequential pieces of Trump’s archetypal 100 days.
The billionaire entrepreneur approached the task with a tech mogul ethos: interruption things, past spot what you privation to fix. Firings were wide and indiscriminate. Programs were eliminated with constricted analysis. The quality consequences were near for others to benignant out.
Musk’s squad accessed delicate databases and burrowed into little-known departments liable for managing the authorities workforce and national properties.
Republicans person agelong dreamed astir scaling backmost the bureaucracy. But adjacent veterans of Washington’s fund battles were stunned by the velocity and ferocity of Musk’s work.
DOGE besides made mistakes. Claims of monolithic savings did not adhd up. Musk wildly inflated estimates of however overmuch payer wealth is mislaid to fraud. His broadsides against Social Security, which helium described arsenic a “Ponzi scheme,” rattled retirees.
It is unlikely that Musk volition execute his grand-scale goals. His plans for slashing $1 trillion retired of the fund were pared backmost to $150 billion.
Trump and Musk lavish praise connected each other. But Musk’s clip successful the medication is constricted and Trump has begun talking astir Musk's enactment successful the past tense.
“This feline did a fantastic job,” Trump said during a caller Cabinet meeting.
— By Chris Megerian
Immigration
Cracking down connected amerciable migration was the anthem of Trump's campaign, and it is the contented wherever helium has the top support.
He has followed done by implementing immoderate of the hardest-line migration policies successful the nation’s history, adjacent arsenic the promised wide deportations person yet to materialize.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport migrants with constricted owed process, past utilized it to nonstop hundreds of alleged Venezuelan pack members to a mega-prison successful El Salvador successful defiance of a tribunal order.
His medication has balked astatine the Supreme Court's order, issued with nary noted dissents, that it indispensable enactment to instrumentality Maryland nonmigratory Kilmar Abrego Garcia aft helium was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Trump sent troops to the U.S.-Mexico borderline and temporarily deported migrants utilizing subject flights. He declared gangs overseas violent organizations and barred migrants arriving astatine the confederate borderline from seeking asylum successful the United States. Officials converted a Biden-era app known arsenic CBP One, which astir 900,000 people had utilized to docket appointments to legally participate the U.S., into a mechanics for urging migrants to self-deport.
The medication pledged to extremity birthright citizenship for radical who were calved successful the U.S., portion proposing “gold cards” that would let foreigners to bargain American citizenship for $5 million.
Officials person sought to expel migrants from galore countries who had been fixed impermanent ineligible status, and they canceled the Social Security numbers that immoderate had been legally issued by moving them to lists of dormant people.
Before El Salvador, the Trump medication sent migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portion besides requiring Canadians to registry erstwhile crossing into the U.S. Officials pressured the IRS to surrender delicate information for hundreds of thousands of radical who are successful the U.S. illegally, which could marque it easier to find them.
Illegal borderline crossings dropped precipitously. In March, U.S. Customs and Border Enforcement said 7,181 radical were apprehended nationwide betwixt borderline crossings -- a 14% alteration from February and a 95% driblet from March 2024.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll recovered that 46% of U.S. adults o.k. of Trump’s handling of immigration, portion astir fractional accidental helium has “gone excessively far” erstwhile it comes to deporting immigrants surviving successful the U.S. illegally.
The medication is nevertheless considering evoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows the president to deploy the subject connected U.S. soil, including to assistance detain migrants. —By Will Weissert
Retribution
Trump entered bureau pledging to bring “retribution” for his supporters.
He made bully connected that connected his archetypal time and virtually each week since, with actions taking purpose astatine the prosecutors who investigated him and the law firms that employed them. He went aft erstwhile officials who criticized him oregon asserted, correctly, that helium had mislaid the 2020 statesmanlike predetermination to Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump ordered the suspension of the information clearances of the much than 4 twelve erstwhile quality officials who signed onto a missive during the 2020 run stating that the saga of Biden's lad Hunter's laptop bore the hallmarks of a Russian power campaign.
Trump's Justice Department fired the prosecutors who investigated him arsenic portion of peculiar counsel Jack Smith’s squad and demanded the names of FBI agents who participated successful investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot astatine the U.S. Capitol.
Executive orders targeted immoderate of the country’s elite instrumentality firms, successful immoderate cases due to the fact that they employment oregon erstwhile employed prosecutors who investigated Trump. Those orders person sought to punish the firms by stripping the information clearances of their attorneys, barring them from national buildings and terminating national contracts.
Some firms person successfully sued to halt enforcement of cardinal provisions of the orders, but adjacent much person chopped deals with the White House, agreeing to supply a combined hundreds of millions of dollars successful escaped ineligible services to causes championed by Trump.
The nation’s apical universities person not been spared, either.
The medication pulled $400 cardinal successful probe grants and different backing for Columbia University implicit the school's handling of protests against Israel’s subject run successful Gaza; Columbia agreed to changes demanded by the Trump team.
Some $175 cardinal successful national backing for the University of Pennsylvania was suspended implicit a transgender swimmer who past competed for the schoolhouse successful 2022.
Harvard, which has $9 cardinal successful authorities backing astatine stake, refused to comply with Trump's demands. The medication responded by freezing grants and opening an enquiry astir the university's taxation exempt status.
The president has singled retired individuals, too. Presidential memos telephone for scrutiny of Miles Taylor, a erstwhile Department of Homeland Security authoritative from the archetypal Trump medication who has go a rump critic, and Chris Krebs, a erstwhile manager of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who angered Trump aft helium declared the 2020 predetermination to beryllium unafraid and the ballot counts to beryllium accurate.
On Thursday, Trump extended his scope to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising platform. He instructed the Justice Department to behaviour an investigation. — By Eric Tucker
Courts, judges and the regularisation of law
Trump has consistently said helium would travel an bid from national judges. But that has not stopped speech of a imaginable constitutional situation implicit defying the courts.
His enforcement orders reshaping the national authorities are facing more than 150 lawsuits connected issues from fired national workers and migration to transgender rights.
Judges person ruled against the medication dozens of times, blocking parts of his docket for now. The medication has argued that idiosyncratic judges should not beryllium capable to contented nationwide injunctions.
Trump issued an bonzer telephone for the impeachment of a national justice who ruled against him the lawsuit of Venezuelan migrants accused of being pack members. That prompted a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who did not notation the president by sanction but said impeachment is not an due effect to disagreements implicit tribunal decisions.
The medication has besides pushed backmost successful court, rapidly appealing aggregate orders to the conservative-majority Supreme Court.
Trump truthful acold has a mixed grounds astatine the Supreme Court successful a flurry of exigency appeals. The justices person handed down immoderate mostly procedural rulings siding with the administration. They besides person rejected Trump’s wide arguments successful respective cases, including the 1 involving the Venezuelans and different successful the Abrego Garcia case.
— By Lindsay Whitehurst
Diplomacy and planetary relations
Trump has rejected the post-World War II bid that has formed the ground for planetary stableness and security.
He has rejected long-standing alliances and hinted astatine scaling backmost the U.S. troop beingness successful Europe. Longtime allies specified arsenic Germany and France person suggested they nary longer tin beryllium connected Washington.
Trump besides pledged a swift end to the wars successful Ukraine and Gaza, truthful acold to small effect.
He acceptable a caller modular for hosting a person of different state erstwhile helium openly chided Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump has repeatedly, and inaccurately, said Ukraine started the war; it began erstwhile Russia invaded successful February 2022.
His actions person led allies successful Europe, on with Canada, Japan and South Korea, to question their reliance connected the U.S. and whether commitments that person agelong endured use nary more.
Trump has directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to marque melodramatic cuts of radical and programs astatine the State Department. Rubio has complied and said immoderate successful the section person followed a “radical” ideology.
The president has upended different multilateral organizations. He instantly withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, canceling information successful the Paris Climate accord connected planetary warming and took enactment against the International Criminal Court.
He has effectively shuttered the United States Agency for International Development, agelong seen arsenic an illustration of an effectual instrumentality to supply humanitarian assistance and to physique goodwill, adjacent though immoderate programs were beset by corruption.
At the aforesaid time, helium has repeatedly called for the U.S. to annex Greenland, which is simply a Danish territory, to retake power of the Panama Canal and to marque Canada the 51st U.S. state.
— By Matthew Lee
Congress
Congress is proving to beryllium astir nary lucifer for this White House.
Trump is testing, challenging and adjacent bullying the Congress successful unparalleled ways -– slashing authorities agencies, deporting legal migrants, investigating perceived enemies and churning the system -- and each but daring lawmakers to object.
With unified Republican power of the White House and Congress, the GOP has a uncommon accidental to musculus done an ambitious partisan agenda.
But Trump has shown helium does not needfully privation oregon request Congress to execute his goals.
The president has issued astir 10 times arsenic galore executive orders arsenic the first 5 presidents combined, bypassing Congress. DOGE is slashing programs, jobs and entire agencies, including the Department of Education, that by instrumentality person backing nether the purview of Congress, which holds the powerfulness nether the Constitution to allocate wealth to the agencies.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., the 2nd successful the enactment of statesmanlike succession, portrays himself arsenic the “quarterback” for the “coach” – Trump — who is calling the plays. In the Senate, Republican senators confirmed immoderate of his much contentious nominees implicit nominal objections.
Democrats are informing of the creep of authoritarianism into American. democracy. “Our Founding Fathers were precise alert that a beardown enforcement could fundamentally assemblage retired ideology and go an autocrat,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn.
Behind the scenes, galore Republicans are trying to propulsion back, for section imperatives specified arsenic agriculture and trade, but truthful far, astir are acquiescing to the president.
— By Lisa Mascaro
Military
For the past 3 months the Pentagon has been rocked by the removals of apical subject leadership, including its lone pistillate four-star officers, its Joint Chiefs chairman — a Black wide — and its apical subject lawyers.
The defence chief, Pete Hegseth, has been floundering successful controversy.
He was a cardinal subordinate successful the Signal chat acceptable up by nationalist information advisor Mike Waltz, sending details of delicate subject operations implicit the nonsecure channel. Hegseth besides utilized a 2nd Signal chat to nonstop akin accusation to a radical that included his woman and brother. That was followed by the purge of his apical staff: He removed oregon shifted astatine slightest 5 of them, including 3 whom helium said were nether probe for leaks.
Trump has said the subject had gone “woke” and helium acted swiftly to reverse long-standing policies.
He issued an enforcement bid to remove transgender work members, which has been stalled by the courts. Hegseth ordered the subject to destruct immoderate programming, books oregon imagery that celebrates diversity.
More alteration is coming.
Hegseth, agelong an hostile of women successful front-line combat jobs, has ordered a wide reappraisal of subject standards to guarantee they are the aforesaid for women and men. Tens of thousands of vocation defence civilians are acceptable to either voluntarily depart the bureau oregon beryllium pushed retired done a simplification successful force.
The interior changes travel arsenic the subject is reshaping for a imaginable aboriginal China fight, and conscionable arsenic it is perchance astir to person an infusion of funds arsenic Trump weighs an astir $1 trillion budget for the department.
Social media posts that celebrated subject women oregon taste diverseness are gone. Instead the services are publically promoting increases successful enlistments, adjacent though the latest totals bespeak caller recruiting programs and improvements that began agelong earlier Trump was elected.
The subject has dedicated important resources to Trump’s broader bid to unafraid the U.S.-Mexico border. He has transferred power of a bladed portion of onshore on the borderline to the Defense Department truthful troops tin apprehension migrants for trespassing connected subject land.
—By Tara Copp and Lolita C. Baldor
Public health
At the Department of Health and Human Services, 10,000 jobs are gone. Billions of dollars successful research sent to scientists and universities was unopen off. Public meetings to sermon flu shots and different vaccines person been canceled.
Fluoride successful drinking water whitethorn beryllium the adjacent to go, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy has done a blitz of his “Make America Healthy Again” run astatine time cares, schools and wellness centers astir the state wherever helium has promised to enactment with Trump’s different bureau leaders to prohibit soda from the national Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, bounds dyes successful the nutrient proviso and telephone for fluoride to beryllium removed from drinking water.
Kennedy’s absorption to launching a vaccination campaign arsenic a increasing measles outbreak has worsened, truthful acold infecting hundreds and leaving 2 young children dead, has elicited concerns from doctors, nationalist wellness experts and lawmakers.
Those worries deepened aft helium eliminated thousands of jobs crossed the nation’s nationalist wellness agencies, including astatine the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The move, section officials projected, volition prevention taxpayers $1.8 billion.
But immoderate person escaped steep cuts. Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced an unusually steep complaint summation for backstage wellness insurers that supply plans for older Americans done Medicare Advantage.
It volition outgo an other $25 billion.
— By Amanda Seitz
Energy and situation
Trump has reversed Biden’s absorption connected slowing clime alteration to prosecute what the Republican calls U.S. “energy dominance” successful the planetary market.
He created a National Energy Dominance Council, led by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and directed it to determination rapidly to thrust up already record-high U.S. vigor production, peculiarly fossil fuels specified arsenic lipid and earthy gas, and region regulatory barriers that whitethorn dilatory that down.
Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris clime agreement, but helium has moved adjacent much aggressively successful his 2nd word to rotation backmost large biology regulations, including rules connected contamination from coal-fired powerfulness plants, centrifugal vehicles and manufacturers.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced a bid of actions to rotation backmost landmark regulations, including a technological uncovering that has agelong been the cardinal ground for U.S. enactment against climate change. Zeldin’s program would rewrite the EPA’s 2009 finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger nationalist wellness and welfare, the ineligible underpinning for a big of clime regulations.
Zeldin says the changes, including much than 30 announced connected a azygous time past month, volition thrust a dagger done the bosom of what helium calls “climate-change religion.”
Environmentalists and clime scientists telephone the alleged endangerment uncovering a bedrock of U.S. instrumentality and that immoderate effort to undo it has small accidental to succeed.
While Trump’s medication has blocked renewable vigor sources specified arsenic offshore wind, helium has tried to boost what helium calls “beautiful” coal, granting astir 70 coal-fired powerfulness plants a two-year exemption from national requirements to trim emissions of toxic chemicals specified arsenic mercury, arsenic and benzene.
Environmental groups and nationalist wellness advocates accidental the program could let hundreds of companies to evade laws meant to support the situation and nationalist health.
— By Matthew Daly
Arts and culture
Dana Gioia, a writer and erstwhile seat of the National Endowment for the Arts, liked to accidental that a cardinal to maintaining enactment for the NEA and different national organizations was ensuring they backed projects successful arsenic galore legislature districts arsenic possible.
It was a bipartisan look that lasted for immoderate 60 years, done Democratic and Republican administrations, until Trump's 2nd term.
Since returning to office, Trump has ousted leaders, placed unit connected administrative permission and chopped disconnected hundreds of millions of dollars successful backing that artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others successful the taste assemblage had agelong counted on. Acting without legislature authorization, helium has declared that institutions ranging from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to the National Endowment for the Humanities person go fronts for a “woke” docket that threatens to undermine what helium calls “our Vision for a Golden Age successful Arts and Culture.”
The organizations helium has attacked mostly day from the mid-1960s, astatine the highest of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” home programs, erstwhile nationalist enactment for authorities was precocious and the elevation of the arts a nationalist priority. The Kennedy Center, the NEA, the NEH and the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences each were established with wide backing from the 2 parties.
The humanities "are the languages, religions, laws, philosophies, and customs that marque america distinct,” reads a connection connected the NEH website. “They are our past and our cultures, the ideas and movements that person shaped societies passim time.”
The NEH and others besides mention applicable benefits; arts and civilization are bully for economy.
The NEH homepage includes a header stating that the endowment “supports the humanities successful each authorities and U.S. jurisdiction.” The NEA’s website highlights a caller authorities survey showing that the arts added $1.2 trillion to the system successful 2023 and, astatine a clip erstwhile Trump has placed steep tariffs connected countries worldwide, notes that “the full worth of the nation’s arts exports was astir $37 cardinal greater than the worth of arts imports from different countries.”
—By Hillel Italie
Media
Many journalists figured a 2nd Trump word would beryllium a situation for their industry. Few recognized however much.
The caller medication has aggressively, adjacent innovatively, waged combat against the property since taking office. It has fought against CBS News and The Associated Press successful court, sought to dismantle the government-run Voice of America and sent the Federal Communications Commission aft perceived media rivals.
The White House has established rapid-response societal media feeds that support a changeless travel of rejoinders to “hold the fake quality accountable.”
“The Trump medication is connected a run to bash everything it tin to diminish and obstruct journalism successful the United States," said Bill Grueskin, a Columbia University journalism professor.
The aboriginal of Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and akin services that for generations person delivered unbiased quality to countries wherever it is successful abbreviated proviso is being haggled implicit successful court.
Trump sued CBS News due to the fact that helium believed “60 Minutes” edited a conception past autumn to the vantage of predetermination hostile Kamala Harris. It remains hanging implicit the network’s head, though the newsmagazine has produced several hard-hitting segments connected the medication implicit the archetypal 100 days, provoking Trump into an aggravated societal media effect connected April 13.
Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, is investigating CBS News, too, on with ABC News, NBC News, NPR, PBS, Comcast and, astir recently, the Walt Disney Co., the second for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The AP sued the medication aft it reduced the outlet’s entree to statesmanlike events for not pursuing Trump’s pb successful renaming the Gulf of Mexico, winning a tribunal ruling that the authorities could not punish the enactment for escaped speech. The medication says it intends to appeal. The medication has sought changes successful the property corps that covers him, introducing caller media that immoderate suggest is often a euphemism for affable outlets, and wants more power over who questions Trump.
Fox News is again the go-to root to perceive Trump’s thinking, oregon that of radical trying to power him.
The young administration’s biggest embarrassment came erstwhile it unwittingly invited a journalist into a radical chat wherever subject plans were discussed. Even worse, it was a fig Trump reportedly dislikes: Atlantic mag editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
Trump property aides miss fewer opportunities to propulsion the boss’ constituent of view, tweak the media oregon some simultaneously: They accidental they bash not respond to questions from reporters who mention idiosyncratic pronouns successful their bios.
—-By David Bauder
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.
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