The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term have brought the most consequential changes in the federal government since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal nearly a century ago, along with an all-out effort to curb the nation’s major independent institutions — the courts, law firms, academia and the press.
Though Trump proclaimed this was the onset of a new golden age, his moves have so far left the country worse off than when he re-entered the White House.
In just three months, he has increased the likelihood of an economic recession, weakened the government’s ability to meet unexpected crises, frayed longtime overseas alliances and undermined the Constitution’s balance of powers.
Trump has gone far beyond cutting federal jobs, targeting alleged waste and eliminating diversity programs. He has crippled many governmental programs that benefit the young, the frail and the elderly and threatened outside institutions that resisted or criticized him.
And his on-again, off-again imposition of stiff import tariffs has sapped consumer confidence at home and created uncertainty throughout the global trading system abroad.
Trump has governed by granting himself a vast increase in unauthorized presidential power, seeking to weaken traditionally independent branches of government and challenging the law that requires the executive branch to spend the money Congress appropriated and maintain the programs it authorized.
Overall, he is succeeding where previous Republican presidents failed to curb the vast array of federal programs and services that FDR launched in the 1930s, moderate Republicans like Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon maintained, and Democrats like Lyndon B. Johnson, Barack Obama and Joe Biden expanded.
Politico’s Daybook, a daily compendium of Washington developments and political gossip, said correctly some weeks ago that Trump’s goal was “the wholesale destruction of the liberal state.
“Everywhere you look, liberal institutions across America are being gutted … and it’s taken Trump just two months to pull it off,” Playbook concluded. “For hardline conservatism, it’s a triumph of historic proportions.”
Trump has weakened U.S. ties with its traditional allies and strengthened them with long-term adversaries by reversing key aspects of the nation’s foreign policy. He has sought rapprochement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia and threatened to withdraw military support from the country’s strongest allies in Europe.
And while vowing to prevent weaponization of government, Trump unleashed a wave of retribution that targeted not only perceived political enemies in both parties, but also critics in broader areas of American life like law firms, federal judges and the press.
He has sought to influence overall societal attitudes by controlling or influencing such nonpolitical institutions as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ousting its board and installing himself as chairman; the Smithsonian Museums; and the National Gallery of Art.
Trump’s sweeping actions, often by executive orders with questionable legal or legislative authority, have unleashed a massive political and legal counterattack. Fired employees, government unions, Democratic attorneys general and individual targets have sued to stop what they regard as illegal acts.
Their outcome may determine the extent Trump succeeds in crippling the government’s decades-long focus on helping Americans who suffered from poverty or racial and sexual discrimination — and how much of his unilateral efforts survive.
Still, it seems likely that the changes unleashed in Trump’s first 100 days will result in a changed and a weakened America.