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.
Chaos reigns
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.
Roosevelt’s reforms, rubber-stamped by a supportive Democratic Congress, expanded government’s authority to help needy Americans. Trump’s initiatives, acquiesced in by supportive congressional Republicans, would limit its ability to help them, though federal courts have questioned or halted many of his unilateral actions.
Highly publicized court challenges have also contributed to a slow start of his efforts to deport millions who came here illegally, starting with gang members and others with criminal records. But Trump was able, through stricter enforcement, to stem the flow of illegal entrants on the Southern border.
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 recent 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.”
Besides, the sweeping tax cuts Trump is demanding from his congressional allies would make it harder for any successor to undo his actions by ensuring reductions in future federal revenues.
Much of the initial government dismantling stemmed from the implementation, by billionaire supporter Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” of the detailed battle plan Trump’s conservative allies developed after he left the presidency in 2021.
Applying a meat-axe approach to agency after agency, DOGE forced thousands of government employees into retirement and crippled programs that fight poverty, encourage diversity, enhance the environment, support scientific research and help disaster victims abroad, while reducing governmental assistance for veterans, taxpayers and Social Security recipients.
It eliminated most humanitarian foreign aid programs, folding the Agency for International Development into the State Department, and started to dismantle the Department of Education, though only Congress can legally do so.
Upside down
Meanwhile, 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, including a peace agreement for Ukraine, 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. In the name of fighting antisemitism and racism, he suspended federal financial grants to many prominent universities, some of whom acquiesced, rather than risk billions in government research funds.
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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.
Last week, a senior federal judge in Washington, James Boasberg, threatened to hold the administration in contempt for refusing to pause deportation of illegal immigrants with criminal records. Other cases, from Trump’s effort to revoke birthright citizenship to his unilateral termination of federal programs, are headed for ultimate adjudication by the Supreme Court.
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.
Carl P. Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. ©2025 The Dallas Morning News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
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