After an election in which Donald Trump won back the presidency and his party held the House and won the Senate, congressional leaders were quick to fantasize of all the legislation they would be able to pass. They envisioned a flurry of bills rewriting immigration law, slashing regulations, and delivering on Trump’s bold campaign promises.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But the first 100 days of Trump’s second term paints a more complicated picture. Instead of relying on the Republican-led Congress, Trump has leaned heavily on executive action to carry out his agenda, issuing an unprecedented 135 executive orders since he took office in January. In doing so, Trump has largely bypassed Congress at the outset of his Administration, a sharp break from his first term. So far, Congress has only passed six bills—five of which have been signed into law—the fewest of any president in the first 100 days of an administration in the last seven decades, according to a TIME analysis of congressional records.
At this point in his first term, Trump had already signed 30 bills into law—a high watermark for Presidents this century. Former President Joe Biden signed 10 bills by his 100th day in 2021, compared to 14 by Barack Obama in 2009 and seven by George W. Bush in 2001. Some earlier presidents—including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter—signed 20 or more pieces of legislation within their first 100 days.
Trump’s second-term tally—just five bills signed—underscores a dramatic shift toward consolidating presidential power. The bills that have passed Congress so far have been relatively modest: three of the six bills were measures undoing regulations established by the Biden Administration, such as eliminating rules on environmental protections and cryptocurrency taxation, which were passed under the Congressional Review Act. Another was a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open. The other bills were the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure, and the Take It Down Act, which Trump is expected to soon sign after it overwhelmingly passed the House on Monday. The bill criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice.
While Congress has largely been relegated to the sidelines under Trump’s second Administration, most Republicans on Capitol Hill have supported his unfettered use of executive power. Trump has often drawn on rarely-used laws to advance his agenda, such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out mass deportations and declaring a national emergency to enact sweeping tariffs on countries around the world.
“The executive always wants to control more things, but in the past, members—whether it’s a Democratic president or Republican president— have always resisted that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters in March. “It didn’t happen this year for the first time. They just bowed down to the President, and they’re surrendering their power.”
Trump is now calling on Republicans in Congress to pass what many are calling his “one big, beautiful bill”—a massive legislative package designed to cement many of his campaign promises into law. The bill aims to extend the 2017 tax cuts, expand domestic energy production, fund immigration enforcement, and boost military spending.
In the meantime, Trump’s reliance on executive orders to push his agenda—often bypassing Congress altogether—has become a defining feature of his presidency. Constitutional scholars and political analysts have warned that the sheer volume of executive actions is testing the limits of presidential power, raising concerns about the potential erosion of the rule of law.
Here’s what Congress has accomplished—and what Republicans are still hoping to achieve—as Trump’s second presidency reached the 100-day mark.
Laken Riley Act
The most high-profile measure to pass Congress was the Laken Riley Act, named after a nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the country unlawfully and had been previously apprehended by Border Patrol and released.
The bill, signed into law by Trump nine days into his presidency, changes how the federal government handles immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and mandates that those charged with theft, burglary, or other serious crimes be detained until their cases are resolved. The bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes,” meaning immigration officers would be required to arrest and detain those people. Before, immigration officials would use their discretion to first detain people with violent criminal records.
The bill ultimately passed the House with unanimous support from Republicans, and the backing of 46 of 215 Democrats. In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to move the bill forward.
Avoided a government shutdown
Congress managed to avert a government shutdown in late March, passing a stopgap funding bill to keep federal agencies running through the end of the fiscal year. The effort required careful maneuvering by GOP leaders—and a surprising degree of cooperation from ten Senate Democrats who voted alongside Republicans.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was criticized by many in his party for voting in favor of the legislation, which critics said stripped away numerous funding directives and gave Trump unprecedented power to reallocate money as he saw fit without fear of judicial intervention.
Rolled back Biden Administration regulations
One area where Trump and congressional Republicans have been unusually productive is in using the Congressional Review Act—a powerful but little-used law that allows Congress to repeal recent federal regulations with a simple majority vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster. Of the five bills Trump has signed, three were CRA resolutions aimed at dismantling Biden-era rules.
In March, Trump signed a resolution overturning the Waste Emissions Charge, an environmental regulation finalized near the end of Biden’s presidency. Although parts of Biden’s broader climate agenda remain in place, Republicans succeeded in nullifying this specific fee on methane emissions. That same month, Trump also signed a CRA resolution blocking a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule that had required oil and gas companies operating offshore to submit detailed archaeological surveys. Republicans argued the rule created unnecessary compliance costs for energy producers.
And in April, Trump signed into law a bill to overturn a revised rule from the Internal Revenue Service that expanded the definition of a broker to include decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
Take It Down Act
A bipartisan bill that criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn is expected to soon become law, after it was sent to Trump’s desk on Monday. The measure, which had the backing of First Lady Melania Trump, aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools by making it a federal crime to knowingly post or threaten to publish computer-generated pornographic images and videos of real people.
Trump has said he would sign the bill into law: “I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” he told a joint session of Congress in early March. A few days earlier, Melania Trump staged a press conference with deepfake victims—her first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady.
Read more: Congress Just Passed Its First Bill Tackling AI Harms
Up next: Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”
Now, attention is shifting to what Republicans hope will be their crowning legislative achievement: an enormous package that seeks to extend the 2017 tax cuts, implement additional tax relief, ramp up border defenses, expand energy production, and slash federal spending by at least $1.5 trillion.
“Republicans, it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,” Trump posted on Truth Social in April. “The USA will Soar like never before!!!”
The House and Senate passed a budget resolution earlier this month to begin a process known as reconciliation that they hope will allow them to pass the measure without Democratic support. Yet significant divisions within the GOP caucus remain. Senate Republicans set a relatively modest $4 billion target for cuts, while House Republicans are under orders to find at least $1.5 trillion in savings, a gap that will be difficult to bridge. Disagreements have already surfaced over proposed cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and clean energy initiatives. Moderate Republicans from swing districts are balking at deep cuts to social safety net programs, even as hardliners demand more aggressive reductions.
Adding to the pressure is the looming threat of a government default. The bill is expected to include a provision raising the federal debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion, which the Treasury Department warns must happen by late summer to avoid an unprecedented financial crisis. Economists across the political spectrum have warned that extending the Trump tax cuts without equivalent new revenue or significant changes to entitlement programs like Social Security could balloon the federal deficit to record levels.
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