Trump’s chaotic, stunning first 100 days

[ad_1] Throughout his marketing campaign, President Donald Trump was exceedingly clear about his plans for a second time period. He launched policy videos , made sweeping proclamations on the stump , and his allies revealed reams of concepts, maybe none as notorious as Project 2025 .

Trump spelled issues out so explicitly, it appeared as if it might be troublesome to be stunned by something he ended up doing. Regardless of that, he has managed to do quite a few surprising issues, and has actually operated in novel methods.

I requested a number of Vox politics and coverage writers about what has stunned them about Trump’s first 100 days. That is what they needed to say:

DOGE’s speedy rise and fall

Like all of Washington, I used to be stunned by the “Division of Authorities Effectivity.”

Most anticipated Elon Musk’s spending-cutting effort could be a toothless advisory panel, not a wrecking ball smashing the federal workforce. Musk was surprisingly savvy about seizing management of the levers of presidency energy, like the power to position civil servants, cancel contacts, or ship threatening emails to each civil servant.

The eventual end result was much less stunning, although: He hit a wall. Trump’s Cupboard secretaries grew to become pissed off that Musk had usurped their energy, and demanded he be reined in. Trump complied — and DOGE was leashed. — Andrew Prokop

The administration is surprisingly incompetent

In his first time period, Trump’s “malevolence,” because the authorized analyst Benjamin Wittes put it, was “tempered by incompetence.” One of many pro-democracy advocates’ greatest fears of a second Trump time period was that the president could be extra skilled, competent, and ready to execute his antidemocratic agenda. Surprisingly, to date, there hasn’t been a lot proof that this Trump administration is any extra competent than the final.

In its first 100 days, this administration kicked off its feud with Harvard College by sending the university a letter by mistake ; deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia due to an “administrative error”; slapped tariffs on an island of penguins uninhabited by people; inadvertently filed documents outlining the failings in its plan to finish New York Metropolis’s congestion pricing; and by chance looped in a journalist on a Signal chat plotting airstrikes in Yemen .

The issue is that this time round, the Trump administration has not been tempered by incompetence. In every of those circumstances — and in others — it has solely leaned into its anti-democratic tendencies. So the hazard posed by the second Trump administration, it appears, isn’t competence, however an unwillingness to confess errors and a penchant for doubling down . —Abdallah Fayyad

Trump’s immigration coverage continues to be fairly in style

The general public gave Trump the good thing about the doubt on immigration all through February and March: Based on averages of his job approval by the pollster Adam Carlson , he had principally optimistic marks.

That pattern held till mid-April. Over one month, Trump’s ranking on immigration dropped 7 points — largely aligned with the time by which the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Salvadoran immigrant, dominated headlines.

Nonetheless it’s not the type of mass disapproval Trump noticed on immigration throughout his first time period. There could also be a easy clarification: The country has changed since 2017 , changing into much more hostile to immigration usually.

The sturdiness of Trump’s polling on immigration — at the least in comparison with different points, the place he’s deeply underwater — is stunning. Regardless of weeks of detrimental press protection, high-profile deportations of migrants and college students on visas, and a detrimental Supreme Court docket ruling, immigration remains the most popular of Trump’s points: 47 p.c approve, whereas 51 p.c disapprove, based on a New York Instances/Siena Faculty ballot from this month .

Primarily, the general public does appear to be — lastly, progressively — turning towards Trump on immigration. Whether or not that continues is difficult to say, nevertheless. — Christian Paz

Democrats haven’t found out the best way to deal with Trump

Throughout Trump’s first time period, Democrats took on the identification of a vocal opposition get together. Now, regardless of campaigning on the concept a second Trump time period was an existential menace to democracy, Democratic lawmakers appear to have receded into the background.

There have been some notable singular efforts to push again towards Trump, together with Sen. Cory Booker’s record-long Senate flooring speech in April, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders’s anti-Trump nationwide tour. However the get together as a complete has but to discover a unified technique for opposing Trump.

Democrats’ inaction is perhaps deliberate. Trump is already implementing unpopular policies that are tanking his poll numbers , with none significant help from Democrats. However in letting Trump be Trump, Democrats seem like permitting him to dismantle key establishments and trample on civil liberties unchecked. It’s an strategy that would danger allowing the nation to sleepwalk into authoritarianism — and that’s a danger that I’m stunned they’re prepared to take. — Nicole Narea

The FBI is on the sidelines

The FBI has, traditionally, been one of the vital potent instruments of political repression in the USA — look, for instance, at its ruthless marketing campaign to get Martin Luther King Jr. to consider killing himself by threatening to expose his infidelity .

However within the Trump administration, the FBI has principally been an inefficacious sideshow, with essentially the most aggressive crackdowns on civil liberties carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (an company that essentially has a extra restricted scope).

This is among the greatest “canine that didn’t bark” within the second Trump administration, and I believe it’s for 2 causes.

First, Trump’s management picks — FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino — are mainly incompetent. Each are Trump loyalists, who little question could be prepared to deploy aggressive techniques on his behalf, however neither appears to own the ability set needed to show the FBI right into a instrument of authoritarian repression (at the least, not this shortly).

Second, the FBI has professionalized for the reason that days of J. Edgar Hoover, and plenty of of its skilled higher-ups and subject brokers don't wish to be get together to energy abuses. These two components are, at the least for now, maintaining a doubtlessly vital menace to democracy at bay. — Zack Beauchamp