Trump’s First 100 Days: Executive Sprint, Legislative Snooze

President Donald Trump has begun his second term with “a barnstorm of a first 100 days,” as FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter put it on “Washington Watch.” The president himself has issued 143 executive orders, while his administration has moved in so many directions “at such an incredible pace that it’s almost hard to keep up with,” marveled Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.). “He’s got his eye on the history books,” Carpenter declared. The real test will be whether the Trump administration can match its historically quick opening with long-term staying power.

“Historically, a president’s first 100 days in office … acts as a marker,” explained guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice, “to determine how successful, how effective that president has been.” Presidents usually begin with a sort of “honeymoon period,” in which Congress remembers their recent electoral triumph, and voters still give them the benefit of the doubt. The 100-day mark serves as a sort of artificial milestone for analyzing how much a presidential administration achieved over this period.

“Really out of the gate, the president took initiative to address the major concerns of the American people, the issues that were center to the electorate at large — things like immigration, securing the border … addressing the cost of living crisis,” Carpenter reflected.

In addition, he added, Trump has “not neglected some of the commitments he’s made to the more socially conservative elements of the Republican Party. He’s reinstated the Mexico City policy, he’s overturned the Department of Defense’s policy to reimburse for travel related to performing abortions … and then [he is] also enforcing the Hyde Amendment.”

In a mere 100 days, the Trump administration has deported 100,000 illegal immigrants, shut down the border, defined male and female correctly, banished DEI from the federal government, shut down or restructured ineffective agencies like USAID or the Department of Education, audited executive departments for waste, fraud, and abuse, and taken the world on a tariff roller coaster.

“The simple, four-word phrase that I think describes this perfectly is ‘promises made, promises kept,’” McDowell declared. “It’s a crazy concept in Washington to do what you say you’re going to do. That’s exactly what the president is doing.” According to an FRC Action tracker of 52 specific policy promises Trump made during the campaign, the president has completed 32 items, four are in progress, and only 16 are still pending.

The Trump administration’s personnel reforms are proceeding nearly as rapidly as its policy agenda. “There are thousands of political appointees [who] are made by each successive administration, Republican or Democrat. And the speed of getting good people into those seats is important, but so is the quality,” explained Quena Gonzalez, FRC’s senior director of Government Affairs, on “Outstanding.” “Judging by the personnel that I have seen so far, vacuumed up by the administration, I’m greatly encouraged.”

Gonzalez noted the Trump administration’s labors to purge the federal bureaucracy of left-wing ideologues and functionaries who were simply poor workers. He noted that even sympathetic reporting in The Washington Post “let slip … that many of these people” fired from the federal workforce “did not share Trump’s worldview and the worldview of the people that elected him.”

The moment they heard the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) showed up to investigate USAID, for example, many employees “pulled down all the trans and pride flags on their desk … all the left-wing paraphernalia.”

Gonzalez argued that Trump’s rapid and radical reforms were necessary because “this is really a battle of worldviews.” For 23 years, he has watched Republican presidents begin to make “incremental changes,” which then fizzle out when the media finds or manufactures scandals. When a Democratic administration succeeds the Republican, the media then pretends that “everything’s back to normal,” when it most certainly is not.

“The Overton window” — the range of what positions are considered acceptable — “is shifting way to the left,” he said. “If the Right is unwilling to push back, then you lose ultimately.” So, he concluded, “for a correction to be successful, it has to be pretty drastic.”

Based on his previous experience with bureaucratic insubordination, Trump entered office with greater awareness of the bureaucratic war he would have to wage. “Trump’s been here before. He was stymied in some ways by the entrenched interests here in Washington, and he came back wanting results.” Whereas last time Trump campaigned on the slogan, “Drain the Swamp,” suggested Gonzalez, “this time he came and blew up whatever dam it was that held that swamp together.”

On issues like the border, Trump’s swift and successful actions demonstrate that solving the problem “didn’t take new laws, it just took a new president,” McDowell mused. But therein lies the glaring weakness amid his whirlwind of reform: what one administration ushers in, the next can drive out. “I don’t think speed is the issue. I’m really pleased with the speed and vigor of the administration,” said Gonzalez, but an executive order only lasts “as long as the executive.”

What happens after Trump leaves office, the next time a Democratic candidate wins a presidential election?

This is where Congress must step up to the plate. In all the time that Trump has issued 143 executive orders, Congress has passed a grand total of five laws. Only one of those laws (the Laken Riley Act) represented a significant policy change; one was a stopgap funding measure that simply punted a government shutdown into the near future, and the other three were resolutions that disapproved agency rules that the Biden administration tried to slip under the radar on its way out the door.

Congress is “having to play the most catch-up right now … because they’ve ceded so much authority” to the executive branch, Gonzalez explained. “Congress has been happy, for upwards of 50 years, to cede more and more control to what we call the administrative state.” Their task is made more difficult in the current Congress by “the very slim majorities of Republicans in the House and the Senate.”

“Trump had the initiative coming in, as the new president, to act unilaterally in some ways. … And he’s even tested the boundaries of what it’s possible for a president to do,” granted Gonzalez. “But really, the hard work of making those changes permanent … will be up to Congress.”

“We can focus on the first 100 days of the president. But Congress has a huge role to play. And, increasingly after the first 100 days, their role is going to become very important,” he continued.

Unfortunately, after 100 days, passing legislation through Congress also becomes more difficult because members of Congress will already begin thinking about the next election. “The first 100 days is kind of like this nice incubator period where you get your cabinet, you get your political appointees done, and then after that, it’s like, ‘Okay, who’s running for Congress?’” said Gonzalez.

Midterm elections are “typically when you see the party in power lose seats, so I think from here on out there’s going to be some volatility in the political environment in D.C.,” he explained. For “members in the House who are vulnerable … if it’s advantageous for them to throw an elbow at the Trump administration, they might do that.”

If Congress could not pass any more legislation during Trump’s first 100 days, how can they hope to achieve more for the rest of the term? As swing-district members begin to contemplate their electoral vulnerabilities, enacting conservative legislation will become harder, not easier.

Historically, presidents have expended considerable political capital negotiating with Congress to win legislative victories. This time around, President Trump has been so preoccupied with unilateral executive action that he has hardly bothered to herd Congress along. If he wants to make his agenda permanent, Trump will eventually have to turn his attention to Congress. But it remains uncertain whether he has waited too long, or whether he will even try.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

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