LIST: THE EXECUTIVE ORDERS, ACTIONS, AND PROCLAMATIONS TRUMP HAS MADE AS PRESIDENT

The result is an administration that has issued more executive actions in 100 days than any other predecessor.

The more than 140 orders Trump has signed have focused on slashing illegal immigration, trimming the federal government through layoffs or buyouts, forcing businesses and universities to abandon diversity programs, and revamping the nation’s trade deals with foreign nations.

A compliant GOP-controlled Congress has aided a dominant, less encumbered Trump, who has consolidated more power in the White House.

Here’s how the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration compare to the first 100 days of his first term.

Immigration

In 2017, Trump stressed that a key part of his administration would be to create a border wall that would deter illegal immigrants from entering the United States through the southern border. But when that faltered, Trump ordered his second administration to take drastic actions to reduce illegal border crossings.

The results were swift and successful, leading the White House to tout repeatedly that campaign promises were being fulfilled.

One of the first executive orders Trump signed in 2017 directed the U.S. to create a physical wall, while another order called for an increase of 10,000 immigration officers.

The massive border wall vision went unfulfilled during his first term, although arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal authorities increased and border apprehensions fell during the first three months of Trump’s tenure.

After Trump came back to office in January, his administration quickly set out to curb illegal border crossings drastically, again fulfilling campaign promises to supporters.

“The president immediately declared a national emergency on the southern border, deployed the U.S. military and Border Patrol to repel the invasion, and ended reckless catch-and-release policies,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a Monday press briefing.

“The results have been nothing short of extraordinary,” she continued. “Between President Trump’s inauguration and April 1 of this month, only nine illegal aliens were released in the United States, a staggering 99.99% decrease from the more than 184,000 illegal aliens who were released into the country under Biden during the same period last year.”

Border Patrol data in March showed just 7,180 southwest border crossings, a drop from 155,000 crossings just four years ago.

Trump also scored a political win by signing the bipartisan Laken Riley Act, the first legislation of the second term to be passed into law. The bill requires illegal immigrants arrested or charged with theft or violence to be detained by authorities. (It is one of just five bills Trump has signed into law. In 2017, he signed 28 bills into law in his first 100 days.)

Trump, however, has faced some political setbacks after the judicial system struck down an executive order ending birthright citizenship, and judges have stopped his fast-track deportation operations through his use of the Alien Enemies Act.

Trade

Trump started his 2017 trade legacy by reversing a trade deal negotiated by his Democratic predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

But that legacy could be undone if his high-risk plan in 2025 to force 90 new trade deals through tariffs leads to a global economic crisis. Rising grocery and gas prices helped Trump get back into power. Another financial calamity initiated by Trump could harm the GOP in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership by executive order in January 2017, in a rebuke of Obama’s signature trade achievement.

But because Congress never ratified the deal, Trump was able to nix it with the stroke of his pen.

In April 2017, Trump signed another executive order pushing federal agencies to implement a “Buy American and Hire American” policy.

Trump’s “America First” policy continued into his second administration as he enacted and then paused his “Liberation Day” tariffs on most U.S. trade partners, excluding China, which faces a 145% levy.

The financial uncertainty of a possible trade war with China and other foreign nations has rocked the stock market. Economists have warned that the odds of a recession have increased due to Trump’s tariffs.

But Trump officials claim the turbulence will calm down even as the uncertainty has helped crash Trump’s approval numbers.

“President Trump implemented powerful tariffs to end the era of economic surrender and to rebalance America’s trading agreements,” Leavitt said. “More than 100 countries have already come to the table looking to offer more favorable terms for America and our people.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters that trade deals with Asian nations are being negotiated.

Asian trading partners and allies “have been the most forthcoming in terms of doing the deals,” Bessent said on Tuesday.

“I can see some announcements on India. I can see a contour of a deal [with the] Republic of Korea coming together,” he added. “And then we’ve had substantial talks with the Japanese.”

The federal government

Trump began the targeted dismantling of the federal government during his first administration.

But it wasn’t until his second administration’s unprecedented, and legally challenged, actions that his efforts to upend the so-called “deep state” bureaucracy would reach epic proportions with the help of tech titan Elon Musk.

The federal government has now seen tens of thousands of workers flee voluntarily or through layoffs as Trump enforces cuts on federal agencies. Several departments, including the Education Department, are also being gutted or shuttered as Musk’s chainsaws cut through Washington.

In his first days in office in 2017, Trump implemented a hiring freeze on the federal government, but by April 12 of that year, the White House scrapped the freeze but still called for shrinking the federal bureaucracy.

Trump would turbocharge those plans in 2025 by tapping Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to slash federal workers and spending.

DOGE has uncovered $160 billion in estimated cost savings, a far cry from the $2 trillion that Musk once touted he would save.

Still, DOGE has managed to gut the United States Agency for International Development. At least 216,215 of the 275,240 layoffs by employers, nearly 80%, in March came from the federal government.

Leavitt also told reporters in February that 75,000 federal workers took the administration’s “Fork in the Road” deferred resignation offer.

Many of the more than 200 lawsuits the Trump administration is facing are related to the DOGE cuts, along with his efforts to reshape the nation’s immigration policies.

Foreign policy

After former President Joe Biden’s unsuccessful tenure managing two unwieldy foreign wars in 2024, Trump has worked to end the fighting in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe, with a somewhat mixed record.

Neither the war between Israel and Hamas nor the war between Russia and Ukraine has ended.

Despite Trump’s predilection for an “America First” posture in 2017, he never pulled the U.S. out of NATO despite his anger at the spending of European members.

Trump directed a missile strike against one of former Syrian President Bashar Assad’s air bases in April 2017 after an alleged chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun that killed civilians.  

Later in April, Trump authorized a major non-nuclear bomb to target the Islamic State in Afghanistan.

Trump would also shock Washington by implementing a travel ban on foreign nations from seven predominantly Muslim countries, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, through an executive order in late January 2017.

Trump’s efforts, criticized as a “Muslim ban,” were slowed down in the courts and revised. A third version of a country-specific ban was allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court.

Eight years later, the White House mused over banning citizens from 43 nations, going even farther than his first term.

Trump is also pressuring Ukraine and Russia to end their more than three-year-long war. He scored a political win this week after the U.S. and Ukraine signed a long-awaited minerals deal, which may help lead to peace negotiations.

Trump has also tapped State Department officials to help broker a deal between Israel and Gaza after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack ushered in a new wave of fighting in the region. He also announced that the U.S. began “direct” negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program in early April.

“We’ll see what can happen. I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable to doing the obvious,” Trump said.

Healthcare

After the first Trump administration failed to repeal Obamacare in 2017, his second administration has instead focused on lowering healthcare costs, an issue that remains popular with senior citizens, who tend to be reliable GOP voters, and the broader public.

In his first hours in office, Trump signed an executive order minimizing the economic burden of Obamacare pending repeal, a first step to repealing the law. The American Health Care Act of 2017, a Republican bill to nix Obamacare, faced broad pushback from centrist and conservative Republican lawmakers.

The legislation was pulled from the House in March 2017 after it failed to receive enough support. It later passed the House in May 2017 but failed to pass through the Senate in July 2017.

In his second term, Trump has chosen to focus on lowering drug prices and ensuring healthcare price transparency through executive action.

TRUMP’S FIRST 100 DAYS: WHERE THINGS STAND IN INITIAL MONTHS OF HIS SECOND TERM

His February executive order directing hospitals and health plans to “deliver meaningful price information to the American people” has garnered praise from patient advocates.

“In his first 100 days, President Donald Trump’s bold leadership on healthcare price transparency will be transformative for the American healthcare system and will unleash the free market,” said Steve Forbes, chairman and CEO of Forbes Media, in a statement to the Washington Examiner, noting “consumers will finally have real, upfront prices in healthcare.”