100-DAY REPORT CARD: TRUMP TACKLES BORDER BUT HITS SETBACKS ON DEPORTING IMMIGRANTS

The five bills passed out of Congress and sent to Trump’s desk were the Laken Riley Act, three Congressional Review Act bills overturning Biden-era policies, and a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open.

Some Republicans aren’t too concerned with the metrics, despite Trump signing 28 bills into law during his first administration. Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), leader of the Main Street Caucus, told the Washington Examiner he thought it was a “silly narrative.”

“In my mind, looking at the score of the baseball game at the end of the first inning is interesting but hardly dispositive,” Johnson said.

Budget reconciliation has monopolized much of Congress’s time, Johnson said, as Republicans seek to pass a single megabill to codify Trump’s priorities on the economy, defense, and the border.

It took House Republicans 100 days of the Trump administration to get the reconciliation process officially started, with Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) announcing the start of the committee markups on budget text earlier on Tuesday.

Infighting between Republican leadership and fiscal hawks delayed action on the budget blueprint to start the reconciliation process multiple times as they argued across the two chambers and within their ranks. Their time frame is now pushed back from getting the bill to Trump’s desk by Memorial Day to July 4.

Many Republicans acknowledged that the central focus would be on Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” pushing their bills to the wayside.

“Bottom line is, reconciliation is gonna suck the air out of the room, and that’s what we gotta do,” Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) told the Washington Examiner.

Despite needing four months to finally kickstart the megabill, Johnson thinks the progress on reconciliation has been “substantial and worth accounting for.”

“We’ve been spending a tremendous amount of time, literally thousands of hours on reconciliation, and I think it’s safe to say we’ve made a lot of progress there,” the South Dakota Republican said. “That does take some time, and no doubt there have been fewer suspension bills sent to the President’s desk.”

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said it’s not about the number of bills at Trump’s desk but rather the “quality” of the work Congress is doing that should matter when looking back at the first 100 days.

“In the House, we’ve been focused on [reconciliation]. So that’s probably why you haven’t seen the volume of bills, yeah. But it’s about transformative policy, not just racking numbers up for the sake of saying you did,” Donalds told the Washington Examiner.

Trump seems unconcerned that his wins have come through executive action, which can be undone by the next president, and not through a more permanent legislative victory.

“This is the best they say 100-day start of any president in history, and everyone is saying it,” Trump said in Michigan on Tuesday. “We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet.”

Trump’s record-high number of executive orders has been heavily rebuked by Democrats and even some Republicans, who believe that Congress is ceding power to the executive, particularly on things like spending, oversight, program cuts, and other areas.

Republicans and Democrats have attempted to bring forward legislation that would reverse executive authorities over the last few months, with some most recently centered on Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs and others looking to investigate the administration over “Signalgate.”

But a House rule passed on Tuesday now prohibits members from bringing resolutions of inquiry to the floor until October.

“We have to give [Trump] the runway,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said during a news conference on Tuesday. “This is not a separation of powers concern at all. Congress has a role to play, but so does the executive, and I think everything they’ve done thus far has been entirely and lawfully appropriate, and that’s what our policies reflect.”

The speaker has pushed back against claims for months that Congress is allowing Trump to overstep its constitutional bounds, arguing that the American people are instead seeing an “active, engaged, committed executive branch.”

But Democrats think the lack of legislative wins should be a signal that Trump has to rely on executive orders because he doesn’t have the votes in Congress to sign anything into law.

“That should be, I think, an indication to so many people in this country,” Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “If they really focused on, ‘why is he doing so many executive orders,’ it’s because his policies are not popular enough to get them through the House and the Senate.”

She admitted that the razor-thin majority in the House could be playing a role; at the beginning of Trump’s first term in January 2017, Republicans held a 241-194 majority. Conversely, Mike Johnson is navigating a three-seat majority.

With a lack of legislative wins, House Republicans hand Democrats a narrative that the GOP campaigned on lowering costs and closing the border, but have yet to pass any laws doing so. With Trump off the ballot in 2026, GOP strategists have said they believe House Republicans in particular need to show wins in order to maintain and grow the majority.

Many Republicans are banking on reconciliation being a crowning victory for the midterm elections, delivering on Trump’s campaign promises to end taxes on overtime, tips, and Social Security. But Republicans also risk political attacks if they cut the Medicaid healthcare program for lower-income people to deliver on tax priorities.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS VOTE TO HINDER DEMOCRATS’ ABILITY TO INVESTIGATE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Democrats accuse Republicans of sitting on their hands to pass meaningful legislation in the meantime.

“Why are members of the House within the Republican conference not using their power? You ran on affordability issues; you’re not doing anything on that. No legislation, you’re making it worse,” Balint, the Vermont Democrat, said. “So why aren’t you using your collective power. … You could literally be using your vote to band together and do stuff for your constituents, and you chose not to.”

Lauren Green contributed to this report.