President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have shown just how much he likes to act alone.
While past presidents used their honeymoon period to get signature legislation through Congress, Trump has signed very few bills. Instead, he’s focused on a flurry of executive orders, unilaterally imposed tariffs, and mass firings and spending cuts that Congress did not approve but has, so far, let slide.
Here’s a look at 100 actions taken by Trump, his administration and the GOP-controlled Congress over his first 100 days:
Signing laws
• Signed the Laken Riley Act, which allows federal immigration officers to detain and deport undocumented people who have been charged with crimes, in addition to those who have been convicted.
• Signed three Congressional Review Act resolutions that overturn Biden administration regulations and a stopgap funding bill, for a total of five bills — fewer than any president in the last seven decades by this point.
Implementing tariffs
• Announced tariffs on Mexico and Canada, sparking a consumer-led “Buy Canadian” movement that has hurt U.S. companies.
• Announced various tariffs on China that collectively add up to 145%, sparking a trade war with the country.
• Announced sweeping tariffs on every major U.S. trade partner, ranging from 10% to 54%, to take effect on April 2, which he dubbed “Liberation Day.”
• Included the Heard and McDonald islands, which are uninhabited, on the list of countries getting a tariff.
• Admitted that the formula for the tariffs involved looking at the trade deficit with a country and dividing it by the value of goods the U.S. imports from that nation.
• Saw the S&P 500 lose $5 trillion in value over two of the worst days for the stock market in modern history in response to “Liberation Day.”
• “Paused” the sweeping tariffs on nearly every country for 90 days because bond traders were “getting a little queasy.”
• Posted on social media that it would be a “great time to buy” shortly before announcing the pause, raising questions about insider trading.
• Raised the overall average effective tariff rate from 2.5% to around 27%, the highest for the U.S. since 1903.
Cutting government
• Named billionaire Elon Musk as a “special government employee” in charge of a White House team to cut spending.
• Renamed the U.S. Digital Service, which advised agencies on technical issues, into the U.S. DOGE Service (also known as the Department of Government Efficiency, which is not in fact a government department) after a Musk joke.
• Repeatedly said that DOGE was “headed by” Musk, including in a joint address to Congress.
• Told courts that Musk did not head DOGE — or even work for it — and declined to say who did head it, then later identified a little-known employee as its acting administrator.
• Froze billions of dollars in foreign aid and sought to all but dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• Attempted mass firings at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects consumers from financial fraud.
• Dramatically cut spending and staff at the Department of Education, which Trump has vowed to abolish (though this would require an act of Congress).
• Slashed staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who handle weather forecasts, among other things.
• Used police and private security to enter the U.S. Institute of Peace as part of an effort to take control of the nonprofit and gut it.
• Tried to quickly rehire federal workers on critical issues such as bird flu, nuclear weapons and medical devices.
• Ordered the General Services Administration to begin ending leases on roughly 7,500 federal offices around the country.
• Sent 2 million federal workers an email offering to pay them through September if they resigned.
• Required federal workers to write down five accomplishments each week, then didn’t do much with the emails.
• Rehired a member of Musk’s team who resigned after media resurfaced old social media posts in which he said he was “racist before it was cool.”
• Gave some Republican senators Musk’s phone number so they could call him to get problematic DOGE spending cuts reversed.
• Saw widespread protests at Musk-owned Tesla dealerships, plummeting sales of its cars and a 71% drop in profits.
• Promoted Tesla on the White House lawn and said vandalism against the company will be treated as domestic terrorism.
• Reduced the amount of money expected to be saved by the Musk effort from a goal of $1 trillion to $150 billion.
Deporting noncitizens
• Signed an executive order to make it possible to detain migrants at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay.
• Sent two groups of migrants to Guantanamo Bay and released a photo of migrants being boarded onto a military plane.
• Struck a deal to pay El Salvador $6 million to imprison deportees at its notorious CECOT megaprison.
• Invoked the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act, last used to incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II, to begin deporting people the administration alleges are gang members.
• Sent three planes with more than 200 migrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s orders not to deport anyone under the act until his court had held a hearing on the issue.
• Lost two appeals of the continued block on deportations before the Supreme Court, including one released at 12:55 a.m.
• Conceded in a court filing that Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was among those deported due to “an administrative error.”
• Fired the Justice Department lawyer who signed that court filing and had been praised by the judge for his candor.
• Appealed a judge’s order to have Abrego Garcia returned from El Salvador, then lost in a unanimous Supreme Court decision.
• Said Abrego Garcia’s return is up to El Salvador, even as President Nayib Bukele claimed he doesn’t “have the power to return him.”
• Detained Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Khalil over his pro-Palestinian activism.
• Detained Tufts University grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen, over an editorial she co-authored in the student newspaper.
• Deported a 10-year-old U.S. citizen recovering from brain cancer after detaining her family on their way to a medical checkup.
• Sent two U.S. citizens, including a four-year-old boy with Stage 4 cancer, on a deportation flight to Honduras with their mother.
• Detained 19-year-old U.S. citizen Jose Hermosillo for 10 days over a disputed claim that he had entered the country illegally.
• Said that the administration can’t give everyone it wants to deport a trial because that would take “without exaggeration, 200 years.”
Firing officials
• Fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and two other top military officials late on a Friday in an unusual move.
• Fired the two Democratic commissioners on the Federal Trade Commission in what appeared to be a violation of a 1935 Supreme Court decision.
• Won an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to stop a lower court ruling that restored the two FTC commissioners to their jobs while their case proceeds.
• Fired the director of the National Security Agency and other top national security officials after a meeting with far-right activist Laura Loomer.
• Fired a pardon attorney who said she believes she was ousted because she refused to restore Mel Gibson’s right to carry a gun.
• Moved to fire the Democratic chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, who said her firing was invalid and refused to step down.
• Threatened to oust Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, leading to a spike in gold prices and a slide in the dollar.
• Signed a sweeping executive order to try to bring independent agencies under White House control based on a fringe legal theory.
Targeting law firms
• Stripped security clearances from the law firm Covington & Burling for its work with former special counsel Jack Smith.
• Stripped security clearances from Paul Weiss for hiring a lawyer who worked on the Manhattan district attorney’s case against Trump.
• Stripped security clearances from Perkins Coie for its ties to the Steele dossier during the 2016 election.
• Stripped security clearances from WilmerHale for hiring Robert Mueller and a top aide.
• Stripped security clearances from Jenner & Block for hiring a lawyer who worked on the Mueller investigation. • Stripped security clearances from Susman Godfrey, which represented a voting machine company that sued Fox News. • Faced lawsuits from four of the law firms over the suspension of their security clearances. • Announced deals with nine law firms to avoid similar sanctions in exchange for providing nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to the administration. • Canceled $400 million of funding to Columbia University unless it overhauled admissions and ceded control of several academic departments. • Has not, to date, restored funding to Columbia, despite the university agreeing to nearly all of the demands. • Canceled $2.2 billion to Harvard University to punish it for refusing to comply with a similar list of demands. • Suspended $175 million in funding to the University of Pennsylvania for allowing a transgender swimmer to compete. • Notified Brown, Cornell, Northwestern and Princeton of cuts or potential cuts to hundreds of millions in funding. • Faced a lawsuit from Harvard that argued the frozen grants violate the college’s First Amendment rights. • Was criticized in a letter signed by 150 university and college presidents for attempting to use funding to influence their policies. • Put 1,300 staffers at the Voice of America on paid leave amid plans to shutter the news agency, which was set up during World War II. • Barred The Associated Press indefinitely from the Oval Office and Air Force One for continuing to use the name “Gulf of Mexico” to refer to the Gulf of Mexico. • Posted on the Federal Communications Commission website raw footage and transcripts of the CBS interview with Kamala Harris over which Trump sued. • Opened an investigation into San Francisco radio station KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions. • Took control of a White House press pool that has been run independently by journalists for more than a century. • Briefly allowed a Russian state media reporter into the Oval Office to cover a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. • Invited far-right podcaster Tim Pool, who has allegedly received money from Russia, to a White House press conference. • Argued in a speech to the Department of Justice that reporting by independent news outlets is biased and should be “illegal.” • Granted sweeping pardons and commutations to more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. • Broadened Jan. 6 pardons to include charges that stemmed from police searches while investigating those cases. • Supported restitution payments for Jan. 6 defendants whose convictions were wiped out. • Launched a review of federal prosecutors’ use of an obstruction of justice charge against some Jan. 6 defendants that the Supreme Court said was used too broadly. • Claimed that pardons of House Jan. 6 committee members and some others by then-President Joe Biden were now “void.” • Pardoned former Nikola Corp. CEO Trevor Milton of federal crimes related to defrauding investors, after he made significant political donations to Trump and his allies. • Pardoned the four founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX and the corporation itself of money laundering charges. • Granted clemency to Jason Galanis and Devon Archer, who had given unfavorable testimony about Hunter Biden. • Announced a plan to give the food industry two years to phase out all artificial dyes. • Said (by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.) at a press conference that people with autism will “never hold a job” or “go out on a date.” • Began amassing private medical records of people with autism from government and private sources. • Claimed, without evidence, that getting a “wild infection” of measles boosts the immune system, in an interview with Kennedy. • Cut thousands of scientists and public health staffers amid a dramatic restructuring of the Department of Health and Human Services. • Was criticized for inconsistent messaging about vaccines in interviews and public appearances. • Promoted Steak ‘n Shake beef tallow-cooked fries in an interview with Kennedy. • Accidentally added a journalist to a group chat of top officials on Signal discussing war plans in Yemen. (National security adviser Mike Waltz.) • Criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to his face in a shockingly contentious White House meeting. • Sent Vice President JD Vance to Greenland, where he argued that Denmark has not “done a good job.” • Loosened restrictions on water flow for showerheads after Trump complained they make it hard to wash his “beautiful hair.” • Said the U.S. should “take over the Gaza Strip,” perhaps through military action, and redevelop it as the “riviera of the Middle East.” • Blamed, without evidence, Federal Aviation Administration efforts to hire a more diverse staff for an air crash near Washington, D.C. • Proposed a “gold card” visa that would allow people to become lawful permanent residents for $5 million. • Posted an illustration of Trump wearing a crown on social media with the words “LONG LIVE THE KING!” • Repeatedly floated the idea of running for an unconstitutional third presidential term in 2028. 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Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MS NOW. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline. 
Targeting universities
Targeting the media
Issuing pardons
Changing public health policy with RFK Jr.
And finally…
