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TODAY MARKS 100 days since Donald Trump was inaugurated as the president of the United States in January.
Before his inauguration, Trump promised he would deliver the “most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency in American history”.
The volume of his executive orders has certainly been notable. He’s issued more in his first 100 days than any other US president of the last century, amounting already to half of the total number that he signed during his first term between 2017 and 2021.
The impacts of his presidency have been felt around the world, not least because of his infamous tariffs.
With the first 100 days of his term over, here are five questions about what the coming months hold.
Opinion polls have unanimously indicated a decline in Trump’s approval ratings since his return to the White House in January.
According to a poll conducted by Ipsos and published by the Washington Post and ABC News, only 39% of Americans currently approve of him and how he s conducting the presidency.
64% said he is “going too far” by trying to expand presidential powers.
Gallup, another polling company which has examined sentiments about US presidents at the 100-day mark for years, put Trump’s approval rating at 44%.
By the Gallup poll, he’s the only American president after World War Two to have an approval rating lower than 50% at this time in his term (except for… himself, during his first term, when he was at 41% 100 days in). Joe Biden had an approval rating of 57%.
Trump’s low rating is driven by the exceptionally high degree of polarisation in public opinion of him. The Gallup poll puts his approval among Republicans at 90% but just 4% among Democrats. Presidents of previous decades tended not to see such a dramatic margin of difference.
But Trump, in his usual fashion, has dismissed the polls out of hand. He claimed they were “fake news” in a social media post yesterday, adding: “We are doing GREAT, better than ever before.”
On the campaign trail, Trump pledged that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking up office.
He was reminded of that during a recent interview with Time magazine. His answer was that: “Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest.”
Be that as it may, Trump made it a point during his campaign to claim again and again that he, not Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, would be the president to end the war, and that he would do it swiftly.
Trying to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and forge a ceasefire agreement has been a longer and more tedious process than what Trump imagined or wanted it to be.
The White House said yesterday that Trump wants “a permanent ceasefire” and is becoming “increasingly frustrated” with the leaders of both Russia and Ukraine.
For a time, Trump was warming up to Russian President Vladimir Putin in a way no US president has for years, seeming to believe that Putin was a more amenable partner in coming to a ceasefire deal than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
But Trump has changed his attitude on Putin again as Russia continues to strike Ukraine despite the US telling it to stop.
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along,” Trump said in recent days.
Trump has repeatedly made harsh comments about Zelenskyy, and of course, there was the testy press conference between the two in February. They met in the Vatican this weekend on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral and had what seemed to be a civil conversation.
But the US’s desired path to a ceasefire is very different from Ukraine’s. The US would have Ukraine surrender Crimea to Russia, something that Ukraine says is a hard red line.
A temporary ceding by Ukraine of Crimea to Russia, rather than a full and permanent surrender, might be the ultimate outcome. If or when a deal happens, Trump will surely try to sell it as a victory of his negotiating tactics – but his path to getting there has been far from plain sailing.
From tariffs and threats of annexation to ignoring judicial orders, Trump has alienated many both inside and outside the US in his first 100 days.
The Trump administration has used its powers to target what it perceives as enemies, including, according to an NPR report, launching criminal investigations, widespread ICE detentions, banning companies from federal contracts, and firing employees.
He has evaded and even ignored court orders from US judges, especially when it comes to deportations. A federal judge ordered in March that planes deporting people to El Salvador without a hearing should be grounded, but the Trump administration defied the order and let the planes reach their destination. It then refused to bring back a man called Kilmar Ábrego García, who was wrongly deported and then detained in El Salvador.
Looking across the Atlantic, he called European Union countries “freeloaders” that banded together to “screw over” the US.
He’s said he wants to take control of Greenland, which is currently an autonomous territory of Denmark. Greenland leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen has said Trump’s rhetoric has “not been respectful” and that Greenland “will never, ever be a piece of property that can be bought by anyone”.
Trump’s treatment of other countries been a sore spot for many, but none quite so bitterly felt as Canada.
The countries have long had friendly relations but Trump’s rollercoaster of threats about tariffs and territory – he says he wants to make Canada the US’s ’51st state’ – has soured the relationship between the two neighbours to its worst state in centuries.
As well as being Trump’s 100th day in office, today also brought the results of Canada’s national election which saw Prime Minister Mark Carney win power again for the Liberal Party.
In his victory speech, Carney said that Canada’s “old relationship” with the US is over.
“America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never ever happen,” Carney said. How will Trump respond?
As well as not ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, there are a number of other pledges that Trump made during his campaign that he hasn’t yet fulfilled.
Many of his promises that have not yet come to fruition centre around measures that would reduce taxes or costs for members of the public.
He told voters, for instance, the he had the “concepts of a plan” to replace the US’s Affordable Care Act – a healthcare costs law that was introduced by Obama – but has not done so.
He said that he would eliminate federal taxes on social security payments for retirees, but that’s something that actually needs an act of Congress to make happen. Similarly, he said he would remove federal income taxes on overtime and tips that service workers receive from customers, but that would also require an act of Congress.
Trump said he would make IVF free; that also has not happened.
Trump has followed through on many other of the policies he promised, like pardoning the rioters who were involved in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and carrying out mass deportations (though the number of deportations has actually not jumped compared to the Biden administration).
He said he would pull the US out of the 2015 Paris Agreement which brings nearly 200 countries from around the world together to fight the climate crisis, and initiating that withdrawal was indeed one of his first steps after his inauguration.
He swore to target federal funding for schools that teach students what he calls “radical gender ideology”, which he did via an executive order.
He was he would release government records about JFK’s assassination, which started in March, and that he would delay enforcement of a law that would ban TikTok in the US, which he has done.
Democrats have planned a number of events, protests and speeches to coincide with Trump’s 100th day in office to try to signal to their voters that they are trying to push back against his policies.
In the Senate, Democrats plan to hold the floor later today to “fight back against the disaster of Trump’s first 100 days”, said Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
“His lies, his broken promises, his threat to our democracy, his arresting people without due process,” Schumer listed.
But Republicans have a majority in Congress and the Senate, as well as Trump in the White House, which makes it challenging for Democrats to effect change legislatively.
An alternate strategy has been to try to challenge and hold up Trump’s plans by using the courts.
Democrats have filed lawsuits against some of what they find his most egregious and unlawful policies. This month, for example, Democrats lodged proceedings against Trump over a plan he has proposed to overhaul how the US carries out elections.
But Democratic voters to say they want to see the party’s elected politicians do a lot more to resist Trump. A poll last month found that 65% of Democratic voters want the party’s Congresspeople to stick to their positions, even if it means not getting things done in D.C., instead of making compromises that would placate Trump.
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