Trump's first 100 days — Part One.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Quick hits.

1. The United States and Ukraine signed a deal to give the U.S. preferred access to Ukraine’s critical mineral resources in return for the creation of an investment fund in Ukraine. The agreement does not require Ukraine to reimburse the U.S. for past military aid but will count future assistance as a contribution to the investment fund. (The deal)
2. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, will reportedly leave their posts at the White House on Thursday. (The report)
3. A New Jersey judge ruled that activist Mahmoud Khalil can argue his deportation case in federal court, rejecting the Trump administration’s assertion that the Immigration and Nationality Act prevented a federal court from hearing the case. (The ruling)
4. The Supreme Court heard arguments on a virtual Catholic charter school’s attempt to become the first religious charter school in the U.S. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, and a 4–4 split would allow the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling blocking the school’s request to stand. (The arguments)
5. Inflation-adjusted consumer spending increased 0.7% in March, while the monthly change in the core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index — the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge — was approximately zero. Year-over-year PCE rose 2.6% in March. (The numbers)

Today's topic.

Very few things about Donald Trump’s presidency could be called “normal.”

He was an abnormal presidential candidate in 2016 when he took the Republican primary by storm. He presided over abnormal times with the Black Lives Matter protests and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He lost an abnormal pandemic election to Joe Biden in 2020, won an abnormal primary by runaway margins in 2024, then won an abnormal general election where the incumbent candidate, Joe Biden, dropped out in the middle of the race and in which Trump survived two assassination attempts.

Now, as only the second president to serve a second non-consecutive presidential term, President Donald Trump is defying the status quo and breaking norms once again. Even before he set foot in the Oval Office, Trump was already busy negotiating with foreign leaders, bringing tech CEOs to heel, and promising major reforms for the executive branch.

Trump’s first 100 days back in office have felt like a whirlwind. The White House has produced story after story about new executive orders, cabinet nominees, legal challenges, trade policies, firings, rehirings, appointments, restructurings, negotiations, and leaks. Then, all these actions have created reactions — in the press, on university campuses, at the border, in the market, and in the halls of Congress. It’s been legitimately hard to keep tabs on everything the Trump administration has been doing. 

So, how do we cover a presidency that’s been as active and, yes, abnormal as Donald Trump’s second term? It’s a tough challenge, but for us the answer is simple: by applying the same standard and structure we developed in his first term, throughout President Biden’s time in office, and in February, after month one of this administration. 

Since there’s so much to cover, we’ll be reviewing President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in a two-part edition. This edition is part one, and we’re sending it to all subscribers. 

Today, we’ll examine Trump’s central campaign promises and the degree to which he has kept them. Consistent with past reviews of Biden and Trump, we’ll use a “promise meter,” a 1–10 scale measuring how well Trump has kept his promise (with 10 being the best score). This is not our judgment on any policy’s efficacy or value, it is only a judgment on how well Trump has kept each campaign promise. In other words, this edition will be an objective (as much as we can make it) overview of Trump’s stated goals and how well he has kept to them. 

Tomorrow, we’ll release part two, where we’ll get into a more subjective overview of Trump’s term so far. In it, we’ll cover some actions and events that weren’t among Trump’s major campaign promises, share views from the left and right on his first 100 days, and then I’ll give “My take.” The full version of tomorrow’s Friday edition will only be available for paying Tangle members.

As always, we’re aiming to be as thorough as possible in our analysis, but containing all the nuances of an office as vast as the presidency in a single piece — with an administration as active as Trump’s — is impossible. We’ll certainly miss some things, but we’re confident that you’ll come away from our two-part edition with a thorough, holistic understanding of the first 100 days of President Trump’s second term.

And, of course, if you disagree with our analysis, think we missed the mark, or want to discuss the piece further, don’t hesitate to write in. 

Core promises.

The border, immigration, and deportations.

Trump campaigned heavily on immigration in 2024, making a few specific promises related to the southern border, deportations, and immigration policy. In particular, he vowed to perform the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” which in its early stages would focus on violent criminals and ultimately lead to the deportation of millions of people here illegally. He also promised to “seal the border,” resume construction of the border wall, hire 10,000 new border patrol agents, deploy active-duty troops to the border, and crack down on drug trafficking and gang activity across the border.

In order to achieve his goals, Trump said he would reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy, revive the public-health measure Title 42, and restrict asylum eligibility. He also promised to terminate Biden-era initiatives like the CBP One App and deport students who were involved in pro-Palestinian protests that gripped college campuses across the country in the wake of October 7. Finally, he promised to end birthright citizenship, a right granted to all children born in the U.S., by reinterpreting the 14th Amendment. 

To achieve all of these promises, Trump said he would focus on exercising his executive power rather than waiting for Congress, and he expressed confidence that he would succeed thanks to his reshaping of the judiciary in his first term.

On the whole, Trump is moving fast to implement his immigration agenda — despite having to clear a few hurdles. And he can also claim some early successes, most notably with border encounters. Customs and Border Protection tracks every encounter it has with unauthorized migrants at the border, a useful metric for measuring border security, and the numbers since Trump took office are the lowest on record. In March, encounters with unauthorized migrants at the southern border fell to around 11,000, down from 96,000 in December, the last full month of the Biden administration. Trump has nearly brought catch and release to an end, though he hasn't been able to detain every migrant because of a lack of detention space. 

So far, Trump’s progress on deterring illegal immigration has perhaps been the crowning “promise kept” of his administration. Immigration was key to both his 2016 and 2024 victories, and “securing the border” has been a major focus in his first 100 days. 

Conversely, Trump’s mass-deportation effort has been much more of a mixed bag. He declared a national emergency at the southern border on his second day in office, and according to the White House, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested more than 150,000 unauthorized immigrants and deported over 139,000 so far. Those totals equate to a higher number of monthly arrests than occurred under Biden in 2024, but fewer monthly deportations than Biden’s monthly average of 57,000. The White House has claimed that 75% of the people deported under Trump have had criminal records, but specific looks into existing large-scale efforts put this figure in doubt. First instance, CBS learned that only 25% of the 238 migrants sent to a Salvadoran mega prison had criminal records in the U.S. 

At this rate, Trump’s goal of deporting 15–20 million people looks unattainable — which is not surprising. Immigration experts were skeptical that he could bring a program of that scale into existence, and Trump is predictably running into bottlenecks with the capacity at detention centers. He’s also running into a lot of legal trouble. Since Trump tried to stretch his executive authority through invoking a national emergency, designating foreign gangs as terrorist groups and claiming he can deport gang members as participants in an invasion under the Alien Enemies Act, he has been stymied by the courts. Cases of American citizens being deported, detained, or interrogated have also ramped up public and legal criticism of his actions. 

On some of the smaller-scale promises, Trump is following through: He has shut down the CBP One App, reinstated the Remain in Mexico policy, implemented a broad asylum ban, and ordered 1,500 active duty soldiers to the border. He has not re-implemented Title 42, but the combination of his executive actions and policies are largely having the same impact. 

On other more granular promises, the administration is attempting to follow through but running into some roadblocks. For instance, Trump has attempted to deport several students who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, as promised, though some of those cases are also tied up in legal challenges. He has also ordered more border-wall construction, but as happened during his first term, he has faced land-acquisition and funding disputes.

Finally, Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship on his first day in office, but the administration was immediately sued, and the order is now before the Supreme Court. As for the drug trade and gang activity, Border Patrol has boasted major seizures of fentanyl, and the lower number of crossings have also reduced the amount of drugs seized at the border. The New York Times also published a deep dive into how Trump’s crackdown has struck fear into cartel leaders, some of whom have gone into hiding and shut down drug labs. 

Spending and waste.

As part of his agenda, Trump favored cutting federal costs through impoundment — or, underspending the budget Congress approved for executive departments. This turned into a new federal initiative on efficiency, which Donald Trump first discussed publicly in a conversation with Elon Musk that was livestreamed on X on August 13, 2024. “I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, ‘Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible? Where is it not sensible?,’” Musk said, adding, “I’d be happy to help on such a commission.” In a November 20 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy detailed their vision for a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), aimed at reducing the size of the federal government and cutting costs, that they would lead. 

Since taking his second oath of office on January 20, Trump has pursued federal cost-cutting by directing DOGE to cancel wasteful contracts and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to cut the size of the federal workforce. How have those initiatives fared?

Let’s start with DOGE. Shortly after Trump was inaugurated and Ramaswamy dropped out of running DOGE to pursue a bid for Ohio governor, one of Trump’s day-one actions was to sign an executive order establishing “the Department of Government Efficiency to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” The initiative listed $55 billion in savings through canceled contracts and grants in February, and now claims to have cut $160 billion in federal spending.

However, DOGE has had to revise its goals several times, and while it’s still too early to accurately quantify its total savings, it appears to be well short of even its revised target. Musk first set DOGE’s cost-savings goal at $2 trillion, then lowered it to $1 trillion, then to $150 billion by the end of next fiscal year. Of the $160 billion the initiative currently says it has saved, an analysis from the BBC has found that only $61.5 billion has been itemized and only $32.5 billion has been detailed with receipts. What’s more, an independent analysis from the Partnership for Public Service has found that DOGE has actually cost taxpayers $135 billion. 

DOGE has also run into legal trouble with its methods. Most notably, 19 Democratic attorneys general sued DOGE after it gained access to Treasury Department data. A federal judge temporarily banned DOGE employees from accessing Treasury Department data, and now one employee will be given access, if he completes mandated training. 

OPM’s initiative to cut the federal workforce, meanwhile, started in earnest in January, with an email from OPM asking federal employees to commit to working in person from federal offices and to a culture of “restored accountability.” OPM offered full pay and benefits through September to workers who couldn’t commit to the new standards and agreed to resign by February 6. Then, in February, Musk posted on X that federal employees must respond to an email from OPM asking for five things they accomplished in the previous week or risk being fired (requirements to respond to those emails have since been dropped or ignored by many agencies). 

The Trump administration says 75,000 people took its buyout offer, and a second wave of buyout offers was sent in April (we don’t yet know how many people have taken that offer, but early reports indicate the total number is smaller). Separately, the administration has also laid off tens of thousands of probationary employees and defunded entire federal departments, notably including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Many of the employees dismissed by the federal government have since either been reinstated in their positions following successful legal challenges or have been rehired, as was the case when the Department of Health and Human Services fired 10,000 employees in early April.

Taken together, the impact of Trump’s focus on making the government more efficient is on track to fare much worse than past initiatives. President Bill Clinton’s “reinventing government” program of the 1990s consolidated over 800 agencies and cut over 250,000 federal jobs from 1993 to 1998, mostly through an OPM buyout. The Clinton administration delivered a deficit reduction of $476 billion and four straight years of deficit cuts. Meanwhile, Trump is ahead of Clinton’s pace in eliminating federal jobs at an estimated 121,000, but he may not have cut any spending, and simultaneously has directed a Republican-led Senate to pass a budget that will increase the deficit. 

In total, Trump did establish DOGE as a task force to combat government efficiency and waste, he did put Musk in charge of it, and he has directed the executive branch to reduce the size of the federal government and workforce. However, he has not taken meaningful steps to resolve inefficiencies or deliver savings anywhere close to the scale that he and Musk have suggested it would; on the contrary, Trump is overseeing an expanding federal budget and growing deficit (though, notably, Trump did not campaign on a promise to balance the budget). Meanwhile, efforts to downsize the workforce have resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of federal employees, but the effort has been sporadic, disorganized, and often stymied in court.

Manufacturing and tariffs.

In February of 2023, Donald Trump posted his plan to leverage tariffs as a tool to encourage domestic production. 

“Rather than raising taxes on American producers, President Trump will impose tariffs on FOREIGN producers through a system of universal baseline tariffs on most imported goods,” the post on Trump’s campaign site, Agenda 47, reads. “In addition to universal baseline tariffs on most foreign goods, President Trump's plan will reclaim our economic independence from China. President Trump will revoke China’s Most Favored Nation trade status and adopt a 4-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods—everything from electronics to steel to pharmaceuticals.”

Elsewhere on the Agenda 47 website, Trump has promised to impose “reciprocal tariffs” with any country that currently has levies on U.S. imports. “If India, China, or any other country hits us with a 100 or 200 percent tariff on American-made goods, we will hit them with the same exact tariff. In other words, 100 percent is 100 percent. If they charge us, we charge them — an eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount,” Trump said in a video detailing the strategy. 

Trump also promised to impose tariffs at several other times on the campaign trail. In an interview with Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow in 2024, Trump expressed support for a 10% global tariff. “I do like the 10% for everybody; but the problem with the 10% is that some countries are much bigger abusers than others.” Trump also repeated this objective several times at rallies. A month before the election, Trump said that he would renegotiate the United States–Mexico–Canada trade deal, saying that he would consider imposing tariffs in excess of 100% on vehicles made by Chinese companies manufactured in Mexico.

In short, Trump has been promising to impose broad tariffs consistently, and for a long time.

On February 1, President Trump signed an executive order announcing new tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada — specifically, 10% on all Chinese imports and 25% on all Mexican and Canadian imports, except for Canadian energy imports, which would be taxed at 10%. The tariffs were then paused, but Trump continued to threaten additional tariffs on Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Venezuela before announcing his global tariffs and reciprocal tariffs plan on April 2. The reciprocal tariffs were then paused for 90 days, but the 10% global tariffs remain in effect. Chinese imports, meanwhile, are currently being taxed at 145% — though the White House has exempted many tech products from the heightened rate and has signaled it may lower the duties in the near future.

Ultimately, Trump has pursued almost exactly the tariffs strategy he said he’d pursue as president. He has implemented a 10% global tariff, pursued aggressive reciprocal tariffs, and has taxed imports from China in excess of 100%. He has only failed to deliver in some detailed aspects of this promise — the “reciprocal tariffs” weren’t based on what the U.S. is charged by foreign countries but instead calculated off of the trade deficit the U.S. has with each country individually. 

However, the tariffs also come with major asterisks. First, Trump has paused the reciprocal tariffs since they were first announced, and it’s unclear if they’ll ever be fully reinstated. Second, Trump’s rollout of the tariffs has been unpredictable and sporadic, and the goals he’s communicated for them are contradictory. So while he’s made progress towards delivering on tariffs, it’s not clear if he’s on track to meet his campaign promises.

The only promise Trump has not made any progress on is removing China’s “most favored nation” trade status, which is defined by the World Trade Organization and not within the president’s unilateral ability to control.

Ending wars in Gaza and Ukraine.

During the campaign, President Trump said in no uncertain terms that he would end foreign wars in the early days of his administration, remarking in his speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention, “I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created.” 

On the Ukraine war, he was even more explicit, saying, “Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled.” Since taking office, however, the Trump administration has struggled to make meaningful progress toward a peace deal. Trump did speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss a potential ceasefire in his first month, which was followed by a meeting between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia, kicking off formal ceasefire discussions. During that time, the administration was also in contact with the Ukrainian government to negotiate a mineral-rights deal as part of a ceasefire agreement. 

However, Trump grew increasingly critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, culminating in a combative Oval Office meeting on February 28. Since then, Trump and Zelensky have taken some steps to smooth relations — meeting in Rome on Saturday in what the White House called “a very productive discussion.” Ukraine also accepted, in principle, a 30-day ceasefire proposal by the United States. Putin similarly accepted the proposal on conditional grounds, suggesting that more discussions were still needed.  Then, on Wednesday, Trump came to terms with Ukraine on a mineral-rights deal.

Despite some early headway, and recent public discussions, the prospect of a lasting peace deal remains as remote as it was in December. On April 18, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would halt its efforts to broker a ceasefire if the two sides could not make progress in the near future. President Trump has also expressed frustration with Zelensky and Putin in the past week, criticizing the former for his refusal to accept a U.S. proposal that included significant land concessions to Russia and the latter for a Russian airstrike on Kyiv that killed 12 people. Last week, Trump appeared to walk back his campaign promise to quickly end the war, telling TIME, “I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration,” while stressing that he was still working on a resolution. 

Trump took a less explicit stance on the war in Gaza, vowing at the 2024 RNC to broker a peace deal but declining to give a specific timetable. Instead, then-candidate Trump urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war by the time he entered office, calling on Israel to “get it over with” while affirming his support for their campaign against Hamas. 

The administration took a significant step toward this goal when it announced a ceasefire deal (brokered in coordination with Biden administration officials) between Israel and Hamas days before Trump took office. The agreement was structured into three phases, the first of which held from January 19 to March 18. In that time, Israel and Hamas completed several hostage and prisoner exchanges, and Israel initiated an incremental withdrawal from Gaza. However, the sides were not able to reach an agreement on the second phase of the deal, and Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza on March 18. 

Since then, President Trump has continued to press both sides to come to terms on a peace deal, but has not outlined what that deal could entail. While hosting Netanyahu at the White House in April, Trump said, “I'd like to see the war stop, and I think the war will stop at some point, that won't be in the too-distant future.”

The president explicitly promised to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in the early days of his administration, and thus far, he has failed to follow through. While negotiations are ongoing with the parties involved in both conflicts, the timetable for peace deals remains uncertain. At the end of the day, President Trump has already blown past his promised timeline, and he’s begun to temper expectations that an end to either war is imminent. 

Reforming universities.

Donald Trump made written promises to initiate reforms at universities in several different places. First, the official Republican Party platform included among its 20 commitments that a Republican president and legislature would “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.”

Furthermore, on his campaign site, Trump promised to “reclaim our once great institutions from the radical left.” 

“I will direct the Department of Justice to pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination. And schools that persist in explicit unlawful discrimination under the guise of equity will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment,” Trump said. Additionally, Trump promised to revise the standards for college accreditation.

In his first 100 days, Trump has taken several actions to pull back federal funding to private universities. The initiative started on February 3, when the Department of Justice announced a “Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism” with the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses.” 

In March, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities warning of potential penalties from pending investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment. On March 7, the Trump administration announced it would cut $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from harassment. Then, on April 15, the administration announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University after the school refused to comply with the government’s requirements to address alleged antisemitism and racially discriminatory practices.

The administration has also slashed funding to other universities, including Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and Princeton, and asked the IRS to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Although Harvard and other schools have challenged the administration’s decision in court, the funding freeze is likely to stand at least into the summer.

Note: As we clarified in response to a reader question, federal funding to these universities is administered through individual research grants. It does not fund undergraduate teaching or go to private endowments.

Additionally, the Trump administration has begun to deport students it claims have violated the terms of their visas by supporting Hamas terrorists. In March, former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his participation in pro-Palestinian protests; the administration claims that his continued presence in the United States has “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Separately, Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested in Somerville, MA, for “engaging in activities in support of Hamas.”

Lastly, on April 23, President Trump signed an executive order directing the secretary of Education to “realign accreditation with student-focused principles.” The order aims to promote intellectual diversity in universities through promoting increased competition in the accreditation process. “Instead of pushing schools to adopt a divisive DEI ideology, accreditors should be focused on helping schools improve graduation rates and graduates’ performance in the labor market,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.

Trump made university reforms a consistent feature of his presidential campaign. He said he would use federal funding as a tool to instigate reforms on DEI policies, would deport students on temporary visas involved with what the government has deemed pro-Hamas protest, and would reform the college-accreditation system. The only major campus reform Trump has retreated on was restoring the visas it had canceled for over 1,500 foreign students. 

While it’s too early to say whether these initiatives will achieve their intended goals of changing the culture of college campuses, Trump has followed the exact strategies he laid out while campaigning.

See you tomorrow.

Tomorrow, we’re going to pick this up with Part 2 of our review of Trump’s first 100 days in office. In that newsletter, we'll address the stories, promises, and controversies we did not get to today, will share some arguments from the left and right, and then I’ll give my take.