Editors at National Review Online assess the first year of Donald Trump’s second term as president.
Within hours of being sworn in, he had already signed a blizzard of executive orders, both unraveling Joe Biden’s unilateral actions and taking sweeping steps to advance his own agenda.
He has continued the frenzied pace. He is currently running everything from the Kennedy Center to (notionally) Venezuela. Just the last week or so, he has tried to pressure Iran to stop killing protesters and, much less consequentially, urged the New York Giants to hire John Harbaugh. His drive for action, controversy, and attention is so intense and relentless that even the hyperactive TR might have recommended that he slow down a little.
Much good has come from the unbridled ambition. Trump has made tremendous strides in scaling back the transgender insanity and DEI initiatives within the federal government. His aggressive enforcement of immigration laws has led to a historic decrease in border crossings and a significant outflow of illegal immigrants who have either been deported by force or who have decided to leave on their own. He’s rolled back the preposterous campaign to usher gas-powered cars into desuetude. In his own significant legislative achievement, he got Congress to pass an extension of his first-term tax cuts, which was coupled, unfortunately, with various campaign gimmicks such as his “no tax on tips” pledge.
His need for speed, however, has meant that he took many actions haphazardly. Elon Musk’s DOGE effort to rightsize the government ended without making a dent in the federal budget. Much more significantly, his shoot-from-the-hip tariffs, purportedly under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, are bad policy and legally dubious; they are currently hanging by a thread at the Supreme Court. It’s quite possible that their chaotic rollout may be bookended by a chaotic rollback after an unfavorable Court decision.
