The 100 first days of Trump are louder, faster, more authoritarian – and more dangerous than ever. While its government systematically converts democratic institutions, central election promises fall by the wayside.
Bastian Brauns reports from Washington
When Donald Trump passed his oath on January 20, 2025 for the second time, he promised a “national renewal”. He announced that he would contain the immigration of deporting millions of illegally immigrants, stopping inflation, ending wars abroad and finally unleasing economic strength that the world has never seen. In short: the “start of a golden age”. Trump assured his voters that he had learned from the chaos of his first term. “This time,” he said in his inauguration, “everything will be different.”
What followed in the first 100 days of his second presidency was primarily tremendously loud and quick: a profound realignment of political thinking and acting in the USA. With every further day, the US President gradually postponed standards, values and priorities in the state apparatus. The United States has become a different country after 100 days.
Trump has carried out one of the most radical and coordinated upheavals in the American government of recent history. The Trump government systematically dismantled the central institutions of the United States, concentrated the power of the president massively and led the United States to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
At the same time, the central promises with which Trump won his election campaign for a second term last autumn are ousted in chaos. Nothing is done: Inflation hardly drops and threatens to rise, consumer confidence is at a historical low, instead of economic growth, a recession threatens, the deportation figures are less than at all of the time. Foreign policy “successes” in Gaza, Ukraine and in the rest of the world have so far failed to materialize.
Trump’s first term already looked chaotic – but she was driven by impulsiveness, personal feuds and internal power struggles. His second term, on the other hand, is completely different: the chaos was raised to the principle to create confusion. In the interior of the government, the rows are closed this time with a few exceptions. This administration works quietly, quickly – and terrifyingly effective with regard to its main goal of power concentration.
The reason for this is the so -called Project 2025.
Before the election, only a few voters had recorded the extent and ambition of this plan. Before the election, the Project 2025 had designed more than 400 conservative political experts and activists with the aim of dismantling the “administrative state” – by replacing thousands of civil servants with ideologically consolidated loyalists, depriving federal authorities of their independence and bundling power at the president.
This long-term plan contained political concepts for all ministries, legal reasons for the circumvention of court judgments and step-by-step instructions on the expansion of the power of the president via the judicial and security authorities.
Much of it is now a reality. In his first 100 days Trump:
- Thousands of professional bureaucrats are released in the course of an extended “Schedule F” order and replaced by loyal supporters from the Project 2025 environment.
- More than 45 high government offices with authors from Project 2025 – from cabinet members to authorities, including many from the Heritage Foundation, the Claremont Institute and other project participants.
- Direct access to the Ministry of Justice and the FBI has achieved – political opponents are now being examined, restricted and discredited public prosecutor and even judicial independence.
- Extensive deregulating at the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), the Ministry of Education and the Consumer Protection Office initiated – partly under the bypass of legal procedures.
- Signals that his government will only follow negative court decisions – which the judiciary presents before a direct confrontation.
- Financial attacks on independent universities are undertaken with the aim of bringing their teaching and decisions under government control.
- The Trump government does not take all of this with laws, but above all with executive orders to an unprecedented extent. Many of them override congress laws.
This list could be continued much more. The short version is: Whether with tariffs or with the deportations-Trump often rules with the help of emergency laws to avoid the congress, i.e. democratic procedures. The majority of the Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives let him grant. In truth, they could oppose him.
Trump as a tool of other actors
In all of this, Trump himself acts less than the architect of this reactionary revolution as her tool. Where his first term often derailed by erratic behavior, the second is shaped by disciplined determination – not because Trump had changed, but because his environment has changed. It is tougher, ideologically solid, better organized – and it has meticulously used the years under Biden.
