Throughout his marketing campaign, President Donald Trump was exceedingly clear about his plans for a second time period. He launched coverage movies, made sweeping proclamations on the stump, and his allies revealed reams of concepts, maybe none as notorious as Undertaking 2025.
Trump spelled issues out so explicitly, it appeared as if it might be troublesome to be stunned by something he ended up doing. Regardless of that, he has managed to do a variety of sudden issues, and has actually operated in novel methods.
I requested a number of Vox politics and coverage writers about what has stunned them about Trump’s first 100 days. That is what they needed to say:
DOGE’s speedy rise and fall
Like all of Washington, I used to be stunned by the “Division of Authorities Effectivity.”
Most anticipated Elon Musk’s spending-cutting effort can be a toothless advisory panel, not a wrecking ball smashing the federal workforce. Musk was surprisingly savvy about seizing management of the levers of presidency energy, like the power to put civil servants, cancel contacts, or ship threatening emails to each civil servant.
The eventual final result was much less stunning, although: He hit a wall. Trump’s Cupboard secretaries grew to become pissed off that Musk had usurped their energy, and demanded he be reined in. Trump complied — and DOGE was leashed. —Andrew Prokop
The administration is surprisingly incompetent
In his first time period, Trump’s “malevolence,” because the authorized analyst Benjamin Wittes put it, was “tempered by incompetence.” One of many pro-democracy advocates’ largest fears of a second Trump time period was that the president can be extra skilled, competent, and ready to execute his antidemocratic agenda. Surprisingly, up to now, there hasn’t been a lot proof that this Trump administration is any extra competent than the final.
In its first 100 days, this administration kicked off its feud with Harvard College by sending the college a letter by mistake; deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia due to an “administrative error”; slapped tariffs on an island of penguins uninhabited by people; inadvertently filed paperwork outlining the failings in its plan to finish New York Metropolis’s congestion pricing; and by accident looped in a journalist on a Sign chat plotting airstrikes in Yemen.
The issue is that this time round, the Trump administration has not been tempered by incompetence. In every of those instances — and in others — it has solely leaned into its anti-democratic tendencies. So the hazard posed by the second Trump administration, it appears, isn’t competence, however an unwillingness to confess errors and a penchant for doubling down. —Abdallah Fayyad
Trump’s immigration coverage remains to be fairly common
The general public gave Trump the advantage of the doubt on immigration all through February and March: In line with averages of his job approval by the pollster Adam Carlson, he had largely optimistic marks.
That development held till mid-April. Over one month, Trump’s score on immigration dropped 7 factors — largely aligned with the time wherein the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the wrongly deported Salvadoran immigrant, dominated headlines.
Nonetheless it’s not the type of mass disapproval Trump noticed on immigration throughout his first time period. There could also be a easy clarification: The nation has modified since 2017, turning into way more hostile to immigration typically.
The sturdiness of Trump’s polling on immigration — a minimum of in comparison with different points, the place he’s deeply underwater — is stunning. Regardless of weeks of adverse press protection, high-profile deportations of migrants and college students on visas, and a adverse Supreme Courtroom ruling, immigration stays the preferred of Trump’s points: 47 % approve, whereas 51 % disapprove, based on a New York Occasions/Siena School ballot from this month.
Basically, the general public does appear to be — lastly, regularly — turning towards Trump on immigration. Whether or not that continues is tough to say, nonetheless. —Christian Paz
Democrats haven’t found out how you can deal with Trump
Throughout Trump’s first time period, Democrats took on the id of a vocal opposition celebration. Now, regardless of campaigning on the concept a second Trump time period was an existential risk to democracy, Democratic lawmakers appear to have receded into the background.
There have been some notable singular efforts to push again towards Trump, together with Sen. Cory Booker’s record-long Senate ground speech in April, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders’s anti-Trump nationwide tour. However the celebration as a complete has but to discover a unified technique for opposing Trump.
Democrats’ inaction is perhaps deliberate. Trump is already implementing unpopular insurance policies which might be tanking his ballot numbers, with none significant help from Democrats. However in letting Trump be Trump, Democrats seem like permitting him to dismantle key establishments and trample on civil liberties unchecked. It’s an method that would threat allowing the nation to sleepwalk into authoritarianism — and that’s a threat that I’m stunned they’re keen to take. —Nicole Narea
The FBI is on the sidelines
The FBI has, traditionally, been probably the most potent instruments of political repression in the USA — look, for instance, at its ruthless marketing campaign to get Martin Luther King Jr. to contemplate killing himself by threatening to expose his infidelity.
However within the Trump administration, the FBI has largely been an inefficacious sideshow, with essentially the most aggressive crackdowns on civil liberties carried out by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (an company that essentially has a extra restricted scope).
This is without doubt one of the largest “canine that didn’t bark” within the second Trump administration, and I feel it’s for 2 causes.
First, Trump’s management picks — FBI director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino — are principally incompetent. Each are Trump loyalists, who little question can be keen to deploy aggressive ways on his behalf, however neither appears to own the ability set mandatory to show the FBI right into a software of authoritarian repression (a minimum of, not this rapidly).
Second, the FBI has professionalized because the days of J. Edgar Hoover, and lots of of its skilled higher-ups and subject brokers don’t wish to be celebration to energy abuses. These two components are, a minimum of for now, conserving a probably vital risk to democracy at bay. —Zack Beauchamp
