“Move fast and break things” – the Silicon Valley mantra – aptly describes the whirlwind start to President Donald Trump’s second term.
The president hit the ground running last January, issuing a flurry of executive orders, including pardons for most Jan. 6 defendants and the launch of the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s effort to slash the federal government.
One year on, Mr. Musk is long gone, as is DOGE. And the impact of President Trump’s ambitious and aggressive efforts to reshape policy – indeed, America itself – is coming into focus. He has pushed the envelope on presidential power, issuing more executive orders in his first year back than in his entire first term. He has bypassed Congress and challenged the courts, invaded Venezuela and arrested its leader, exacted retribution on his perceived enemies, and transformed the White House itself with golden decor and a big planned ballroom.
Why We Wrote This
Beyond policy specifics, Donald Trump has in many ways raised the bar for how much power a president can wield unilaterally. Controversy has followed, regarding both the policies and the approach to power.
Mr. Trump’s second term makes the first term look like a dress rehearsal. It’s almost as if he spent his first four years in office figuring out how much power he had, and came back determined to use every bit of it.
Fifty years from now, will historians be calling Mr. Trump a “transformational president”? Or will this period ultimately seem like a lot of tumult that added up to little long-term change? Likely both. Every president leaves a stamp on the office and the country. As always, the challenge is to separate the signal from the noise.
Mr. Trump has made plenty of promises (or threats) that have gone nowhere – from claiming he could end Russia’s war on Ukraine within 24 hours to saying he would turn the Gaza Strip into a luxury tourist destination.
But in many ways, Mr. Trump has already changed the United States profoundly, including its role in the world, in ways that may have lasting impact.
A timeline at the bottom of this article charts major presidential events this past year.
More stories on President Trump’s second term after one year:
• On the economy, no recession, but no boom either
• Shattering foreign policy norms
• Battling universities over antisemitism and DEI
America’s image in Europe as a steady ally has been torpedoed, as made clear in the president’s new National Security Strategy, which lauds Europe’s “patriotic” – i.e., nationalistic – parties. Mr. Trump’s new tariff regime has upended global trade, while his crackdown on illegal immigration cut off the flow of migrants at the border and sparked major unrest in Minneapolis.
He’s also shrunk and reshaped parts of the U.S. government, including eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a priority. The departments and agencies that Mr. Trump gutted, such as the Education Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, will be hard to reconstitute, even if a future president wants to do so. In all this, and perhaps most important, he has reset the bar for using executive power.
“Previous presidents have been criticized for using executive orders and trying to act unilaterally, but he’s taken it to a different level,” says Matthew Dickinson, a presidential scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont. “It’s going to be hard to put that genie back in the bottle.”
In a year of upheaval, one notable aspect of Trump 2.0 has been the loyalty and stability of his team. Unlike Year 1 of his first term, when the president rapidly cycled through top aides in key spots – including his chief of staff, press secretary, and chief political strategist – this year has seen little staff turnover. “Let Trump be Trump” appears to be the guiding philosophy of Term 2.
Looking ahead, Mr. Trump’s power might get a real check after the fall midterm elections, if Democrats retake the House of Representatives. Signs of “lame duckery” are already appearing, as some Republicans start pushing back on his policies and approach. Still, he has a year to go with the current Congress – and that’s a lifetime in Trump time.
– Linda Feldmann
On immigration, big goals and big controversy
In Year 1, President Trump oversaw an avalanche of anti-immigrant policies – while creating exceptions for some immigrants who are white or rich. From borderlands to urban centers, his administration targeted illegal immigration and lawful pathways alike. He condemned many migrants, generally, as criminals. He called some, specifically, “garbage.”
Invoking a rare wartime law – and disputed gang ties – the Department of Homeland Security sent more than 100 Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March. A federal judge has asked the administration to address due process violations, while the government dismisses former detainees’ claims of abuse.
The president kept campaign promises as he sought to “seal” the southern border. Border Patrol apprehensions, a proxy for illegal crossings, sank to their lowest level since 1970. A surge of armed forces to the border included the creation of new military zones. In the interior, controversial waves of immigrant arrests – many targeting people without criminal records – at times ensnared U.S. citizens. Even as the administration withholds certain data, it reports deporting over 600,000 people. Mr. Trump also limited legal immigration, including of refugees, while prioritizing Afrikaners from South Africa. As foreigners from 39 countries face entry bans, Mr. Trump is offering “gold card” residency for $1 million per person.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP/File
Heading into Year 2, polling suggests the public has soured on his immigration agenda. An immigration officer’s fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month has also sparked protests there and nationwide.
What to watch: whether the Supreme Court lets the president end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.
– Sarah Matusek
Steering a new direction on social issues
President Trump has taken a number of steps in office aimed at defeating “woke” ideology – including dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs that he said illegally discriminated against white people.
On his first day in office, Mr. Trump signed an executive order instructing government agencies and departments to terminate all DEI offices and positions, “equity action” plans, and DEI performance requirements.
This order was a direct response to the first executive order President Joe Biden signed after his own inauguration, instructing agency heads to assess the equity of agency policies and actions. Another Trump executive order rescinded affirmative action requirements for federal contractors. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo instructing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to investigate illegal DEI mandates in the private sector and in educational institutions that receive federal funds.
In response, major U.S. companies from Walmart to Meta scrapped diversity goals and training programs. And hundreds of colleges and universities have ended programs that promoted DEI on campus or focused on LGBTQ+ or minority students.
Mr. Trump moved to undo protections for transgender people, making it federal policy to recognize only two genders and rescinding federal funds from schools that allow biological males to compete in women’s sports. After Mr. Trump revoked Mr. Biden’s executive order that allowed transgender troops to serve openly in the military, the Department of Defense issued a ban on transgender service members, which the Supreme Court has upheld. His Department of Health and Human Services in December proposed a sweeping set of new rules that would dramatically restrict access to gender-transition treatments for minors.
Mr. Trump has also tried to shift American culture in a more conservative direction. He has instructed the Smithsonian museums to root out what he calls anti-American propaganda in their exhibits. He took over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, appointing a new board that tapped him as its chair, eliminating “woke” programming, and adding his name to the building’s exterior.
– Story Hinckley
Justice as retribution?
The first year of this second Trump administration has challenged long-standing norms in the criminal justice system. Having criticized the justice system as unfairly targeting him, Mr. Trump appears to be trying to use the system in a similar fashion.
He has pushed for prosecutions of his political adversaries and issued pardons for allies. He has personally criticized lower court judges who ruled against his administration, while one of his top aides has railed against “judicial tyranny.” Presidents have traditionally refrained from direct criticism like this out of respect for the judiciary’s independence and to uphold public confidence in the courts. Amid Mr. Trump’s attacks, violent threats against federal judges rose.
In September, Mr. Trump called for two adversaries – former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James – to be prosecuted. Indictments quickly followed – against Mr. Comey on charges of lying to Congress, and against Ms. James on charges of mortgage fraud. Both deny the charges, and both cases have since been dismissed on procedural grounds. In January, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced that he was being investigated for allegedly lying to Congress. The investigation is a pretext, Mr. Powell said, for not acquiescing to Mr. Trump’s demands to lower interest rates.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has used the presidential pardon power to reward his supporters and potential allies. On his first day in office, he issued pardons to more than 1,500 people convicted or charged for their participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, including hundreds charged with violent felonies.
– Henry Gass
A chain saw, but DOGE doesn’t meet its target
Remaking the federal bureaucracy began on President Trump’s first day in office, when he created the Department of Government Efficiency. Under the leadership of Mr. Trump’s billionaire benefactor Elon Musk, DOGE became synonymous with the president’s effort to dislodge what he calls the “deep state” and slash a “bloated” federal government. Mr. Musk set a goal of cutting $2 trillion from the country’s $7 trillion budget. By its own accounting, DOGE – which disbanded eight months ahead of schedule – only achieved about 10% of its cost-cutting goal; media investigations and conservative think tanks suggest the true savings were roughly half that, at best.
Still, cuts were widespread across the government. According to data released by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in January, more than 322,000 federal employees have left the government since January 2025, either through layoffs or after taking buyouts. But some agencies also rehired workers, either out of necessity or because of court rulings, leading to an overall workforce cut of roughly 220,000 employees, or a 10% reduction. This falls short of Mr. Trump’s stated goal of four reductions for every new hire, and is less than President Bill Clinton’s federal workforce cut of about 17% in the 1990s.
The cuts varied across the government, with some agencies and departments harder hit than others. The U.S. Agency for International Development was shuttered almost entirely, the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities was cut by more than 50%, and the Department of Education by more than 40%. The Departments of the Treasury, Agriculture, State, and Health and Human Services each lost around 20% of their workforces. The Department of Defense, on the other hand, only fell by 8%.
Beyond the current cuts, workers and experts fear that the administration’s attacks on federal workers may damage future recruitment. Mr. Trump also signed executive orders to allow for more politically appointed positions – a “sharp departure,” says Rachel Augustine Potter, a politics professor at the University of Virginia, from “the meritocratic foundations of the U.S. bureaucracy.” If courts uphold these changes, she writes, it could make it difficult for America to return to a less politicized, expertise-based civil service.
– Story Hinckley
A timeline, below, charts many of the major presidential events this past year.
Read our other stories on President Trump’s second term after one year:
• On the economy, no recession, but no boom either
• Shattering foreign policy norms
• Battling universities over antisemitism and DEI
