Trump’s Counterrevolution at 100 Days

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term have been stunningly transformative, even as the Left has begun to mount some counter offensives in the judiciary and in the media.

For a president to be successful, he must apply principles that one might apply to warfare or sports. The early days of a presidency are about maintaining tempo—about keeping the ball moving on issues that the president was elected to promote. Any kind of slowdown usually means the president’s power to reform the system has come to an end, as this signals the natural shifting of the tide to the out-of-power party.

On this end, Trump 2.0 has been one of the most successful early presidencies since FDR. This is Trump’s Dark New Deal, to borrow language from Elon Musk. He’s effectively flooded the zone with dramatic changes in policy that range from immigration to trade to foreign affairs and much more.

Whereas Trump’s predecessor was a virtually comatose upholder of an old regime, one that had become quite radical in its aims and tyrannical in its operation, Trump is a disruptor. He is pushing the envelope to an extent far beyond even his first term in office.

This is Trump’s populist counterrevolution. Here’s a quick review of his more significant accomplishments thus far.

Border Secured

On the border, the Trump effect has been stunningly effective. By making it known that the law will be enforced and then enforcing those laws, Trump has virtually solved the border problem overnight. Getting control of the border was one of the central planks of Trump’s message since he became active in politics, and he’s succeeded spectacularly.

The Trump administration justly spiked the football on this issue Monday.

“Since President Donald J. Trump took office, he and his administration have ushered in the most secure border in modern American history—and he didn’t need legislation to do it,” read a statement from the White House. “President Trump has made good on the promises he made on the campaign trail to usher in an unprecedented era of homeland security.”

The problem is now dealing with former President Joe Biden’s mess internally, which was always going to be the greater challenge. The Left’s commitment to open borders won’t abate even as the popular tide has turned against them. The Left has retreated to the dubious position of just wanting “due process” for the millions of people it brought here illegally, but that’s a tough case to make when the previous administration gleefully undermined the U.S. legal process for years to create this crisis.

Deep State Defanged

The Trump administration’s actions against the administrative state, or the deep state, have been nothing short of remarkable. From the new Department of Government Efficiency to the State Department to even the departments of Energy and Education, Trump has taken aim at neutering the “fourth” branch of government.

This has served two purposes.

First, it’s restoring some level of accountability to our federal government that has over time become untethered from any kind of genuine democratic accountability. A mid-level career bureaucrat should not be dictating how the executive branch operates, nor should a government job be treated as an inviolable right. The Trump administration is using every tool it can to change that dynamic.

The second purpose is that by cutting loose large chunks of the administrative state, Trump is also severing the Left’s patronage networks. It’s clear that most of the federal apparatus, even including the FBI, is run and operated by partisan Democrats who, in many cases, are willing to use their power to punish or at least impede their domestic political enemies. To make matters worse, the federal government also distributes countless billions of dollars in grant funding to essentially left-wing activists in badly misnamed nongovernmental organizations.

There’s a reason why the Left lost its collective mind when Trump dramatically curtailed the U.S. Agency for International Development, for instance. It knows that this strikes at not only its domestic power but also at its global ability to conduct social engineering.

DEI Regime Crumbling

Given everything else that’s happening, Trump has quietly begun the process of dismantling the diversity, equity, and inclusion regime. The Left has essentially warped civil rights law to move away from shared notions of equality under the law.

The Biden administration and its elite institutional allies used the prior four years to racialize our government and society based on their notions of who qualifies as an oppressor and who is oppressed.

The result has been a massive backlash.

Now, Trump is taking aim at DEI, not only eliminating it from federal departments but using civil rights law to ensure that any institution receiving government support will no longer be able to discriminate based on race.

He is now using this to push Ivy League schools to drop their DEI programs or else lose billions of dollars in federal funding.

Another example of how Trump is blowing up DEI is his executive order ending “disparate impact” analysis from government policy. The disparate impact theory posited that any example of racial disparity, even unintentional, was assumed to be an example of discrimination. The policy has been used to threaten police departments and schools so that they will abandon good policies out of fear of being sued.

Now, it’s the other way around. Colleges and corporations will now have to be more careful if they choose to discriminate.

Global Reset

While Trump’s re-ascendance has dramatically changed domestic politics, he’s also monumentally reshaping the global chess board. Trump has pushed hard for peace in Eastern Europe, has put pressure on Iran and its proxies in the Middle East with the hopes of creating stability in the region, and more broadly reoriented American foreign policy to more strictly focus on U.S. national interests.

He’s reviving the Monroe Doctrine with a focus on the Americas to both secure America’s doorstep and, more importantly, to keep China at bay.

And while Trump’s tariff policies have perhaps sparked the greatest backlash, this administration has made it clear that the U.S. can’t continue to be addicted to cheap goods from a foreign country that often means to do us harm.

Trump has at least started what should have begun long ago, which is the great decoupling from China.

The jury is still out on whether these moves will pay off. But the necessary pivot was a long time coming. In the age of increasing great power competition, Trump is clearly making moves to ensure that America continues to be the greatest power.

What Trump has done across the board should be defined as the great pivot. In his first 100 days back in office, Trump has demonstrated that he’s a man leading a populist uprising—not just to break down an old system, but to rebuild it on a stronger foundation.

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