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President Donald Trump has done so much damage to America since taking office in January that it feels like he’s been at the helm at the White House for a lot longer than 100 days.
While the president touted his supposed accomplishments in an interview with ABC News this week, reality paints a worrisome picture.
On the economy, for example, Trump again falsely said he inherited an economy that was in terrible shape and that it was getting better. Yes inflation has dropped, as have egg prices, but Trump’s on-again, off again tariffs have caused unnecessary uncertainty and wreaked economic havoc. Plunging stock markets have eroded retirement savings for millions of Americans, while Trump bragged that rich visitors to the White House made hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars off the market swings. This raises serious concerns about market manipulation and insider trading and is a reminder that Trump doesn’t care about average Americans.
The damage from Trump’s economic policies is just beginning. Data from the Commerce Department showed that growth in the country’s gross domestic product was negative for the first quarter of this year and many economists warn we’re headed for a recession.
Trump’s tariff announcements — which were often followed by backtracking — have soured relationships with many nations, notably Canada. Canadians are also, rightly, outraged about Trump’s pledges to make the country America’s 51st state. Trump likely changed the course of Canada’s recent national election, ensuring the victory of a Liberal Party prime minister.
Trump’s bluster and threats have also caused longtime U.S. allies to reconsider their relationships with the country and to turn to other nations for trading, security and economic relationships. This, and other Trump administration actions, will likely be a huge boon to China, which is gaining power worldwide.
At home, the Trump administration has run roughshod over the Constitution, and Congress.
Law enforcement officials, often dressed in black with no insignias and their faces covered, have snatched hundreds of people from their homes, offices and the streets, claiming that they are in the country illegally or that they were engaged in illegal activities, which to this administration includes protesting on college campuses. One man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was sent to a notorious detention center in El Salvador. U.S. officials have said this was a mistake and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ordered his return to the U.S., where he was legally living. Abrego Garcia, like many of the other deportees, has not been charged with a crime or been granted a hearing.
During the April 29 ABC News interview, Trump acknowledged he could make a call and have Abrego Garcia returned to the U.S. Instead, he referred to a photograph, which reputable sources say was photoshopped, of tattoos that Trump says show Abrego Garcia is a gang member.
Whatever the allegations, the U.S. Constitution requires that people living in America are entitled to due process. All people, not just white people or people who were born here.
Further eroding the Constitution and legal norms, the FBI last week arrested and charged a county judge in Wisconsin, accusing her of helping an undocumented immigrant evade federal immigration officials. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has warned other judges that the same thing can happen to them if they don’t follow Trump administration dictates.
This is terrifying. As Gov. Janet Mills said, when she stood up to Trump at a White House event in February, the president, despite his assertions, is not the law. Executive orders on their own do not change federal law and must comply with existing laws, which are made and changed by Congress.
In his first 100 days, with help from the Republicans who control the U.S. House and Senate, Trump has made Congress largely irrelevant.
He has unilaterally frozen spending to states, agencies, universities and programs that he doesn’t like. In Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, has gotten funding restored to programs targeted by the Trump administration. She and three other Republicans joined Senate Democrats on Wednesday to try to stop Trump’s tariffs. Previously, the group opposed his tariffs on Canada. A bipartisan group of senators is now pushing legislation that would reclaim some of Congress’ powers over tariffs.
Trump has hit Maine especially hard, criticizing the state and Mills for not following his executive order to ban transgender girls from sports teams. He’s cut funding and his administration has undertaken sham investigations of schools and the Maine Department of Education. The Department of Justice has also launched a lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Trump and Republican megadonor Elon Musk have touted the work to find and eliminate waste and fraud in the federal government. The Department of Government Efficiency has fired tens of thousands of federal employees (many of whom are likely to be rehired) and encouraged the resignation of many more. DOGE essentially shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development and has hobbled numerous other federal agencies. Its staffers have also accessed reams of personal information about Americans for reasons that are unclear.
Despite Trump’s claims that DOGE has saved billions of dollars (a fraction of the $2 trillion it pledged), investigations have found that the agency has actually spent nearly as much as it claims to have saved. In fact, federal spending so far this year is higher than it was last year at the same time. And, Musk and his companies are getting favorable — and expensive — government contracts.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the many troubling and destructive things that Trump has done in his first 100 days.
But, as Sen. Angus King said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, “it does present a disturbing and dangerous pattern — that this president is attempting to govern as a monarch, unbound by law or constitutional restraint, not as a president subject to the constraints of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
As King also said in his speech, which echoed Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s famous “Declaration of Conscience” speech in 1950, we must act now if we hope to stop the destruction and reclaim America as a beacon of law and democratic government.
