Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, we break down four sets of data that explain President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office. First, we take a look at the wide gap between the number of executive orders and laws he has signed so far. Then, Steve Kornacki examines how Trump’s standing in the polls at this point compares to that of his recent predecessors, as well as how Americans view his handling of key issues.
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— Adam Wollner
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Trump signed a tidal wave of executive orders, but not new laws, in his first 100 days
President Donald Trump has leaned heavily on executive power, rather than the Republican-controlled Congress, in his bid to drastically reshape the federal government in his first 100 days in office.
Trump has signed 140 executive orders so far in his second term, far outpacing his recent predecessors. In fact, Trump issued more executive orders in the first 10 days of his term than any president did in their first 100 days since Dwight Eisenhower.
That has largely left members of the House and Senate on the sidelines. Trump has so far signed just five bills into law, fewer than any president in the first 100 days of an administration since at least Eisenhower, according to an NBC News analysis of data in the congressional record. By this time during his first term, Trump had signed 30 bills into law. At the same point, Barack Obama had signed 14 while Joe Biden had signed 11.
And the laws Trump has enacted are relatively limited in scope. As Sahil Kapur and Scott Wong note, three of them are measures to terminate regulations established by Biden. Another is a stopgap bill to keep the government funded for six months. And one is a strict immigration detention measure called the Laken Riley Act.
While the government funding and immigration measures ultimately received some Democratic support, none of these measures were crafted on a bipartisan basis.
Trump is expected to soon sign a sixth bill into law, the “Take It Down Act,” which criminalizes the publication of nonconsensual, sexually explicit images and videos, including those generated by artificial intelligence. The House overwhelmingly passed it Monday night, sending it to Trump’s desk.
And GOP lawmakers are working on crafting a multitrillion-dollar bill, which will include an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, a boost in immigration enforcement and military spending, and a debt ceiling hike.
“He hasn’t signed many bills into law because the agenda of the first 100 days has not been a legislative agenda at all,” said William Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “Clearly, the administration, before it took office, planned a whirlwind of activity for the first 100 days at a pace that was compatible only with executive action. And this is part of an effort not only to overwhelm doubters and opponents through shock and awe tactics, but also to permanently expand executive power,” Galston said.
“I would say that that is the most fundamental institutional objective of Donald Trump and his administration,” he added.
Read more from Sahil and Scott →
More on Trump’s first 100 days:
- How Trump has tried to remake America in his first 100 days, by Jonathan Allen
- The man who led Project 2025 gives his assessment of Trump’s first 100 days, by Allan Smith
- Here’s what Trump has done on 14 of his major campaign promises, by Olympia Sonnier and Megan Shannon
How Trump’s 100-day standing in the polls compares to recent presidents
By Steve Kornacki
As the 100th day of his new presidential term arrives, Donald Trump’s poll numbers look an awful lot like they did 100 days into his last one.
His job approval rating, according to an average of 16 independent national polls conducted over the last two weeks, sits at 43%. That’s exactly where it sat in April of 2017, placing both Trump administrations at the bottom of the list of modern presidents at this same point.
In his first term, there was limited fluctuation to Trump’s average daily approval rating. It dipped as low as 38% and reached as high as 47%. That’s a significantly narrower range than for any of his modern predecessors. So while his current mark is by no means strong, it’s also par for the course for a president who has won two of the three national elections he’s contested. In other words, these are numbers that Trump and his fellow Republicans are quite accustomed to.
What is different from his first term, though, is how Americans view Trump’s handling of specific issues.
Clearly, tariffs and inflation stand out as Trump’s biggest liabilities. This is in contrast to his first term, when Trump’s handling of the economy generally won him his highest marks from voters, and when inflation wasn’t pronounced enough to loom as a major concern in polling. That both inflation and the potential ripple effects of tariffs can be felt in voters’ wallets makes those numbers that much more ominous for Trump and his party.
There’s another notable shift from Trump’s first term involving the opposition party. While Trump’s Republican Party is far from popular right now, Democrats actually are faring worse. In the average of recent national polls, 44% view the GOP favorably, while 55% view it unfavorably. But for Democrats, the split is 40% favorable and 59% unfavorable. During Trump’s first term, Democrats consistently rated higher than the GOP.
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Ben Kamisar.
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