100 Days of Trump

Plus: "Calm corners" in the subway system, mysterious 18-hour power outage, and more...

It's been 100 days of Donald Trump: "The numbers are good," says Tom Homan, the border czar, referring to the reported 139,000 people who have been deported since the president was inaugurated (a number also promoted in a "PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT" White House press release).

But like so many of the administration's touted accomplishments, the number that's being bragged about is likely very different than the reality. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is required to share deportation numbers with Congress, says it's removed roughly 57,000 people (which squares with the count of roughly 400 deportation flights, at 125 people a flight). Of course, ICE removals aren't the full picture: ICE works in conjunction with Customs and Border Protection, which handles arrests and removals at the border. So CBP numbers would have to make up the other half of that 139,000 total, but Trump has basically sealed the border, so very few apprehensions and subsequent deportations are actually happening down there. The number is sort of beside the point, though: Trump has routinely flouted due process, denying trials to illegal immigrants accused of being MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gang members, using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected "terrorists" but not actually proving that these people are terrorists in a court of law (more here, here, here, here). Ridding the country of actual violent criminals who entered illegally is something Americans broadly support; ripping families apart (even when they entered illegally), and depriving the accused of due process has dampened Trump's formerly broad approval from the American public. Oh, and throwing the Make-a-Wish population into immigration detention doesn't help.

Playing fast and loose with the numbers and labels and law is classic Trump. Consider the tariff rates announced on "Liberation Day" (which liberated lots of people from feeling good about their stock portfolios): Can anyone even keep track of what they are right now? The zone has been flooded with tariff-related announcements, and Trump has gone back and forth on what amounts they are and why and for which countries and when they're taking effect, seemingly fixated on the idea that trade deficits are inherently a problem, a sign of American weakness or the average Joe being ripped off.

Consider the "reciprocal" tariffs—that were not, in fact, reciprocal at all, calculated based on trade deficits, not on what each country charges us—they were signed into law on April 2, with the first 10 percent going into effect on April 5, and then the country-specific increases—which would ratchet goods from, say, Vietnam, up to a 46 percent tariff—were delayed 90 days on April 9 (with the exception of China, which was made 10 percent initially, then increased to 20 percent, then ratcheted up to 145 percent). If you can't keep up, know you're not alone. "This is not a negotiation," wrote trade adviser Peter Navarro, which is odd, because Trump appears to be…negotiating with the likes of Japan, South Korea, and India. ("90 deals in 90 days," is the new Navarro line, which contradicts what he had just said.)

To justify the trade policies, the administration has gone with "we're reshoring critical industries because we don't want to be reliant on China" (which we already did, for semiconductors) but also "we're revitalizing hollowed-out manufacturing regions like the Rust Belt." Regardless of which story it sticks with, factories will need critical components from places like China to get manufacturing up and running. And markets need some amount of predictability, not the constant back and forth. Meanwhile, consumers haven't really started to feel the effects of tariffs, mostly because shipping takes a long time, and there's a lag, so they haven't felt the depressed shipping volumes or noticed shortages yet. Trump's defenders—dwindling in number as the economy gets wrecked—have been going with the line that he's "the first president in generations to tell Wall Street to screw itself" and that "he's for the working men and women of this country." Never mind that everyday goods will skyrocket in price and that there's no such thing as some sort of centralized, nameless, faceless "Wall Street," nor does its getting screwed help normal Americans in the slightest. ("Wall Street for the last three election cycles chose the Democrats," noted the same Trump defender on my show, Just Asking Questions. "That's not an accident. They hate what Trump represents. They love open borders. They love slaves. They love free trade. And they don't give a shit about the American working class.")

As for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—which I had high hopes for, and have been somewhat disappointed by—libertarians are divided. "Musk's role within the executive branch is starting to look every bit as vague and unaccountable as the shadowy deep state operatives that Trump campaigned against—and that lack of clarity might soon undermine some of what DOGE has accomplished," wrote Reason's Eric Boehm in March in "DOGE Goes Deep State." Christian Britschgi had a more positive take in "DOGE Has Been a Smashing Success": "When compared to the most likely alternatives, DOGE has cut as much government as one could hope for," he wrote last week, adding that "making the federal government a less secure place to work and a less reliable funding partner means fewer people will want to work for it, and fewer organizations will rely on it for funding." This is a win in my book, too, but I do wonder how many of the DOGE cuts will be enduring, and whether there was a way to do staff cuts differently such that the least qualified people were axed, not just the most recently hired (or promoted). And when DOGE head Elon Musk claims federal contracts were canceled, when in reality he's touting the total contract number not subtracting what's already been paid out, the actual cost-savings ends up being far less than claimed. Still, "the relevant benchmark for DOGE's performance isn't how much a highly competent effort to shrink government could have accomplished," reminds Britschgi. "Rather, it's what the most likely alternatives to the DOGE would have accomplished."

Some components of the federal-government-scrapping effort—like dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau—have been held up in court. Others—like ending the Department of Education—are still works in progress. Libertarians can maintain some hope that these things will happen and happen through the proper mechanisms to have an enduring effect.

In the realm of foreign policy, Trump discouraged Israel from bombing Iran's nuclear sites and has semiprioritized ending the war in Ukraine (though not without antagonizing Volodymyr Zelenskyy and, now, possibly shifting his focus elsewhere). These bright spots are overshadowed by the fact that relations with China have gotten worse as the trade war heats up.

In other realms, Trump has shown his authoritarian tendencies while delivering very little for the American people who voted him into office. He has targeted law firms like Susman Godfrey, the Houston-based firm that represented voting machine maker Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion won a $787 million settlement from Fox News in 2023 after getting a judge to grant that Fox had spread conspiracies on the air related to whether Dominion's voting machines were rigged against Trump, resulting in his 2020 election defeat. Trump used an executive order to cancel federal contracts held by Susman Godfrey, which a federal judge has temporarily halted. These intimidation tactics have resulted in even very monied law firms acquiescing: "So far, to avoid reprisals, at least nine firms have promised to provide roughly $1 billion in top-tier pro bono legal advice to causes Mr. Trump embraces," reports The New York Times. I'm sympathetic to Trump's belief that lawfare and the Deep State and the media have, at times, unfairly targeted him, but his efforts to dole out retribution make me fear he doesn't see the goal as independence for these institutions and rooting out specific bad actors within the bounds of the law, but that he just wants his enemies punished.

Ditto with the universities. Trump has threatened to pull federal funds from universities that fail to comply with his orders surrounding hiring and curriculum decisions, while launching investigations into how top universities have been handling antisemitism on campus. Though no libertarian tears will be shed when a presidential administration decides that federal funding in higher ed has gone too far and needs to be reversed, this looks an awful lot like encroachment on the First Amendment rights of students at these universities, an attempt to get these institutions to kowtow and do the executive's bidding. It would be better to spend less time talking about all the ways the universities and their lefty administrators, professors, and students suck (again: I am no fan of the tent encampments and Hamas pamphlets!), and better to make a more principled case for why it's not in the American people's best interest to underwrite student loans or fund schools via federal money or give their endowments such favorable tax treatment.

"Trump Promised a Markets Boom," reads one Bloomberg headline. "100 Days In, Stocks Have Only Seen Damage." This sums it up. We're 100 days in, and what good has Trump done for the American people, exactly? Some green shoots in the DOGE realm, for sure, but not much to cheer beyond that.

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Scenes from New York: I love how mayoral candidates will just make totally insane proposals like "calm corners" in subway stations and public parks for those experiencing mental episodes. Someone having a schizophrenic break and threatening to stab people probably won't be helped by more time spent in shavasana pose.

NYC mayoral candidate Jessica Ramos thinks "calm corners" will be part of the solution. Are you kidding me pic.twitter.com/FkdUqdiOLy

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) April 28, 2025

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QUICK HITS

• A mysterious power outage hit vast amounts of Portugal and Spain, shutting down trains, airports, traffic lights, the internet, and more for about 18 hours. (It has now been restored.) The cause is currently unclear. A meme that's circulating, of a luxuriously chill hang, has been beautifully and quickly converted to Europoor format, because we still have power over here:

The American mind cannot comprehend this https://t.co/gMXgdrcbfA pic.twitter.com/UEhXF1Ll2r

— YIMBYLAND (@YIMBYLAND) April 28, 2025

• "Both Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp. say they're seeing more clients buy protection against dollar declines. And at Group Richelieu in Paris, Alexandre Hezez says his funds are now hedged to the maximum level allowed because 'everything has been turned upside down,'" reports Bloomberg. "Hezez, like many investors, previously felt it made little sense to offset the foreign exchange risk. The thinking was that if US stocks sold off because of a global panic, the dollar would likely strengthen on haven demand and offset those losses. Overall currency hedging by foreign investors in US stocks stands at 23%, well below the near 50% level seen in 2020, State Street Corp.'s custodial data shows."
• "Top colleges in the cross hairs of President Trump have sharply increased their spending on lobbying," reports The New York Times. "Ten universities that have been singled out by the administration for scrutiny spent a combined $2.8 million lobbying the federal government in the first three months of 2025, which is more than those institutions spent in any quarter at least since 2008, according to the analysis.…One of the 10, Columbia University, more than tripled its spending on lobbying in the first quarter of 2025, compared with the same quarter last year, the analysis found. Another, Harvard University, also greatly increased its lobbying outlays, spending $230,000, compared with $130,000 in the same period last year."
• Cardio's out, gains are in.