WASHINGTON, D.C. — In his second term in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump has wasted no time in trying to tackle a broad list of priorities, relying heavily on executive orders to enact changes in the federal government. That was one shared takeaway of political strategists and a professor who spoke to Spectrum News about President Trump’s first 100 days in office.

“How far and how aggressive he's going on his campaign promises by executive order is kind of the tale of the 100 days –– with a huge emphasis on DOGE, which of course was created by executive order itself,” said Casey Burgat, the legislative affairs program director at the George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. Burgat is also an author and a former congressional staffer.

To date, Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders — with wide-ranging objectives, such as terminating federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs, attempting to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents are in the country illegally and renaming the body of water between the U.S. and Mexico as the Gulf of America. 

Democratic strategist Ameshia Cross also emphasized the role of the U.S. DOGE Service, also known as the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, as well as the velocity with which the president has sought to tackle his goals. 

“Within the first 100 days, he is accomplishing much of what he set out to do with Project 2025. It is literally a Santa’s checklist — and he has checked it off twice — of exactly what he wants to get done,” Cross said, referring to The Heritage Foundation’s roadmap for a conservative presidential administration. 

On the campaign trail, Trump sought to distance himself from Project 2025, but he has since enacted some of the proposals featured in the right-wing document and picked one of its architects, Russell Vought, as the administration’s budget director. 

For Republican political strategist Bob Clegg, Trump is expeditiously delivering on many promises made to those who cast their ballots for him. 

“That's what people voted for," Clegg said. "I mean, if you go back to last fall and you looked at polling, the one thing that people wanted was change.

“He's moving pretty fast on all fronts,” Clegg added. “Now, there's a practical political side to this, too, which is … we control the House; we control the Senate. He's got to do this, probably within the next 16 months.” 

There are several key factors that the political professionals said differentiate Trump’s first 100 days this year compared to 2017, including the expediency and breadth of his actions to start this term.

“When you just compare to what he was like eight years ago,” Clegg said, “even that contrast is pretty striking, and you had people back then saying it was doing too much, so I wonder what they're saying now.”

The president has also signed far more executive orders this term. During his first four years in office, or just over 1,450 days, Trump issued a total of 220 executive orders, meaning he is on pace to top this number before he hits his second 100 days in office this term.

“He's followed through on his promises, but he's doing it all from the Oval Office," Burgat said. "Congress has really struggled to legislate, which I think a lot of people predicted given what we saw in his first administration and the divisions within the Republican Party."

Trump has also surrounded himself with more loyal supporters in his second presidency, the political professionals said.

“Even in the first term, it seemed like he had a complete hold of the Republican Party, but he still had a lot of opposition not only from Democrats but privately and internally from the Republican Party, whether within his administration, sometimes his own Cabinet, and of course, some high-profile senators," Burgat said. "Those folks are no longer there."

“The main difference is the people he has around him," Cross said. "He has chosen a lot more loyalists this go-round than he did before. Expertise doesn’t matter; loyalty does. Before he was pulling some off rosters of previous Republican administrations."

Clegg emphasized that the president feels he has a mandate, after winning the popular vote as well as the Electoral College in 2024. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received more than 2.9 million more votes than Trump. 

“The first term he was so new to Washington and its ways he relied on a lot of people that were in and around government,” Clegg said. “This time around, he knew he had four years under his belt, and he knew exactly how he wanted to change things.”

Burgat also acknowledged the lessons learned during Trump’s first presidency. 

“Never discount the amount of effectiveness that can come just from experience and having done the office before,” Burgat said. “They had an administration in waiting throughout these four years, hoping that they would come back into the White House, and they stepped in on day one with a very different plan than they did on the first time.”

Among his wide-ranging, early objectives coming into office, the president had pledged that DOGE would “restore competence and effectiveness to our federal government.”

“I'm amazed at how much they uncovered. I'm amazed how much they've done,” Clegg said, praising DOGE’s efforts to date.

“Just the mere fact that they've exposed it and let the American taxpayer know this is how your tax dollars are being spent in these various ways is good," he said. "If they can find fraud and abuse in some of these agencies, whether it’s Medicare or Social Security or whatever, that’s great, too."

DOGE has made bold claims of savings on its “Wall of Receipts,” but media outlets and Democratic leaders have raised questions about the numbers, and earlier this year, an Associated Press audit found that nearly 40% of canceled contracts were expected to produce no savings. 

“Though it is expeditious in terms of how fast he’s been able to do certain things, in large parts that is driven by the DOGE efforts which are outside of our traditional government function, in addition to a Republican-led Congress that refuses to be a check or a balance against executive power,” Cross said. 

Burgat noted how DOGE initially focused on foreign aid in the early days of the administration but now is shifting its aim to “programmatic spending — where the big dollars lie in the federal budget.”

“Incredibly important in the first couple months, in that they were showing immediate action, especially with the high publicity that Elon Musk can bring to it," Burgat said. "They were canceling what looked like huge amounts of contracts and dollars, eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. But the process matters here, too, and what we've seen is that not only Musk has taken a step back, but the DOGE has started to run up to some pretty big obstacles.”

Burgat said the challenge now facing DOGE is that potential cuts to programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare may not have the same level of support from backers of the president. 

On the immigration front, the Trump administration has also been met with notable challenges in the courts, including objections to its use of the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime provision. Trump had signed an executive order in March, designating the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization and allowing for accused members to be detained and deported under the act. 

“The courts have done what the courts can do,” Cross said. “Just because there is a lawsuit doesn’t mean that you will win the lawsuit. Just because there are injunctions doesn’t mean that he will pay attention to them.”

To Cross, Trump has focused more on rhetoric than immigration enforcement to date.

“What we know is that the numbers in terms of those who have been detained are nowhere near what they were in the past,” she said, saying that the president has been “trying to make people believe that more is happening than actually is.”

Burgat described the president’s immigration actions as “working around the edges within the executive branch rather than doing the immigration overhaul that a lot of his supporters were promised.”  

“The trade-off with executive orders is that they're challenged almost immediately, and those things have to be heard by a court system that doesn't work on a political or congressional or presidential timeline. They work on their own timeline,” Burgat said.

However, Clegg saw the Trump administration’s work to remove people in the U.S. illegally as fulfilling his promise to voters to reverse the immigration policies of his predecessor.

“Millions came across the border in those four years, and people wanted that to end, and he's ending it,” Clegg said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said border crossings this year are down substantially from 2024. 

“Of all the issues that he campaigned on, it’s probably the most popular issue out there,” Clegg said.

Among other notable moves made by the president in his first 100 days was his announcement — and then subsequent pause — of tariffs on other countries. Notably tariffs on China, as well as a base 10% tariff on other nations, have remained.

For Clegg, the issue of tariffs is a wait-and-see one since the president gave a 90-day reprieve before many of his “Liberation Day” tariffs took effect. Clegg pointed to levies previously imposed by Trump on China during his first presidency that President Joe Biden left in place as a successful model.

“We import so much more than we export,” Clegg said. “That trade imbalance … affects our economy, and he just wants to try to somehow level that off.”

Burgat called Trump’s use of tariffs in his first 100 days as a “double down on what he did in the first term.”

“He genuinely believes tariffs are good economic policy, that trade deficits with certain countries are bad, and that he can use them as a tool of leverage to negotiate any number of things on a foreign policy basis.” Burgat said, noting that many economists point to potential downstream economic effects and uncertainty that may arise in the markets from tariffs. “This is one thing that he knows he can do with the stroke of a pen and the microphone that is the bully pulpit of the White House, and he's been more than willing to use that.”

Meanwhile, Cross criticized the president’s international trade strategy and overall economic policies to date.

“This is a guy who promised to bring down the price of eggs, to make housing more affordable," she said. "Meanwhile, he is creating a tariff war as a means to get across a political policy strategy. He is not into diplomacy; he is into strong arming.” 

She said staunch supporters would view the first few months of Trump’s presidency more favorably than those who cast their ballots for him in 2024 along personal economic lines. 

“Those individuals expected more from Donald Trump because he sold them a bill of goods that they believed in, and now they are paying the price,” Cross said.