| President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been marked by upheaval in the federal government, financial markets and international trade, and at institutions including law firms and prestigious universities. The Washington Post’s Chris Alcantara, Nick Mourtoupalas, Azi Paybarah and Clara Ence Morse visualized all of this with 10 charts about his second term so far. “Executive orders are up, while the S&P 500 and Trump’s approval rating are down,” they report.
Here are four of those charts and what they found. Read the rest of their excellent story here. He is using executive orders much more than other presidents did |  | | “Trump signed more than 140 executive orders as of Monday, far more than any American president in the same period,” my colleagues report. “He is rapidly approaching the number that Barack Obama signed in his entire first term.” Executive orders have less staying power than laws, as I reported Monday, but they’re bit of a power flex for the social media age, says Andrew Rudalevige, who studies the modern American presidency at Bowdoin College and has analyzed all of Trump’s executive orders. Rudalevige said executive orders help a president enforce existing law, but when used at this volume, they can make the president seem like he’s doing a lot, even if that’s not really the case. He is historically unpopular at the 100-day mark |  | | As my colleagues report: “Thirty-nine percent of U.S. adults approve of Trump’s job performance, and 55 percent disapprove, according to the latest Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll. That’s the lowest 100-day approval rating of any U.S. president since polling began more than 80 years ago.” This and other polls find that most Americans disapprove of how he’s handling tariffs, the economy more broadly, his cuts to federal agencies, how he’s handling foreign relations, how much the president is governing by executive order, how Elon Musk is handling DOGE and even how Trump is handling immigration — which has been his strongest issue for nearly a decade. Trump still has support from a majority of Republicans. But The Post’s Aaron Blake finds significant cracks in that support, with about one-quarter of Republican-leaning voters saying in that Post poll that Trump has “gone beyond his authority as president.” “And that’s just the ones who will admit it,” Blake writes. The markets are reeling from his tariffs |  | | As my colleagues report: “The U.S. stock markets took a hit in the first 100 days of Trump’s second term. It is the biggest drop seen this early in any presidential term in the last two decades. This follows Trump’s attacks on the head of the independent Federal Reserve — which his aides have urged him to soften — and uneven rollout of tariffs, including in an area mainly inhabited by penguins, which roiled the global economy.” “It’s insane,” Michael Strain, an economist with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, told me recently of Trump’s tariffs. “This is an enormous self-inflicted wound on the economy, and to see our government do this to American businesses and households is something I never thought I would see.” Trump has visited a golf club nearly every weekend |  | | As my colleagues report: “Trump has spent nearly every weekend at a golf course, according to a review of his schedule, media reports and publicly available information. “In 2011, Trump complained that Obama ‘plays golf to escape work while America goes down the drain.’ Later, Trump wrote, ‘Can you believe that, with all of the problems and difficulties facing the U.S., President Obama spent the day playing golf.’ “In 2016, as Trump sought to make the leap from reality-TV celebrity to commander in chief, he told supporters in Virginia he ‘may never see’ his golf courses and properties again. 'Because I’m going to be working for you, I’m not going to have time to go play golf.'” | |
