What’s the moment from President Trump’s first 100 days back in office that has stayed with you the most — the one that defines who and what this presidency and administration represent? That’s one of the questions that Times Opinion wanted to explore as America reached the 100-day mark of Trump’s second term — and as we often do, we turned to our columnists for answers. The moments they chose ranged from specific actions, like Trump trying to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico, to broader campaigns, like a crackdown on foreign students speaking their minds. There were shocks, like Trump’s meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and the firing of widely admired national security officials. And there were, of course, the tariffs. Taken together, these moments capture a period driven wholly by the instincts and impulses of one man, and by the complicity or impotency (depending on your point of view) of Congress, the two leading parties, the courts, the donor class, the bureaucratic state and elite legal and educational forces in dealing with Trump and his agenda. The columnist Jamelle Bouie pinpoints the nature of Trump’s consolidation of power in an essay today, describing how the first 100 days of any presidency are typically about construction — so what happens when they are about destruction? And I sat down with the columnists Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada for our First 100 Days podcast series to go deeper on how Trump has changed America. As with many big moments, Times Opinion also wanted to understand how regular Americans were processing the first 100 days, so we turned to a group of voters who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, then swung to Trump in November. They are feeling a mix of hope, regret and jitters, and many of them are deeply frustrated with Trump’s performance on the economy but still sticking by him as a man of action, particularly on illegal immigration. In many ways, their views are a counterpoint to those of another group that we spoke with: a mix of 35 legal scholars assessing actions by Trump that displayed the most serious evidence of lawlessness. Many Americans disagree on what Trump and his administration are trying to do. To that end, the staff photographer Damon Winter decided to capture Trump’s cabinet in a series of portraits, and the columnist David French wrote an accompanying essay about how rare it is for half of America to see these people as a team of warriors and the other half to see a team of toadies — and what that says about the country. This is no ordinary era in American politics or history. We hope you’ll spend time reading this and future coverage to better understand why. Read Opinion’s coverage: Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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