The making of a legacy: 1st steps in Trump era

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has presided over an extraordinary first 100 days in office marked by the aggressive use of executive power and a freewheeling leadership style, shattering the norms of the presidency and the traditions of Washington.

While his attention-grabbing statements and actions have produced very few of the concrete policy changes he had promised as a candidate, there is little doubt that Mr. Trump has moved to set the nation on a radically different course. Here is a look at his record to date.

Jobs and the economy

• Released a proposal for deep tax cuts, including slashing the rate for large and small companies to 15 percent and collapsing the seven individual income tax brackets into three: 10, 25 and 35 percent.

• Approved construction of the Dakota Access pipeline and reversed the Obama administration’s blocking of the Keystone XL pipeline.

• Issued executive orders to chisel away at Obama-era financial regulations, including a rule intended to protect consumers from bad investment advice.

• Signed 13 bills to wipe out Obama-era regulations using the Congressional Review Act and ordered agency reviews of regulations across the government.

The regulatory reversals may have been Mr. Trump’s most concrete economic steps so far.

Health care

• Signed an executive order to scale back as many parts of the Affordable Care Act as possible.

• Announced rule changes to cut the annual open enrollment period under the Affordable Care Act.

• Made a late pitch for passage of legislation to repeal and replace thehealth law.

Mr. Trump has made little progress on his promise to quickly repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a system Republicans say would provide greater access to care and more affordable coverage.

Environment

• Signed executive orders directing the Environmental Protection Agency to begin the legal process of repealing President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

• Signed an executive order directing the EPA to begin limiting the scope of the Waters of the United States rule, an Obama-era regulation intended to protect rivers, streams and wetlands.

• Signed directives that aim to open parts of some national monuments to drilling, mining and logging, and to roll back Mr. Obama’s bans on future offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.

• Signed legislation to lift an Interior Department regulation completed in the last days of the Obama administration to block coal companies from dumping mining debris into streams.

Immigration

• Signed an executive order to ban travel from six predominantly Muslim countries that are considered “terror prone” and to temporarily halt refugee resettlement.

• Signed an order calling for the construction of a wall on the southern border and the addition of thousands of border agents. Threatened to revoke federal funding from jurisdictions that decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities.

• Increased arrests of undocumented immigrants, detaining 22,000 from January through mid-March, a 38 percent increase over the same period in 2016. Doubled the number of noncriminal immigrants arrested.

Mr. Trump has yet to accomplish any of the most ambitious goals he laid out on illegal immigration, including beginning construction of a border wall paid for by Mexico and defunding “sanctuary cities,” and he has not overhauled the refugee admission process. A revised travel ban and the sanctuary city order are tied up in the courts.

Foreign policy

• Moved to reset the American approach to China, initially threatening to upend the decades-old “One China” policy. Tied the trade relationship with China to cooperation on North Korea.

• Withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and signed orders aimed at combating foreign trade abuses. Began inquiries into whether steel and aluminum imports were hurting American producers.

• Imposed tariffs on Canadian lumber and criticized Canada’s high tariffs on dairy products, while threatening to withdraw from Nafta if it could not be sufficiently renegotiated.

Military and intelligence

• Fired 59 cruise missiles into Syria after the regime’s use of chemical weapons and imposed sanctions on 271 Syrian officials.

• Approved a raid against al-Qaida militants in Yemen during which an American commando was killed.

• Delegated more authority to his combatant commanders to carry out military operations.

• Dropped the “mother of all bombs,” the most powerful conventional weapon in the American arsenal, on an Islamic State cave in Afghanistan.

• Imposed financial sanctions on 25 Iranians and companies that officials said had assisted in Tehran’s ballistic missile program and supported terrorist groups.

Social issues and courts

• Nominated and won confirmation of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

• Reinstated the “global gag rule,” which bars American aid for family planning organizations around the world that counsel patients on abortion.

• Signed legislation to allow states to deny funding to Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health organizations that offer abortion services.

• Rescinded an Obama administration policy that said transgender students in public schools had to be allowed to use the bathroom of their choice.

Personnel

• Nominated 71 individuals to fill the top ranks of his administration. By the same date, Mr. Obama had named 190.

• Promised a radical restructuring of the government, leaving positions in key agencies, including 200 at the State Department, unfilled or occupied by holdovers from the Obama administration.

• Hired family members and people with no government experience to serve in several top roles.

Norms of the presidency

• Upended the way a president communicates with the public, using Twitter to talk directly to Americans.

• Refused to release his tax returns and declined to divest from his multibilliondollar real estate empire.

• Imposed a five-year ban on lobbying by administration officials, but shut down disclosure of White House visitor logs.

• Used his exclusive Mara-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., as his “winter White House” and played golf frequently at clubs he owns.

Mr. Trump has shattered the protocols and customs of the presidency, with his unvarnished commentary on Twitter, his seat-of-the-pants approach to policy moves and statements, and his penchant for mixing the official with the commercial. He has called the news media the “the enemy of the people.”

But Mr. Trump has also made himself much more accessible than his predecessors.