THE BROKEN MIRROR: 100 DAYS INTO THE TRUMP REGIME

I. The Illusion of Momentum

On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump returned to the presidency with a promise: that this time, the “first 100 days” would be “extraordinary.” Not just bigger, but transformational. Monumental. Faster. It was all going to happen “day one,” or by lunch.​

What followed was a blitz of executive orders—143 in total, more than any president has signed in their first 100 days, surpassing even FDR's 99 in 1933. These orders rolled back Biden-era policies, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and reinstated controversial measures like the "Remain in Mexico" policy. The administration also pardoned over 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6 Capitol riot. ​

Meanwhile, the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led a sweeping overhaul of the federal workforce. Over 275,000 federal employees were laid off or resigned under pressure, amounting to a 12% reduction of the civilian federal workforce. ​

And here we are—100 days later—with a 0.3% contraction in GDP, marking the first economic decline since 2022. This downturn was driven by a record trade deficit of $162 billion in March, as businesses rushed to import goods ahead of impending tariffs. ​

While the president’s team brags about cutting “woke programs” and deporting immigrants with “antigovernment tattoos,” the reality is clear: there has been no legislative triumph—only five bills have been signed into law, the fewest in modern history. No economic revival. No unifying national vision. Just volume, vengeance, and the steady erosion of American democracy

II. He’s Not Governing. He’s Dismantling.

Donald Trump isn’t a president in the traditional sense. He doesn’t govern. He imposes. He doesn’t legislate. He dictates. And he doesn’t lead. He performs.

In his return to power, he ruled by fiat — bypassing Congress with a flurry of executive orders that gutted environmental protections, withdrew the U.S. from global partnerships like the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization, and reinstated hardline immigration policies like “Remain in Mexico.” The number? 143. That’s more than any president has ever signed in their first 100 days — including FDR.

Congress, meanwhile, has been almost entirely sidelined. Only a handful of bills have become law, none remotely historic. This isn’t governance by deliberation. It’s domination by directive.

And it’s not improvisation. It’s the playbook: Project 2025 — a 900-page blueprint from the Heritage Foundation — calls for the demolition of institutional guardrails. It lays out the firing of civil servants, the appointment of loyalists, and the consolidation of power inside the executive branch. It’s being implemented, line by line, in real time.

This isn’t chaos. It’s design. A strategy to dismantle neutrality, disable accountability, and reshape the federal government into a political enforcement tool. The goal? To make sure power never slips out of the hands of those who believe they alone are entitled to hold it.

III. The Bipartisan Lie

There was a moment — brief and delusional — when some believed that a second-term Trump might be different. That the chaos of the past, the riots, the impeachments, the pandemic mismanagement — all of it might have humbled him. That maybe, this time, he’d govern. Maybe, this time, he’d reach across the aisle.

Instead, he picked up exactly where he left off — with vengeance.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed an executive order reinstating Schedule F, a federal employee reclassification that allows agencies to fire career civil servants and replace them with political loyalists. Within weeks, the Office of Personnel Management released a rule proposal outlining how departments could begin identifying thousands of employees for reclassification. The stated goal: purge the so-called “deep state.”

According to data compiled by the Government Accountability Project, at least 14 federal agencies received internal directives from senior political staff asking for reviews of employees with past affiliations to progressive organizations, whistleblower activity, or public union representation. While no official firings have been confirmed through May 1, watchdog groups say intimidation and “reassignment under review” notices are surging — particularly in the EPA, the DOJ, and HHS.

In Congress, overtures toward bipartisanship have hit a brick wall. No major bipartisan bill has made it out of committee since Trump took office. House and Senate Democrats have reported being excluded from agency briefings, particularly on immigration enforcement and federal personnel changes.

And when Senate Democrats called on the White House in March to comply with a Supreme Court order in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia deportation case, they received no response. Not even a form letter.

The Biden-era tradition of bipartisan gang-of-eight briefings, budget summits, and joint emergency task forces is gone. What’s replaced it is silence — or retaliation.

Trump’s second term doesn’t just reject bipartisanship. It treats it like betrayal.

This isn’t gridlock. It’s erasure. And the goal isn’t negotiation — it’s elimination.

IV. The Department of Retaliation

In this White House, justice isn't blind—it's weaponized.​

On February 4, 2025, the Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as Attorney General, a move that signaled a seismic shift in the Department of Justice's priorities. Within 24 hours, Bondi issued a series of directives that dismantled Biden-era policies, including reinstating the federal death penalty and lifting the moratorium on federal executions.

But Bondi's DOJ didn't stop at capital punishment. She reversed protections that shielded journalists from being compelled to reveal confidential sources, allowing prosecutors to subpoena reporters' records in leak investigations . This move has been criticized as a direct attack on press freedom, undermining the First Amendment and the public's right to know.​

The Department has also been accused of targeting political opponents. Under Bondi's leadership, the DOJ initiated investigations into Democratic-aligned organizations and ordered raids on nonprofits accused of "leftist agitation," a term lacking legal definition but rich in political implications. These actions have raised concerns about the politicization of federal law enforcement agencies.​

Perhaps the most alarming example of institutional defiance is the administration's refusal to comply with a Supreme Court order regarding Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident and asylum-seeker who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador. Despite a unanimous Supreme Court ruling mandating the U.S. government to facilitate Garcia's return, the Trump administration has refused to act . President Trump has publicly stated that he could intervene but chooses not to, citing unsubstantiated claims about Garcia's alleged gang affiliations.

This blatant disregard for the judiciary sets a dangerous precedent. When the executive branch openly defies the Supreme Court, it undermines the very foundation of our constitutional democracy. Justice isn't just being aimed—it's being perverted.​

What do you call a government that refuses to obey its own Constitution? That's not America. That's something else.

V. Project Orbán

Viktor Orbán didn’t outlaw democracy. He kept the courts, the parliament, the press — just not their independence. He turned opposition into performance art and dissent into a career risk. Hungary still votes. It just doesn’t matter who wins.

Now look at us.

Since January, Trump’s second term has followed the same script — agency by agency, lever by lever. But where Orbán used soft censorship and backroom favors, this White House is using federal power like a scalpel.

At the Department of Education, enforcement of civil rights guidance has quietly vanished. On March 14, the department announced it would no longer pursue Title IX cases involving gender identity. On April 1, it paused all investigations related to curriculum discrimination pending “state review protocols.” What that means: if a state wants to whitewash its textbooks or block access to AP Black history, no one in Washington is coming to stop them.

At the CDC, a new internal policy requires all epidemiological reports to pass through a political appointee’s office before publication. On March 26, an infectious disease bulletin on rising drug-resistant infections was delayed for “alignment review.” The report was eventually released — scrubbed of its original recommendations for regional emergency funding.

The EPA’s enforcement division has suspended at least four major investigations into corporate polluters — not because of lack of evidence, but because the agency is now using a “cost-to-compliance” ratio before issuing fines. Translation: If it’s expensive to hold a company accountable, they don’t. Internal emails confirm at least two whistleblowers have been reassigned since March.

And at the Justice Department, a new layer of political oversight was added in April for all high-profile investigations. Prosecutors must now submit case memos to a “legal clarity team” housed inside the Office of the Deputy Attorney General. That team includes two attorneys who worked on Trump’s 2020 election litigation — cases that were thrown out in every court but now appear to be policy credentials.

This is what hollowing out looks like.

The institutions still stand. The signs are still on the buildings. But the mission has changed. These aren’t watchdogs anymore. They’re security cameras pointed in the other direction.

Orbán didn’t need to jail every journalist or rig every vote. He just needed enough control to make resistance feel ornamental. And that’s the point. Not to make opposition impossible — just irrelevant.

That’s what we’re watching now. Not the end of democracy. Just its quiet reclassification.

VI. The Loyalty Government

This isn’t an administration. It’s a loyalty operation wearing a government’s suit.

From top to bottom — Cabinet secretaries, deputy secretaries, agency heads, senior legal staff — Trump’s second term has filled the federal bureaucracy not with experts, not with conservatives, not even with ideologues, but with people who passed a single test: will you do what you’re told, no matter what?

The litmus test isn’t experience. It’s allegiance.

Let’s start with the Department of Health and Human Services, where Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. began his term by cutting off funding for long-running infectious disease programs. His reasoning? Too much institutional “groupthink.” That’s how the administration now describes consensus. He’s required placebo-controlled trials for all new vaccines — even when such trials are medically inappropriate — causing a freeze in NIH review pipelines.

At Education, the Office for Civil Rights lost over half its staff in March. According to internal emails obtained by ProPublica, enforcement officers were instructed to “await further instructions” before pursuing complaints related to gender, race, or disability discrimination. Four regional offices have since closed.

At Homeland Security, field agents have been directed to investigate “anti-government sentiment” in immigrant communities — a phrase with no legal definition and no operational guideline. A new internal memo obtained by the ACLU confirms the inclusion of social media posts as “risk indicators.”

Across the Department of Justice, prosecutorial independence has been choked off at the root. Career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division were ordered in February to submit all proposed filings to a political review team staffed largely by Trump campaign alumni. Two senior DOJ lawyers have resigned since March, citing “unethical interference in ongoing investigations.”

Inside the Environmental Protection Agency, senior scientists have been reassigned to “non-public roles,” including several who authored previous reports on climate risk and corporate polluters. The agency's internal newsletter has stopped publishing enforcement actions — a first since the Nixon administration.

And while not technically a federal employee, Steve Bannon now chairs the “Executive Policy Coordinating Council” — a group created by executive order to oversee agency compliance with administration priorities. Bannon, a private citizen and convicted criminal, now holds weekly meetings with department heads and has been granted secure access credentials.

This isn’t governance. It’s compliance management.

The result isn’t just bad policy. It’s the corrosion of fact itself. When civil servants are told to clear their conclusions with political staff before publishing, you don’t just lose objectivity — you lose oxygen. You choke off the flow of honest information up and down the system until the only thing left is noise and nodding.

This is the institutional version of the same loyalty oath Trump demanded from James Comey in 2017. Only now, no one’s refusing.

And when a government stops serving the truth, it starts serving something else entirely.

VII. The Exodus of Expertise

The United States once attracted the brightest minds in the world. Now, they’re leaving — or refusing to come.

Since January, over 9,000 U.S. researchers have resigned. Another 280 applied for “scientific asylum” at a French university designed to resist political interference. NIH grants are drying up. CDC staffing is down 20%. International student enrollment is dropping fast.

We’re not just losing talent. We’re losing trust. When America stops being a haven for scientific freedom, we don’t just lose prestige — we lose the edge in medicine, climate, AI, and national defense.

VIII. Tariffs, Tumbling Markets, and the Blame Game

It was supposed to be the power move. The punch-in-the-nose moment. The part of the movie where the music swells and the flags wave. In his first week back in office, Donald Trump announced a new wave of tariffs on China — some topping out at 145% — with the kind of fanfare usually reserved for the end of wars.

The target? “Communist supply chains.”
The result? American panic-buying, a record trade deficit, a contracting economy, and a stock market that responded like it smelled smoke in the basement.

In March 2025, U.S. businesses flooded ports with early imports, trying to beat the clock on tariffs that would price them out of competitiveness. The result? A $162 billion trade deficit — the largest in American history — and a 0.3% GDP contraction for Q1. That’s not spin. That’s Commerce Department data.

Wall Street flinched hard. The S&P dropped 6% in two weeks, energy and tech dragged down the Dow, and financial analysts started using phrases like “pre-recession signals” and “liquidity drag” on national television.

So what did the president do?

He blamed the Fed. Then he blamed Democrats. Then he blamed retailers for being “woke,” China for “counterfeit inflation,” and finally the media — for reporting the numbers accurately.

He called it “strategic recalibration.”
Everyone else called it a self-inflicted wound.

Even his own former vice president, Mike Pence, issued a rare rebuke:

“Erratic trade policy will collapse our economy faster than any foreign adversary ever could.”

Meanwhile, the tariff policy itself is wildly inconsistent. American semiconductor firms were granted “temporary exemptions.” Agricultural subsidies ballooned after retaliatory tariffs shut U.S. farmers out of overseas markets. And small businesses — the ones Trump claims to champion — now face higher costs on everything from packaging to circuit boards.

Here’s what’s not happening:

• There’s no return of manufacturing jobs.

• There’s no onshoring miracle.

• There’s no China retreating with its tail between its legs.

What there is — is economic whiplash, political deflection, and a domestic market that’s absorbing the damage.

This isn’t a doctrine. It’s a reflex. And in the absence of a real strategy, it’s loud. It’s erratic. And it’s coming out of your pocket.

IX. Culture Wars in Place of Policy

America is struggling economically. But instead of relief, we got rage.

Instead of jobs or clean energy, Trump repealed DEI programs, restricted transgender healthcare, and weaponized Homeland Security against public libraries.

The Department of Education — already being downsized — stopped enforcing civil rights protections on campuses. HUD banned trans individuals from federally funded shelters.

In other words, your insulin might cost more, your power bill is higher, your mortgage is tighter — but your government is making sure there are fewer Black authors on your kid’s school library shelf.

It’s governance by culture war. It’s politics as provocation. It doesn’t solve a thing — and that’s the point.

X. The House Always Loses

It won’t last.

The system Trump is building is loud and fast and mean — but it’s hollow. You can strip-mine federal agencies of expertise, but eventually, you need someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. You can politicize science, but pathogens don’t vote. And you can ignore the rule of law — right up until the moment law is the only thing keeping chaos at the curb.

And that moment is coming.

In Mississippi and Oklahoma, FEMA failed to meet its own response timeline for opening disaster recovery centers after April’s tornado outbreaks. The delays weren’t logistical. They were structural. After a 27% staffing cut in February, FEMA’s regional offices in both states were left understaffed. The backlog now stretches into June — and rebuilding hasn't even begun.

The EPA, once the nation's environmental watchdog, is now operating without active air monitoring in over 90 counties. Internal memos confirm that more than 40% of its enforcement team has either been reassigned, retired, or left entirely since January. Wildfire season is already underway in New Mexico, and the EPA hasn’t issued a single regional air quality alert.

At the Office of Special Counsel, which handles federal whistleblower protections, two major investigations were frozen in March after the White House moved authority over “sensitive personnel cases” to a new political appointee. The result? Career staffers from the Department of Interior and NOAA — both reporting ethics violations — were told their cases were “under reevaluation.” No timeline. No recourse. No protection.

This is what collapse looks like. Not with an explosion — but with a shrug.

When the next emergency hits — a hurricane, a market crash, a foreign cyberattack — the question won’t be “who failed.” It’ll be “who was left.” Because the truth is, the people who knew how to hold the line — the ones who knew how to balance a budget, or launch a disaster recovery site, or stop a spill from becoming a river fire — are gone.

They were fired. Or reassigned. Or just gave up.

And what’s left behind is a government that can punish, prosecute, surveil, and spin — but can’t actually function.

This isn’t gridlock. It’s deliberate institutional fragility.
It’s not reform. It’s erosion.
And the real tragedy? It won’t break all at once.
It’ll fail just when we need it most.

Final Warning: The Line Between Us

This isn’t just a story about Trump. It’s about us.

About how much we’re willing to tolerate. About how many rules we’ll let him break. About whether we still believe in the fragile, beautiful idea of democracy — or whether we’re ready to trade it for something faster, simpler, and crueler.

There are people rising. Protests are swelling. Lawsuits are filing. Courts are speaking — some louder than others. Americans are watching, learning, organizing.

The authoritarian model only works if the people stop fighting back.

Trump has power. But he doesn’t yet have permission. He doesn’t have surrender.
And if there’s still a line left in the sand, we better decide — right now — which side of it we’re on.

History doesn’t remember who hesitated.

It remembers who refused to kneel.