One hundred days into his second term in the White House and Donald Trump has commanded a chaotic reordering of the federal government, the nation’s economy and targeted virtually every aspect of American life.
He broke records — including his own — introducing tariffs and executive orders, and he faces more than 200 lawsuits against him and his administration.
Here, The Independent explores the numbers behind the beginning of Trump’s second term, from a crashing stock market to mass deportations and purges of the federal workforce.
Ruling by executive order
Republicans control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, but Trump’s legislative agenda isn’t getting any action in Congress. Virtually all of Trump’s agenda is being pushed through a blitz of executive orders — since taking office, the president has signed a whopping 142 of them.
More than a dozen are focused on immigration, nine are aimed at expanding coal and oil and gas production, and at least two deal with election administration and voting rights, baselessly asserting his narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from him in a White House document.
5 bills
signed into law
Other orders cover Trump’s culture wars, with at least four explicitly targeting transgender Americans, and at least another four attacking DEI and accessibility initiatives.
0
federal judges nominated, with 46 vacancies to fill
Within 100 days, the president has signed only five bills into law — the least amount for a new president within seven decades. At this point in his first term, he had signed 24 bills into law.
Chaos in the stock market
Trump has taken a brute-force approach to trade and the economy, whether it’s blanket tariffs or sweeping cancellations of federal contracts — and stock markets in particular have seen historic swings.
Since Trump entered office, the Dow Jones and NASDAQ indices have both been in decline. The most dramatic drops happened around Trump’s threatened tariff announcements on so-called “Liberation Day” April 2.
In just a few short days, the Dow Jones index dropped by more than 10 percent, one of the most significant hits to the stock market since COVID-19.
Government treasury bonds, which are typically more robust than the stock markets, have also seen spikes amid the panic.
Dollar falls to three-year low
The U.S dollar is historically strong and, as a result, is the currency underpinning global markets and the benchmark for other currencies.
But it’s been in near-consistent decline since the end of January.
The value of the dollar hit its lowest in over three years. The value of the dollar dropped by 2 percent on “Liberation Day,” marking the worst single-day crash in roughly a decade.
$4.1 trillion
in imports exposed to tariffs
Tariffs were a contentious feature of Trump 1.0, but his second administration has taken the trade war to levels previously unseen in U.S. policy.
Almost every country in the world is now facing some form of tariffs on goods exported to the U.S.
Yet Americans will likely be the worst hit, according to analysis from the Kiel Institute. Consumer prices are predicted to increase by 7.2 percent in the short term, and exports could go down by 20 percent, making it harder and more expensive to get products.
The United States imported more than $4.1 trillion in products last year, roughly 31 percent more than it exports. Nearly all of these goods coming into the country will now face tariffs.
24
days spent golfing
Trump launched product-specific tariffs averaging 25 percent on imported cars, automotive parts, steel and aluminum. Canada, Mexico and China were all hit with levies due to alleged involvement in fentanyl supply chains.
On April 2, Trump unleashed a minimum 10 percent tariff on all goods, plus “reciprocal” tariffs between 11 and 50 percent against imports from countries with “trade barriers” to the United States.
Those tariffs are temporarily paused, but a 10 percent base rate remains.
Meanwhile, the trade war between the United States and China has only escalated, with 145 percent total tariffs on Chinese goods, and retaliation from Beijing.
American businesses sell billions each year to China and rely on key Chinese materials for production – including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which has suffered stunning profit losses since Trump entered office.
6
appearances from Melania Trump in Washington, D.C.
Billions slashed from federal agencies
Trump’s creation of a so-called Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by the world’s wealthiest man, has faced intense legal scrutiny from the start.
Cuts proposed by DOGE have been widespread and brutal. But the actual scale of those cuts is a subject of debate — even among the department itself.
Musk recently downgraded his ambition for government savings from $1 trillion to $150 billion.
The official DOGE website says agency cuts have gutted an estimated $160 billion.
But a recent investigation from The New York Times suggested the majority of those cuts (roughly $92 billion) are not yet accounted for.
122
injunctions issued against the Trump administration
Of those itemized cuts which have already been posted with receipts, federal grants have faced the most cuts ($32.5 billion).
But some of these numbers are subject to change, with reports of millions being mistaken for billions, and credit taken for cuts from Joe Biden’s administration.
Separately to DOGE, Trump announced sweeping cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which alone funded around $43 billion in foreign aid programs in 2023.
Federal workers brace for mass firings
280,000
estimated federal layoffs
DOGE’s work has contributed to more than 280,000 planned layoffs across 27 federal agencies within the last two months, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Canceled contracts and cuts to federal aid have imperiled more than 4,400 other American jobs, largely impacting nonprofits and health organizations.
Court filings have outlined the scope of DOGE’s destruction, which has upended virtually all global aid, obstructed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and throttled funding for libraries, public health research and combating homelessness.
But the administration has not officially tallied cuts to the workforce, and judges have blocked some firings while others have cleared a path for the DOGE agenda.
Layoffs have come in the form of 55,000 confirmed cuts, more than 76,000 employee buyouts, and more than 145,000 other planned reductions impacting the roughly 2.4 million civil employees in the federal workforce, according to The New York Times.
15
USAID workers left
The U.S. Agency for International Development employed as many as 10,000 people before the Trump administration virtually eliminated the agency, which supports hundreds of life-saving missions around the world. The agency is expected to keep only 15 positions, meeting the bare minimum required under federal law.
Trump’s immigration agenda
Trump’s campaign promoted the “largest deportation operation in American history,” but the administration has largely concealed from the public concrete details about immigration enforcement, including where people are arrested and who is being removed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted near-daily updates on the number of arrests within the first weeks of the administration but stopped when daily arrests and removals declined.
Within the first weeks of the Trump administration, from January 25 to February 8, more than 9,700 people were deported, according to data from the nonpartisan TRAC research group. Another 8,300 people were deported in the two weeks that followed, and another 9,600 people were removed between February 23 and March 8.
ICE posted near-daily updates on the number of arrests within the first weeks of the administration but stopped when daily arrests and removals declined.
Total removals reached at least 27,772 within Trump’s first six weeks in office, a rate of 661 people a day, according to TRAC. But that’s roughly 11 percent fewer than daily removals under the Biden administration.

Border crossings plummeted after the administration effectively ended any legal pathways for people to enter the United States by claiming asylum under U.S. and international law.
Border agents tallied more than 96,000 encounters in December. In January, that figure dropped to roughly 66,000, according to Customs and Border Protection. There were roughly 11,000 in February and another 11,000 in March.
137
Alien Enemies Act removals
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history to summarily deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members from Venezuela.
Under that authority, at least 137 men were removed from the United States and sent to a brutal Salvadoran prison, where they face the prospect of indefinite detention, though administration officials admit in court documents that “many” of those men have no criminal record.
In total, the administration has deported at least 278 people from the United States to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador since March 15.
Some 48,000 people were held in ICE detention in facilities across the country, as of April 6, reaching an all-time high, according to TRAC.
Nearly half — approximately 22,249 people — have no criminal record.
Adams County Detention Center in Natchez, Mississippi held the largest number of ICE detainees within the last year, averaging more than 2,000 detainees on any given day. Texas holds the most ICE detainees in the country, with more than 12,000 people held in facilities there within the last year. Louisiana’s facilities held more than 7,000.
1,500
student visas revoked
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked at least 1,500 student visas from roughly 250 universities, targeting dozens of international student activists for their pro-Palestinian advocacy and criticism of Israel over the war in Gaza.
Two failed ceasefires, thousands of lives lost
A ceasefire between Israel and Palestine — which was negotiated by the Biden administration days before Trump entered office — deteriorated under his watch. And more lives have been lost.

On March 18, Israel launched a series of air strikes across Gaza which it said targeted Hamas, resuming attacks after two months of ceasefire.
Since then, approximately 1,652 people have been killed in Gaza, with 4,391 more wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Some 420,000 people have been displaced in this period alone, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Around this time, Trump also tried — unsuccessfully — to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
The administration promised to bring peace to Ukraine within 100 days. Now, that time is up.

After tense discussions between Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky and Trump, Ukraine agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on March 11. Russian leader Vladimir Putin refused.
Then, on March 18, both parties appeared to agree to a temporary ceasefire on energy infrastructure alone, following a 90-minute call between Putin and Trump.
600
mentions of ‘tariffs,’ his ‘favorite’ word
But in just a few hours, both parties accused the other of hitting energy infrastructure. And Ukraine’s government has recorded more than 30 attacks since then, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Hundreds of Ukrainians have died since Zelensky first met with Trump at the end of February, with more injured, according to figures from the United Nations.
1,587
Truth Social posts
Hundreds of Truth Social posts
The president owns more than 100 million shares, or roughly 53 percent, of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of social media platform Truth Social, where he fires off more than a dozen posts a day. His stake in the company — which was transferred into a trust controlled by Donald Trump Jr. after taking office — is worth $2.7 billion.
The president has posted roughly 27,000 times since officially joining the platform in 2022.
Since taking office, he has posted more than 1,500 times, or at least 15 times a day on average. He has mentioned “illegal” immigration at least 70 times.