President Donald Trump is coming up on a full year in office for his second term. It’s been a period defined by his attempts to make the presidency more powerful than anytime in modern history. He has touted his deportations, bragged about billions raised from tariffs and promised an economic revival that is right around the corner. “We’re getting inflation — we’re crushing it,” he said last week, “and you’re getting much higher wages.”
Yet polls regularly show that a majority of the country disapproves of his presidency and most of his major policies.
“The question then becomes whether the growing discontent, does that translate to meaningful political checks on his actions,” said Rosa Brooks, a national security expert at Georgetown University Law Center, “either in Congress or at the voting booth?”
Here’s what the end of Trump’s first year is looking like.
His mass deportations are picking up
There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and Trump has set a goal to deport 1 million by his first year in office.
That’s a major logistical challenge and some courts have ruled that some of his rapid deportations and removal tactics are illegal. Yet the raids show no signs of stopping. He has moved from targeting largely liberal cities to more politically mixed areas such as Charlotte, as well as farm workers and major employers. The Trump administration recently signed a contract to purchase its own planes to deport people quickly. And the Supreme Court also said immigration officials can use race as a reason to stop someone.
“By the end of this almost everyone is going to know someone who had a friend or family member or colleague affected, or who witnessed an arrest happening,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.
Trump and his administration say they are targeting “the worst of the worst.” But Bier calculates that about 5 percent of those detained had a violent criminal conviction. In D.C., more than 80 percent of the immigrants arrested don’t have a prior criminal record, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal data. There’s little evidence that migrants commit crimes at a higher rate than Americans.
Most of his tariffs could get knocked down by the Supreme Court
Trump’s signature economic policy is a big gamble. He has imposed the highest tariffs in about a century, saying it will revive U.S. manufacturing, yet goods from pretty much every country in the world now cost more to import because of them.
And his tariffs might be illegal.
Tariffs are essentially a tax at the border, and the Constitution vests Congress with the power to impose taxes. The Supreme Courtis consideringthe legality of most of his tariffs and could issue a ruling in the coming weeks or months.
It’s also getting harder for American companies to avoid raising prices (in some cases, again) as they pay the tariffs to bring goods and raw materials into the country. By one estimate, Americans are expected to spend $1,800 extra a year because of tariffs.
Still, the pro-tariff side sees early signs of a manufacturing boomreturning to the United States. “Prices and costs are rising, but it has nothing to do with tariffs,” said Nick Iacovella of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a conservative, pro-tariff group. “They can be done without causing harm to the U.S. economy and could lead to a lot of great benefits,” he said.
Prices are going up, not down
“We inherited the highest prices ever, and we’re bringing them down,” Trump asserted on the first stop of his affordability tour last week.
But electricity is becoming unaffordable for many, homeownership is out of reachfor a number of Americans, inflation remains high and grocery costs keep going up — in part because of Trump’s deportations of farm workers. Trump touts his work to lower some drug prices, but health insurance costs are going up for millions of Americans next year if Congress doesn’t act soon.
There have also been recession-like layoffs in white-collar jobs, and the unemployment rate is at its highest level since 2021. Even basics are a pain point for many: A majority of Americans say they are spending more on groceries and utilities than they were a year ago, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
“In early December, half of Americans say they were worse off financially than a year ago,” said Claudia Sahm, chief economist at the investment management firm New Century Advisors.
He’s pushing for peace deals while escalating military action in Venezuela
Some in Trump’s base have accusedhim of focusing too much on foreign affairs.
He has spent much of his first year in office pushing for peace deals around the world, to mixed results, as he openly campaignsfor a Nobel Peace Prize.
The biggest potential for peace comes between Hamas and Israel, a deal Trump helped negotiate that has largely held, The Post reports, though Gaza’s future remains uncertain. After promising to end the war in Ukraine on his first day in office, he saidthis week that a Ukraine-Russia peace deal is “closer than ever,” though there is fierce criticism in Europe that this deal largely echoes Russian talking points. He’s also announced peace deals in Southeast Asia and Africa, yet those conflicts escalated shortly after he took credit for them. “Peace is not a pretty process,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told The Post last week.
Amid all that, Trump has bailed out Argentina and is bombing suspected drug smugglers off the coast of Venezuela — actions that some Republicans are criticizing and even scrutinizing.
Trump has accused Venezuela’s president of sending drugs and violent criminals to the United States, but no expert I talked to said they understood why Trump was singling out Venezuela. “Trump doesn’t like big, scary wars, so we don’t want to pick on someone our own size,” Brooks, with Georgetown University Law Center, theorized, “but if we can find a nice adversary that can’t effectively strike back and engage in strikes, that makes us look tough.”
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