President Donald Trump has had such a consequential start to his second term that my normal list of 10 could not capture the full scope of what he accomplished. So, here is my list of the 20 best things Trump did in 2025. (In my previous column, I discussed the 10 worst.)
20. He delivered justice for the Abbey Gate bombing.
After terrorists killed 13 U.S. service members during President Joe Biden’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden promised, “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” He left office three years later having made no one pay. It took Trump less than six weeks to capture what he described as a “top terrorist” responsible for the attack.
19. He created “Trump Accounts” to give every American child a trust fund.
The federal government will put $1,000 into a tax-advantaged investment account for every American child born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, to be locked until they turn 18. The Treasury Department estimates the accounts could grow to between $3,000 and $13,800 in 18 years, and to as much as $1.9 million by age 28 if fully funded with additional contributions and left untouched, giving every American child a financial foundation as they begin adulthood.
18. He drove illegal migration to a virtual halt.
Biden claimed he needed legislation from Congress to secure the border; Trump shut down the border in weeks with no new congressional authority. Encounters at the border are at record lows, apprehensions are 95 percent lower than the daily average under Joe Biden, and no illegal migrants have been released into the United States for seven months.
17. He used tariff threats to strike new trade deals.
In his first term, Trump offered the European Union a zero-for-zero trade deal, but the E.U. failed to take him up on the offer. Seven years later, Trump struck a deal that includes a 15 percent baseline tariff on most European exports to the U.S., while most U.S. exports to the E.U. will be duty-free. What changed? Trump’s trade war. He also used tariffs as leverage to reach deals with Britain, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and Cambodia.
16. He brought many of the nation’s elite universities to heel.
He forced Columbia University to sign a $220 million settlement over diversity, equity and inclusion and over antisemitic civil rights violations on campus, and reached similar settlements with Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia, with more potentially on the way.
15. He took on radical gender ideology and protected women’s sports.
He signed an executive order and issued new regulations to stop U.S. hospitals from engaging in the chemical and surgical mutilation of children and ordered that federal funds be rescinded from any educational institutions that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities. As a result, the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committees changed their policies to ban men from competing in women’s sports, and the University of Pennsylvania agreed to restore women’s school records, post the definition of a woman on its website, and apologize to female athletes it harmed with past Title IX violations.
14. He ended collective bargaining for a million federal workers.
His executive orders gutting public worker unions mean many federal departments can terminate union contracts and hire and fire based on merit.
13. He scrapped Biden-era policies intended to force people into electric cars, and unleashed oil and gas production.
Trump is rolling back Biden’s fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions standards, and signed legislation ending California’s electric vehicle mandate, policies intended to coerce Americans into buying electric vehicles. Trump also lifted Biden’s pause on natural gas exports, dramatically increasing U.S. exports, opening up millions of acres in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and mining, approving record numbers of drilling permits, rolling back climate regulations and revoking Biden-era orders that blocked oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.
12. He made our nation’s capital safer by sending in the National Guard.
After Trump took federal control of the D.C. police and deployed the Guard, crime in the District dropped by double-digits in virtually every category.
11. He dramatically cut taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security.
His One Big Beautiful Bill also made his 2017 pro-growth tax cuts permanent.
10. He forced Panama to crack down on Chinese influence over the Panama Canal.
Under pressure from Trump, Panama replaced Huawei telecommunications infrastructure installed at 13 sites with secure American technology, pulled out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and scrapped its contracts with a Hong Kong-based company to manage port facilities.
9. He added $156 billion to the defense budget.
As part of his One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump made a down payment on the second Trump defense buildup, including funding for his “Golden Dome” defense shield to protect America from ballistic missile attacks, which will fulfill the vision Ronald Reagan put forward with his Strategic Defense Initiative. But he still needs to increase regular defense spending to deliver on his promise of “peace through strength.”
8. He shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Eliminating USAID as an independent agency has been a conservative goal since the 1990s. While permanently abolishing USAID requires an act of Congress, Trump has folded its functions into the State Department, eliminated wasteful programs and made sure that U.S. aid decisions support U.S. foreign policy objectives.
7. He fixed the military recruiting crisis.
After suffering years of severe recruiting shortfalls under Biden, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force all met or exceeded their 2025 recruiting goals, many of them months ahead of schedule.
6. He has eliminated dozens of suspected Venezuelan drug boats.
Trump launched the largest deployment of naval assets to the Caribbean since the U.S. invasion of Panama, and is taking out the speedboats and submarines the narco-terrorists use.
5. He is standing up for persecuted Christians in Nigeria.
He warned that he would send the U.S. military into Nigeria “guns-a-blazing” to wipe out Islamic terrorists engaged in mass killings of Christians, and on Christmas Day he delivered, carrying out “multiple” strikes against Islamic State targets in northwestern Nigeria.
4. He forged one of the greatest peacemaking records in U.S. history.
He has made progress toward lasting peace in conflicts between India and Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, Cambodia and Thailand, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. He also brought the war between Israel and Iran to an end after 12 days and brokered a deal to end the Israel-Hamas war that secured the release of all remaining hostages. He also helped avert conflicts between Kosovo and Serbia and Egypt and Ethiopia, and got Kazakhstan to join the Abraham Accords. Russia’s war on Ukraine has proven more intractable, but this is an unprecedented record worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.
3. He is doing more to help Ukraine than Biden ever did.
Trump is sending new weapons worth billions of dollars to Ukraine — paid for by European allies, not American taxpayers — and is providing Ukraine with targeting intelligence for strikes deep into Russia. And he is offering Ukraine a NATO Article 5-style security guarantee as part of a potential peace deal.
2. He got NATO allies to meet and raise their defense spending promises.
Today, all allies are on track to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense this year, and at a triumphant NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump got allies to agree to raise their spending to 5 percent by 2035 — more than double their previous commitment. As NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wrote to Trump, this is “something NO American president in decades could get done.”
1. He obliterated the Iranian nuclear program.
Four presidents promised to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but only Trump took decisive action to halt it. Launching Operation Midnight Hammer is possibly the most important and courageous foreign policy decision any president has made in the past half-century.
Love him or hate him, this is an objectively stunning string of accomplishments. I can’t think of a president in my lifetime who has accomplished so much in such a short period of time. And whatever one thinks of Trump’s record, he needs to be judged against the alternative. Kamala Harris was the most radical Democratic nominee in history, and the damage she would have done as president would have been irreparable. Instead, Trump took the oath of office with a popular vote mandate to do everything on this list — and more.
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