“We are all afraid,” Alaska Republican Senator Liza Murkowski said last week at an event in Anchorage. “I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real,” she explained. Republican politicians are afraid to voice their dissent. Federal employees are afraid of being fired. Immigrants — especially if they are Venezuelan and have tattoos — are afraid of being deported without any due process to their countries (or worse, of being locked up in a maximum security prison in El Salvador). Universities are afraid of having their funding withdrawn. Foreign students are afraid of losing their visas. Law firms are afraid of being punished if they don’t bend. Companies are afraid of maintaining their diversity, equality, and inclusion policies. Benefit recipients are afraid of losing them. The media is afraid of retaliation. Trans people are afraid of being discriminated against..... Another senator, Democrat Cory Booker, recalled a quote from one of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, the third president: “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Donald Trump is about to complete 100 days of his second term as president of the United States. The Republican returned to the White House with a radical agenda and a long list of enemies. He won the November 5 election over Democrat Kamala Harris with a difference of less than 1.5 percentage points in the popular vote, but a wide lead in the Electoral College. His party won a majority in both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court also has a large conservative majority.

With the experience of his first term and four years ruminating his revenge, once back in power Trump surrounded himself with loyalists and began to govern by decree. His crusade against immigration, the need for revenge, his authoritarian drift, the erosion of ties with allies and a trade war have marked the start of his second term in office.

Trump said on the campaign trail that he would be “dictator” on day one. About to complete 100 days in office, he has barely signed any laws approved by Congress, but rather has issued about 140 executive orders, many of them of dubious constitutionality. With them, he has bent the limits of presidential authority and tested the resistance of the country’s democratic system. His authoritarian drift has brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. His erratic trade policy has crippled the economy and triggered a crisis of global proportions. His imperialist ambitions and his pawing at the geopolitical chessboard have eroded the confidence of his allies in the U.S.

According to a poll published Friday by The New York Times, the adjectives that best define Trump’s first 100 days for voters are chaotic (66%), scary (59%) and exciting (42%). His approval rating of 45%, according to Gallup, is the lowest first quarter approval rating of any president since World War II... except for himself in his first term.

The first 100 days became a standard measure for judging the beginning of a presidency with Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in that period brought forward an ambitious legislative agenda that was part of the New Deal to confront the Great Depression. Since then, conventionally, it is a sort of first examination of the president’s administration.

Trump won the 2024 election by capitalizing on working-class discontent with irregular immigration and inflation. In terms of results, the plunge in the inflow of undocumented immigrants is the biggest success of his first 100 days, although border arrivals had already fallen sharply in the last stretch of Joe Biden’s term.

The Republican has relied on the Mexican’s government collaboration, but, above all, he has deliberately played the fear card. The number of people he has deported thus far is not very different from Biden’s numbers at the beginning of his mandate. But the theatrics behind this administration’s immigration raids and deportations, the president’s xenophobic discourse and the arbitrariness and lack of guarantees to which the deportees are subjected have had a deterrent effect on the arrival of new immigrants. The transfer of over 200 immigrants, mainly Venezuelans, to a maximum security prison in El Salvador in a twisted application of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act is the best example of this. Immigrants have been expelled and locked up without evidence, trial, or safeguards.

Salvadoran Kilmar Abrego García, deported in what the Trump administration has acknowledged was an “administrative error” since the man had a judicial order prohibiting his expulsion, but who remains imprisoned in El Salvador, has become a symbol of that arbitrariness. Trump, however, has preferred to demonize Abrego García than to make amends for his mistake. A federal judge asserted that the administration is engaging in “willful and intentional disregard” of court orders to facilitate Abrego García’s return. “This isn’t just about one man. The administration’s violation of his constitutional rights is a threat to the rights of all,” said Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, who visited Abrego García in El Salvador.

This Friday, the FBI arrested a judge accused by the Department of Justice of obstructing the detention of an immigrant in her courtroom by letting him out through a back door. That this was a politically motivated arrest was made clear by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who threatened judges who protect immigrants: “We will come after you and prosecute you. We will find you.” “This is what fascism looks like,” Senator Van Hollen retorted.

Trump has also pushed the limits of executive power with his trade war. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act grants the president authority to regulate trade in the face of an “unusual and extraordinary threat” from abroad, but the way Trump has used that power is unprecedented. A dozen Democratic states alleged in a lawsuit that he has overreached and violated the Constitution and the law with his tariffs. “National trade policy,” they claimed, “now hinges on the president’s whims rather than the sound exercise of his lawful authority.”

Trump has been changing tariffs from one day to the next, approving them, suspending them, raising them and reducing them, at times simply through a message on social media. On the third “Liberation Day” — the president used the same name for the day he won the election and for the day of his inauguration — he launched a trade war against the entire world without having allies or a clear strategy. As a result, he patches and rectifies his measures every so often, removing tariffs, apparently without understanding the complexity of today’s supply chains or the implications of his measures. The chaos and uncertainty caused by his erratic actions is holding back not only the U.S. economy, but the world economy as well.

The trade war has pitted Washington against Beijing in an arm wrestling match that Trump seems to regret a little: he renounced to respond to the latest Chinese retaliation, reached out for dialogue and is seeking a de-escalation. But it has also strained U.S. relations with its neighbors and allies. In Canada and Europe, especially, distrust towards the first power is spreading, fed by the turnaround in U.S. foreign policy.

Trump has manifested imperialist anxieties, asserting that he will take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal and toying with the idea of annexing Canada. He has questioned his commitment to NATO and has aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin to try to end the war in Ukraine with a deal favorable to Moscow. Having said more than 50 times on the campaign trail that he would end the war in 24 hours, the inability to achieve this in his first 100 days is particularly frustrating to him. He has also failed to stop the war in Gaza.

Just as his economic policy is symbolized by his photo with the tariff poster, the defining moments of his foreign policy are his contempt for the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in the Oval Office, and the press conference he gave with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which he launched his crazy idea of expelling the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip so that the U.S. could take control of the territory and convert it into a real estate development overlooking the sea.

Musk’s chaos

Another unusual image left by these 100 days is that of Elon Musk with his son X on his shoulders in the Oval Office. The world’s richest man has helped make “chaotic” a defining adjective of the administration thus far. Musk and his lackeys took the federal government by storm as if it were a Silicon Valley startup. The cuts and layoffs of tens of thousands of civil servants, often without any criteria whatsoever, have made him a hated figure halfway around the world.

After his cars were boycotted and Tesla’s profits plummeted, Musk decided to step aside from his governmental duties. As a semi-farewell gift, the Trump administration committed to easing regulation of autonomous driving. Tesla shares rose 10% and Musk’s fortune increased by $18 billion the Friday after the announcement.

The Trump administration, full of billionaires, does not seem to understand the concept of conflict of interest. The president himself has offered to receive at the White House and invite to a “private and intimate dinner” those who invest the most in his memecoin, the $TRUMP, which soared with the announcement, enriching Trump. Days earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent shared behind closed doors with bankers and investors that tariffs on China were not sustainable and Wall Street soared.

With the Democratic Party still in a state of shock, pockets of resistance have emerged against Trump’s abuses and arbitrariness. Two of them stand out above the rest: the judges, especially on immigration, and the financial markets, which have put a stop to his economic nonsense, forcing the president to partially back down on tariffs and to bury his desires to oust Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

The countdown to the end of Trump’s second term still marks 1,363 days, but the president has fantasized several times about running for a third term, which is prohibited by the Constitution. His online store sells Trump 2028 caps for $50, but asks for patience for deliveries “due to high demand.”

Despite the frenetic activity at the start of his second term, Trump has found time to become the first president to attend the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 Miles. He has also attended several wrestling tournaments. In addition, according to the trumpgolftrack.com website, he has golfed 24 of his first 100 days.