In its first 100 days in office, the second Trump administration issued 147 executive orders, a figure already greater than the yearly average of his predecessors since 1944. John C. Paschold and Anthony P. Sparacino write on why we consider a president’s “first 100 days” to be of such importance. Comparing Trump’s first 100 days to those of past presidents, they comment that three features stand out: the heavy reliance on unilateral actions, the fast pace of those actions, and how Trump has used the idea of the first 100 days as a rhetorical device.
April 30, 2025, marked the end of the first hundred days of President Donald J. Trump’s second term. Those that follow American politics closely likely feel that the pace of activity emanating from the White House has been dizzying.
Why are the first 100 days important?
The idea of the “first hundred days” is typically attributed to the first term of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), who is seen as the pivotal figure in the rise of the modern presidency. FDR achieved a great deal during the beginning of his first term. During his first 100 days, FDR signed 77 bills in law, one of the most consequential periods of legislative output in American history. Among the laws passed were the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Emergency Banking Act, and the Economy Act.
Despite our focus on them, evaluating presidents on their first hundred days in office is inherently problematic. FDR set something of an impossible standard – the standard itself is rather arbitrary.
For one, the first 100 days are only a small fraction of a presidential term (only about 7 percent of a president’s four-year term). And while almost all presidents have had a first 100 days in office (save William Henry Harrison, who only served one month in office in 1841), the context during which this period takes place varies greatly from one president to the next. In FDR’s case, context was certainly important: he entered office in March of 1933 amidst the greatest economic recession that the United States has ever seen.
Nevertheless, a defining feature of the modern presidency is that we use the first 100 days as a standard of evaluating the nation’s chief executive. Moreover, presidents themselves use this idea in their rhetoric. And despite the problems associated with the first hundred days as a means of evaluating presidents, presidential adoption of this rhetorical device offers us a means of understanding the nature of the modern presidency and the priorities presidents have upon entering the Oval Office. It therefore allows us to make some comparisons among presidents in terms of how they are using their power and what their priorities are.
Unilateral action and modest legislative successes
Three features of Trump’s first hundred days stand out to us. First, the start of Trump’s second term is unique in that he has been heavily reliant on unilateral action compared to his predecessors in terms of moving his agenda forward. And the means through which Trump has chosen to unilaterally exert authority is through executive orders, which one scholar coined as “probably the most widely publicized instrument in the president’s toolbox of unilateral initiatives.”
Data from the American Presidency Project demonstrates that Trump has issued substantially more executive orders than his immediate predecessors. As shown in Figure 1, Trump issued 147 executive orders in his second first 100 days, almost as many as Joe Biden did in his entire four-year term. Additionally, Trump is well ahead of his first term in issuing executive orders, having already signed over half of the number of orders as he had in his entire first term.
Figure 1 – Executive Orders issued by President, 1933-present
Source: The American Presidency Project
Trump’s reliance on unilateral action can also be seen by comparing his use of executive orders to the legislative achievements he and his predecessors have at this point in their terms.
In his second term, thus far Trump’s legislative successes have been modest. An important caveat should be noted here. Regardless of how much Trump is contributing to national partisan polarization, he is operating in an era where polarization is the norm, and while Republicans control both chambers of Congress, the GOP’s margins, especially in the House of Representatives, are exceptionally narrow. Since the 1970s, Congress has increasingly used what Barbara Sinclair of the University of California, Los Angeles termed “unorthodox” lawmaking tactics to advance legislation, including relying on budget reconciliation to pass bills with a simple 50-vote majority in the Senate – and omnibus legislation. Scholars of successful lawmaking – known as legislative productivity – have recently argued that measuring Congress’ lawmaking by counting the number of laws passed is inadequate as the bills that are becoming law are often sweeping in terms of their number of pages and the scope of policy affected.
Trump’s first hundred-day legislative record is small even relative to other presidents who have been operating in a similar political climate. As shown in Figure 2, Congress passed eleven laws and joint resolutions during Biden’s first 100 days. Congress also passed 24 laws and joint resolutions during Trump’s first 100 days of his first term. The 119th Congress, which first convened on January 3, 2025, has seen even less legislative output than during the first 100 days of George W. Bush’s presidency, which Paul Light of Brookings labeled as “100 Days in the Shadows” due its lack of legislative productivity.
“P20250424AM-0133” by The White House is United States government work.
Taking action at speed
A second important feature of Trump’s hundred days is the perceived pace of his activities. This is, admittedly, a much more subjective evaluation of any presidency. Presidents often say that they are going to move quickly on their agenda once they get into office. Trump is more prone to making these types of assertions than his predecessors, but this is a difference in degree rather than form.
According to the Federal Register, Trump signed 26 executive orders on Inauguration Day alone. The scope of these orders ranged widely, from ending the “weaponization” of the federal government to terminating DEI initiatives, to eliminating energy regulations, to pulling out of the World Health Organization. He has also not gone more than a week in between signing executive orders at any point in his administration so far.
Figure 2- Legislation passed in first 100 days and Executive Actions issued
Source: The American Presidency Project
Again, there are some significant qualifications here. For one, the president has seen significant pushback to his executive actions in the courts, such as four judges’ rejection of Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship. This is not uncommon. A president’s opponents will almost certainly use the legal tools at their disposal to challenge a president’s agenda, whether presidents seek to achieve their goals unilaterally or through legislation. One such example of this was Senate Republicans’ 2016 blocking of Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland.
Another caveat is that many of Trump’s executive orders are vague and are, at least in part, meant to be expressive or commemorative. Many of the orders Trump has signed are just two or three pages long, not nearly detailed enough to provide for easy implementation by executive agencies tasked with carrying the orders out. Cabinet departments and federal agencies will have a good amount of work to do to fill in the details of these orders and turn them into actionable policy – or, on the flip side, even substantial leeway to implement the orders as they see fit, as agencies often do when Congress passes unclear and vague appropriations bills.
“The first 100 days” used as a rhetorical tool
A third feature that stands out about Trump’s first hundred days is how he has decided to deploy it as a rhetorical tool. FDR gave a fireside chat on July 24th, 1933, reflecting on a special session of Congress, noting “we all wanted the opportunity of a little quiet thought to examine and assimilate in a mental picture the crowding events of the hundred days which had been devoted to the starting of the wheels of the New Deal.” Joe Biden acknowledged the end of his first 100 days with a speech before a joint session of Congress in 2021. Trump, meanwhile, spent his 100th day in office at a campaign style rally in Michigan, touting his accomplishments to his supporters while expressing a longing to return to the campaign trail.
All three of these presidents have seen criticism for their embrace of executive power but the context of Trump’s commemoration of his first 100 days reflects the status of an outsider and does less than either FDR or Biden to affirm the importance of Congress in a separation of powers system.
Ultimately, Trump has embraced executive power, and the reliance on unilateral action. The pace of his issuance of executive orders demonstrates a significant development in the modern presidency. Additionally, he has embraced the first 100 days as a rhetorical device. Unlike FDR, Trump does not seem willing to offer “the opportunity of a little quiet thought.” His pace is likely to remain that of a sprint. But, as noted, that seems to be a defining feature of Trump’s presidency.
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- Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
