A president’s second term is four years long on the calendar, but in some ways, it’s only one year. The second year is absorbed by the midterm elections for all of Congress and one-third of the Senate, and that’s not conducive to getting anything done except fundraising.
After the midterm elections are over, the focus gradually shifts to the next presidential election, and the incumbent president increasingly limps like a lame duck.
So a president who is inaugurated for a second term has from January 20 until the end of the year to get big things done, to take the boldest action that is politically possible, and to change whatever he came to Washington to change.
Conversely, the opponents of a president only need to gum up the works for one year, and then the calendar takes over and does it for them.
One year into the Trump second term, what has the president accomplished?
Let’s start with what hasn’t happened. The United States is not at war, and the recruitment crisis in the volunteer military is no longer a thing. “All military branches met or exceeded recruitment goals for fiscal year 2025, marking the strongest recruiting performance in 15 years,” the Pentagon reported.
Back in July 2024, a commentary in the journal Foreign Policy raised concerns about the potential return of the military draft. “The draft’s resurgence into the national conversation in the United States and elsewhere marks a reversal of a decades-old trend,” the author wrote. Happily, it’s not in the conversation now. If anyone in your family is of draft-eligible age, it’s one less thing to worry about. You probably haven’t even thought about it. That’s the way it should be when the military and foreign policy of the United States are managed competently.
Here’s something else that hasn’t happened since Trump took office: continuous caravans of military-age men entering illegally into the United States across the southern border, or flown into the U.S. through the abuse of a humanitarian parole program in immigration law, and then housed indefinitely at taxpayer expense in hotels throughout the country. Trump successfully closed the border to illegal immigration. A year ago it was conventional wisdom that it couldn’t be done.
It’s also worth remembering that the U.S. watched the regime in Iran build up a nuclear program for roughly two decades but ambled around the U.N. discussing it without ever acknowledging that the U.S. military had the capability to simply end that threat. Trump authorized the military to go ahead with a precision mission to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities. This did not throw the planet into World War III or regional chaos. All that could be heard in the wake of the successful mission was the sound of dozens of world leaders finally getting a good night’s sleep.
The list of things that didn’t happen wouldn’t be complete without noting that President Trump’s tariffs, which he has successfully used for leverage in all kinds of international negotiations, have not caused the catastrophic inflation or other economic disasters that were so widely predicted. Recall that the Federal Reserve chairman defended keeping interest rates up because the Fed’s computer models consistently showed that tariff-driven inflation should have been here by now.
On the domestic front, Trump came into office with a plan to break the power of the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, the people who can’t be fired and who are able to manipulate endless approvals and authorizations to block the policies of the officials elected by the American people. Trump has taken many actions toward this goal, but one in particular could make significant progress toward restoring the voters’ control of their government.
The U.S. government is thick with “independent” agencies in the executive branch that do not answer to the head of the executive branch, the elected president. In fact, they answer to no one. They are quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial, and they exercise enormous power over the economy and every business operating in it.
Take the Federal Trade Commission, for example. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he tried to fire one of the FTC commissioners because of political differences. Roosevelt wanted his own policies implemented, and since he had won the election, he had a pretty good argument that he should be able to replace appointees in executive branch agencies who disagreed with him. But the Supreme Court disagreed with FDR. The case was Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.
When President Trump took office this year, he teed up this issue again, firing an FTC commissioner as well as other appointees atop “independent” agencies, making FDR’s argument. Lawsuits followed, and the issue is before the Supreme Court. Trump’s actions may lead to the overturning of the Humphrey’s Executor decision, making government agencies accountable to the elected officials who are accountable to the voters. That would be an historic restoration of government by the people.
Trump deserves credit for reinstating affordable abundance as the goal of U.S. energy policy, for successfully shepherding the extension of the 2017 tax cuts, for shutting down the part of USAID funding that was pure grift, and for ending DEI preferences that are simply racial discrimination by another name.
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“After 11 months, our border is secure, inflation is stopped, wages are up, prices are down,” Trump said. “We are poised for an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen.”
Over on PBS, commentators who watched the speech complained that Trump had renamed the Kennedy Center to add his name to the building.
May that forever be America’s worst crisis.
Write [email protected] and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley
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