100 days of chaos and dysfunction

The 28th of April marked the first one hundred days of Donald Trump’s presidency, and if the latest polls are to be believed, his approval ratings would go down as one of the worst in recent memory.

Fox News, considered the mouthpiece of the President and his MAGA movement, has his approval rating at 44 percent, the lowest of any American President at the 100-day mark in the past seven decades. Other news organizations have him polling even lower. The CNN national poll found the president’s approval rating at 41 percent and a Washington Post-ABC news poll had his support cratering below 40 percent.

Trump, in his usual bombastic manner, tweeted in his Truth Social platform that the polls were “fake news” and accused the pollsters of manipulating the results and underrepresenting his voters. He suggested that the pollsters should be investigated for “election fraud.”

I do not think Trump-friendly Fox News is deliberately polling more Democrats than Republicans, but the president has now labeled the news organization as a “Trump hating, fake pollster” and is waging war on Rupert Murdoch, its owner, demanding that Fox’s pollsters be removed.

What these latest polls truly suggest is the growing dissatisfaction of many Americans over Trump’s chaotic governance in the first 100 days. The on-again, off-again tariff wars have wreaked havoc on the US and global markets, sparking fears of a recession and uncontrolled inflation. Trillions of dollars in equity value have evaporated, shrinking a huge portion of Americans’ retirement funds that are invested in US stocks.

Trump has been widely criticized for indiscriminately using executive orders and weaponizing the executive branch to go after his opponents. Legal challenges have been raised against his effort to withhold federal funding from sanctuary jurisdictions. His directive to repeal government regulations without implementing federally mandated procedures has raised questions about his compliance with federal law, particularly the Administrative Procedures Act (APA).

Enacted in 1946, the APA defines the steps necessary for rulemaking, adjudication and judicial review of agency actions. Many of the President’s executive orders and directives may have overstepped presidential authority and violated established legal protections.

Perhaps, the guiltiest party in this seemingly wanton disregard for federal law is Trump’s newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE), led by his billionaire friend and largest campaign donor, Elon Musk.

DoGE has been gutting federal agencies since the first week of Trump’s presidency resulting in mass firings, layoffs, and resignations in several key government agencies and institutions. Many federal workers were laid off only to be reinstated due to administrative errors.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs over 1,000 employees were dismissed, including researchers working on cancer and other medical treatments. More than 1,300 jobs were eliminated at the Department of Education, an agency that helps administer federal student loans to underprivileged college students, with plans to eliminate the agency in its entirety.

Deep cuts are planned for the Department of the Treasury, which began laying off 20,000 workers in the Internal Revenue Service, eliciting concerns about the agency’s ability to enforce tax laws and generate tax revenue for the federal coffers.

At the Department of Health, mass layoffs and resignations affecting the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health could weaken the ability of the US to respond to health crises domestically and abroad, and effectively slow down critical medical research.

The Department of Defense saw over 5,000 probationary workers laid off, some within days of being made permanent. These are just the tip of the iceberg of the state of confusion and disarray in government, all under the guise of cost-cutting and elimination of government “bloat,” the long term effects of which have not been fully discerned and analyzed.

In the Washington D.C. metropolitan area where I live, an area that relies heavily on government procurement and employment, the impact of lost jobs and wages is now being felt in many sectors of the local economy.

I have yet to discuss the disastrous immigration policies that resulted in illegal detentions and deportations without due process, or the use of federal funds to curtail dissent and academic freedom in America’s most prestigious educational institutions, or the war in Ukraine which the President promised to end on “day one,” but this will be for another time.

What is evident now is that Trump’s polling in his first 100 days in office demonstrates a fading popularity stemming from what critics describe as a lack of understanding and competence in running a country.