Opinion

Guest Essay

By Steven Rattner
Graphics by Sara Chodosh

Mr. Rattner served as counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

President Trump indisputably dominated 2025. Only the second president to be elected to nonconsecutive terms, the reinvigorated Mr. Trump plunged back into office with a muscularity unmatched by any other president in my lifetime. Ignoring convention, precedent and, at times, the law, he rammed through vast changes aimed at curtailing immigration, walling off our economy and dismantling the agenda of his predecessor (and successor) Joe Biden. But by year’s end Mr. Trump’s popularity had sunk to historical lows, as many Americans recoiled from his brutality and his extremism. Above all, they fretted about his failure to improve their economic well-being.

Sources: Federal Register; Center for Effective Lawmaking.

Sidestepping Congress, Mr. Trump chose to refashion the federal government largely by issuing executive orders at an explosive pace. He spent part of his first day in office in 2025 signing 26 and went on to issue a total of 225 as of December 18, more than he did in his entire first term and nearly three times as many as any other president did in his first year in over 40 years.

Some tested — and perhaps exceeded — the limits of executive power. For example, Mr. Trump decreed an end to birthright citizenship, a principle that at least until now had been adjudicated to be a constitutional right.

Continued inaction by the 119th Congress mirrored Mr. Trump’s hyperactivity. The legislative body passed just 61 laws, mostly prosaic ones, in its first year — a small fraction of the number enacted annually between 1975 and 2005. While Republicans controlled both chambers, they lacked the 60 votes needed to pass most legislation in the Senate and had only a razor-thin margin in the House. In October, bitter partisan divisions led to what became the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Source: Associated Press

Mr. Trump’s predilection for pushing boundaries spurred an avalanche of litigation. To date, 358 lawsuits have been filed against the second Trump administration, 149 of which partly or fully blocked the administration’s initiatives. The courts left just over 100 in effect, and a........

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