What Did Democrats Do in Their First 100 Days?

S.E. Cupp, Tribune Content Agency on Apr 30, 2025

This week, President Trump’s second term turned 100…days, that is.

And to mark the occasion, he held a rally in Michigan where he touted what he thinks of as his biggest accomplishments — tariffs, deporting alleged gang members to El Salvador, and his creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

But one look under the hood of this nascent administration and it’s more than obvious that things aren’t going so well.

It turns out, hiking tariffs on China to 145%, raising them on nearly every other country, alarming our allies, and wreaking havoc and uncertainty on the global economy doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Economists put odds of a recession at as high as 60%, inflation rates are still high, and the stock market’s been an ulcer-inducing rollercoaster.

Thanks to a fury of Constitution-testing executive orders, Trump’s administration is also facing more than 300 legal challenges, all while he is busy suing and threatening to sue journalists and media outlets. All the while, Trump’s signed a meager five bills into law.

And Elon Musk’s after-school project DOGE has resulted in the haphazard firing of nearly 120,000 federal workers, in many cases leaving our departments understaffed and in total chaos.

It’s hard to see where, exactly, this has all made our lives any better, and the polls tell a grim story:

At 41%, his approval is the lowest for any newly elected president in at least seven decades; only 22% say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the job, a new low; his approval among women, independents, and Hispanic Americans is down; approval on inflation, tariffs, and handling the economy are also down.

But for all the scrutiny of Trump’s first 100 days — you can read any number of write-ups from Fox News, CNN or Time— something’s missing in the analysis: the Democrats.

It’s been 100 days — nearly four months — since Trump took the White House back and began his reign of revenge, and what, exactly, has the so-called opposition done in response?

Not much. While Trump was rallying on Day 100, House and Senate Dems began a marathon of speeches at the Capitol and laid out their plan to combat the new world order:

“Day after day after day, we will hammer home the Republican agenda and Americans will see the difference between Democratic unity and Republican disarray,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, unconvincingly.

“We are doing the right thing. We are focusing on how bad Trump is.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also sounded defiant, promising that Dems are operating in a “more is more environment.”

“Rallies, press conferences, demonstrations, sit-ins, town hall meetings in Democratic districts, town hall meetings in Republican districts, days of action. More will continue to be more,” he said.

Democrats didn’t lose to Trump in 2024 because they didn’t do enough sit-ins or “days of action,” whatever those are. They didn’t lose because they didn’t focus on how bad Trump was — they did that practically exclusively.

They lost because they didn’t listen to the American public, told them their problems weren’t real, and pretended their policies on the economy, crime and immigration were actually working when we could all see they were not.

It isn’t mysterious or elusive as to how this happened, nor is it mysterious or elusive as to how to take the country back from the grips of Trump’s incompetence, corruption, and authoritarianism.

Dems need to acknowledge their failings, rework their policies in these three crucial areas, return to a party of common sense and love of country, and offer real, workable solutions to compete with Trump’s ill-conceived and ill-intended ones.

If tariffs aren’t the answer to right the economy, what is? If DOGE isn’t the answer, what’s the Dem plan to cut government waste? If deporting illegal immigrants without due process is unconstitutional, how will Dems solve our border crisis? If militarizing our law enforcement to combat crime sounds dystopian and terrible, what will Dems do to keep violent criminals off the streets?

It should be deeply troubling to Democratic Party leadership that 61% of their own voters disapprove of congressional leadership, specifically Schumer and Jeffries.

It’s not a question of passion, but action. Pointing out how bad Trump is — when that’s obvious to a growing majority of Americans — isn’t action. Nor are protests, speeches, and stunts.

Where’s the new Dem New Deal? Or their version of a Contract with America? A bold agenda for every Dem lawmaker to get behind, push in their districts, and coalesce around heading into the midterms and for the next three years?

Trump’s 100 days have been equal parts terrifying, heartbreaking, and embarrassing — but it’s hard to say that Democrats have done anything meaningful in that time either. And the clock is ticking.

========

(S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.)