It was an unusual display on the North Lawn of the White House: 88 yard signs with the faces of people the Trump administration says are criminals who had been arrested by immigration agents. President Donald Trump has launched harsh immigration actions in his first 100 days in office—detaining more people for immigration violations, allowing arrests outside schools and courthouses, and sending more than 200 Venezuelan men to be imprisoned in El Salvador. He plans to do more in the coming weeks. Trump is ramping up raids on workplaces to find those in the country unlawfully, and on Monday, signed an order directing his Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to send him a list of so-called sanctuary cities that aren’t doing enough to cooperate with his deportation efforts, according to Trump officials. The number of immigration arrests at workplaces has tripled since Trump took office, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Monday. “It’s going to triple again,” Homan said. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to bring back workplace raids, after the Biden administration had largely put a stop to such enforcement tactics. With the new order, Trump is threatening to cut federal funds to cities and states his Administration decides are blocking his mass deportation effort. In the executive order he signed Monday, Trump gave Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a May 28 deadline to publish a list of cities, counties and states that are obstructing "the enforcement of federal immigration laws” and told every agency to identify federal funds “for suspension or termination” that would otherwise be sent to those places identified as “sanctuary jurisdictions.” If Trump follows through with cutting federal funding to local governments, it would be just the latest example of his Administration usurping powers given to Congress under the Constitution. Already in his first three months in office, Trump has cut federal jobs and funding to agencies that were appropriated by Congress. Trump used incendiary language in his order, saying that state and local officials who obstruct immigration efforts are engaged in an “insurrection.” State and local officials, he wrote, “continue to use their authority to violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of Federal immigration laws. This is a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States.” Legal experts have warned that Trump’s comparing illegal immigration to an “invasion” and his painting those who oppose him as treasonous could be used as a false pretext for unlocking extraordinary presidential powers, including the Insurrection Act of 1807 and other laws designed for leading the nation in times of extreme national disasters and war. Over the past week, the Trump administration has increased the tempo of its immigration crackdown. Law enforcement agencies in Florida worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Miami office to arrest 800 people last week who were allegedly in the country unlawfully. And the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security arrested 100 people and allegedly seized drugs and weapons in a joint raid Sunday on a night club in Colorado Springs, Colo., that the Trump administration says was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The new actions come as the Trump administration tries to push through barriers to its deportation actions. Trump’s Justice Department arrested a county judge in Wisconsin on Friday for allegedly helping an undocumented immigration avoid federal deportation officers, and the Trump administration is facing alarm and scrutiny for deporting three U.S. citizen children with their mothers. And Trump has flouted a Supreme Court order that he "facilitate" the release from prison in El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported from Maryland. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump said he had not asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia “because I haven’t been asked to ask him by my attorneys” Polling shows that Trump’s immigration actions are losing public support. A Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll on Friday showed 46% of Americans approved of Trump’s immigration policies, down from a 50% approval rating on the topic in February. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Friday, showed 47% approved and 51% disapproved of his handling of immigration.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. It’s still April, but President Donald Trump is already letting Americans know that the October day widely acknowledged to be Columbus Day will in fact be Columbus Day, thank you very much. The move, announced over the weekend as the newest side dish on the culture-war buffet, is merely the latest signal to Trump’s MAGA base that he won’t bend to political correctness or progressive ideology that favors Indigenous Peoples Day, which under President Joe Biden co-existed on that date. Christopher Columbus—who never set foot in the United States yet nonetheless is taught in schools as having “discovered” America—is right up there among “cancelled” American icons with Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee. For Trump and his basic understanding of history, Columbus is as core to the United States’ DNA as apple pie and Betsy Ross, and the interloper Indigenous Peoples Day is a pernicious effort to hijack it like a cancer. “The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,” the President posted Sunday on Truth Social, his alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter. “They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all! Well, you’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!” To be clear: Trump does not have the power to unilaterally declare a national holiday. Nor did anyone “destroy” the holiday; Biden issued proclamations acknowledging Columbus Day annually. At the same time, he recognized Indigenous Peoples Day, but Congress has not designated it into a federal holiday. Similar action would be needed to delist Columbus Day from the ranks of federal holidays. Congress has not done so. Members of Congress tried a couple of times to demote Columbus by changing the holiday’s name, but those efforts fell short. Several statues of Columbus have been removed in recent years, but it’s not as if Ohio is going to rename its capital anytime soon. Even in true-blue Manhattan, Columbus Circle still has its 76-foot tall namesake at its center, a monument developed in response to the violent lynchings of Italian-American immigrants. October the 13th was always going to be Columbus Day, no matter what Trump said or did or tweeted. And, while implicitly saying Indigenous Peoples Day is no more, the President did not technically go that far. But his base sure heard what it wanted to. The presidency has always been a largely performative task, undertaken with the expectation that the public-facing aspect of the job requires a show. The gig is a 24/7 act, but Trump takes it to a new level as he nurses grievances and fuels division for his own movement’s gain. His latest announcement is a naked appeal to voters who feel a new era of politics is excluding them by de-elevating a colonizing explorer who, per elementary-school understanding, in 1492 “sailed the ocean blue.” The reality is far more complex for a figure who opened the door for a European expansionism that led to the decimation and enslavement of native-born Americans. As many as 56 million native-born Americans died as result of Europeans’ arrival here between 1492 and 1600, but the elementary-school poem is as catchy as ever. Political memory, similarly, has always been ripe for weaponization. There’s a dark link between history and nationalism, with the two feeding off each other to paint an ideal that can, at times, turn violent in defense of both an imagined past and systemic inequality. Just look at the rise of white Christian nationalism in the last half century that accompanied increasing civil rights—and the violence it has unleashed. It’s almost impossible to imagine the MAGA present in the absence of a nativist, nationalist antecedent. But the irony is that Columbus never stood on what is today mainland North America, despite becoming a rallying point after Italian-American immigrants were lynched in the 1890s. Columbus was a stand-in for the nation’s hagiographic origin story, much like the Mayflower or its Western pioneers. As Stephen Sondheim so wisely observed, children will listen to the tales they are told, and those myths are tough to shake once they take hold. It’s why everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick’s Day, and next Monday will see lines out the doors of our local taquerias for Cinco de Mayo—two holidays that barely rank in their purported homelands. All of which suggests that Trump is less interested in correcting history or justifying a holiday-weekend mattress sale than nudging his faithful to feel aggrieved—and then emboldened. With a wink and a bullhorn, Trump is teaching his base to never back down from their dug-in stances—even those based on invented histories they were taught in kindergarten.

On April 28, the House of Representatives passed the first major law tackling AI-induced harm: the Take It Down Act. The bipartisan bill, which also passed the Senate and which President Trump is expected to sign, criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. The bill aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools. While some civil society groups have raised concerns about the bill, it has received wide support from leaders on both sides of the aisle, from the conservative think tank American Principles Project to the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen. It passed both chambers easily, clearing the House with an overwhelming 409-2 vote. To some advocates, the bill is a textbook example of how Congress should work: of lawmakers fielding concerns from impacted constituents, then coming together in an attempt to reduce further harm. "This victory belongs first and foremost to the heroic survivors who shared their stories and the advocates who never gave up," Senator Ted Cruz, who spearheaded the bill in the Senate, wrote in a statement to TIME. "By requiring social media companies to take down this abusive content quickly, we are sparing victims from repeated trauma and holding predators accountable." The tools that had been used to humiliate them were relatively new: products of the generative AI boom in which virtually any image could be created with the click of a button. Pornographic and sometimes violent deepfake images of Taylor Swift and others soon spread across the internet. When Berry and Mani each sought to remove the images and seek punishment for those that had created them, they found that both social media platforms and their school boards reacted with silence or indifference. “They just didn’t know what to do: they were like, this is all new territory,” says Berry’s mother, Anna Berry. Anna Berry then reached out to Senator Ted Cruz’s office, which took up the cause and drafted legislation that became the Take It Down Act. Cruz, who has two teenage daughters, threw his political muscle behind the bill, including organizing a Senate field hearing with testimony from both Elliston Berry and Mani in Texas. Mani, who had spoken out about her experiences in New Jersey before connecting with Cruz’s office during its national push for legislation, says that Cruz spoke with her several times directly—and personally put in a call to a Snapchat executive asking them to remove her deepfakes from the platform. Mani and Berry both spent hours talking with congressional offices and news outlets to spread awareness. Bipartisan support soon spread, including the sign-on of Democratic co-sponsors like Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal. Representatives Maria Salazar and Madeleine Dean led the House version of the bill. Political wrangling Very few lawmakers disagreed with implementing protections around AI-created deepfake nudes. But translating that into law proved much harder, especially in a divided, contentious Congress. In December, lawmakers tried to slip the Take It Down Act into a bipartisan spending deal. But the larger deal was killed after Elon Musk and Donald Trump urged lawmakers to reject it. In the Biden era, it seemed that the piece of deepfake legislation that stood the best chance of passing was the DEFIANCE Act, led by Democrats Dick Durbin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In January, however, Cruz was promoted to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, giving him a major position of power to set agendas. His office rallied the support for Take it Down from a slew of different public interest groups. They also helped persuade tech companies to support the bill, which worked: Snapchat and Meta got behind it. “Cruz put an unbelievable amount of muscle into this bill,” says Sunny Gandhi, vice president of political affairs at Encode, an AI-focused advocacy group that supported the bill. “They spent a lot of effort wrangling a lot of the companies to make sure that they wouldn't be opposed, and getting leadership interested.” Gandhi says that one of the key reasons why tech companies supported the bill was because it did not involve Section 230 of the Communications Act, an endlessly-debated law that protects platforms from civil liability for what is posted on them. The Take It Down Act, instead, draws its enforcement power from the “deceptive and unfair trade practices” mandate of the Federal Trade Commission. “With anything involving Section 230, there's a worry on the tech company side that you are slowly going to chip away at their protections,” Gandhi says. “Going through the FTC instead was a very novel approach that I think a lot of companies were okay with.” The Senate version of the Take It Down Act passed unanimously in February. A few weeks later, Melania Trump threw her weight behind the bill, staging a press conference in D.C., with Berry, Mani, and other deepfake victims, marking Trump’s first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. The campaign fit in with her main initiative from the first Trump administration: “Be Best,” which included a focus on online safety. A Cruz spokesperson told TIME that Trump’s support was crucial towards the bill getting expedited in the House. “The biggest challenge with a lot of these bills is trying to secure priority and floor time,” they said. “It’s essential to have a push to focus priorities—and it happened quickly because of her.” "Today's bipartisan passage of the Take It Down Act is a powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children," Melania Trump said Monday. "I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth." Support is broad, but concerns persist While the bill passed both chambers easily and with bipartisan support, it weathered plenty of criticism on the way. Critics say that the bill is sloppily written, and that bad faith actors could flag almost anything as nonconsensual illicit imagery in order to get it scrubbed from the internet. They also say that Donald Trump could use it as a weapon, leaning on his power over the FTC to threaten critics. In February, 12 organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology penned a letter to the Senate warning that the bill could lead to the “suppression of lawful speech.” Critics question the bill’s effectiveness especially because it puts the FTC in charge of enforcement—and the federal agency has been severely weakened by the Trump administration. At a House markup in April, Democrats warned that a weakened FTC could struggle to keep up with take-down requests, rendering the bill toothless. Regardless, Gandhi hopes that Congress will build upon Take It Down to create more safeguards for children online. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on the subject, signaling increased interest. “There's a giant movement in Congress and at the state level around kids' safety that is only picking up momentum,” Gandhi says. “People don't want this to be the next big harm that we wait five or 10 years before we do something about it.” For Mani and Berry, the passage of Take It Down represents a major political, legal, and emotional victory. “For those of us who've been hurt, it's a chance to take back our dignity,” Mani says.

After an election in which Donald Trump won back the presidency and his party held the House and won the Senate, congressional leaders were quick to fantasize of all the legislation they would be able to pass. They envisioned a flurry of bills rewriting immigration law, slashing regulations, and delivering on Trump’s bold campaign promises. But the first 100 days of Trump’s second term paints a more complicated picture. Instead of relying on the Republican-led Congress, Trump has leaned heavily on executive action to carry out his agenda, issuing an unprecedented 135 executive orders since he took office in January. In doing so, Trump has largely bypassed Congress at the outset of his Administration, a sharp break from his first term. So far, Congress has only passed six bills—five of which have been signed into law—the fewest of any president in the first 100 days of an administration in the last seven decades, according to a TIME analysis of congressional records. At this point in his first term, Trump had already signed 30 bills into law—a high watermark for Presidents this century. Former President Joe Biden signed 10 bills by his 100th day in 2021, compared to 14 by Barack Obama in 2009 and seven by George W. Bush in 2001. Some earlier presidents—including Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter—signed 20 or more pieces of legislation within their first 100 days. Trump's second-term tally—just five bills signed—underscores a dramatic shift toward consolidating presidential power. The bills that have passed Congress so far have been relatively modest: three of the six bills were measures undoing regulations established by the Biden Administration, such as eliminating rules on environmental protections and cryptocurrency taxation, which were passed under the Congressional Review Act. Another was a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open. The other bills were the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure, and the Take It Down Act, which Trump is expected to soon sign after it overwhelmingly passed the House on Monday. The bill criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. While Congress has largely been relegated to the sidelines under Trump’s second Administration, most Republicans on Capitol Hill have supported his unfettered use of executive power. Trump has often drawn on rarely-used laws to advance his agenda, such as invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to carry out mass deportations and declaring a national emergency to enact sweeping tariffs on countries around the world. “The executive always wants to control more things, but in the past, members—whether it's a Democratic president or Republican president— have always resisted that,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters in March. “It didn't happen this year for the first time. They just bowed down to the President, and they're surrendering their power.” Trump is now calling on Republicans in Congress to pass what many are calling his "one big, beautiful bill"—a massive legislative package designed to cement many of his campaign promises into law. The bill aims to extend the 2017 tax cuts, expand domestic energy production, fund immigration enforcement, and boost military spending. In the meantime, Trump’s reliance on executive orders to push his agenda—often bypassing Congress altogether—has become a defining feature of his presidency. Constitutional scholars and political analysts have warned that the sheer volume of executive actions is testing the limits of presidential power, raising concerns about the potential erosion of the rule of law. Here’s what Congress has accomplished—and what Republicans are still hoping to achieve—as Trump’s second presidency reached the 100-day mark. Laken Riley Act The most high-profile measure to pass Congress was the Laken Riley Act, named after a nursing student who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan immigrant who was in the country unlawfully and had been previously apprehended by Border Patrol and released. The bill, signed into law by Trump nine days into his presidency, changes how the federal government handles immigrants who are in the country unlawfully and mandates that those charged with theft, burglary, or other serious crimes be detained until their cases are resolved. The bill requires the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security “to take into custody aliens who have been charged in the United States with theft, and for other purposes,” meaning immigration officers would be required to arrest and detain those people. Before, immigration officials would use their discretion to first detain people with violent criminal records. The bill ultimately passed the House with unanimous support from Republicans, and the backing of 46 of 215 Democrats. In the Senate, 12 Democrats joined all Senate Republicans to move the bill forward. Avoided a government shutdown Congress managed to avert a government shutdown in late March, passing a stopgap funding bill to keep federal agencies running through the end of the fiscal year. The effort required careful maneuvering by GOP leaders—and a surprising degree of cooperation from ten Senate Democrats who voted alongside Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was criticized by many in his party for voting in favor of the legislation, which critics said stripped away numerous funding directives and gave Trump unprecedented power to reallocate money as he saw fit without fear of judicial intervention. Rolled back Biden Administration regulations One area where Trump and congressional Republicans have been unusually productive is in using the Congressional Review Act—a powerful but little-used law that allows Congress to repeal recent federal regulations with a simple majority vote, bypassing the Senate filibuster. Of the five bills Trump has signed, three were CRA resolutions aimed at dismantling Biden-era rules. In March, Trump signed a resolution overturning the Waste Emissions Charge, an environmental regulation finalized near the end of Biden’s presidency. Although parts of Biden’s broader climate agenda remain in place, Republicans succeeded in nullifying this specific fee on methane emissions. That same month, Trump also signed a CRA resolution blocking a Bureau of Ocean Energy Management rule that had required oil and gas companies operating offshore to submit detailed archaeological surveys. Republicans argued the rule created unnecessary compliance costs for energy producers. And in April, Trump signed into law a bill to overturn a revised rule from the Internal Revenue Service that expanded the definition of a broker to include decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges. Take It Down Act A bipartisan bill that criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn is expected to soon become law, after it was sent to Trump’s desk on Monday. The measure, which had the backing of First Lady Melania Trump, aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools by making it a federal crime to knowingly post or threaten to publish computer-generated pornographic images and videos of real people. Trump has said he would sign the bill into law: “I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody,” he told a joint session of Congress in early March. A few days earlier, Melania Trump staged a press conference with deepfake victims—her first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. “Republicans, it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,” Trump posted on Truth Social in April. “The USA will Soar like never before!!!” The House and Senate passed a budget resolution earlier this month to begin a process known as reconciliation that they hope will allow them to pass the measure without Democratic support. Yet significant divisions within the GOP caucus remain. Senate Republicans set a relatively modest $4 billion target for cuts, while House Republicans are under orders to find at least $1.5 trillion in savings, a gap that will be difficult to bridge. Disagreements have already surfaced over proposed cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and clean energy initiatives. Moderate Republicans from swing districts are balking at deep cuts to social safety net programs, even as hardliners demand more aggressive reductions. Adding to the pressure is the looming threat of a government default. The bill is expected to include a provision raising the federal debt ceiling by as much as $5 trillion, which the Treasury Department warns must happen by late summer to avoid an unprecedented financial crisis. Economists across the political spectrum have warned that extending the Trump tax cuts without equivalent new revenue or significant changes to entitlement programs like Social Security could balloon the federal deficit to record levels.

President Donald Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos are feuding again. The White House lashed out at Amazon on Tuesday for reportedly planning to display how much of a product’s cost comes from Trump’s tariffs. Doing so would emphasize to consumers that U.S. tariffs are not paid by overseas companies, but by the American companies importing the goods, and then largely passed on to customers. “This is a hostile and political act by Amazon,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday at a briefing focused on the economy and Trump’s 100th day in office. She said she had just talked to Trump on the phone about Amazon’s plan, citing a report from Punchbowl News. “Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt said. Amazon soon disputed the report, with a spokesperson initially telling The Washington Post that the company was only thinking about listing tariff costs on some products on a lower-cost section of the site called Amazon Haul. Then the company walked back the idea entirely. "The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store considered the idea of listing import charges on certain products," spokesman Tim Doyle said in a statement. "This was never approved and is not going to happen.“ Bezos had clashed publicly with Trump for years. When Trump was running for president in 2016, he said Trump’s calls to “lock up” his political rival Hillary Clinton “erodes our democracy.” Trump has called him “Jeff Bozo.” But Bezos extended an olive branch last summer after Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pa., writing on X that Trump had shown “tremendous grace and courage.” After the Bezos-owned Washington Post decided not to endorse a presidential candidate in 2024, Bezos defended the decision, saying presidential endorsements “create a perception of bias.” When Trump won a second term, Bezos praised Trump’s “extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory” and said at a New York Times event that he wanted to work with Trump to reduce regulation and was “actually very optimistic” about Trump’s return to office. That outlook may have changed over the past 100 days, as Trump launched a trade war that included 10% across-the-board tariffs on all goods brought into the U.S. and a 145% tariff on goods from China. Trump paused a raft of even higher tariffs on dozens of countries for 90 days to allow time for countries to petition his Administration directly for relief. The higher tariffs are scheduled to snap into place in July. Trump officials say they are negotiating trade deals with 17 countries, but the trade negotiations with China are stalled. The on-again-off-again tariff announcements have rattled investors, wiping out trillions in value from stock markets and frustrating business leaders who are struggling to make business decisions without knowing how much goods will cost in the long run. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who appeared with Leavitt in the press briefing room on Tuesday, said Trump’s erratic tariff actions were part of the President’s negotiating strategy to achieve better trade deals and encourage more companies to open factories in the U.S. “President Trump creates what I call strategic uncertainty in the negotiations,” Bessent said. Bessent acknowledged that some business leaders have pulled back from launching new projects in recent weeks. He said that Trump’s work stripping away federal regulations and a tax bill Republicans hope to pass this summer may include incentives for businesses to buy equipment and build new factories. “Business leaders, they’ve gone into a pause, and I think we are going to give them great certainty on this tax bill,” Bessent said. Congressional Republicans are hoping to include a raft of tax breaks in the bill they hope to finish by early July. On the campaign trail, Trump promised he would end taxes on tips, overtime, Social Security payments, and auto payments for cars made in the U.S. Bessent said Trump is pushing for companies to be able to deduct the cost of new equipment and factory buildings to encourage more manufacturing in the U.S. Americans have become more skeptical of Trump’s economic decisions since he took office. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-April found that 37% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 42% in late January.

On the eve of Canadians gearing up to vote in a federal election, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed President Donald Trump’s previous comments about making Canada the “51st state.” During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, April 27, host Kristen Welker questioned Rubio on whether or not the State Department has “taken any steps to carry out” Trump’s plans “as he has said, to annex Canada.” “What the President said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous Prime Minister [Justin Trudeau] that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point [Trump] asked, ‘Well, if you can't survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state,’” Rubio said. Sorry, the video player failed to load.(Error Code: 101102) When asked if the U.S. still wants to make Canada the 51st state, Rubio responded with: “I think the President has stated repeatedly he thinks Canada would be better off as a state.” Rubio’s comments come after a back-and-forth between Canada’s former Prime Minister Trudeau and Trump about how Canada should deal with the pressures felt by Trump’s tariffs. Canada has also countered with a 25% tariff on goods imported from the U.S. Trump has repeatedly said both on social media and to reporters that Canada could become the 51st state of the U.S. When asked in the Oval Office by reporters in February if there was anything Trudeau could “give” to Trump amid ongoing tariff discussions, Trump reiterated that as a state, there would be no tariffs on the country. “What I’d like to see; Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said. “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that it would become a state.” Canada's current Prime Minister Mark Carney has also spoken out on Trump's persistent comments about annexing Canada. He said Trump raised the matter during a phone call in March. Speaking at a campaign press conference, Carney said: "To be clear, as I've said to anyone who's raised this issue in private or in public, including the President, it will never happen. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump doubled down on his previous statements and said he was “really not trolling” about making Canada the 51st state, arguing that America doesn’t “need anything from Canada.” “We’re taking care of their military. We're taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don't need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don't want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don't need their lumber. We don't need their energy. We don't need anything from Canada,” Trump said. “And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.” Trudeau—who announced his plans to step down in January as Canada’s Liberal Party leader—has previously told lawmakers and business leaders to take the threat of annexation seriously, with several outlets reporting that at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto in February, Trudeau suggested that Trump wants access to Canada’s critical minerals. “Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing," he said. As mentioned, Rubio’s new comments land a day before Canada’s April 28 federal election, which could see a new leader in place for negotiations about tariffs with the United States. Trump’s comments have weighed heavily on the Canadian elections thus far, with the Liberal Party utilizing a Canadian wave of nationalism that has resulted from the ongoing trade concerns. The country’s next leader could decide the fate of Canada’s critical relationship with the U.S. and how that will look moving forward. “They're going to have a new leader. We'll deal with a new leadership in Canada,” Rubio said. “There are many things to work cooperatively with Canada on, but we actually don't like the way they treated us when it comes to trade, and the President has made that point when he responded to the previous Prime Minister.”

President Trump and his wife, First Lady Melania, were among the key world figures to attend Pope Francis’ funeral at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on Saturday, April 26. Trump joined dozens of heads of state to bid farewell to the leader of the Catholic Church, who died on April 21, at the age of 88, after a series of complicated health issues. But ahead of taking his seat for the service, Trump had a brief meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The two met on the sidelines of the funeral, before proceedings began. It was their first in-person meeting since their highly-documented Oval Office showdown in February, which saw the two world leaders clash when discussing the Ukraine-Russia conflict. According to White House communications director Steven Cheung, Trump and Zelensky ”met privately… and had a very productive discussion." Serhii Nykyforov, Zelensky’s spokesperson, added that the meeting lasted for around 15 minutes. The office of President Zelensky shared a picture of the meeting via social media. Trump and Zelensky can be seen sitting opposite one another on two chairs in a marbled room, with the U.S. President leaning in to listen as the Ukrainian leader speaks. Trump also posted images of the meeting on his Truth Social account. Taking to his own social media profile some time later, Zelensky shared an update about his sit-down with Trump, characterizing it as a "good meeting." "We discussed a lot one-on-one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional cease-fire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out," Zelensky said. "Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results." The Trump-Zelensky sit-down comes shortly after Trump delivered a rare public rebuke of Russian President Vladmir Putin, with whom he has typically enjoyed a strong relationship. Taking to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Thursday, April 24, Trump called out Russia’s leader over a deadly attack on Kyiv, Ukraine. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on Kyiv. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Let’s get the Peace Deal DONE!,” he wrote. Zelensky has typically received strong support from his fellow world leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. On Saturday, when he entered St. Peter’s Basilica to take his seat for Pope Francis’ funeral service, Zelensky was met with a round of applause from the public, with thousands gathered outside the proceedings to pay their respects to the Pontiff. Although Trump had previously said that he would end the war in Ukraine on the first day of his second term in the White House, the conflict rages on. In a sit-down interview with TIME on April 22, Trump answered whether he felt peace was possible if Putin is still President of Russia. “I think with me as President, there’s—possible, if [a] very probable [chance],” Trump said. “If somebody else is President, no chance.” Trump went on to say: “I believe I'm the only one that can get this thing negotiated. And I think we’re a long way. We've had very good talks, and we're getting very close to a deal. And I don't believe anybody else could have made that deal.” However, Trump shared a vastly different sentiment on Saturday, April 26, when he returned to Truth Social in the hours following Pope Francis' funeral. Trump expressed doubt that Putin wants to end the war in Ukraine, and hinted at sanctions against Russia. "There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities, and towns, over the last few days," Trump said. "It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through 'Banking' or 'Secondary Sanctions?' Too many people are dying!"

After weeks of courtroom battles, student protests, and escalating pressure from universities and federal judges, the Trump Administration has reversed a sweeping effort that jeopardized the legal status of thousands of international students in the United States. The Department of Justice announced Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will reinstate the immigration records of international students whose student visa data had been abruptly terminated, often due to minor or dismissed legal infractions. The decision marks yet another retreat by an Administration that has made hardline immigration enforcement a centerpiece of its second term. The abrupt mass terminations earlier this month, which the American Immigration Law Association estimates impacted about 4,700 students, sent shockwaves through campuses across the country. Students were thrown into legal limbo with no notice, as their records in a system known as SEVIS (Student and Exchange Visitor Information System) were erased. That meant they were technically no longer in the country legally and at risk of detention and deportation. Some were blocked from attending classes or accessing campus resources. Others, already in precarious positions, found themselves detained or forced to self-deport. Judges across at least 23 states issued emergency orders temporarily blocking the government's actions, slamming the move as arbitrary, opaque, and potentially unlawful. Over 100 lawsuits were filed—by students, universities, and advocacy organizations—charging that the terminations violated due process and targeted students without sufficient cause. The Trump Administration’s reversal came just hours before ICE officials were expected to testify under oath in the court challenge. “ICE is developing a policy that will provide a framework for SEVIS record terminations,” a Justice Department attorney said in court Friday, according to Politico, signaling a temporary halt to the practice of revoking records solely on the basis of prior legal encounters. Here’s what to know about what this means for international students in the United States. Who’s still at risk? For many affected students, the path forward remains unclear. The widely publicized cases of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil, for example, which are both entangled in broader national security and foreign policy debates, reflect the ongoing ambiguity surrounding the Administration’s intent. Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student, was detained in Massachusetts after ICE agents confronted her on the street. Her F-1 visa had been quietly revoked days earlier, allegedly for “activities in support of Hamas,” though her attorneys say the real reason was her outspoken support for Palestinian rights. Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident and pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, faces deportation proceedings following a State Department order stripping him of his green card—a dramatic escalation in a campaign that critics say is as political as it is legal. While the government’s reversal applies to students with “minor” or “dismissed” legal infractions—such as traffic violations or dropped charges—it remains unclear whether cases like Öztürk’s or Khalil’s fall under the Trump Administration’s reversal. ICE retains authority to terminate a student’s record for national security concerns or other violations of immigration law. The State Department, which separately revoked many student visas, did not respond to a request for comment on whether those cancellations are being reversed as well. ICE’s quiet expansion of campus control The origins of the mass terminations of student visas remain murky. Students from across the country have reported learning of their status loss only through school administrators or attorneys. Several said they were never arrested or even aware of any charges. Traditionally, it has been universities, through designated officers, who notify SEVIS of changes in a student’s status. Under the Trump Administration, ICE has begun taking more direct control, in what immigration lawyers describe as a dramatic shift. Though ICE and the State Department have framed the actions as necessary to protect national security and uphold immigration law, critics argue the crackdown fits into a broader pattern: pressuring universities to conform to Administration priorities including limiting political dissent. Just this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that students engaging in pro-Palestinian activism could face visa revocations for allegedly undermining U.S. foreign policy. The campaign has drawn comparisons to the post-9/11 surveillance of Muslim students and scholars, though with new digital tools.

President Donald Trump emerges through a pair of handsome wooden doors on the third floor of the White House. On his way down the wide, carpeted staircase, he passes portraits of his predecessors. Nixon is opposite the landing outside the residence. Two flights down, he has swapped the placement of Clinton and Lincoln, moving a massive painting of the latter into the main entrance hall of the mansion. “Lincoln is Lincoln, in all fairness,” he explains. “And I gave Clinton a good space.” But it’s the portrait around the corner that Trump wants to show off. It’s a giant painting of a photograph—that photograph, the famous image of Trump, his fist raised, blood trickling down his face, after the attempt on his life last July at a rally in Butler, Pa. It hangs across the foyer from a portrait of Obama, in tacit competition. When they bring tours in, everyone wants to look at this one, Trump says, gesturing to the painting of himself, in technicolor defiance. “100 to 1, they prefer that,” he says. “It’s incredible.” Making his way out to the Rose Garden, he walks up the inclined colonnade toward the Oval Office, describing the other alterations to the decor, both inside and out. His imprint on his workspace is apparent. The molding and mantels have gold accents now, and he has filled the walls with portraits of other presidents in gilded frames. He has hung an early copy of the Declaration of Independence behind a set of blue curtains. The box with a red button that allows Trump to summon Diet Cokes is back in its place on the Resolute desk, behind which stands a new battalion of flags, including one for the U.S. Space Force, the military branch he established. A map of the “Gulf of America,” as Trump has rechristened the Gulf of Mexico, was propped on a stand nearby. If Trump is making cosmetic changes to the White House, his effect on the presidency goes much deeper. The first 100 days of his second term have been among the most destabilizing in American history, a blitz of power grabs, strategic shifts, and direct attacks that have left opponents, global counterparts, and even many supporters stunned. Trump has launched a battery of orders and memoranda that have hobbled entire government agencies and departments. He has threatened to take Greenland by force, seize control of the Panama Canal, and annex Canada. Weaponizing his control of the Justice Department, he has ordered investigations of political enemies. He has gutted much of the civil service, removing more than a hundred thousand federal workers. He has gone to war with institutions across American life: universities, media outlets, law firms, museums. He pardoned or gave a commutation to every single defendant charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attacks, including those convicted of violent acts and seditious conspiracy. Seeking to remake the global economy, he triggered a trade war by unleashing a sweeping array of tariffs that sent markets plummeting. Embarking on his promised program of mass deportation, he has mobilized agencies across government, from the IRS to the Postal Service, as part of the effort to find, detain, and expel immigrants. He has shipped some of them to foreign countries without due process, citing a wartime provision from the 18th century. His Administration has snatched foreign students off the streets and stripped their visas for engaging in speech he dislikes. He has threatened to send Americans to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Says one senior Administration official: “Our success depends on his ability to shock you.” What shocks constitutional scholars and civil libertarians is the power Trump is attempting to amass and the impunity with which he is wielding it. Trump has claimed Congress’s constitutional authority over spending and foreign trade, citing a loosely defined emergency. He has asserted control over independent agencies and ignored post-Watergate rules designed to prevent political meddling in law enforcement and investigations. When lower courts have ordered him to slow or reverse potentially illegal moves, he has at times ignored or publicly ridiculed them. In one case, he defied a Supreme Court order. Issuing a ruling in that fight, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee and arguably the most influential conservative jurist outside the high court, said the Administration’s behavior threatens to “reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.” In an hour-long interview with TIME on April 22, Trump cast the first three months of his term as an unbridled success. “What I’m doing is exactly what I’ve campaigned on,” he says. Which is true, in part. From deportations and tariffs to remaking America’s alliances and attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, Donald John Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, is carrying out pledges to radically reshape America and its role in the world. He didn’t invent most of the problems he is aggressively going after, and supporters say he is doing more than predecessors from both parties to fix them. America’s immigration system has been broken for decades; Trump’s moves have slowed illegal border crossings to a trickle. Throughout the Cold War, U.S. strategists bemoaned military “free-riders” in Europe and East Asia; Trump has triggered previously unimaginable moves by Germany and Japan to spend more on their own, and their neighbors’, collective defense. China used its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 to launch a multidecade attack on those who sought to do business with them; Trump’s latest tariffs are the most aggressive effort to fight back. “I have solved more problems in the world without asking for or getting credit,” he says. Trump has benefited from an enfeebled Democratic Party and compliant congressional Republicans who have abdicated legislative powers and long-held beliefs, whether out of cowardice or a desire to ride his coattails. There has been little meaningful or sustained backlash from the public. The civil-society leaders and corporate titans with the most political capital have largely acquiesced to Trump’s rule, choosing supplicancy over solidarity. The capitulation has only emboldened him. It’s possible that Trump, 100 days in, is at the peak of his power. A resistance—if not one that resembles the first-term Resistance—is stirring to life. Trump’s protectionist policies threaten a recession of his own making; businesses big and small face the imminent threat of closure as they cut workers, close production lines, and try to stay afloat in the face of disruptions to supply chains and revenue of a scale not seen since the pandemic. Universities have found greater courage in the face of Trump’s threats to their multibillion-dollar research budgets. Communities that rely on immigrant labor have bristled at the uptick in deportations. With consumer confidence at its lowest level in three years and inflation expected to climb as a consequence of the trade war, even meek Republicans have raised complaints about the impact of some of Trump’s moves on their political future. Polling finds that a larger share of Americans now live in fear of their government and Trump’s approval rating has slipped to 40%, according to a Pew survey, lower at this early stage in his term than that of any other recent President.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. Don’t look now, but Donald Trump is in some of the worst polling territory of his time in power. And that’s saying something, as he’s never been on terribly firm ground. For most of his first term, Trump leaned heavily on his solid footing as a steward of the economy and defender of the border to offset his erratic day-to-day antics. But his support on those twin policy pillars are showing signs of weakening in a series of new polls pegged to his first 100 days back in power. In fact, they’re dragging him down as he adopts more extreme policies. All of the latest polls show Trump doing terribly on his handling of the economy. Reuters, in fact, found Trump at his lowest marks for the economy ever—just 37% approval. On immigration, Trump’s polling isn’t quite as dire, but he’s just about completely erased his edge amid a deportation spree that's included U.S. citizens and others in the country legally. His unfavorable numbers have been on a steady climb since he came back to the Oval Office, reaching as of Thursday 52% in a New York Times aggregate analysis. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush were all faring better at this point in their terms. And Trump 2.0 takes little solace in the fact he’s still doing better than Trump 1.0 was faring eight years ago at this point in the presidency. (That excludes a brutal Fox News poll, released Wednesday, that has him under his first-term numbers by a single point, but still within the margin of error.) In this century, no U.S. President’s polling has fallen off as sharply as Trump’s, either. And it’s not like he had much padding there, either; he started his second term with the second-worst numbers of any President in the modern era, again only saved by his first time coming to Washington. You have to go back all the way to 1953 to find a first-time President with worse numbers. (For those who cannot tick through the White House occupant list, that would be first-time politician Dwight D. Eisenhower.) The latest polling for The Economist and YouGov give Trump an approval rating of negative 13 points—a three-point hit from just a week ago. (At this point in his presidency, Biden was up 11 points.) Drilling down into the latest polling from Pew, Trump is in negative territory in every single demographic group save two: Republicans and those people who voted for him. Men, women, persons of color, college educated and not—they all have net negative views of him. On exactly zero issues is he in net-positive territory. Not immigration. Not trade. Not public health. Not the economy. Not foreign policy or tax policy. There’s no single answer why voters have started to sour on Trump, but it’s impossible to set aside the economy. Trump’s tariff tiff with friend and foe alike has left markets rattled. His escalating trade war is giving Wall Street major buyers’ remorse. His mass deportations have left employers scrambling for low-cost labor and courts jammed with cases. His gutting of government—and lurching reboots—does little to project steadiness, either. Gallup’s polling, also new this week, finds the country exhibiting the worst economic confidence since 2001 when it started asking the question. What started as a net-12 point advantage on the economy for Trump at the start of his term three months ago has become a 12-point deficit—a massive shift marking about a quarter of the electorate, according to the Economist/ YouGov data. It’s a similar rot in the same poll’s question on immigration. What started as an 11-point net positive there has since become a net-negative prospect of 5 points in that Economist/ YouGov survey. In the new Pew data, immigration ranked as the most liked thing Trump has done so far, ranking up there with about 20% of all Americans. It’s the lone area where Trump is above water, although the Fox numbers hint at trouble, with just 47% giving him good marks on that topic, and 48% disapproving. But when asked what they like the least about his work so far, his approach to governing is equally as strong, with 22% of adults telling Pew it’s their biggest criticism of time back in power. The fading shine of Trump is far from a salve for the wound he’s gashing on Washington, but it does give hope for Democrats, who have been open about their lack of strategy for pushing back on just about any of his moves undermining the rule of law, the economy, or even the government he leads. Politically independent voters—the bread and butter of elections—have been the biggest crack in Trump’s coalition: in January, according to Quinnipiac polling, 46% of indie voters said they disapproved of Trump; today, that number stands at 58%. A 12-point swing with independents is the entire ballgame, and should give Republicans a reason to reconsider if Trump’s halo is enough to save them when they face voters next year. Among Republicans, there are also signs of trouble. The Fox poll asked GOP voters about their prospects for this second term, and 75% of the group said they were “encouraged” about the next four years. Good, sure. But recall that 84% of those partisans said the same when asked that question at this point during Trump’s first term. If this trend continues, there might be reason for the groundskeepers at the Capitol to ready the Speaker’s suite for a new occupant, especially given Democrats’ strong fundraising so far this cycle. Republicans currently have a tiny seven-seat majority in that chamber. So far, GOP lawmakers have shown deference to the belief only Trump could protect them from a loss in the next primary. These latest numbers show he may actually be piling on the pain.