It's no secret, I am certain, to those who follow this page that I have increasingly eschewed politicians in general. I have mostly lost interest in the copious and omnipresent onslaught of reporting on political intrigues and the back and forth verbal battles that play out every day. Frankly, it's exhausting.
What has become painfully obvious to me and perhaps to you too is that the career politicians historically have not been interested in seeking solutions for the American people. Why? Their own self-interest was always at the forefront of their endeavors.
Some career politicians like former President Joe Biden, who was re-elected for a lifetime in politics, finished as a multi-millionaire, and he is just one among many who amassed a personal fortune in ways that are only now becoming apparent.
Term limits on the members of the House and the Senate cannot be far behind if it ever came to a vote that could be put on a ballot. Also, surprisingly to many, American citizenship at birth is currently not a requirement, and that fact should also be addressed in coming days.
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| President Donald J. Trump |
It cannot have escaped your notice that President Donald J. Trump is only six months into his administration, and the list of substantive achievements for the benefit of the American people is staggering by anyone's calculations. The thin margins in both the House and the Senate with the whole House up for re-election each two years, perhaps explains the urgency we have witnessed.
Securing the borders was first and foremost on the Trump agenda. The speed and the sweeping success of accomplishing that goal was simply stunning to observe. Deportations mounted as illegal immigrants were rounded up and sent packing back to their countries of origin. Self-deportations have increased, no doubt because those who were here illegally got the message that America was transforming quickly into a law and order posture.
On other fronts, the first six months of Donald Trump's second presidency have been the most "successful" of any American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, according to an analysis conducted by Newsweek.
The legislative efforts paid off in passage of his flagship "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," a tax and spending package. It narrowly passed along strictly party lines illustrating once again we are a narrowly divided nation politically. The reductions in taxes and spending were staggering, and makes one wonder how any right-thinking politician from the other party could oppose it.
Newsweek asked "ChatGPT" to rank the accomplishments of 20th and 21st century U.S. presidents in their first six months, taking account of the level of support they enjoyed in Congress.
The model gave Trump an overall score of "very high," thanks to legislation such as the One Big Beautiful Bill and Laken Riley Acts.
On July 4, 2025, Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law after it narrowly passed both the House and Senate. The legislation slashed certain taxes, including extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts; raised the U.S. debt ceiling; increased spending on the military and border control; and cut some funding from Medicare and other welfare programs. According to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, the package will add $3.3 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.
Trump signed the Laken Riley Act into law on January 29, with the bill taking its name from a Georgia college student who was murdered by a Venezuelan illegal immigrant in February 2024. The legislation requires noncitizens charged or convicted of a range of offenses, including theft and assaulting a police officer, to be held without bond. It also gives states more freedom to sue the Department of Homeland Security over immigration enforcement.
The analysis cited above concluded that the first six months of Trump's second term were the most productive since Roosevelt's first term in 1933. In his first 100 days, Roosevelt passed 15 New Deal statutes, including the Emergency Banking Act.
Third in the calculation was Biden's first 100 days, which saw the package of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan designed to combat the economic effects of coronavirus, along with the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday. This package was passed despite the Democrats and Republicans being tied in terms of 50 affiliated Senators each, giving then-Vice President Kamala Harris a tiebreaking vote.
At the other end of the spectrum, the analysis gave the worst score for the first six months to Theodore Roosevelt, who became president in 1901, arguing that he passed "no major statue before March 1902."
Bill Clinton was also ranked poorly, with the conclusion his only major legislative reform during his first six months was the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.
Here's some insight from a foreigner, Dafydd Townley, an American politics expert at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K., who told Newsweek: "While Donald Trump has achieved some legislative successes, they are more reflective of the partisan support in Congress. Not every president in the modern era has had such a one-dimensional party to support his legislative agenda. The Democratic Party has long been a coalition of diverse voices, making it difficult to appease every member of Congress. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama found this out during their first term in office.
"Until the George W. Bush era, Republicans failed to hold both House and Senate majorities in the modern era, apart from two years in the first Eisenhower administration. Even during the Bush years, control of the Senate shifted back and forth on several occasions, making legislative efforts difficult, if not impossible. Reagan's ability to bridge the partisan divide and work with congressional Democrats on specific bills, such as Social Security reform and immigration policies, suggests a White House capable of achieving ideological success despite congressional barriers. The same applies to Richard Nixon, who gained considerable legislative success despite having a Democrat-controlled House and Senate when he entered office.
"Democrat presidents of the early Cold War had to contend with conservative Southern Democrats in Congress, despite Democrat majorities in the House and Senate. These long-serving members dominated congressional committees, thereby limiting the legislative success of John F. Kennedy, for example. The successful passage of a huge number of bills as part of his Great Society program is a testimony to Lyndon Johnson's management of Congress.
"Trump has been much more reliant on the use of executive orders to implement Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint for Trump's second term in office. The Trump-inspired legislation in this Congress is more likely to consolidate power within the executive branch and lead to less congressional interference in the president's management of the White House and its agencies."
Left unstated in this analysis by Newsweek, and in my mind more substantive, is Trump's experience as a deal maker among the nations of the world. He imposed tariffs, thought my many "experts" to be disastrous. Instead, the heads of nations have been making historic trade deals with America that have the potential to increase revenues we haven't seen for decades, reduce the deficit spending, and provide American jobs. Those results have already been witnessed, with more to come.
My conclusion: I would much rather have a Donald J. Trump in the White House today than any other politician you can name who would undermine these achievements we have witnessed to date.
If Republicans lose control of either the Senate or House in the 2026 midterm elections, it will make it significantly harder to get the party's bills approved by Congress.
