What Trump Has Actually Done In Three Years

Matthew Yglesias: “While the media, understandably, focuses on Trump’s many scandals, his administration has quietly enacted a far more aggressive agenda than his Republican predecessors. Big boosts to fossil fuel production have come at the expense of an unprecedented deterioration in air quality. Tens of thousands of people have lost health insurance by administrative fiat, and millions are in the process of losing their nutritional assistance through the same mechanism. He’s remade the judiciary, installing conservative judges at twice Obama’s pace, and he’s consolidated a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that may endure for decades.”

“Tax changes were Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment, creating a huge windfall for wealthy shareholders and small gains for the middle class — with revenue losses much larger than initially forecast. He’s also undertaken significant but little-noticed alternations in supervision of Wall Street that increase the riskiness of the banking system, plus drastic changes to immigration policy that go far beyond wall construction.”

“The immigration changes align with Trump’s main campaign themes, even if they don’t line up in detail with what he promised. But much of this amounts to delivering for big business and the wealthy in a much more dramatic way than his “populist” positioning would indicate. Promises to voters to protect clean air, provide better health care, crack down on banks, and tax the rich have fallen entirely by the wayside.”