Trump reversed numerous environmental regulations, withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change, and signed the Great American Outdoors Act but later issued an Executive Order undercutting its impact.

[11] Trump also brought on board politicians who had opposed him during the presidential campaign, such as neurosurgeon Ben Carson as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development,[12] and South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as Ambassador to the United Nations.

The Washington Post wrote, "For the first time since the system was created in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, inspectors general find themselves under systematic attack from the president, putting independent oversight of federal spending and operations at risk.

[57] Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin found Trump lacked several traits of an effective leader, including "humility, acknowledging errors, shouldering blame and learning from mistakes, empathy, resilience, collaboration, connecting with people and controlling unproductive emotions.

"[123] The Trump Justice Department obtained by court order the 2017 phone logs or email metadata of reporters from CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, and Politico as part of investigations into leaks of classified information.

[172] In December 2018, Trump signed the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill which sought to rehabilitate prisoners and reduce recidivism, notably by expanding job training and early-release programs, and lowering mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

[179] Trump circumvented the typical clemency process, taking no action on more than ten thousand pending applications, using the pardon power primarily on "public figures whose cases resonated with him given his own grievances with investigators".

[228] Analysis conducted by Bloomberg News at the end of Trump's second year in office found that his economy ranked sixth among the last seven presidents, based on fourteen metrics of economic activity and financial performance.

[288][289] Despite rhetoric about boosting the coal industry, coal-fueled electricity generating capacity declined faster during Trump's presidency than during any previous presidential term, falling 15% with the idling of 145 coal-burning units at 75 power plants.

[342] Trump ordered a four-month government-wide hiring freeze of the civilian work force (excluding staff in the military, national security, public safety and offices of new presidential appointees) at the start of his term.

[349] Trump repealed a regulation that barred gun ownership from approximately 75,000 individuals who received Social Security checks due to mental illness and who were deemed unfit to handle their financial affairs.

[364] The administration ended subsidy payments to health insurance companies, in a move expected to raise premiums in 2018 for middle-class families by an average of about twenty percent nationwide and cost the federal government nearly $200 billion more than it saved over a ten-year period.

[385] Trump's Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

[421][422] An additional $900 Billion would be further dedicated to the pandemic in the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act that was signed into law December 27, 2020, despite initial opposition by Trump following criticism of the individual stimulus payments as too low and of the bill as having wasteful spending.

Trump was criticized for leaving his hospital room at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to go on a joyride to greet his supporters, thus exposing United States Secret Service agents to the disease.

[441] The administration took several steps to limit the rights of legal immigrants, which included attempted revocations of Temporary Protected Status for Central American refugees,[442] 60,000 Haitians (who emigrated following the 2010 Haiti earthquake),[443] and 200,000 Salvadorans (who emigrated following a series of devastating earthquakes in 2001)[444] as well as making it illegal for refugees and asylum seekers,[445] and spouses of H-1B visa holders to work in the U.S.[446] A federal judge blocked the administration's attempt to deport the TPS recipients, citing what the judge said was Trump's racial "animus against non-white, non-European immigrants".

[472] The Washington Post quoted a White House official as saying Trump's decision to separate migrant families was to gain political leverage to force Democrats and moderate Republicans to accept hardline immigration legislation.

[503] In September 2020, Brian Murphy – who until August 2020 was the Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis – asserted in a whistleblower complaint[504] that during the shutdown senior DHS officials sought to inflate the number of known or suspected terrorists who had been apprehended at the border, to increase support for funding the wall.

NBC News reported that in early 2019 a DHS spokeswoman, Katie Waldman, pushed the network to retract a story that correctly cited only six such apprehensions in the first half of 2018, compared to the nearly four thousand a year the administration was publicly claiming.

[520] On June 1, 2020, hundreds of police officers, members of the National Guard and other forces, in riot gear used smoke canisters, rubber bullets, batons and shields to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters outside St. John's Episcopal Church across Lafayette Square from the White House.

[524] Trump, accompanied by other officials including the secretary of defense, then walked across Lafayette Square and posed for pictures while he was holding a Bible up for the cameras, outside the church which had suffered minor damage from a fire started by arsonists the night before.

[549] Trump said he was pleased with the way things were going in Portland and said that he might send federal law enforcement to many more cities, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, and Oakland – "all run by liberal Democrats".

[551][552] Under a deal worked out between Governor Kate Brown and the Trump administration, federal agents withdrew to standby locations on July 30, while state and local law enforcement forces took over responsibility for protecting the courthouse; they made no arrests and mostly stayed out of sight.

[680] As Donald Trump lost the election bid against Joe Biden, the U.S. State Department notified Congress about its plans to sell 18 sophisticated armed MQ-9B aerial drones to the United Arab Emirates, under a deal worth $2.9 billion.

[695] Trump went to great lengths to keep details of his private conversations with Russian president Putin secret, including in one case by retaining his interpreter's notes and instructing the linguist to not share the contents of the discussions with anyone in the administration.

[707] In July 2018, the special counsel indicted twelve Russian intelligence operatives and accused them of conspiring to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections, by hacking servers and emails of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

[801] The Washington Post reported in May 2017, "a wide variety of information that until recently was provided to the public, limiting access, for instance, to disclosures about workplace violations, energy efficiency, and animal welfare abuses" had been removed or tucked away.

[802][803] In July 2018, CNN reported that the White House had suspended the practice of publishing public summaries of Trump's phone calls with world leaders, bringing an end to a common exercise from previous administrations.

[761] Henry Kerner, head of the Office of Special Counsel, found in a report released in November 2021 that at least 13 administration officials demonstrated "willful disregard" for the Hatch Act, including "especially pernicious" behavior in the days before the 2020 election.

Those pardoned include his former senior adviser Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner's friend charged with cyberstalking, Ken Kurson; a real estate lawyer, Albert Pirro; and rappers prosecuted on federal weapons offenses, Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.