The Libertarian Party released a detailed review this week of President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office since winning a second term, grading his administration’s early actions across a range of policy areas. The party gave the administration an overall grade of a C-minus.
The party shared its review on Tuesday, describing the administration as a “mixed bag for liberty,” and giving it a blend of praise and criticism. It looked at ten categories, along with providing a “Libertarian View” to go along with each. As part of its focus, the review assessed whether the size and scope of government had grown or shrunk since the beginning of Trump’s second term, and whether Americans had gained or lost freedoms.
The review credited the administration with issuing mass pardons, including for January 6 protesters and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, and praised proposed cuts to federal agencies and a general shift away from military intervention in Ukraine. However, it sharply denounced what it sees as a failure to rein in defense spending, including continued military support to Israel, and a return of protectionist trade policies. It also called out the expansion of executive authority through more than 140 executive orders, referring to it as an “executive order overload.”
“Shrinking government is a win,” the party wrote. “But relying on executive orders instead of legislative change centralizes power, even when the policy is right. Real decentralization requires structural change, not just a reshuffling of bureaucracies.”
Other concerns included proposed mass deportations, a $1 trillion defense budget, and signs of continued federal overreach in areas such as education and public health. The party’s review expressed alarm at the administration’s praise of El Salvador’s “mega-prison strategy” and called the current immigration system a “byzantine, quota-ridden bureaucracy that incentivizes illegal entry.” While the review noted some positive movement on school choice and decentralization, it argued that much of Trump’s governing approach has relied too heavily on executive power.
In issuing its final grade, the party acknowledged signs of “positive disruption,” but still cautioned libertarians to remain vigilant.
“While there are signs of positive disruption—some red tape is being slashed, some political prisoners pardoned, some war spending paused—the deeper disease of centralization, fiscal irresponsibility, and state power remains unaddressed,” it further wrote. “Libertarians should praise the steps toward decentralization, but stay vigilant as power continues to shift, often just from one federal hand to another.”
My apologies for subsequent redundant comments. I had erroneously assumed that my first comment was rejected because more recent comments were approved first.
I wish there were some way to know definitely whether a comment was rejected or just hadn’t been reviewed yet, and if it was rejected, what was wrong with it so that I (or anyone else) could try again and resubmit a new version designed to correct the error.
Does your system have an option to leave a comment viewable only to the person who posted it, with a “comment rejected” tag similar to the current “comment awaiting approval” or however y’all phrase that, and if at all possible a note from the management as to the reason(s) for rejection?
Please keep in mind that some of us can’t share a real email address for a wide variety of reasons, or simply don’t check email often enough for any reason for that to be of any practical use with such issues. I and all my friends and family have taken to the convention of entering [email protected] or [email protected] in the email fields of all websites which demand an email addresses, and have spread that idea vigorously far and wide everywhere we go, along with using VPNs, IP proxies, and other such privacy protection measures.
Second term Trump gets an A-.
Biden: F
Trump is fixing what Biden and Obama broke.
To riff on Jake, even an F is too high. Giving Trump “high marks” for pardoning a boatload of convicted criminals is disgusting. I guess the Mises Mice are mice-ing around?
And on Ukraine, this was obviously written before the rare earths deal. Oh, correct that, it was NOT. That makes this review of Trump stupider yet.
Beyond that, Trump’s foreign policy in general is purely transactional.
I give the LNC an F for this rating and review.
If you think you could do better, consider the old line about walking a mile in someone’s moccasins before you judge them. Presidents are highly constrained in what they can actually do, as opposed to what they could do in theory. Many of those constraints are not readily visible, particularly from an outside perspective. I doubt anyone knows all of them other than whoever is president at any given moment.
LMAO – that’s grading him too high.
I graded the first 100 days of every single president since I could vote:
George W. Bush: F
Barack Obama: F
Donald Trump, first term: F
Joe Biden: F
Donald Trump, second term: F
And that’s because authoritarians in the Democratic and Republican parties are complete morons.
What grades did they give other recent presidents after each of their first hundred days, and what about Trump in his first term?
Rick: The Libertarian Party issued it as a press release with no named author. I happened to speak with Steven Nekhaila recently for a separate project the Foundation is working on, and he mentioned that the review was something in the works the party would be releasing soon. I took that to mean the national committee was at least aware of it.
Who specifically in the party wrote this? Without names, it’s meaningless.