Assessing Trump’s First 100 Days – PART 1

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – This week marks Donald Trump’s first 100 days in the White House, a period of time that new Presidents are judged on in terms of their ability to carry out their stated goals. Soon after his electoral college win Trump released his first 100-days plan – a list of ambitious goals that included the passing of laws to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, to fully fund a border wall with Mexico, to offer tax cuts to middle class families, and much more.

Trump did sign some executive orders to begin to keep some of his pledges. Perhaps the only concrete achievement he can tout is the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the US Supreme Court – a pledge he didn’t actually make in his first 100 days plan.

And, on immigration, Trump has begun fulfilling his ominous pledge to, “begin removing the more than 2 million criminal illegal immigrants from the country and cancel visas to foreign countries that won’t take them back.” Under Trump, ICE, the immigration enforcement arm of Homeland Security, has been given broad discretionary leeway to round up and detain or deport undocumented immigrants whether they have criminal records or not.

Today we’ll turn to our correspondent Arun Gupta for part 1 of a 2 part interview assessing the new President’s plans.

Arun Gupta, an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, and Salon. He writes regularly at teleSUR English. He was a founding editor of the Occupy Wall Street Journal and is a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali.