President Donald Trump is closing a seismic year as the country’s commander in chief.
Since the first day of his second administration, when he issued 26 executive orders, 12 presidential memos, and four proclamations, the most first-day actions of any U.S. president, Trump has reshaped Washington, D.C.
He hasn’t had it all his own way, however. He may have kept many of his 2024 campaign promises, but he has been plagued by the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and the Russia-Ukraine war despite his attempts to broker a deal to end it.
Reflecting on 2025, Northeastern University politics professor Costas Panagopoulos recalled Trump’s call for unity in September after conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the administration’s negotiation in October of a more permanent Israel-Hamas ceasefire as being among the president’s greatest successes this year, while his fiery White House Oval Office meeting in February with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was one of his biggest failures.
“Politically, his best moment was his first,” Claremont McKenna College politics professor and former Republican strategist John Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “On the day he took office, many Americans were hoping for a fresh start.”
Heading into 2026, which will decide whether or not Republicans will hold on to the House and Senate after next year’s midterm elections, here are Trump’s top four successes and four failures of this year:
Trump’s 2025 successes
1. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act
The passage of Trump’s signature policy achievement, his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, comprised his greatest political accomplishment of 2025, considering it included many of his campaign promises, such as extension of his 2017 tax cuts and reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
However, the massive legislative bill, which encapsulates Trump’s agenda, has faced messaging issues, forcing the president, who is always the consummate marketer, to start rebranding it as the Working Families Tax Cut ahead of the midterm elections.
Shortly after the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Congress also passed a rescissions package that repealed $9 billion in approved federal spending on foreign aid, PBS, and NPR, another win for the president.
“Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history,” Trump told the nation this month during his end-of-year prime-time address. “For the last four years, the United States was ruled by politicians who fought only for insiders, illegal aliens, career criminals, corporate lobbyists, prisoners, terrorists, and above all, foreign nations.”
He added, “Now, you have a president who fights for the law-abiding, hardworking people of our country — the ones who make this nation run.”
2. Reshaping the White House, federal government, and Washington, D.C.
In less than a year, Trump has made his mark on the White House, the federal government, and Washington, D.C. — and not only regarding policy and personnel.
Starting with the White House Office of Management and Budget’s memo in January freezing “all federal financial assistance” concerning “activities” potentially antithetical to Trump’s policy and political agenda and the Office of Personnel Management’s email shortly afterwards providing federal employees with the opportunity to participate in its deferred resignation program under threat of job cuts, the president has changed the makeup of the federal workforce.
Still, legal challenges remain related to many of the actions taken by Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, including their dismantling in July of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the ongoing dismantling of the Department of Education.
Trump has also upended the White House press corps, reorganizing the White House Correspondents’ Association’s pool program and introducing a “new media” seat to the briefing room to incorporate friendlier outlets and platforms.
Trump also changed the face of the White House and Washington, D.C., such as through his paving in September of the White House Rose Garden, his demolition in October of the White House East Wing to make room for his ballroom, and his proposed construction that same month of an Arc de Trump near the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall.
3. Pardoning of allies and legal wins
Starting with his pardoning in January of approximately 1,500 defendants who had been criminally charged over their alleged or convicted participation in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Trump embarked on his second term more emboldened compared to his first, with the president in September publicly encouraging Attorney General Pam Bondi on social media to prosecute, among others, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Although some of his Department of Justice’s prosecutions have been undermined by its own missteps, it has experienced success with many of its legal cases, including that against the Associated Press for its use of “Gulf of Mexico” in addition to Trump’s preferred “Gulf of America” — even if only as a deterrent against critical press coverage as the matter proceeds in court.
Other cases, such as those regarding Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to mostly Democratic-controlled cities across the country, commencing in June in Los Angeles, have had mixed legal results.
4. Reforming US trade and foreign policy
Trump has pursued trade deals with the likes of the United Kingdom, the European Union, and China, as he has done the same regarding peace deals between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Hamas, and even Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Although many of Trump’s trade agreements lack specificity, some of the peace accords have been broken, and the talks have provided opportunities for negotiating parties to present the president with gifts, including a $400 million luxury airplane and gold Rolex desk clock, creating ethical concerns, he has been right in that he has been singularly responsible for striking such arrangements as other world leaders hope to placate him.
Regardless of his pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump has simultaneously expanded his use of military power against Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, as well as last week striking what he described as a drug “facility” on land.
In June, Trump similarly struck three of Iran’s uranium enrichment nuclear facilities, which Republican strategist Charlie Black referred to as the president’s greatest success of 2025.
“That greatly diminished a threat to U.S. security,” Black told the Washington Examiner.
Trump’s 2025 failures
1. No Russia-Ukraine peace deal
Trump promised to end the Russia-Ukraine war on Day One of his second administration, but 11 months later, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Zelensky, have not signed a peace deal.
Tensions between the countries increased this week following Russia’s allegations that Ukraine targeted Putin’s residence in Novgorod. Ukraine has denied Russia’s accusations, made one day after Zelensky met with Trump at the U.S. president’s private resort, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida.
Trump’s apparent support of Putin has caused concern among the U.S.’s NATO allies, particularly after he and Vice President JD Vance met with Zelensky at the White House, where Vance criticized the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office for not saying thank you for the U.S.’s assistance in the war.
Those concerns were then exacerbated in June when Trump met with Putin in Alaska, the Russian’s first time in the U.S. in a decade, before the disclosure in November of a pro-Russia proposed peace agreement that included Ukrainian territorial and NATO alliance concessions.
Trump has also become closer to other world leaders who have traditionally been considered adversaries, such as Syrian President Ahmed al Sharaa, who until November was on the U.S.’s terrorist sanctions list and last year had a $10 million bounty on his head.
2. Affordability “hoax” and “con job”
Trump won last year’s election, in part, because of his promise to address voters’ concerns about former President Joe Biden’s economy.
However, more than a year later, Trump’s approval rating regarding the economy is a net negative 15 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics. His approval related to inflation is worse at a net negative of 26.5 points.
In response, Trump has dismissed affordability and cost-of-living concerns as a Democratic “hoax” or “con job.”
At the same time, Trump has repeatedly defended his tariff policies, particularly citing the leverage they have provided him to negotiate trade deals, amid criticism of the pressure they have placed on prices.
Regardless, Trump in November signed an executive order exempting coffee, beef, bananas, and other U.S. imports from his tariffs. A month later, the president also announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers who had been undercut by his duties.
Trump’s economic policies simultaneously underpinned the historically long government shutdown that started in October, as Democrats tried to pressure Republicans to extend pandemic-era Affordable Care Act health insurance premium tax credits.
3. Mishandling of the Epstein files
Trump’s heavy-handed response in November to a bipartisan congressional campaign mounting pressure on his administration to release the federal government’s files regarding Epstein backfired when he was forced to support the passage of a discharge petition compelling the Department of Justice to disclose the documents in its possession.
As part of his own pressure campaign, Trump had tried to convince Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) to remove their names from a discharge petition that sought to force the release of the Epstein files.
Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) in July introduced the discharge petition after Bondi stoked speculation of a cover-up related to the files following a Fox News interview in February during which she told the news network Epstein’s so-called client list was on her desk before the DOJ and FBI announced there was no such list and released largely already public information.
Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino reportedly threatened to resign in protest over the announcement.
The DOJ is currently being criticized for not adhering to the Epstein Files Transparency Act after it disclosed this month heavily redacted records, such as photos of high-profile and powerful men in Epstein’s company, again stoking speculation of a cover-up.
4. Signalgate and other unforced errors
Trump’s response to the Epstein files was not his and his administration’s only unforced error in 2025. After a national security scandal that has become known as “Signalgate,” former White House national security adviser Mike Waltz was removed as Trump’s top national security aide in May and nominated to become the U.S.’s next ambassador to the United Nations.
The shuffling of Waltz’s role in the administration came after he, in March, added Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal messaging app group chat discussing U.S. strikes on Iranian-supported Houthi rebels in Yemen.
But Trump has reckoned with other bad headlines throughout his first year, such as in January, apportioning responsibility to diversity, equity, and inclusion policies for the crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 and a U.S. Army helicopter in Washington, D.C., as well as the Department of Homeland Security in March deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador despite a court order that was supposed to protect him from being removed from the country.
“It is impossible to pick one specific moment of weakness for Trump this year as we watch our country drop further and further into a weakened autocratic state whose businesses are in a weaker position, our country losing our standing as a leader both strategically and morally, and as we actively push the best and the brightest to look elsewhere for a home,” Democratic strategist Stefan Hankin told the Washington Examiner.
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For another Democratic strategist, Christopher Hahn, Trump’s greatest failure came this month, with his comments concerning the death of actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner. Police allege Reiner was murdered by his mentally ill son.
“By inserting himself into the tragic murder of the icon, Trump exposed his narcissism to a broad swath of the electorate that may have been oblivious to it,” Hahn told the Washington Examiner.