Anyone with even one eye open is aware of President Donald J. Trump’s high-profile wins in his first month in office. Year-on-year illegal border crossings are down 94 percent. DOGE has identified at least $65 billion in often mind-blowing federal extravagance, incompetence, and graft. DEI is banished from the federal government and is comatose in the private sector. Male athletes are banned from competing against females in federally funded schools. Russia and Ukraine seem to be on a collision course — with Trump’s peace table. Trump’s diplomats have liberated a dozen U.S. hostages previously trapped in dungeons in Afghanistan, Belarus, Gaza, Russia, and Venezuela.
And much more.
However, as the White House celebrated scores of victories, other gains have received limited news coverage. Still more have washed away in the cascade of events. Even as someone who supports Trump and tracks his progress closely for a living, it is impossible to stand beneath his Niagara Falls of achievements and not miss a few things as they tumble by.
During just a day or two, earlier in February, Trump’s tariff threats inspired Bogota to fly illegal alien criminals back to Colombia. Mexico dispatched its own soldiers to reseal its northern (our southern) border. Canada fortified its frontier and appointed an anti-fentanyl czar. Early that same evening, Trump unveiled a highly imaginative, albeit equally controversial, plan to jump-start Middle East peace by having America control and rebuild the Gaza Strip, while the Palestinians evacuated across the region.
Moments after the press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when that news emerged, this item rippled over the precipice: The CIA offered its entire staff a buyout proposal.
The next morning, as even more Trump triumphs arose by the hour, I told an equally astonished Fox News producer: “It’s official: Two weeks in, and I am sick of winning.”
Sick was the wrong word since about 95 percent of these developments induced a dizzying glee among mega-MAGA Republicans, not least moi. As Trump often says: “It’ll make your head spin.”
“Soaked of winning” is more like it: One cannot approach Trump’s Niagara Falls of great news and stay dry for long.
So, even as I grab yet another towel, these 20 Trump accomplishments struck me as underreported, underappreciated, or — in some cases — brand new, even to me.
My chief source here is a 15-page White House document: “A non-comprehensive list of President Trump’s wins after just one month.”
- President Trump’s radical transparency is impossible to miss: multiple public events daily, cameras inside the Oval Office as he signs executive orders and banters with journalists, and a tasteful level of Truth Social posts (rather than his first term’s running commentary on Twitter that exhausted even his fans). News to me, as the White House Press Secretary revealed on Feb. 20: “President Trump set the tone on this approach immediately when he took more than 12 times the questions in his first few hours in office as Joe Biden did in his entire first week.”
The National Journal’s George E. Condon reported Monday that Trump answered 1,009 questions posed by journalists in his first 30 days versus 141 for Biden — up 715 percent.
- “President Trump declared a national emergency at the border and deployed the military, including the 10th Mountain Division, to secure our nation,” the White House document recalled. The 10th was the World War II unit of a young Kansan named Bob Dole. After suffering lifelong injuries while battling Nazis in Europe, Dole eventually represented his state in the House and Senate from 1961 until 1996, when he resigned to become the GOP standard bearer in that year’s failed bid to block President Bill Clinton’s re-election.
- “A migrant shelter in San Diego announced it will shut down after it has received no new arrivals since President Trump took office.”
- “The Trump Administration officially declared Tren de Aragua, MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the United Cartels, the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel, and the Michoacán Family as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”
- “President Trump reinstated the death penalty for federal capital crimes.”
Excellent! Criminals have free reign, from coast to coast. Connecticut is about to give Tyree Smith conditional release from a mental hospital. Only due to insanity, he was found “not guilty” in 2013 of killing Angel Gonzalez and eating part of his victim’s brain and an eyeball. Smith should have been convicted and executed. Ditto thousands who enjoy three hots and their cots daily, rather than 2,000 volts through their skulls, once and for all.
- “After a meeting with President Trump, Stellantis announced it will reopen its assembly plant in Belvidere, Illinois — putting 1,500 employees back to work — and build its next-generation Dodge Durango in Detroit, Michigan. The company also announced new investments in their Toledo, Ohio, and Kokomo, Ind., facilities.”
- “The Department of Energy postponed burdensome Biden-era efficiency standard rules for the following appliances, saving American consumers large sums:
- “Central air conditioners: Biden rules were slated to make air conditioners $1,100 more expensive, according to Alliance for Consumers.
- “Gas water heaters: Biden rules were slated to make water heaters $2,800 more expensive.
- “Walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial refrigeration equipment, and air compressors.”
Walk-in coolers? Yup! As if barking orders at Americans about their gas stoves and dishwashers were not intrusive enough, Biden’s neo-totalitarians could not keep their noses out of walk-in coolers. No aspect of life is safe from the Democrat-Left’s control freaks.
- “The total cost of federal regulations in 2023 was a record-breaking $2.1 trillion, or $15,788 per U.S. household, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. By requiring agencies to identify at least ten existing rules, regulations, or guidance documents to be repealed for every one rule they promulgate, President Trump has put the U.S. on track to severely reduce regulatory costs for everyday Americans.”
This is an admirable and even more aggressive pace than candidate Trump’s 2016 promise to repeal two regulations for each new one imposed or the 5.5-to-one ratio that his first presidency actually achieved.
- President Trump restored maximum pressure on Iran, “sanctioning an international network for facilitating the shipment of millions of barrels of Iranian crude oil worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the People’s Republic of China.” (RELATED: Trump Administration Imposes Sanctions on Iran Oil)
Trump’s return to hammering Tehran brings a badly needed end to Biden’s boneheaded policy of drowning the ayatollahs in cash in hopes that he could buy their good behavior. Trump squeezed Iran down to $4 billion in foreign reserves. Biden lifted sanctions, greenlighted Iranian oil production, and unfroze their assets. By 2023, the ayatollahs’ reserves had swollen to at least $73 billion. Rather than play nicely, the mullahs financed Hezbollah, paid the Houthi terrorists to ignite the Red Sea, and underwrote Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, deadly surprise attack that butchered some 1,200 Israelis. Nice job, Sleepy Joe!
- President Trump hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who announced his intention to “elevate Japan’s investment in the United States to an unprecedented amount of $1 trillion,” import “historic” quantities of LNG from Alaska, and open new auto plants in the U.S.
- In his first month, Trump did plenty to curb abortion:
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- “President Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy to ensure no taxpayer dollars support foreign organizations that perform, or actively promote, abortion in other nations.
- “President Trump directed full enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer dollars from being used to fund or promote elective abortion.
- “President Trump granted full and unconditional pardons to 23 pro-life Americans who were unjustly persecuted by the Biden Administration.”
The latter included non-violent activists who prayed, sang hymns, and otherwise urged women not to kill their unborn children. Others blocked abortion clinic doors — a classic civil disobedience tactic perfected in the 1950s civil rights movement and 1960s anti-Vietnam War protests. For such actions, Calvin Zastrow, 63, spent six months behind bars. Chester Gallagher got 16 months in the clink. Paulette Harlow, Heather Idoni, and Jean Marshall all received two-year prison terms. If only they participated in the fiery, but mostly peaceful, George Floyd riots, they all would have strolled home.
- “President Trump cracked down on anti-Semitism by canceling visas for foreign students who are Hamas sympathizers.”
Good! Boot them all. And don’t come back now, hear?
- “President Trump re-opened 625 million acres for offshore drilling, which Biden banned in his waning days, in order to ‘drill, baby, drill.’”
- “President Trump ordered [that] federal agencies hire no more than one employee for every four employees who leave.”
- “President Trump ordered an examination of all regulations to assess any infringements on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.”
- “The Environmental Protection Agency canceled tens of millions of dollars in contracts to left-wing advocacy groups, announced an investigation into a scheme by Biden EPA staffers to shield billions of dollars from oversight and accountability, and put 168 ‘environmental justice’ employees on leave.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also discovered a tsunami of federal largesse to Power Forward Communities, a shadowy “climate” group associated with far-Left Democrat organizer and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. This outfit declared an income of $100 in 2023. And yet in 2024, Team Biden handed PFC a whopping $2 billion grant. “That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue,” Zeldin said. This payment stinks like a Superfund site.
- “President Trump eliminated discriminatory DEI offices, employees, and practices across the bureaucracy alongside a return to merit-based hiring — including at the Federal Aviation Administration, where the Biden administration specifically recruited individuals with intellectual disabilities and psychiatric issues.”
Hiring mentally ill people at the Department of Agriculture is one thing. If such an employee fouls up some corn subsidy checks, we will survive. But someone at the FAA who has an explosive episode at an FAA facility — say a violent meltdown in an airport control tower — could cause a helicopter to fly into a passenger jet on final approach, to suggest just one scenario.
- “President Trump terminated the Biden-era electric vehicle mandate” and “suspended the Biden-era EV charging program, which had resulted in just eight charging stations despite $7.5 billion earmarked for the program.”
This totals a staggering $937.5 million per charging station! This level of fiscal mismanagement should cross the line from outrageous incompetence to criminal financial negligence. People should go to jail for such disrespect for America’s taxpayers.
- “President Trump shut down the wasteful Biden-era ‘Climate Corps’ program.”
Hooray! No more snoops and snitches to police how cool Americans keep their homes in the summer or how hot they run their showers to warm up in the winter. None of this is Washington’s damn business!
- “President Trump took executive action to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).”
This is the case despite the Democrat-Left-media’s frequent, preposterous, and baseless lies that Trump planned to abort IVF. Inconceivable! Rather than prohibiting IVF, he is making this medical treatment easier to adopt.
On Monday, Democrat pollster Mark Penn released the February 2025 Harvard-Harris Survey. It found that Americans like what Trump has delivered since Jan. 20. Among 2,443 registered voters surveyed, Trump’s approval rating is at 52 percent versus 43 percent who disapprove of his performance. This is Trump’s best showing in this Center-Left poll ever. Also, 58 percent believe Trump is performing better than Biden, while 42 percent think the reverse.
Even better news for Trump: Whatever Americans think of him personally, his public policies are wildly popular:
- Ending bans on oil drilling off of Alaska’s shores — 57 percent support and 43 percent oppose;
- Reciprocal tariffs on nations that tariff U.S. goods — 61 percent versus 39 percent;
- Banning men from women’s sports — 69 percent versus 31 percent;
- Closing the border with more security and anti-illegal-alien policies — 76 percent versus 24 percent;
- Undertaking a major effort to fight waste and fraud in spending — 76 percent versus 24 percent;
- Deporting illegal alien criminals — 81 percent versus 19 percent; and
- Only renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America fell short — 39 percent versus 61 percent.
“People are taking a generally positive wait-and-see attitude for Trump but have really reassessed their attitudes toward Biden, Harris, and the Democrats, taking a much harsher, more negative attitude,” said Mark Penn, the survey’s co-director.
And how!
Democrats are in a ditch. Their party’s approval is at a record-low 36 percent, trailing Republicans by 15 percent. The man whom Democrats say is a creeping authoritarian on his good days and worse than Hitler on his bad ones has never been more popular. The American people overwhelmingly back his policy agenda. And Democrats’ alternative vision is: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
These words should cause agony on the Left and ecstasy on the Right.
One month down. Forty-seven to go.
READ MORE from Deroy Murdock:
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Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.