Higher prices, hungrier children, and veterans in crisis: A look at Trump’s first 100 days in office.

Trump’s policies and cuts have put veterans, children, and seniors in North Carolina at risk and threaten to raise prices of many everyday items.

Donald Trump has been in office for 100 days. 

This benchmark is mostly arbitrary, but it has historically been considered a brief reflection point in any new administration’s hike up the steep, winding trail of governance. It’s a chance to measure how far they’ve climbed, and what milestones they passed or are in reach of.  

It’s also a moment to note what was lost along the way.

What scars did they cut into the trail, what mess did they scatter behind them, what structures did they leave looted and burning, what other hikers did they shove off the cliff as they passed?

As the nation stops to reflect on the Trump administration’s first 100 days, the view isn’t pretty.

Trump’s policies and priorities since his inauguration have created a flurry of trade wars, mass layoffs, chaos at Social Security offices, threats of cuts to veteran services and Medicaid, political retribution, and barely-veiled promises of more to come. 

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to immediately end inflation and to make gas, food, and healthcare more affordable for the middle class. In his inaugural address, Trump pledged to restore “prosperity” to the American public. But the policies he has enacted, mostly through executive orders, are expected to raise prices on nearly everything and tear giant holes in the safety nets meant to prevent seniors from going homeless, children from going hungry, and pathogens and toxins from entering our food and water supplies. 

These and other actions have spurred an outcry even in conservative communities, growing loud enough that many Republican lawmakers stopped holding town hall events. 

Here’s a quick review of the second Trump administration’s 100 days and the real world effects its policies have had and will have on North Carolina. 

Elon Musk and DOGE

We might as well start with Elon Musk. 

One of the most notable chapters of Trump’s second administration so far was the appointment of Musk, the world’s richest man, to head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Whatever words were in its title, however, the department was not about efficiency. It did not trim fat from federal programs and departments — it cut off meat and bone. 

In its chaotic roll out, DOGE laid off thousands of federal workers with little planning, thought, or notice, including entire departments of people performing essential tasks like air traffic control. The effects were so immediate that DOGE had to rehire folks it laid off weeks earlier.

The cuts cover a lot of ground and threaten to leave a wide range of people without essential services.  

• Layoffs at the Social Security administration could mean delays in getting checks to seniors who depend on them to eat, pay rent, and live.
• Cuts to national and international science and research funding will stall efforts to fight cancer, measles, and other serious diseases.
• The Trump administration canceled a grant program that helps prevent pregnant women from being murdered by abusive partners. 
• DOGE proposed firing 80,000 employees at the VA, including medical professionals at the veterans’ crisis hotline. Fewer counselors mean longer wait times when veterans need immediate care and are often within reach of a gun.
• The administration reduced or eliminated funding for food banks, heating assistance, and the SNAP program, which helps feed children who don’t get enough to eat. 
• An overhaul at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration eliminated many of the tools and personnel who track hurricanes, a multi-billion dollar threat to North Carolina each year. 
• And cuts at the Federal Food and Drug Administration will likely make it harder for inspectors to spot, track, and prevent outbreaks of food borne illnesses that can cause weeks of diarrhea and vomiting. 

The full list of cuts is much, much longer. 

The response to the mass layoffs and Musk’s seemingly unchecked power eventually led to the first large scale protests across the country. Though resistance was slow at first, it’s now increasing in volume and frequency. 

Veterans marched through Raleigh in March. Demonstrators have gathered in increasing numbers outside Musk’s Tesla dealerships across the country over the last several months. Trump’s polls remain strong with his base, but his approval overall has dropped far and fast, even in North Carolina, where he won in 2024 by more than 3 percentage points. 

Tariffs are causing chaos for consumers and businesses 

Most people likely never thought about tariffs before Trump was inaugurated. It’s top of everyone’s mind now. 

President Trump increased tariffs on nearly every country in the world, including unprecedented increases on the country’s largest trading partners China, Canada, and Mexico. Tariffs are taxes on imported goods, but the resulting higher costs are not paid by foreign countries, they are paid by US consumers. If it costs a company more to import a good, they don’t often eat that higher cost themselves — they usually pass it on to you.

In 2024, China, Canada, and Mexico made up nearly 37% of all US imports and a third of its exports, the Pew Research Center says, adding up to more than $2.5 trillion in goods and services total. These services are not isolated in a few niche stores that Americans can avoid.

They affect nearly every sector and every shelf in the store.

Did your beard trimmer break this morning? Did your coffee maker go on the fritz? What about that toaster? Do you need to restock your kitchen pantry and utensils drawer? Do you plan ahead and are already thinking about back to school backpacks, school supplies, and clothes? Have you already started your Christmas lists of toys and gaming consoles? 

Do you like coffee, jams, fruits, vegetables, and rice?

Tariffs will likely make all these prices go up.

While Trump has at least temporarily backed off of some of the highest tariffs, the threat of additional  tariffs and the unpredictable nature of Trump’s tariff announcements has been enough to cause problems, especially for small businesses and NC farms that operate month to month on thin margins to begin with. If they don’t know how much things will cost, they can’t plan. 

And if it costs more for a new appliance, consumers may not buy it, meaning many small businesses can’t sell their products. 

These are the things that cause small businesses to close.

“Nothing is safe from these tariffs,” Vince Tursi, the owner of Dssolvr, a brewery in Asheville, said at a news conference this month. 

“The policy is essentially a total loss for small businesses,” he said. 

Trump has pitched his tariffs approach as an effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States, an unrealistic plan, economists say, that would take decades, even if successful.

A bipartisan group of more than 1,700 economists signed an open letter to Trump urging him to reconsider. 

One CEO recently warned that 80% of small businesses that rely on imports from China “will just die.”

“Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been a complete disaster for North Carolinians,” Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said in a news release. 

“Staring down the threat of a Trump recession, North Carolinians are seeing costs rise, jobs dry up, North Carolina projects shuttered, and hard-earned benefits and critical programs under attack,” he said.

Deportations

Trump’s deportation policies promised to prioritize pursuing violent gang members, but he’s deporting legal residents with no criminal records and with little to no due process, a right enshrined in the US constitution.

Last week, Trump officials removed three young US citizens from the country while deporting their mothers. The children, ages 2, 4, and 7, were not given due process as required by law, the ACLU of Louisiana says. The 4-year-old has cancer, but was not allowed to take his medication with him.

The mothers were denied access to their lawyers, and given little time to speak with their families, the ACLU said. The children join a growing list of citizens or legal residents deported without due process, including two NC fathers with no criminal records.

‘Veterans are going to die.’

The VA is the main source of healthcare and urgent care for more than 400,000 North Carolina veterans. DOGE’s proposed cuts will cost lives, veterans and nurses say.

Ann Marie Patterson-Powell, a VA nurse in North Carolina, told Cardinal & Pine this month that the cuts to already short-staffed facilities would mean longer wait times, fewer hospital beds, and would leave few options for veterans who have urgent needs other doctors are not trained to treat.

The cuts to the crisis hotline would be potentially catastrophic, veterans say.

If it takes longer for veterans in crisis to reach a trained professional, there’s little doubt what can happen.

“Veterans are going to die,” Sean Wright, a former Army medic who credits the hotline for saving his life, told Cardinal & Pine in March. 

“Most male veterans, they commit suicide with handguns and it’s impulsive. So you’re gonna have a veteran who’s sitting there with a handgun thinking about taking their own life. And if they’re on hold for just a little too long, that could be fatal for them,” Wright said.

“Veterans are going to take their own lives who otherwise would’ve gotten care.”

Medicaid at risk in North Carolina

Following Trump’s orders, Congressional Republicans passed a budget bill in April that would cut trillions in spending in order to pay for trillions in tax cuts for the country’s wealthiest folks. Those cuts can’t be realized without significant cuts to Medicaid, the federal program that helps low-income and disabled Americans get health insurance.

The North Carolina General Assembly voted to expand Medicaid in 2023, bringing health insurance to an additional 640,000 people who would have been otherwise unable to afford it. Expansion also helped stabilize rural hospitals and lower costs for everyone, since the uninsured no longer had to seek care in emergency rooms, where the costs are far higher. 

But Republicans in the state legislature included a trigger clause in the legislation that would cut off state funds for the expansion if the federal government ever provided less than its current 90% of the costs.

Federal cuts to Medicaid, then, could trigger the trigger, dumping those hundreds of thousands of people off the insurance they just received, putting rural hospitals in peril again, and driving costs up even for people with health insurance. 

Dr. Devdutta Sangvai, the head of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, told Cardinal & Pine in March that the loss of such a huge source of funding would pull the Jenga piece from a stabilizing healthcare system and cause the whole thing to collapse. 

“The impact would be severe,” he told us before a press conference on the issue. Thousands of North Carolinians would “immediately” lose their health insurance. 

That would cause a “cascade effect” he said that would harm the entire state. 

Nearly 80% of the department’s $40 billion budget is from federal money, Sangavi said, and the bulk of that goes to the state’s Medicaid program. 

“Those individuals are working in our factories,” Sangavi said of those who stand to lose their insurance. 

“For individuals to not go about their day to day lives as a result of cuts to federal programs, you can now do the math of what will happen.”