Marc Thiessen, Washington Post January 2, 2026

Pres­id­ent Don­ald Trump has had such a con­sequen­tial start to his second term that my nor­mal list of 10 could not cap­ture the full scope of what he accom­plished. So, here is my list of the 20 best things Trump did in 2025. (In my pre­vi­ous column, I dis­cussed the 10 worst.)

20. He delivered justice for the Abbey Gate bomb­ing.

After ter­ror­ists killed 13 U.S. ser­vice mem­bers dur­ing Pres­id­ent Joe Biden’s cata­strophic with­drawal from Afgh­anistan, Biden prom­ised, “We will not for­give. We will not for­get. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” He left office three years later hav­ing made no one pay. It took Trump less than six weeks to cap­ture what he described as a “top ter­ror­ist” respons­ible for the attack.

19. He cre­ated “Trump Accounts” to give every Amer­ican child a trust fund.

The fed­eral gov­ern­ment will put $1,000 into a tax-advant­aged invest­ment account for every Amer­ican child born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, to be locked until they turn 18. The Treas­ury Depart­ment estim­ates the accounts could grow to between $3,000 and $13,800 in 18 years, and to as much as $1.9 mil­lion by age 28 if fully fun­ded with addi­tional con­tri­bu­tions and left untouched, giv­ing every Amer­ican child a fin­an­cial found­a­tion as they begin adult­hood.

18. He drove illegal migra­tion to a vir­tual halt.

Biden claimed he needed legis­la­tion from Con­gress to secure the bor­der; Trump shut down the bor­der in weeks with no new con­gres­sional author­ity. Encoun­ters at the bor­der are at record lows, appre­hen­sions are 95 per­cent lower than the daily aver­age under Joe Biden, and no illegal migrants have been released into the United States for seven months.

17. He used tar­iff threats to strike new trade deals.

In his first term, Trump offered the European Union a zero-for-zero trade deal, but the E.U. failed to take him up on the offer. Seven years later, Trump struck a deal that includes a 15 per­cent baseline tar­iff on most European exports to the U.S., while most U.S. exports to the E.U. will be duty-free. What changed? Trump’s trade war. He also used tar­iffs as lever­age to reach deals with Bri­tain, Japan, South Korea, Indone­sia, Malay­sia, Thai­l­and, Viet­nam, the Phil­ip­pines and Cam­bodia.

16. He brought many of the nation’s elite uni­versit­ies to heel.

He forced Columbia Uni­versity to sign a $220 mil­lion set­tle­ment over diversity, equity and inclu­sion and over anti­semitic civil rights viol­a­tions on cam­pus, and reached sim­ilar set­tle­ments with Brown, Cor­nell, North­west­ern, the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania and the Uni­versity of Vir­ginia, with more poten­tially on the way.

15. He took on rad­ical gender ideo­logy and pro­tec­ted women’s sports.

He signed an exec­ut­ive order and issued new reg­u­la­tions to stop U.S. hos­pit­als from enga­ging in the chem­ical and sur­gical mutil­a­tion of chil­dren and ordered that fed­eral funds be res­cin­ded from any edu­ca­tional insti­tu­tions that deprive women and girls of fair ath­letic oppor­tun­it­ies. As a res­ult, the NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Para­lympic com­mit­tees changed their policies to ban men from com­pet­ing in women’s sports, and the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania agreed to restore women’s school records, post the defin­i­tion of a woman on its web­site, and apo­lo­gize to female ath­letes it harmed with past Title IX viol­a­tions.

14. He ended col­lect­ive bar­gain­ing for a mil­lion fed­eral work­ers.

His exec­ut­ive orders gut­ting pub­lic worker uni­ons mean many fed­eral depart­ments can ter­min­ate union con­tracts and hire and fire based on merit.

13. He scrapped Biden-era policies inten­ded to force people into elec­tric cars, and unleashed oil and gas pro­duc­tion.

Trump is rolling back Biden’s fuel effi­ciency and tailpipe emis­sions stand­ards, and signed legis­la­tion end­ing Cali­for­nia’s elec­tric vehicle man­date, policies inten­ded to coerce Amer­ic­ans into buy­ing elec­tric vehicles. Trump also lif­ted Biden’s pause on nat­ural gas exports, dra­mat­ic­ally increas­ing U.S. exports, open­ing up mil­lions of acres in Alaska’s Arc­tic National Wild­life Refuge to drilling and min­ing, approv­ing record num­bers of drilling per­mits, rolling back cli­mate reg­u­la­tions and revok­ing Biden-era orders that blocked oil and gas drilling in most U.S. coastal waters.

12. He made our nation’s cap­ital safer by send­ing in the National Guard.

After Trump took fed­eral con­trol of the D.C. police and deployed the Guard, crime in the Dis­trict dropped by double-digits in vir­tu­ally every cat­egory.

11. He dra­mat­ic­ally cut taxes on tips, over­time and Social Secur­ity.

His One Big Beau­ti­ful Bill also made his 2017 pro-growth tax cuts per­man­ent.

10. He forced Panama to crack down on Chinese influ­ence over the Panama Canal.

Under pres­sure from Trump, Panama replaced Hua­wei tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions infra­struc­ture installed at 13 sites with secure Amer­ican tech­no­logy, pulled out of China’s Belt and Road Ini­ti­at­ive and scrapped its con­tracts with a Hong Kong-based com­pany to man­age port facil­it­ies.

9. He added $156 bil­lion to the defense budget.

As part of his One Big Beau­ti­ful Bill, Trump made a down pay­ment on the second Trump defense buildup, includ­ing fund­ing for his “Golden Dome” defense shield to pro­tect Amer­ica from bal­listic mis­sile attacks, which will ful­fill the vis­ion Ron­ald Reagan put for­ward with his Stra­tegic Defense Ini­ti­at­ive. But he still needs to increase reg­u­lar defense spend­ing to deliver on his prom­ise of “peace through strength.”

8. He shut down the U.S. Agency for Inter­na­tional Devel­op­ment.

Elim­in­at­ing USAID as an inde­pend­ent agency has been a con­ser­vat­ive goal since the 1990s. While per­man­ently abol­ish­ing USAID requires an act of Con­gress, Trump has fol­ded its func­tions into the State Depart­ment, elim­in­ated waste­ful pro­grams and made sure that U.S. aid decisions sup­port U.S. for­eign policy object­ives.

7. He fixed the mil­it­ary recruit­ing crisis.

After suf­fer­ing years of severe recruit­ing short­falls under Biden, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, Mar­ines and Space Force all met or exceeded their 2025 recruit­ing goals, many of them months ahead of sched­ule.

6. He elim­in­ated dozens of sus­pec­ted Venezuelan drug boats and deposed the Maduro regime.

Trump launched the largest deploy­ment of naval assets to the Carib­bean since the U.S. inva­sion of Panama, is tak­ing out the speed­boats and sub­mar­ines the narco-ter­ror­ists use and right after the new year began sent the U.S. mil­it­ary to cap­ture Venezuelan dic­tator Nicolás Maduro.

5. He is stand­ing up for per­se­cuted Chris­ti­ans in Nigeria.

He warned that he would send the U.S. mil­it­ary into Nigeria “guns-a-blaz­ing” to wipe out Islamic ter­ror­ists engaged in mass killings of Chris­ti­ans, and on Christ­mas Day he delivered, car­ry­ing out “mul­tiple” strikes against Islamic State tar­gets in north­west­ern Nigeria.

4. He forged one of the greatest peace­mak­ing records in U.S. his­tory.

He has made pro­gress toward last­ing peace in con­flicts between India and Pakistan, the Demo­cratic Repub­lic of Congo and Rwanda, Cam­bodia and Thai­l­and, and Armenia and Azerbaijan. He also brought the war between Israel and Iran to an end after 12 days and brokered a deal to end the Israel-Hamas war that secured the release of all remain­ing host­ages. He also helped avert con­flicts between Kosovo and Ser­bia and Egypt and Ethiopia, and got Kaza­kh­stan to join the Abra­ham Accords. Rus­sia’s war on Ukraine has proven more intract­able, but this is an unpre­ced­en­ted record worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize.

3. He is doing more to help Ukraine than Biden ever did.

Trump is send­ing new weapons worth bil­lions of dol­lars to Ukraine — paid for by European allies, not Amer­ican tax­pay­ers — and is provid­ing Ukraine with tar­get­ing intel­li­gence for strikes deep into Rus­sia. And he is offer­ing Ukraine a NATO Art­icle 5-style secur­ity guar­an­tee as part of a poten­tial peace deal.

2. He got NATO allies to meet and raise their defense spend­ing prom­ises.

Today, all allies are on track to spend 2 per­cent of GDP on defense this year, and at a tri­umphant NATO sum­mit in the Neth­er­lands, Trump got allies to agree to raise their spend­ing to 5 per­cent by 2035 — more than double their pre­vi­ous com­mit­ment. As NATO Sec­ret­ary Gen­eral Mark Rutte wrote to Trump, this is “something NO Amer­ican pres­id­ent in dec­ades could get done.”

1. He oblit­er­ated the Ira­nian nuc­lear pro­gram.

Four pres­id­ents prom­ised to stop Iran from get­ting a nuc­lear weapon, but only Trump took decis­ive action to halt it. Launch­ing Oper­a­tion Mid­night Ham­mer is pos­sibly the most import­ant and cour­ageous for­eign policy decision any pres­id­ent has made in the past half-cen­tury.

Love him or hate him, this is an object­ively stun­ning string of accom­plish­ments. I can’t think of a pres­id­ent in my life­time who has accom­plished so much in such a short period of time. And whatever one thinks of Trump’s record, he needs to be judged against the altern­at­ive. Kamala Har­ris was the most rad­ical Demo­cratic nom­inee in his­tory, and the dam­age she would have done as pres­id­ent would have been irre­par­able. Instead, Trump took the oath of office with a pop­u­lar vote man­date to do everything on this list — and more.