Josh Imhof | features editor

The National Guard in United States cities.

Peace in Gaza.

The capturing of foreign leaders.

Mass deportations.

Strikes on Iran.

A record breaking government shutdown.

The Epstein files.

The end of the penny.

All since Jan. 20, 2025 — the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated for the second time.

“It’s been a very tumultuous and divisive year,” said Riley Hunter, president of the College Democrats at Duquesne.

On his first day back in office, Trump signed 26 executive orders, which is the most any U.S. president has signed on their first day in U.S. history. Trump also revoked 78 Biden-issued executive orders.

In addition to these unprecedented reforms, Trump has made sweeping changes to international relations, domestic issues and the U.S. economy.

Liberalists and realists

Mark Haas, professor of political science at Duquesne, said that most U.S. presidents fall into two camps: liberalists and realists.

The liberalists take ideology seriously and view the biggest threats to U.S. security as illiberal countries. In 2025, the Trump administration strayed from this and published the annual National Security Strategy, which stated a focus on “flexible realism.” This outlined the idea that the U.S. will treat other countries based on interests, rather than spreading democracy.

“It’s an inversion of what has happened traditionally by U.S. presidents, both the Democrats and Republicans,” Haas said.

Haas said that this means Trump is more of a realist, which is a leader who sees the world in terms of power differentials and relationships, rather than ideologies and regime types.

“Trump is closest to that. But on the other hand, he’s doing things that realists don’t really agree with and doesn’t seem to support a realist blueprint. For instance, the alienation of existing allies,” Haas said.

Over the past few months, Trump has repeatedly asserted that the U.S. should own Greenland, a territory owned by Denmark. In recent weeks, this rhetoric has increased, with Trump declining to rule out the use of military force to seize the territory.

On Wednesday, Trump walked back some of these statements at the World Economic Forum, where he told leaders that he would not impose tariffs or use force in Greenland.

This ambiguity has caused questions among world leaders.

“There’s rhetoric, and then there’s policy. The rhetoric is scary enough, because that in itself, is a break from the past. The question is, ‘How seriously do you take rhetoric?’” Haas said. “Trump is unpredictable, and he’s deliberately unpredictable. It’s a negotiating strategy for him.”

Jonathan Collins, president of the College Republicans at Duquesne, sees this unpredictability as a possible strength. He believes that Trump’s threat of military force in Greenland has caused European countries to deploy troops to the island, making it better defended against external threats like Russia.

“I see it as a kind of foreign policy, a method of foreign policy that takes multiple steps … It’s about something bigger,” Collins said.

Hunter said this approach to diplomacy could be harmful.

“I think it’s a very aggressive approach, which some people like. But I think in doing so and being so aggressive, we’ve alienated a lot of our allies that we’ve had for decades to centuries,” she said. “It’s going to make us a more divisive nation, and I just don’t think it was the best way to go about doing that.”

‘Extreme measures’

At home, Trump has expanded the use of the National Guard and other federal assets, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

In June, Trump began deploying National Guard troops in major cities including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee, with the goals of cracking down on crime, immigration and “quelling civil disturbances,” according to The New York Times.

During that time, the administration faced multiple legal challenges to the deployment, as well as criticism from skeptics.

“I think deploying the National Guard is just an extreme measure that while maybe delivering things statistically, it’s not making people feel safe,” Hunter said.

Between Aug. 7 and Aug. 26 in Washington, D.C., violent crimes dropped by 45%, property crimes by 12% and carjackings by 87% over the same period in 2024, according to a report published by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office.

Despite the improvements, Hunter said that instead of national guard troops patrolling cities, she felt the best way to address crime was through local community groups.

“Cheaper and better access to health care and prevention programs and mental health programs that come along with that health care would be helpful,” she said.

Collins agreed that officials should find ways to address the root causes of crime.

“Simply waving a gun won’t solve the problem,” he said. “There should be more services to assist people. I think that would be an amazing step, and I think it is conservative to want to help the individuals of your community.”

While he advocated for more localized support to communities, Collins also felt that there was still a need for rapid response to crime if local officials do not solve these issues.

“We still are a society of rules, and when the leaders of cities [who] have open crime happening in broad daylight and their leaders are failing them by not addressing the problem, one has to then wonder — as president of the United States, should his role then not be to protect the people of the United States when some of these elected officials aren’t doing the job again?” he said.

A tale of two classes

One of the hallmarks of Trump’s 2024 campaign was the U.S. economy.

“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods,” he said at a rally in Montana on Aug. 9, 2024.

While Trump has not “ended” inflation, it has hit a five-year low as of January, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a 2.7% inflation rate for 2025.

While this is still higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate, the stability of inflation in the U.S. has had positive effects on other areas of the economy, such as mortgage rates, said Nadia Evangelou, principal economist and director of real estate research at the National Association of Realtors.

“Lower than 3% matters because mortgage rates react more to unexpected inflation than to inflation simply holding steady,” she said.

This year, 30-year fixed rate mortgages closed the year at an average of 6.15%, down from around 7% at the beginning of 2025, according to Sam Khater, chief economist at Freddie Mac.

“That drop doesn’t suddenly make housing cheap, but it does make it look more workable,” Evangelou said.

Still, even with improving mortgage rates, housing costs have remained the same due to previous inflation levels, making it difficult for some Americans to purchase houses.

“It’s tighter for middle income buyers and middle income consumers,” Evangelou said.

While this happened, wealthier consumers continue to purchase more while middle class consumption has continued to slow down.

“The luxury market continues to outperform,” she said.

Looking ahead

In terms of the economy, Evangelou expects to see more aspects of the housing market to grow.

“This 1% drop in mortgage rates allows about 5.5 million more households to be able to afford the median priced home,” she said. “Not all of them buy a home, but our analysis shows that about 10% of the qualified households actually do. So this translates to about 500,000 more home sales in 2026.”

For foreign policy, Haas expects Trump to continue to use a transactional approach to international relations in the years ahead.

“There’s going to be no sympathy for liberal democracies or antipathy to authoritarians. It isn’t going to matter,” he said. “It’s ‘Can Country X help the U.S. become safer?’ as Trump defines, or become wealthier, as Trump understands.

“There’s a saying in international relations, ‘There’s no permanent friends. There’s no permanent enemies. There’s just permanent interests. Trump does not subscribe to that, and it’s just gonna be on a case by case basis.”

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu