What were President Trump’s “achievements” in 2025? The media use and abuse of this term is an important measurement of bias. Conservative wins don't get the A-word. Achievements are programs like Obamacare, lauded as Obama’s “signature achievement.” It doesn’t matter if the Affordable Care Act ended up affordable. Capitalism is measured by its results. Socialism is measured by intentions.
Well, for conservatives, there were some Trump achievements. National Public Radio was gutted to report: By the end of 2025, some 317,000 federal employees will be out of the government, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Tens of thousands were fired. Far more retired or resigned, many out of fear they would lose their jobs if they stuck around.
Hours after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order cracking down on DEI throughout the government, calling it illegal and immoral. NPR found a sympathetic victim: Mahri Stainnak, who was based in Maine, was put on leave the next day and fired soon after. Stainnak's work with the Office of Personnel Management's DEI office was full of women, minorities, and people with disabilities, she said. NPR related: "Stainnak, who uses they/them pronouns, had actually moved to a new role just before Trump's return to the White House, and still they were fired. Today, they are still struggling to find full-time work."
NPR turned to Max Stier, a Democrat partisan who claimed “They’re burning the whole house down.” He runs something called the Partnership for Public Service., which NPR describes as a nonprofit that for decades has worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations to make government better. See? He sounds just like a Democrat, but let’s pretend he’s not.
Stier warns that “by getting rid of institutions and people he doesn't care for, Trump is turning the clock back to the 1800s, when the government served the private interests of those in power, not the public good.” NPR let Stier do the burning thing again: "Americans are dissatisfied with what they're getting from their government, and they have some reason to be so. But the answer isn't burning the whole thing down." Drama queens were all over the media coverage again in 2025.
Then there's this Trump achievement the media won't recognize. Since January 20, 2025, DHS enforcement operations have resulted in more than 605,000 deportations and 1.9 million illegal aliens have voluntarily self-deported since January 2025.
But the media want bad-news angles. Radio host Vince Coglianese pointed out this Washington Post story:
ICE shift in tactics leads to soaring number of at-large arrests, data shows
The agency has moved away from focusing on arresting migrants at local jails to tracking them down in communities as the Trump administration presses to increase deportations, a Washington Post analysis found.
It was somehow embarrassing that Team Trump is doing more arrests in the streets rather than in jails -- left unacknowledged is that blue states won't cooperate with ICE on aliens in their jails.
Administration officials have set a goal of 1 million deportations in Trump’s first year of his second term, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has pressed for 3,000 immigration arrests per day. Daily arrests are lagging well behind that number.
In a statement, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said 70 percent of the immigrants arrested by ICE have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges in the United States and that some have convictions or charges in their home countries.
The Post’s own examination found pretty much the same: that from Jan. 20, when Trump took office, through Oct. 15 about 36 percent of ICE detainees had criminal convictions and 30 percent had pending charges.
“This story only reveals how the media manipulates data to peddle a false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst,” McLaughlin said. “Nationwide our law enforcement is targeting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens — including murderers, rapists, gang members, pedophiles, and terrorists.”
Enjoy this audio-only podcast below.
