Trump’s first 100 days brought chaos, cuts to Texas but inspired resistance

Trump made big promises ahead of his inauguration in January. Here’s what he’s delivered on — and how it’s impacted Texans.

President Donald Trump’s policies have barreled through Texas in the first 100 days of his second presidency.

In three months — his first 100 days ends on Tuesday —Trump has dismantled federal agencies, slashed funding for Texas agencies that support public health, disaster aid, and the arts, and fired thousands of federal workers.

Here’s a look at the impact of Trump’s second term on Texas — so far. 

Trump’s focus on immigration includes Texas

When Trump took office on Jan. 20, he signed 10 executive orders on immigration, reviving many of the policies he implemented in his first term and starting his effort to remove millions of unauthorized immigrants. 

Trump also revoked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement directive on his Inauguration Day that barred immigration arrests in “sensitive” locations, which include churches, schools, and hospitals. He called for each ICE field office in the country to aim for 75 arrests per day, according to the Washington Post. 

Six days after the executive order, ICE confirmed 84 arrests across North Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott spoke about deportations during his State of the State address on Feb. 2, saying he supports Trump’s immigration efforts and will continue to work alongside the administration to arrest and deport people. And the Trump-Abbott bromance focuses in large part on border issues.

Texas already has 21 immigration detention facilities that, as of February, held 12,186 immigrants. The Trump administration is planning on opening more facilities in Laredo, Dilley, and Henderson, according to the Texas Tribune. 

Education department cuts

On March 12, the US Education Department announced the firing of nearly half its staff, including its entire regional Office of Civil Rights in Dallas, amid Trump’s plan to eliminate the federal agency altogether, calling it “wasteful and infiltrated by leftists.”

Funding from the federal agency supports over 5.6 million students across 9,000 K-12 schools in Texas. The funding includes  $1.8 billion for schools that serve low-income families — including over 3.6 million students — and $1.3 billion for 700,000 students who receive help like speech services, according to the American Federation of Teachers, a labor union for educators.

The federal department also ensures that states and schools comply with federal laws, including Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sex, and that students with disabilities have access to needed services.

Brittany Coleman, a former attorney for the Office of Civil Rights in Dallas who was among the roughly 1,300 employees who were fired, voiced her concerns over the department’s dismantling during a rally on April 5. 

“ We have been stopped from doing our jobs of serving our nation’s students and the American public,” Coleman said. “While I can no longer work to protect students through my job, I’m here to sound off the alarm on how our layoffs are causing a national crisis in education and what that means for students in Texas and across the country.”

“It means less people protecting student civil rights as we continue to see record numbers of complaints year after year,” she added.

Cuts to the department also mean there’s less oversight of federal spending and fewer people to process student financial aid applications.

Funding freezes and layoffs impact Texas

From library and museum funding to public health grants, and money for efforts to  prevent flood risks, Trump has frozen millions of dollars that aid Texans, resulting in more closed offices and laid off employees.

On April 4, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced the cancellation of all Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, including $50 million that was intended to reduce flooding risks for Austin residents.

“To pay for tax cuts for billionaires, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are leaving Americans at risk when disaster strikes,” Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) said in a press release following the announcement. “Austinites should not be at risk of uncontrolled raw sewage flooding our communities so that billionaires can buy a bigger yacht.”

Austin Public Health is also losing millions in funding. Twenty-seen full-time employees have already lost their jobs due to Trump’s federal cuts, according to the agency, and five grants have been eliminated so far, resulting in the loss of an estimated $15 million, including money that paid for Refugee Services Clinic and COVID-19 vaccination programs.

The Trump administration also eliminated the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a small department that provides $12.5 million to the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. 

The TSLAC provided nearly $40,000 in grants to Dallas Public Library this year for a digitization and archival project, which has now been put on pause. TSLAC grants of up to $75,000 also keep programs the Dallas library provides — such as family reading programs, resources for the homeless, and English language learning classes — up and running.

Dallas County Health and Human Services lost two federal grants totaling $70 million, according to the agency, and had to lay-off 11 full-time and 10 temporary employees.

DCHHS leads the county’s immunization and vaccination outreach program. These terminations come as DFW sees its first child measles case in a state that’s seen more than 600 cases since January.

Employees with Dallas’ Environmental Protection Agency office — which covers Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma — have also recently been placed on leave. The change comes after Trump issued an executive order targeting the agency’s environmental justice staff.

“The first thing the Trump administration took aim at in the EPA was environmental justice in our union,” Justin Chen, president of a local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employee that represents EPA employees, said during an April 27 rally for labor rights. “This is not a coincidence. It is the acknowledgement of the fundamental reality that if you live closer to pollution and its sources, you are going to be sicker. Who lives closest to the sources of pollution? It’s not Trump, it’s not Elon Musk. It is the working class that lives closest to these sources, the people who work at these plants and the communities that develop around them that are being exposed at the highest levels,” Chen added.

“They want to terminate these jobs and resources which were being used to right the historical wrongs of unchecked capitalist development,” Chen said.

DOGE, Texas-style

Shortly after his inauguration, Trump announced that billionaire Elon Musk, who calls Austin home, would head the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an initiative meant to cut federal spending that the president deems “unnecessary.”

This move sparked Abbott to sign a bill into law that seeks to recalibrate state government and slash regulations by creating a new Texas agency — the state’s very own DOGE department — that Abbott is calling his Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office.

“What DOGE did, however, was to crystallize exactly what we were seeking to achieve. It gave definition to it,” Abbott said April 23 during his signing ceremony for Senate Bill 14.

It was the first bill signing of the legislative session, and one of the earliest of any session since he became governor in 2015.

Abbott said the Texas version of DOGE, housed in the governor’s office, will make state government less costly and more efficient. But it will cost $7.6 million in its first two years and require hiring 18 employees, according to a legislative budget analysis.

Bye-bye, DEI

Despite evidence that diversity, equity, and inclusion bans have a negative impact on marginalized communities, Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 21 banning diversity, equity, and inclusion practices across all federal departments. 

The order terminated DEI offices, positions, and programs in the federal government, eliminated equity-related grants and contracts, and repealed prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace.

Abbott followed suit 10 days later — directing Texas state agencies to eliminate DEI policies and announcing his plan to end DEI programs in K-12 public schools after successfully purging DEI across universities in 2023.

“DEI violates the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Texas,” Abbott said. “What both of those documents require is no discrimination on the basis of race. Most DEI programs say we’re going to have a special program for students of or people of this particular race or that particular race. That’s totally unconstitutional.”

Texans fight back against Trump

Whether it’s outside the Texas capitol in Austin, on the Grassy Knoll at Dealy Plaza in downtown Dallas, at a Veterans Affairs hospital, or even a Tesla dealership, Texans are showing up to resist the agenda of Trump and Musk.

Demonstrations led by the 50501 movement started in February with a nationwide “Not My President’s Day” rally, and the momentum has not stopped. 

On top of the actions and rallies, some Texas Democrats have hosted town halls in Republican districts as another form of push back against Trump.

Casar has become an outspoken voice against Trump and Musk, joining rallies at the Texas Capitol denouncing attacks on public education by Trump and Abbott, and holding town halls in the districts of US Reps. Chip Roy and Mike McCaul. 

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas) has also been candid about her current disdain for the administration, comparing Trump’s actions to a “dictator” and rallying against the “constitutional crisis” he’s creating.