Trump’s first 100 days: The good, the bad, and the ugly for tech and science

Enlarge (credit: Pete Marovich/Bloomberg)

The first 100 days of President Donald Trump's administration come to a close Saturday. By any account, this presidential honeymoon of sorts was a mixed bag. The 45th president's biggest achievement was the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Neil Gorsuch. His biggest defeat was the failure to live up to a campaign promise to get Congress to repeal Obamacare—officially known as the Affordable Care Act. "We couldn't quite get there. We're just a very small number of votes short in terms of getting our bill passed," the president said. And throughout it all, the administration's first three months, which ended with the lowest public approval rating of any new president at this stage, remained clouded in political turmoil, largely because the FBI is investigating whether Trump's presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government.

The current administration will claim several crowning achievements that fall somewhere in between the president's Supreme Court victory and his healthcare reform defeat. These achievements—or setbacks, depending on your political leanings—run the gamut when it comes to policy areas. The president's FCC appointment has pushed net neutrality to the chopping block. Online privacy took a hit as well after Trump signed legislation allowing home Internet and mobile broadband providers to sell or share Web browsing history without consent from consumers. Trump also signed legislation designed to limit federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions. The president ordered the termination of President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, and he rolled back the Obama administration's move to require automakers to increase fuel efficiency.

"If the standards threaten auto jobs, then common sense changes could've and should've been made," Trump said about the mileage standards. And speaking of jobs, Trump also notably signed an executive order requiring a wholesale review of the H-1B visa program. That program has allowed tens of thousands of foreign tech-sector workers to come and work in the US each year.