During last year’s presidential campaign, Donald Trump constantly repeated his intention to bring about dramatic change as soon as he returned to the White House.
But few expected it to come at such breakneck speed.
In the three months since he took the oath of office, the 47th president has deployed his power in a way that compares to few predecessors.
In stacks of bound documents signed off with a presidential pen and policy announcements made in all caps on social media, his blizzard of executive actions has reached into every corner of American life.
To his supporters, the shock-and-awe approach has been a tangible demonstration of an all-action president, delivering on his promises and enacting long-awaited reforms.
But his critics fear he is doing irreparable harm to the country and overstepping his powers – crippling important government functions and perhaps permanently reshaping the presidency in the process.
Here are six turning points from the first 100 days.
For once, it wasn’t a Trump social media post that sparked an outcry.
Three weeks into the new term, at 10.13am on a Sunday morning, Vice-President JD Vance wrote nine words that signalled a strategy which has since shaped the Trump administration’s second term.
“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he declared on X.
In the media frenzy that followed, legal experts lined up to challenge that assertion, pointing to a 220-year-old principle which lies at the heart of American democracy.
Courts have the power to check and strike down any government action – laws, regulations and executive orders – they think violates the US Constitution.
Vance’s words represented a brazen challenge to judicial authority and, more broadly, the system of three co-equal branches of government crafted by America’s founders.
But Trump and his team remain unapologetic in extending the reach of the executive branch into the two other domains – Congress and the courts.
The White House has moved aggressively to wrest control of spending from Congress, unilaterally defunding programmes and entire agencies.
This erosion of its power has been largely met by silence on Capitol Hill, where Trump’s Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers.
The courts have been more resistant, with well over 100 rulings so far halting presidential actions they deem to be unconstitutional, according to a tally by the New York Times.
Some of the biggest clashes have been over Trump’s immigration crackdown. In March, more than 200 Venezuelans deemed a danger to the US, were deported to El Salvador, many under sweeping wartime powers and without the usual process of evidence being presented in court.
A Republican-appointed judge on a federal appeals court said he was “shocked” by how the White House had acted.
“Now the branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both,” Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote.
Trump and White House officials have said they will obey court rulings, even as the president lambasts many of the judges who issue them and the administration at times moves slowly to fully comply.
It all amounts to a unique test of a constitutional system that for centuries has operated under a certain amount of good faith.
While Trump has been at the centre of this push, one of his principal agents of chaos is a man who wasn’t born in the US, but who built a business empire there.
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