One Hundred Days In: The People Who Have Put These Days to Good Use
Stories that offer guidance for the days ahead.
Episcopal bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, in red and holding the traditional bishop’s crook, in a procession out of National Cathedral on January 21. When Bishop Budde had entered the Cathedral, Trump had been jovial and engaging toward her. On her way out, after she had addressed him from the pulpit and asked him to “show mercy,” he refused even to make eye contact. She was among the first and bravest to stand up for enduring human values under MAGA rule. (Washington Post photo via Getty Images.)
One hundred days in, what have we learned? Most assessments will naturally cover what Donald Trump has done, and undone, in his return to power. That landscape is bleak.
This post is instead on how people other than Trump have been using this time. And how they have been defending the values and institutions that Trump and his allies are attempting to destroy.
That means I won’t be talking about Congressional Republicans, even though their complicit silence is Trump’s most important strategic advantage. (Why “most important”? I’ve saved that argument for a very long footnote.1) Nor, in this positive vein, will I say much more today about the corporate and professional organizations that have decided to capitulate in advance.
Instead this post has two purposes. One is to re-tell a First 100 Days story that everyone already “knows” but that everyone should remember.
The other is to provide an honor-roll checklist of people, groups, and institutions who, in different ways and at different costs, have stood up for the long-term sources of American strength and hope.
‘Speaking truth to power’ in a literal sense: Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.
This story made worldwide news when it occurred. But that was long enough ago that the obliterating tornado of events has pushed the example of Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde out of regular mention in the news.2
Her name should be remembered today, and as an enduring part of this era’s story. That is because she stood up first.
As a reminder: The time was the morning of January 21, less than 24 hours after Trump’s second swearing-in. The occasion was the National Prayer Service, which since FDR’s time has been held at the National Cathedral the day after inaugurations. Sometimes new presidents attend, sometimes not. This time, both Donald and Melania Trump were sitting in the front pew, alongside JD and Usha Vance.
These services are interfaith, but the main presentation at this one was by Budde. As Episcopal bishop of Washington, she officially presides over the Cathedral. Her entire homily was almost 15 minutes long (you can read it and see a video here, and it’s worth rewatching). But Trump, and the world, snapped to attention at the close.
That is when Budde looked straight at Trump from the pulpit, not far away, and said with calm, slow forcefulness, “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President.” He looked up to hear what would come next.
What came next started with a reference to Trump’s own inaugural speech the previous day. In it Trump had told the story of the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, and how it had changed him. “My life was saved for a reason,” Trump said to the nation. “I was saved by God to make America great again.”
Budde took up the theme at face value:
Millions have put their trust in you. As you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God.
In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now….
She went on, in detail, about people who were scared. People fleeing war zones and looking for refuge. People picking crops, and cleaning up in restaurants, and working in hospitals, and worried about a raid by ICE. Trans people. Children worried that their parents might be taken away. Lisa Murkowski has recently commanded attention for saying, “We are all afraid”—and she was talking about defying Trump in Senate votes. Bishop Budde was talking about worries on a different scale.
“Have mercy, Mr. President,” Budde said, looking at him, as she wrapped up. “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land.”
Even via TV you could feel Trump’s fury and shock at being addressed this way, in these circumstances, by this person. No less a spiritual leader than the late Pope Francis had also denounced the cruelty of Trump’s deportation plans. But that was not to Trump’s face, before a live TV audience. When else has Trump had to sit still through such words about himself? Probably only in courtrooms, from witnesses and prosecutors and judges, in his fraud and sexual-assault cases. And those did not come, as this one did, by surprise.
Actually, I can think of one other “by surprise” moment, which underscores the depth of Trump’s rage in that moment at the Cathedral. Fourteen years ago, at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner, then-president Obama spent several minutes on stage ridiculing Donald Trump for his Birther conspiracy theories.
I happened to be at that dinner, with a clear enough view of Trump to see his reaction evolve. At first he seemed pleased just to be mentioned, in a crowd full of politicians and Hollywood and corporate figures. Momentarily he seemed confused about what Obama was getting at. Then his face hardened as he realized that in fact he was the butt of Obama’s jokes, and that nearly everyone in the packed ballroom was laughing at him. A video of Obama’s routine is here. You can also see a Frontline clip about the episode here, which includes Roger Stone’s comment about Trump’s humiliation: “I think that is the night he resolves to run for president.”
Bishop Budde is a physically diminutive figure. Donald Trump is hulking and large. As she walked past him in a procession out of the Cathedral, he refused even to meet her gaze. In that moment she seemed much bigger than he was.
Mariann Edgar Budde had no way of calculating the risks she might be taking on. Soon after the service, Trump was attacking her by name (as “nasty” and dumb) on social media. A GOP congressman “joked” that she should go onto the ICE deportation list. Other threats were not in jest.
But she stood up and spoke.
Standing Up and Fighting: An Honor Roll.
One hundred days in, we have no idea how this part of America’s story ends. But I hope histories of our times will record that people and groups like the ones below made a difference, and changed the outcome.
Each of these items deserves thousands of words of detail. For time-capsule purposes I’ll just name them briefly. I invite more suggestions as we go on.
The public employees, grantees, union members, researchers, NGOs, foundations, and others who immediately organized and took their battles to the courts.
When Trump, Musk, and Doge began dismantling the institutions that have made America strong, scores of organizations representing those institutions were prepared to fight back, quickly, in court. Many of the rulings have come in, and nearly all have gone in their favor. A NYT count showed today that at least 123 rulings have slowed or overturned Trump edicts.
Just one example, standing for hundreds: Last month, Trump and Musk badly damaged America’s interests by disbanding the Voice of America and the entire US Agency for Global Media, which for decades has told the nation’s story around the word. An alliance of employees, officials, unions including the American Federation of Government Employees, and others filed a lawsuit to block this illegal move. A federal judge has just ruled in their favor and ordered the administration to reinstate its employees and contractors.
This is happening all over the place. It can’t undo the damage. But Trump, like all aggressors, keeps advancing until someone resists. These groups knew where and how to resist.The lawyers, civil-liberties organizations, law firms, foundations, scholars, law schools, and other people and groups that have argued and won these cases.
We remember the lawyers, scholars, and law firms that argued the crucial cases of the Civil Rights era. We should applaud their counterparts now.The judges who have stood for rule-of-law.
Through the years while Donald Trump was escaping accountability for his own crimes, and for January 6, the list of judges who epitomized “the judiciary these days” was depressing. Aileen Cannon, who made Trump’s Mar-a-Lago case go away. Samuel Alito, who made abortion rights go away. John Roberts, who made limits on presidential accountability go away. Clarence Thomas, who made the idea of judicial ethics go away. Even more.
Now we think of different names. J. Harvie Wilkinson III. James Boasberg. Paula Xinis. Even more. Like Bishop Budde, they are standing up—and like her, standing up for principle.Governors, state officials, and mayors.
Not all of them. But a lot. One example standing for many: The State of California filing a lawsuit to block Donald Trump’s tariffs altogether, on grounds that he has no legal authority to impose them.Allied leaders.
People from Mexico and Canada know the difference between “America,” a region both countries are part of, and “the United States.”