100 days, two Americas: Assessing the impact of President Trump’s policies on California and Texas

The 100 days marker for presidential administrations is really nothing more than that: A marker. 

The benchmark was established during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term because he got a lot done in those first few months as president. 

His moves in a relatively short amount of time — helped by a Congress controlled by Democrats — has since defined a period where presidents are expected to show what they are initially accomplishing in the job.

Now it’s Trump’s turn, again. 

This time around, we’ve witnessed a reshaping of how the United States deals with the world, a dismantling of multiple federal agencies, mass layoffs of government workers, and deep cuts to administrative functions and funds that support a variety of programs that serve millions of people.  

In these first 100 days, we’ve heard a lot from D.C. pundits. Today, we’re looking at how those decisions are hitting home. We’re focusing on two of America’s biggest and most complex states: Texas and California. Two states with enormous economic power, deep diversity, and very different politics.

In Texas, the Republican leadership controls both houses in the Legislature and the Governor’s office, and they’ve largely aligned themselves with President Trump’s second-term agenda. In California, where Democrats hold a supermajority, the state’s pushing back. 

In many cities across both Texas and California, you’ll find plenty of people who share a skepticism — if not scorn — for the second Trump administration. But in more rural areas of both states, support for Trump’s direction is strong, especially when it comes to issues like immigration or cutting what some see as government waste.

Still, this change is happening so quickly it can be hard to keep up. The ripple effects of mass layoffs, deportations, and trade threats are making many people anxious, and that fear seems to be crossing clear party lines.

Journalists at public radio stations and nonprofit newsrooms in California and Texas spoke with dozens of residents, reporters and political observers to dig into that uncertainty. Not just the economics, but across the board – where it’s coming from and what it means. 

California, Texas respond to second Trump administration

California and Texas are similar by size and population metrics, but politically, the two states are opposites. In the 2024 presidential election, for example, roughly 58.5% of Californians voted for Kamala Harris, while 56.14% of Texans voted for Trump. 

Richard Pineda is an associate professor of communications with a focus on politics at the University of Texas at El Paso. He says Texas leaders at all levels seem to be in “lockstep” with President Trump. But that’s not the case across the state, he added, especially in areas that tend to vote blue — like El Paso and Travis counties. 

“I think that there is a tremendous amount of concern about some of these changes, especially when you see shifts that are happening politically rolling into things like the University of Texas system,” Pineda said.

Some traditionally blue counties are starting to see increases in Republican voters, he added. That can be seen in Starr, Hidalgo, Willacy and Cameron counties — all of which are border counties that have historically voted blue. 

“It’s not to a point that the county will change anytime soon, but even short shifts means that the state is becoming even redder than before,” he said.

Paul Mitchell is the vice president of Political Data, Inc., a voter data firm in California. He says the state, which was seen as the resistance state during Trump’s first term — filing over 120 lawsuits against his administration — hasn’t had the same “clear point of focus” this time around.

“A lot of what Trump tried to do early on (in his first term) that really galvanized support from Democrats in California was he was trying to undo Obamacare,” Mitchell said. “In this first 100 days, you’ve seen him go after transgender issues, and a lot of Democrats don’t know necessarily what to do with that.”

Many of the Californians polled by journalists working on this project expressed deep concern over the president’s actions, while others said they were “cautiously optimistic.” Some in the latter category suggested their backing of President Trump had to do with frustration over state and local governments more than the federal government. 

Mitchell says the 2024 election came at the “perfect time” for those frustrated by these issues in California.

“A lot of voters saw what he was proposing as real action, where they look at California policy makers — whether they’re looking at the lack of action on high-speed rail or these other promises that lawmakers have made — and they say, ‘Well, they’re not delivering here in California, this guy is offering to make big real change,’” Mitchell said. “And I think that that was important to his victory.”

Texas is booming right now: There’s a huge budget surplus, population is growing and business is moving there. In fact, Elon Musk has picked up most of his operations and moved them out of California to Texas.

Pineda said Texas business leaders have been encouraged by state leadership’s support of the Trump administration’s move to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

“The governor and the lieutenant governor taking an active stance to try to undercut those [DEI practices] has allowed some businesses to move without having to worry about having those policies or maintaining those policies,” he said. “That then comes on top of the president pushing against these things, and that’s a good climate for these particular businesses.”

But overall, he said, growth hasn’t remained consistent for all regions of Texas.

“What you’re seeing is developments in these sort of core communities, some of the bigger cities,” he said. “There’s still a lot of rural development that has not happened. We’ve looked to try to expand a rail infrastructure that seems to come up every couple of years and die down. I do think that the move to bring some of these companies in dovetails with limitations on previously held restrictions.”

Trade and tariffs

President Trump is no stranger to tariffs — and the battles that come with changing them. During his first term, Trump imposed a number of tariffs on goods imported from China, sparking a trade war in 2018.  

And starting on his first day back in the White House, President Trump promised immediate action on the price of imported goods. Since then, news about tariffs has moved quickly. Over the last three months Trump has imposed, rescinded and reinstated tariffs worldwide. 

Whether tariffs are active or on hold, California and Texas will feel it. Of all the U.S. states, these two do the most trade with other countries — and China, Mexico and Canada are at the top of the list.

Texas and Mexico’s economies are greatly intertwined — in 2023, trade between Texas and Mexico topped $272 billion, ranking Mexico as Texas’ no. 1 trading partner.  

Jerry Pacheco, president of the Border Industrial Association, says the first 100 days of the second Trump administration has felt like “chaos” for both himself and the members of his organization.

“I mean my world has just been… I get up every day and wonder what’s going to happen,” Pacheco said. “Are we going to lose a prospect that we had close to signing the dotted line? Are we going to see businesses in our industrial base, related particularly to the automotive industry, shuttered?”

California has a similar trade relationship with Mexico, with a highly integrated supply chain that sees individual pieces of larger products often travel back and forth across the border. 

Tijuana, for example, hosts a number of car manufacturing plants, including one owned by Toyota. But not all pieces of these vehicles are made in Mexico: Individual parts of each vehicle can cross the border multiple times — and there’s a tariff each time it crosses back and forth. Seat leather, for example, could be produced in one country, processed in another, then finished in another.

San Diego business professionals echoed the sentiment of their counterparts in Texas, many of whom said they feel uncertain about the future. 

“We have a relationship with Mexico where we’re not just trading together, we’re producing together,” said Jessica Anderson, the interim CEO and president of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. “This is not a tax on just Mexican companies. This is a tax on U.S. businesses and on U.S. companies directly.”

The International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced recently that California had surpassed Japan to become the fourth largest economy in the world. 

State legislative leaders say California’s booming economy is the driving force behind their tariff-related lawsuit against the Trump administration.They’ve also said the fluctuating stock market is a risk to California’s budget, which is highly dependent on income tax revenue from capital gains. 

Immigration

Within hours after his second inauguration in January, President Trump signed dozens of executive orders, including 10 aimed at the immigration system.

Among other actions, these orders pledge to detain and deport undocumented immigrants accused of crimes and stop the resettlement of refugees from countries like Afghanistan.

All of it has – or at least promises to have – a deep impact on Texas and California, hugely diverse states with some of the largest undocumented and refugee populations in the U.S. 

Response to these orders has been mixed, largely across party lines:

“I mean, I live here on the border and I’ve seen first hand what happened the last several years with immigration and now it’s the numbers have plummeted,” said Tim Wilkins of McAllen, Texas. “I mean, it’s almost zero activity.”

“The way that the Trump administration is handling this is frightening — deporting people to El Salvador and some of those people are not the gang members that they say they are and there’s no due process,” said Jane Demian, who lives in Los Angeles. 

In California, ICE raids and enforcement actions by federal agents in cities like San Diego, Pomona and Los Angeles have heightened fears in immigrant communities. In Texas, agents from multiple federal agencies began carrying out immigration enforcement operations in late January in a number of cities, including Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio. 

Reactions to these operations have mixed — Texans in conservative areas are largely supportive, while Texas immigration advocates and professionals are concerned.

“Many people in the immigrant community, many clients, fear for their future in this country, even lawful permanent residents and naturalized citizens,” said Irving-based immigration attorney Haim Vasquez.

Since Inauguration Day, a number of university students have had their visas canceled. Some international students around the country have even been detained.

A number of these California students are suing the Trump administration. In recent days, a handful have won temporary restraining orders with federal judges saying they must not be detained or deported while their cases are heard.

“I would say everybody is scared right now,” Zahra Biloo, director for the Bay Area chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations said. “The most challenging types of calls we are receiving are from U.S. citizens, and so I think to myself, if U.S. citizens with as much privilege and safety as they carry are scared, so, too, then are student visa-holders as well as undocumented students.”

California leaders are no strangers to taking action against the Trump administration. This time around, California Attorney General staff began writing briefs before Inauguration Day, and in early February, Gov. Gavin Newsom approved $25 million to sue the Trump administration.

The response from Texas leaders has looked a bit different: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced recently that he was opening an investigation into the city of Dallas, accusing it of having “sanctuary city” policies, or policies that would not allow city staff to cooperate with federal law enforcement in arresting or detaining undocumented immigrants.

Agriculture and business

All eyes are on the economy. The Trump administration’s approach to tariffs and other economic policies have a lot of people wondering where things are headed. 

For some, that uncertainty brings on a whole lot of anxiety: “Because he enacted a policy that made me lose my job, yeah, I’m anxious, I’m worried, my budget’s completely changed, and, you know, [I’m] living off beans and rice,” said Benjamin Dechard of Austin. 

Others are bullish about the president’s actions: “People are willing to start investing again in their businesses, not holding cash back as a reserve, but now using this as an opportunity to make those investments,” said David Stein from Tyler, Texas.

Agriculture is one business sector that’s got some questions. It’s a huge economic driver in both states: Texas sold about $32 billion in agricultural products in 2022, and California, the nation’s largest supplier, sold a little more than $59 billion worth of goods in the same year. A big chunk of that money comes from exports to countries like Mexico, Canada, and China.

The biggest exports coming out of Texas are beef and cotton, amounting to roughly $2.6 billion dollars every year. But the state also imports and takes in a lot of goods, and farmers are concerned about tariffs affecting the cost to raise their crops. 

Materials like fertilizer, insecticides, seeds and parts for farm equipment are imported and have begun to rise in price, he added. 

“I apologize, I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but there’s probably more unknowns than known,” said Dale Murden, a citrus farmer in the Rio Grande Valley. “I’m like… ‘Uh wait a minute, my fertilizer cost just tripled. Where’d that come from?’”

There’s been a lot of back and forth over tariffs. But the ongoing battle is with China, whose leaders responded with their own levies on U.S. goods. 

Texas sends a large share of its cotton, beef and rice to China. Market leaders are concerned that these U.S.-made goods may become prohibitively expensive for Chinese consumers, and push other exporting countries to swoop in.

“The last time there was a Trump tariff issue, cotton did get caught up in that, and it just caused this great reshuffle,” said John Robinson, a cotton market specialist with Texas A&M University. “We actually sent more of our cotton to Vietnam, and Brazil took our market share formerly with China. Great big reshuffle. It’s inefficient.”

California’s largest exports are nuts and dairy — the state produces 80% of the world’s almonds — and a lot of that goes to China. Some California farmers share concerns about the state of the industry as tariffs are set to go into effect, though not all of them are sure of what to expect. 

Jenny Holterman, a fourth-generation farmer in Kern County, said she’s “worried and sort of not worried,” though she ultimately supports Trump’s tariffs.

She says even if her almond farm takes a hit, she’s hoping tariffs will bring business back to the U.S. But she mentioned she is facing higher costs and she’s already made adjustments in her farm operations because of them. The last time Trump was president and imposed tariffs, exports of California almonds and pistachios fell 20%.

But Holterman says she’s in a better place than others because she has another job and doesn’t rely on the farm as her family’s sole income. Almonds are also not as perishable as other crops, so she has a little bit more flexibility. 

“Eighty percent of the world’s supply of almonds come from California,” Holterman said. “At some point, well, if they want almonds, they have to get them from California.”

Ryan Talley, who owns a medium-sized farm that his grandfather started in the 1940s in Arroyo Grande, said he hasn’t seen a big direct impact yet because he sells most of his crops inside the U.S. But he does sell spinach to Canada — and he’s planning on selling bell peppers in that market, too.

But because the Trump administration is constantly changing its mind about the tariffs, he’s worried because, unlike almond-growers, his crops have a shorter shelf life. 

“They’re highly perishable,” Talley said of his produce. “We don’t have the ability to hold our products for a month or two to wait for the tariffs to go away.”

On the flip side, some folks in the agriculture business are seeing positive impacts as a result of tariffs. In Texas, people who harvest shrimp and oysters see the tariffs as a bulwark against overseas competition. 

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Education

In March, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to cut a federal program that provides around $660 million for schools to buy fresh food directly from farms. 

In California, the Local Food for Schools program served up about $23 million of meals around the state. It was about the same amount of money for Texas.  

Both were part of a broader set of pandemic-era initiatives designed to address food insecurity and support local agriculture during COVID-19 disruptions.​ The USDA now says these programs no longer line up with priorities. 

These cuts have already begun affecting residents of both states. In California’s San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the program will expire at the end of this school year. More than $600,000 was awarded for the region to provide organic strawberries, citrus fruits, apples, and lettuce that ends up in school salads, along with produce like dragon fruit and bok choy. 

California has attempted to recreate the program on its own, but schools have to apply to receive grant funding, while the federal program was opt-in.

In Texas, these federal grants amounted to less than a tenth of what state schools were previously spending for local food. But if states don’t step in to subsidize these programs, some students could lose an important lifeline.  

Many farmers are in a tough situation because they’ve planted their crops with this program in mind. In one case, a California farmer plowed under fields of kale and collard greens because they were no longer contracted, and replanted an easier crop to offload. In another case, a local poultry farm that had a contract to provide about 160 cases of chicken wings each month to a school stands to lose $13,000 a month in revenue. 

Overall impact on California and Texas? You tell us.

The idea for this joint statewide special developed during a transformative time for our country.

Collectively, it’s difficult — and perhaps even unfair — to find the right words that capture what is unfolding. It’s still too early to tell what the true impact will be. 

We know reactions in California and Texas are different — they’re bound to be — different states with different budget demands, different priorities, different cultures and different political views among the majority of voters. 

Today, granular polling so far in both states is rather lean. 

So, what’s the impact of the first 100 days on California and Texas? You tell us. It’ll help us in our coverage going forward, too. 

You can reach the Texas Standard by emailing texasstandard@kut.org and the California Newsroom by emailing CaliforniaNewsroom@kqed.org. 

This story includes reporting from Angela Kocherga of KTEP in El Paso, Michael Marks of the Texas Standard, Levi Sumagaysay and Carolyn Jones of CalMatters in Sacramento, Stella Chávez of the Texas Newsroom, Gustavo Solis of KPBS in San Diego, Tyche Hendricks of KQED in San Francisco, and Jessica Greenwell of KVCR in Riverside, Calif.