Trump Administration 2025–2026 Policy Report Card-Top Priorities for U.S. Security, Prosperity, Innovation, and National Strength
America’s performance should ultimately be measured by outcomes: secure borders, good jobs, technological leadership, efficient government, strong infrastructure, healthcare accountability, national security and confidence in the country’s institutions.
Rather than focusing only on political rhetoric, this report card identifies 20 areas where measurable execution and long-term results should matter.
1. Stronger Enforcement Against Illegal Immigration
Immigration laws lose their meaning when enforcement becomes inconsistent. The United States should maintain an immigration system that welcomes lawful immigration while establishing credible consequences for unlawful entry, visa violations and failure to comply with final removal orders.
Enforcement should focus particularly on national-security threats, serious criminals, repeat offenders, trafficking organizations and individuals who deliberately evade lawful immigration proceedings. At the same time, enforcement must operate within constitutional protections and established legal processes.
Report-card standard: measurable border control, faster lawful adjudication, fewer repeat violations and consistent enforcement of final immigration decisions.
2. Tighten Foreign-Worker Programs While Protecting American Workers
Foreign talent can contribute significantly to American innovation, but temporary-worker programs should address legitimate labor shortages rather than become mechanisms for replacing qualified American employees with lower-cost labor.
Programs such as H-1B should emphasize genuinely specialized skills, transparent recruitment, wage protection, employer accountability and stronger enforcement against abuse. Existing H-1B rules already incorporate Labor Condition Applications and wage requirements intended to protect both American and foreign workers.
Report-card standard: attract exceptional global talent while demonstrating that American workers, wages and career opportunities are not being systematically displaced.
3. Maintain Rigorous Standards for Foreign-Trained Physicians
America needs physicians, including highly capable doctors educated abroad. The objective should therefore not be to exclude foreign-trained physicians, but to ensure that every physician practicing in the United States meets comparable standards of education, clinical competency, ethics and patient safety.
International medical graduates already undergo credential verification through ECFMG, including primary-source verification of medical education documents.
The next step should be continued strengthening of competency-based evaluation while creating faster pathways for highly qualified physicians who can help address genuine shortages.
Report-card standard: one high standard of medical competency and patient safety regardless of where a physician received his or her education.
4. Use Strategic Tariffs Against Unfair Trade—Not Tariffs for Their Own Sake
Tariffs can be legitimate economic and national-security instruments when directed against dumping, forced technology transfer, industrial subsidies, forced-labor supply chains or other distortive trade practices.
They should be strategic rather than indiscriminate. The goal should be changing behavior, defending critical industries and rebuilding competitive American production—not permanently increasing costs for American consumers and manufacturers.
The United States continues to use Section 301 mechanisms involving China and other trading partners, including investigations into excess industrial capacity and unfair trade practices.
Report-card standard: more American industrial capacity, fairer reciprocal trade, stronger supply chains and measurable economic benefit relative to the cost of tariffs.
5. Accelerate AI, Semiconductors and Advanced Manufacturing
Economic leadership during the next several decades will increasingly depend on artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors, robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, advanced materials and automated manufacturing.
America cannot remain technologically dominant while depending excessively on overseas manufacturing for strategically essential technologies.
Recent semiconductor initiatives have included major commitments to expand manufacturing capacity inside the United States.
Report-card standard: global leadership not merely in inventing technology, but also in manufacturing, commercializing and scaling it domestically.
6. Put American National Interests at the Center of Policy
An America-first strategy should mean evaluating major economic, trade, defense, energy, immigration and foreign-policy decisions against a straightforward question:
Does this materially strengthen the security, prosperity and long-term competitiveness of the United States and its citizens?
That does not require isolationism. Strong alliances and international trade can advance American interests when relationships are reciprocal and strategically valuable.
Report-card standard: every major policy should demonstrate a measurable benefit to America’s economic strength, security or strategic position.
7. Restore Merit, Accountability and Political Neutrality in Government
Government agencies should execute the law professionally regardless of which political party controls the White House.
Federal employment should emphasize competence, performance, integrity and measurable results rather than ideological conformity or partisan allegiance.
The federal merit system historically incorporates protections against partisan coercion, favoritism and political manipulation of the civil service.
Report-card standard: a professional, merit-driven government workforce accountable for performance rather than politics.
8. Restore Respect for America, Its Institutions and Its Citizens
National confidence matters. Citizens should be able to criticize government while still recognizing the value of America’s constitutional institutions, scientific achievements, military service, entrepreneurship and civic traditions.
Respect cannot simply be demanded by government. Institutions must earn it through competence, transparency, fairness and accountability.
Report-card standard: rebuild public confidence by making institutions worthy of confidence.
9. Preserve Constitutional Law as the Supreme Civil Standard
America protects religious freedom, but governmental authority ultimately operates under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
No religious legal system—Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu or otherwise—should supersede constitutional civil or criminal law.
At the same time, the First Amendment protects religious exercise while restricting government establishment of religion. Federal law expressly preserves those constitutional principles.
Public education should likewise remain consistent with constitutional requirements while protecting students’ lawful religious freedoms.
Report-card standard: freedom of religion without government establishment of religion, with one constitutional legal framework applying equally to everyone.
10. Maintain Credible Deterrence Against Iran and Other Security Threats
Diplomacy should remain the preferred tool of statecraft where it can produce meaningful results. But diplomacy is most effective when backed by credible military, economic and intelligence capabilities.
The United States must retain the ability to protect American citizens, troops, shipping lanes, strategic infrastructure and allies when threatened.
Military action should nevertheless remain connected to clearly defined objectives, appropriate legal authority and an exit strategy rather than becoming an open-ended commitment.
Report-card standard: deterrence strong enough that adversaries understand the cost of attacking American interests, while avoiding unnecessary wars.
11. Accelerate Space, Quantum and Breakthrough R&D
America should think beyond incremental technological improvement.
Quantum computing, quantum sensing, nuclear technologies, biotechnology, advanced propulsion, reusable spacecraft, autonomous systems, next-generation materials, fusion research and artificial intelligence could reshape entire industries.
The CHIPS and Science Act itself spans semiconductor manufacturing, quantum research, fundamental physics, advanced materials and space-related research.
Government-funded research should increasingly be evaluated by milestones, commercialization potential, national-security importance and measurable scientific outcomes.
Report-card standard: turn research dollars into discoveries, intellectual property, businesses, manufacturing capability and strategic advantage.
12. Prevent Political Weaponization of Government and Eliminate Obsolete Regulation
Law-enforcement and regulatory institutions should enforce laws consistently regardless of political affiliation, wealth or institutional influence.
At the same time, regulations should not remain permanently on the books merely because they once served a purpose.
Every major regulation should periodically face a cost-benefit, relevance and effectiveness review. GAO has specifically recommended stronger procedures for identifying outdated or unnecessarily burdensome regulations in areas it has reviewed.
Report-card standard: fewer unnecessary rules, stronger enforcement of rules that genuinely protect citizens and equal application of law.
13. Build Stronger Strategic Alliances Around the World
America’s strength is multiplied when capable allies share responsibility for global security, technological development, intelligence, trade and supply-chain resilience.
Strategic relationships with Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and other partners can strengthen deterrence and diversify dependence away from hostile or unreliable suppliers.
Successful alliances should increasingly involve shared responsibility rather than permanent one-sided dependency.
Report-card standard: alliances that contribute measurable military, economic, technological or diplomatic value to both sides.
14. Strengthen Election Integrity While Protecting Lawful Voting
Confidence in elections requires both accessibility for eligible voters and credible safeguards against unlawful voting, fraudulent registration, cyber intrusion and foreign interference.
Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, and federal prosecutors have brought cases enforcing those restrictions.
Election systems should continue improving citizenship verification where legally appropriate, voter-roll accuracy, auditability, chain-of-custody controls and cybersecurity while ensuring qualified citizens are not improperly disenfranchised.
Report-card standard: every eligible lawful vote counts—and unlawful votes do not.
15. Strengthen Border and Interior Immigration Enforcement Capacity
Immigration enforcement does not end at the physical border.
A functioning system requires sufficient personnel, technology, immigration courts, investigative capability, detention capacity where legally appropriate and resources for executing lawful immigration decisions.
ICE maintains responsibility for significant components of interior immigration enforcement and removal proceedings.
Technology, biometrics and integrated federal databases should increasingly allow enforcement agencies to identify serious threats while reducing unnecessary administrative friction for lawful immigrants.
Report-card standard: faster, more targeted and more legally consistent immigration enforcement.
16. Bring Critical Manufacturing and Supply Chains Back to America
The pandemic, semiconductor shortages and geopolitical tensions demonstrated the risk of concentrating critical production overseas.
The United States should prioritize domestic or allied-country capacity for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, critical minerals, defense components, energy equipment, advanced electronics and other strategically important goods.
Recent Commerce initiatives explicitly emphasize reshoring semiconductor and other critical manufacturing capacity.
The objective should not be manufacturing everything domestically. It should be ensuring that America cannot be strategically paralyzed because a hostile government controls something indispensable.
Report-card standard: strategic supply-chain independence where national security requires it.
17. Aggressively Attack Healthcare Fraud, Waste and Abuse
Healthcare represents one of America’s largest economic sectors, making even small percentages of waste enormously expensive.
Fraud detection should increasingly use advanced analytics, AI, provider-pattern analysis, claims surveillance, identity verification and cross-program data integration.
The scale of the problem is significant: the 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown included charges against 455 defendants involving more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims, according to HHS-OIG.
But fraud is only part of the challenge. Administrative duplication, unnecessary procedures, payment errors and inefficient care delivery also deserve attention.
Report-card standard: measure taxpayer dollars recovered, improper payments prevented, administrative costs reduced and patient outcomes improved.
18. Counter Foreign Espionage, Covert Influence and Election Interference
Foreign intelligence operations increasingly target universities, corporations, technology companies, government agencies, political organizations and critical infrastructure.
Counterintelligence should therefore extend beyond traditional espionage to intellectual-property theft, cyber intrusion, covert influence, strategic technology acquisition and attempts to penetrate American institutions.
Recent federal prosecutions continue to demonstrate that foreign intelligence operations targeting sensitive American information remain a real national-security concern.
At the same time, allegations of foreign interference should be evidence-based and investigated professionally rather than used as partisan accusations.
Report-card standard: detect foreign influence earlier, prosecute genuine espionage effectively and protect critical American technology and institutions.
19. Rebuild Shipbuilding, Rail, Freight, Ports and Transportation Infrastructure
A major industrial nation requires major physical infrastructure.
America should rebuild commercial and naval shipbuilding capacity while modernizing ports, rail networks, freight corridors, bridges, logistics systems and intermodal transportation.
The 2026 National Freight Strategic Plan identifies rail corridors and infrastructure as critical components of national and export supply chains, while federal programs continue directing substantial investment toward rail modernization.
Infrastructure investment should be judged on economic productivity and strategic necessity—not simply dollars spent.
Report-card standard: shorter freight times, greater port capacity, stronger domestic shipbuilding, reliable rail infrastructure and lower logistics costs.
20. Make America’s 250th Anniversary a Unifying National Moment
The United States reached its 250th anniversary of independence on July 4, 2026, an extraordinary milestone in the history of the republic. The official presidential proclamation commemorated the 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
The anniversary should be more than another political event.
It should provide an opportunity to celebrate American history, scientific achievement, entrepreneurship, military sacrifice, immigration, constitutional government, civil rights, culture and the generations that built the country.
Americans can disagree intensely on policy while still sharing ownership of the nation.
Report-card standard: celebrate peacefully, proudly and inclusively—while using America’s first 250 years as motivation to build a stronger next 250.
Disclaimer: This report card is an independent policy analysis of the Trump Administration’s 2025–2026 priorities and actions. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement of, or opposition to, any political candidate, party, administration, or policy. Assessments are based on publicly available information, stated policy objectives, and measurable outcomes where available.
Disclaimer: This report card is an independent policy analysis of the Trump Administration’s 2025–2026 priorities and actions. It is intended for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute an endorsement of, or opposition to, any political candidate, party, administration, or policy. Assessments are based on publicly available information, stated policy objectives, and measurable outcomes where available.
