Minnesotans’ feelings about Trump’s first 100 days in office range from alarm to optimism

President Donald Trump marked his first 100 days in office with a rally in Michigan on Tuesday.

The 100-day milestone comes at a time when surveys, including one from the Pew Research Center, show support for Trump slipping, though he continues to get high marks from his strongest supporters.

MPR News spoke with Minnesotans around the state about how they are gauging Trump’s tenure so far.

Rene Ann Goodrich of Duluth, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, says Trump’s first 100 days in office have been “shocking,” especially the moves to shrink government programs.

The Trump administration has made big workforce reductions at the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the civil rights division at the Department of Justice

“For Indigenous people and people of color, the attacks on our services… disproportionately impacts Indigenous and people of color,” Goodrich said.

She’s also outraged by the Trump administration removing a report about missing and murdered Indigenous peoples from a federal website.

“So it’s this erasure that’s happening, and we see it in other populations, too,” she said.

Lance Petersen, a farmer near Rush City, grows corn and soybeans and has supported Trump three times now.

He’s pleased with the Trump administration’s initiatives. The trade war Trump kicked off with China, a key export market for agriculture, hasn’t weakened his support.

“It’s tough to be alarmed on what he’s done based on where the things that he said on his campaign trail, of what he was hoping to enact,” Petersen said. “I guess for the most part, I have been, you know, fairly okay with how things have gone.”

Trump’s pledge to reduce the federal workforce and crack down on illegal immigration appealed most to Petersen.

“Some hard decisions needed to be made in order to see some version of progress going forward,” he said.

Spenser Norling, a geography major at St. Cloud State University, said he would give President Trump a score of “one or two” on a scale of 10 at this point.

As a person living with autism who’s made the dean’s list several times, Norling said he’s worried programs he benefited from will not be around for others.

“When I was four years old, I got diagnosed with autism, but fortunately, due to the wonderful public education system and the special education system we have here in Minnesota, I was able to learn and I was able to thrive to the point where I can go to college and to the point where I am only one semester of away from not only graduating from college, but graduating from college with a double major as well,” he said. 

The Trump administration is moving special education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, rattling educators and families who worry about what that will mean for children with disabilities.

“I’m glad that the state of Minnesota still recognizes education, and especially special education, as something that’s worth investing in so that people like me can have success in the future,” Norling said.

Derek Wittlief of Hugo said he’s “kind of neutral” on Trump’s first 100 days. He said he is going to give Trump more time “for his ideas and policies to work out.”

“I think too many people are pointing the finger to things they don’t like as a reason things aren’t working great right now, and it hasn’t been enough time to actually know if these things are going to work or not,” he said.

Wittlief is taking a “wait and see” approach.

Anna Garbers, a social worker in Martin County, said she was devastated when she learned Trump won the election.

“I’m still devastated now seeing the chaos that’s being rained down on our country,” she said. “I think that he has essentially taken a chainsaw to our systems that support a lot of our most vulnerable individuals.”

According to the New York Times, the Trump administration is preparing a budget proposal for next year that “would cut billions of dollars from programs that support child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly.”

“Right now with the economy and some of the things that are going on at the federal level, I would say it’s causing a huge amount of anxiety,” said Garbers. “We don’t know what the cuts are going to mean at this point, and we don’t know how we’re going to continue to meet mandates and provide care in an ethical and compassionate way with with further cuts to resources in an already under resourced field.”.

Errin Niemeyer of Brainerd said he thinks Trump is going in the right direction. He’s especially pleased with Trump’s tariff policies.

“You know, why should we have to pay all this extra money when everybody else is tariffing us for the products coming in?” he said.

He also supports the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE, to trim the size of government.

“I think they need to clean house,” Niemeyer said. “Go DOGE!”

MPR News reporters Mathew Holding Eagle III, Kirsti Marohn, Mark Zdechlik, Leah Lemm, Dan Kraker and Hannah Yang contributed to this story.