Five good things Trump has done

President Donald Trump has undoubtedly been one of the most controversial presidents of modern times — maybe the most controversial. His firebrand approaches toward many controversial issues cause outrage, especially among the liberal opposition. However, his presidency has produced some positive results. Here are five beneficial things Trump has done during his presidency.

1. Economy: Under the Trump administration, the U.S. economy has continued to flourish, with the national unemployment rate as of December 2018, according to the White House, at 3.7 percent, the lowest in 17 years, in part thanks to his pro-business policies and de-regulations such as his executive order “on reducing regulation and controlling regulatory costs,” which have grown business confidence exponentially. The GDP is growing at above a 3 percent rate, something that most experts believed was impossible.

2. ISIS: Throughout his entire campaign, Trump expressed a hard line against Islamic terrorism, and a lot of progress has been made to combat this terror organization. In July 2017, ISIL’s hold of Mosul ended, and in the following September, the U.S.-led a coalition to overtake Rakka, the only major city in Syria left under ISIL control. According to Wilson Center of Newsweek, 95 percent of the ISIS pseudo-caliphate has been liberated.

3. Opioids: Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October 2017. According to John Fritze and David Jackson from USA TODAY, the crisis claimed around  72,000 lives last year. Passing new legislation that would fund more treatment options for addicts and eliminating Medicare regulations that impede treatment and facilitate research on non-addictive painkillers, the Trump administration hopes to curtail the growing problem in the United States. In addition, Trump enacted U.S. Postal Service based efforts to screen overseas packages for synthetic fentanyl largely shipped from China.

4. Syria: The Trump administration punished Syrian president Bashar al-Assad by using airstrikes against a Syrian airbase after this dictator used chemical weapons against his own people, according to The New York Times. By punishing Bashar after his heinous attacks against his people, he reinforced American hegemony and set better standards for human rights throughout the world.

5. Prison reforms: After the clemency of Alice Marie Johnson last June, Trump signed massive bipartisan reforms last December to reduce recidivism and improve prison conditions, including prohibiting the use of shackles or physical restraints on pregnant women, releasing terminally ill patients, placing prisoners closer to family and improving feminine hygiene, according to Jamiles Lartey of The Guardian. The bill, known as the FIRST STEP Act, will allow around 53,000 prisoners to be freed over the next 10 years.

Honorable mention: With hospital spending the most of any category in health-care expenditures, Trump has required hospitals to provide transparent information on their standard charges, according to Julie Appleby and Barbara Feder Ostrov of CNN.

While this in theory forces hospitals to compete with pricing and provides more information for patients, the bills posted do not account for insurance discounts or additional charges that may add on, and has been posted in complicated language that is meaningless for the average person. Still, this is a step towards the right direction to more reasonable prices.

Over the course of his first two years, Trump has created a lot of controversy with his statements and governing style. But despite this chaos, his tenure has had some positives that are easy to forget.