Breaking Down Trump’s Terrifying Flurry of Executive Orders
As Donald Trump resumed the powers of the presidency — declaring in his inaugural address that he was “saved by God to make America great again” — he began signing a slate of sweeping executive orders that reflect his ambition to be a dictator on “Day One.”
In his address Monday inside the Capitol rotunda, Trump described his reactionary agenda — on climate and geography, immigration and citizenship, federal gender recognition, and more — as a “revolution of common sense.”
In the normal course of things, executive orders are subject to checks and balances. And Trump’s first-day batch is sure to invite litigation where they attempt to run roughshod over enacted regulation, law, treaty, or constitutional amendment. However, Trump begins his term with the backing of an archconservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, which has shown little appetite to overrule him and no interest in holding him accountable.
Trump started signing orders soon after he was sworn in as president, signed some more at a lunch with lawmakers, and then sat at a miniature desk onstage at the Capital One arena, where his indoor “parade” was held, took out a Sharpie, and signed even more of them as his supporters cheered. He then headed to the Oval Office to sign some more. He’s continued to sign orders — many of which align with Project 2025, the right-wing policy plan Trump tried to claim he didn’t know anything about — throughout his first week in office.
Here’s what he is trying to enact:
Immigration and the Border
In his inaugural address, Trump said: “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border.”
Trump later in the day signed an executive order attempting to abolish “birthright citizenship.” (This has been guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”) The order alleges that “the privilege of United States citizenship does not automatically extend to persons born in the United States” and seeks to create a legal gray area in the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” to exclude undocumented mothers, or those in America legally on tourist visas.
It was only one of the orders he signed on immigration. Trump also:
Declared a national emergency at the southern border, closing it to anyone without legal status. The order paves the way for him to send troops to the border.
Declared that “the current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion.”
Clarified his intent to send federal troops to “repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
Reinstated the infamous policy that required asylum seekers to “remain in Mexico.”
Designated drug cartels and migrant gangs as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Suspended the U.S. refugee program for “at least four months.” The order means, as Reuters reported, that nearly 1,660 Afghans who were cleared to resettle in the U.S. — including unaccompanied minors who were waiting to reunite with their families — will have their flights canceled.
Targeting Trans Americans
Trump declared in his inaugural address: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
Trump later signed an executive order that prohibits federal recognition of transgender Americans. The order will bar government-issued identification like passports from listing anything other than a person’s birth gender, remove transgender individuals from protection of laws barring sex-discrimination, end funding for transition surgeries for federal prisoners, and purport to protect the First Amendment and other rights of those who flout “preferred pronouns” or refuse to recognize the reality of transgender individuals.
Joe Biden, in 2021, signed an order repealing a ban on trans Americans from openly serving in the military. Trump torched that order on Monday.
Energy and the Climate Crisis
Trump takes office with the nation reeling from climate-change-related disasters including unprecedented flooding in mountainous North Carolina and ruinous fires in rain-starved Los Angeles. Heedless of carbon emissions, Trump declared a “national energy emergency” he said will allow oil companies to “drill baby, drill” for the “liquid gold under our feet.”
Trump also vowed to end the national “electric vehicle mandate” as part of his agenda to roll back predecessor Joe Biden’s signature climate progress, and signed an order revoking Biden’s order setting a target of 50 percent elective vehicles by 2030.
Trump dealt a blow to offshore wind, too, signing an order mandating “temporary withdrawal” of the entire “outer Continental shelf from offshore wind leasing.”
Trump also signed an executive order pulling the United States out of the landmark Paris Agreement, as he did during his first term in office. The climate agreement seeks to limit global greenhouse emissions below catastrophic levels. The U.S. is joining pariah states Iran, Libya, and Yemen as the only nations that refuse to participate.
Targeting Civil Rights
Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order revoking an order President Lyndon B. Johnson signed in 1965 ensuring federal contractors could not discriminate based on “race, color, religion, and national origin.” The order was considered a pillar of the civil rights movement, along with the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which Johnson signed around the same time.
Trump on his first day in office signed an order aimed at eradicating “radical and wasteful” diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from the federal government. A day later, he ordered that all federal employees in roles pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion be placed on paid leave beginning Wednesday.
Health Preparedness
In the Oval Office, Trump signed an order pulling the United States out of the World Health Organization, which grew controversial to his base during the pandemic as it sought to coordinate a global response. The order cites WHO’s “mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic,” a lack of independence, as well as a demand of “unfairly onerous payments from the United States.”
“Oooh, that’s a big one,” Trump said as he signed the order.
The U.S. has been the WHO’s largest funder, and its withdrawal could devastate the organization’s ability to combat disease worldwide. “It’s a cataclysmic presidential decision. Withdrawal is a grievous wound to world health, but a still deeper wound to the U.S.,” Georgetown law professor and public-health expert Lawrence Gostin told the BBC.
Trump’s Killing Spree
Trump loves the death penalty, and on Monday signed an executive order “Restoring the Death Penalty.” It demands the attorney general seek the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use” and in particular for crimes involving the death of a law-enforcement officer, or capital crimes committed by “an alien illegally present in this country.” The order reads in part: “Our Founders knew well that only capital punishment can bring justice and restore order in response to such evil.”
Biden recently scrapped the federal lethal-injection protocol on grounds that it causes unconstitutional suffering. Trump’s order directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure states have access to lethal-injection drugs.
The “Gulf of America”
“We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump declared in his inaugural, later signing an order to do so. He also signed an order renaming Alaska’s — and the nation’s — highest peak from its current indigenous name Denali to its previous moniker: “Mount McKinley.”
Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, was not happy with Trump’s order renaming Denali. “I strongly disagree with the President’s decision on Denali,” she wrote. “Our nation’s tallest mountain, which has been called Denali for thousands of years, must continue to be known by the rightful name bestowed by Alaska’s Koyukon Athabascans, who have stewarded the land since time immemorial.”
Giving TikTok Some Time
Trump from the Oval Office on Monday signed an executive order to delay the enforcement of the TikTok ban for 75 days, telling reporters that the order “gives me the right to sell it or close it.”
In a Truth Social post the previous night, Trump vowed to sign an executive order to create a grace period, staying the enforcement mechanisms of the new law banning the China-linked viral video app in America, “so that we can make a deal to protect our national security.” The move was, typically, self-serving as Trump said he wanted Americans to see TikToks of “our exciting inauguration.”
The problem with the delay is that the TikTok ban, which was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, is technically still in effect, which means it is still technically illegal for app stores to host it in the U.S. Apple and Google will just have to trust that Trump’s Justice Department won’t enforce the ban.
Targeting Career Officials — And Working From Home
A key objective of the Trump administration is to clear out the ranks of competent career officials in government and replace them with pliable loyalists. Trump signed a memo to create an onerous process to make career senior-executive service officials easier to fire. He also directed his administration to ensure these officials are “optimally aligned to implement” his agenda
Trump also signed an order implementing a regulatory freeze and a hiring freeze until his administration has fully taken the reins. Trump, who campaigned as a champion of the working man, behaved a lot like a corporate boss, signing an order ordering federal workers to end remote work and return to their offices immediately.
Populist Show Ponies
Trump signed a trio of orders at his arena signing ceremony that appear to be more public relations than actual reform, including an order to prevent government censorship of free speech and an order to prohibit the “weaponization of government“ — even as Trump talked openly Monday of his desire to go after political enemies of his own, calling speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi, for example, “guilty as hell.”
Throwing down in his ongoing spat with the governor of California over that state’s water policy, Trump also signed a memorandum entitled: “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.”
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