Here's what Trump said he'll do immediately once he becomes president
President-elect Donald Trump has laid out an ambitious agenda that he has promised will go into effect on Jan. 20, the day he will be sworn into office for his second term.
While some of Trump’s policy proposals, such as cutting corporate taxes, will require an assist from Congress in the form of passing new legislation that could take months to complete, others will simply require the stroke of a pen.
Here’s a rundown of the policies he hopes to begin pursuing on day one.
Executive order banning federal funding of gender-affirming health care
Trump repeatedly attacked Harris during the campaign over her support of transgender rights. He also promised to immediately sign an executive order that would ban federal funding for gender-affirming care deemed “necessary” through programs and agencies like Medicare, the Veterans Health Administration, the Department of Defense TRICARE and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
“On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on gender-affirming care — ridiculous. I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump said in a video posted to social media. “I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states.”
Trump also said he would support allowing “victims to sue doctors” who have performed transgender procedures on children.
He will also ask Congress to pass a bill that mandates that the only genders the federal government will recognize are those assigned at birth.
Immigration and mass deportation of migrants
On the campaign trail, Trump regularly promised that on day one of his administration he would begin the “largest deportation operation in American history.” That means rounding up, housing and removing up to 20 million people, many of them migrants who are in the country illegally.
In a Wednesday interview with Fox News, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that on “day one,” the new president would begin “launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country.”
But as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters on Wednesday, “This task is a mountain to climb. It's going to take Trump time."
For starters, Trump plans to reinstate the border policies he enacted during his first term but which ended under Biden, such as “Remain in Mexico,” which requires asylum seekers to wait in that country as their cases are being adjudicated by U.S. judges.
“All of the secure border policies that we had in place with President Trump, he can simply flip the switch and put those back in place just like they were before. They didn’t need an act of Congress,” senior campaign adviser Jason Miller told NBC’s Today in a Wednesday interview.
Next up, Trump will look to deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, a source familiar with the incoming administration’s plans told CNN.
“They’ll be targeted arrests,” Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a candidate to lead Trump’s deportation effort, told CNN. “We’ll know who we’re going to arrest, where we’re most likely to find them based on numerous, you know, investigative processes.”
Trump has also indicated that he is prepared to utilize the National Guard and perhaps even the U.S. military to carry out the massive deportation effort.
During the campaign, JD Vance, now vice president-elect, said that the new Trump administration would look to deport roughly 1 million annually. According to an estimate by the American Immigration Council, that cost of that effort would cost $88 billion each year, USA Today reported.
Economists have also warned that Trump’s deportation plan could cost the U.S. economy trillions in GDP.
Tariffs big and small
Trump ran in 2024 on the promise that he would implement sweeping tariffs on foreign imports in an effort to spur U.S. manufacturing and to force other countries to change their policies.
“I think that tariffs do need to be used to get counterparties back to the table, especially China, which is not living up to all of the agreements they made,” Steve Mnuchin, who served as treasury secretary during Trump’s first term, told CNBC on Thursday.
Once he is sworn in, Trump will largely have a free hand to levy tariffs as he sees fit since Congress has passed laws granting him the power to do so in response to a vaguely defined “international emergency,” the New York Times reported.
Where Trump will slap new tariffs, and how extensive those will be, remains to be seen, but in the waning days of the campaign, he threatened Mexico with tariffs unless it agreed to curb the flow of migrants into the U.S. or halt shipments of cars from China.
“I’m going to inform her, on day one or sooner, that if they don’t stop this onslaught of criminals and drugs coming into our country, I am going to immediately impose a 25% tariff on everything they send into the United States of America,” Trump said Monday at a rally in North Carolina, referring to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
Economists warn that across-the-board tariffs could spark a trade war, cause prices on consumer goods to skyrocket and lead to the return of crippling inflation.
‘Drill, baby, drill’
Trump promised during the campaign to expand U.S. oil drilling on day one of his administration. In practical terms, he will certainly prioritize expediting permits to expand oil drilling.
In anticipation of his election victory, Trump has already gone so far as to draft detailed plans for rolling back all Biden administration climate rules, the Washington Post reported.
“We’re going to drill, baby, drill. And I will terminate the 'Green New Scam' and will cut your energy prices in half, 50%, within one year from Jan. 20,” Trump said in October referencing the Inflation Reduction Act, the climate change legislation signed by Biden in 2022.
He is also passionately opposed to continuing any federal regulations put in place to address climate change, including the Inflation Reduction Act. Trump has promised to end all federal incentives to encourage the adoption of electric vehicles, and he has also pledged to do away with Biden-era fuel efficiency standards.
Trump has also vowed to sign an executive order on “day one” of his administration to halt offshore wind projects, a potential major source of clean energy, and he has pledged to once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, which seeks to limit global temperature rise by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
A deal between Ukraine and Russia
At a town hall event in May, Trump said he could end the war in Ukraine “in 24 hours.”
On Wednesday, Leavitt told Fox News that one of Trump’s “day one” priorities would be “bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to end this war.”
Both Trump and Vance have been harsh critics of the Biden administration’s funding for Ukraine to help it defend itself following Russia’s invasion. The Biden White House is now planning to rush more than $6 billion in allocated military aid to Kyiv prior to Trump’s return to power in January, Politico reported. Once that happens, most experts believe that Trump will cut off further U.S. military aid for Ukraine.
Trump has stated that he believes Ukraine should have been prepared to have “given up” more in negotiations with Russia to avert a war, claiming that if he were president, Russian President Vladimir Putin would never have invaded in the first place.
Whether Trump is able to quickly negotiate peace in Ukraine, and what those terms may include, it’s clear that U.S. policy on the war will abruptly change on Jan. 20.
New sanctions on Iran
Picking up where he left off, Trump is poised to quickly impose new U.S. sanctions on Iran in an effort to influence its funding of Hezbollah and ambitions of producing nuclear weapons.
Leavitt told Fox News that Trump would issue “very tough sanctions on the Iranian regime so we can stop the chaos in the Middle East.” Yet tough sanctions against Tehran imposed by Trump in 2019 did not result in the desired goal of Iran's abandoning its nuclear program.
New sanctions would not require congressional approval and therefore could be another item on the “day one” checklist.