WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump is signing dozens of executive orders on his first day in office as he looks to capitalize on his renewed political momentum to reshape the government and unwind the policies of the Biden presidency.
Many more executive orders are expected to come over the first full week of Trump’s second term, but he is hitting the ground running with actions to lay the groundwork for the next four years.
“With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said in a speech at the Capitol after being sworn into office.
The bulk of the day one orders are centered around immigration and locking down the U.S.-Mexico border. Immigration has been a signature issue for Trump throughout his time in the national political spotlight with promises to conduct mass deportations of illegal immigrants, resuming construction of his signature border wall and slowing the flow of drugs through U.S. points of entry.
He is declaring a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, allowing the federal government to deploy more personnel and resources to deal with the problems. Troops will be deployed to the border to aid immigration enforcement agents and “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
His immigration crackdown is also certain to create a legal battle in the coming years as he moves to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents in the country without legal status. The right to citizenship by birth was established under the 14th Amendment and scholars have questioned how the executive order would survive certain legal challenges.
Trump also issued orders to restarting the “Remain in Mexico” policy of his first term and designated drug cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations. He also suspended refugee resettlement in the United States for at least four months.
The president is leaning into another primary theme from the 2024 election in signing executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government and programs recognizing transgender individuals.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government, that there are only two genders: male and female,” he said in his inaugural address.
The gender policy will define them based on whether people are born with sperm or eggs, combatting what Trump said was an effort to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
The order on DEI programs, which have become a frequent target of Republican lawmakers and Trump, directs the White House to identify and eliminate them within the government.
“We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based,” Trump said.
The president is also signing a handful of orders aimed at dealing with the economy and inflation. He signed a memorandum directing the government to take a broad-based approach at bringing down inflation.
He is also loosening regulations on fossil fuel production in a move to expand domestic energy outputs that already reached record highs under the Biden administration. He will declare an declare an energy emergency, and said he will eliminate what he calls Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate.”
Trump signed documents he said would formally withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreements. He made the same move during his first term but Biden reversed it.
Trump also mentioned he would pardon those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, saying it would be “happening today” in his remarks to the crowd at Capitol One Arena Monday evening. Later, in the Oval Office, he did just that.
Trump said he was pardoning about 1,500 of his supporters who have been charged in the attack. He also commuted the prison sentences of leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The president is also directing the attorney general to seek the dismissal of about 450 pending cases against Jan. 6 defendants.
In another signing, Trump issued an executive order that all federal employees must return to the office for work. He also halted federal government hires, excepting the military and other parts of government that went unnamed and added a freeze on new federal regulations.
The president signed an executive order in the Oval Office to keep TikTok operating for 75 days as national security questions persist. TikTok’s China-based parent, ByteDance, was supposed to find a U.S. buyer or be banned on the previous Sunday.
Trump says the United States as a country should own half of TikTok, which he estimated could be worth $1 trillion.
“I think the US should be entitled to get half of TikTok and, congratulations, TikTok has a good partner and that would be worth, you know, could be $500 billion,” Trump says.
Notably absent from the day one executive action was instituting tariffs on foreign goods, one of the key tenets of his economic agenda that has also raised some concerns about raising prices for Americans.
Trump is also signing an order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He is also renaming the tallest mountain in North America from Mount Denali back to Mount McKinley, which was changed during the Obama administration.
He also signed an order that flags must be at full height at every future Inauguration Day. The order came because former President Jimmy Carter’s death had prompted flags to be at half-staff.
__________________
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
This post was originally published on here
