Just hours into his second term as president, Donald Trump was hard at work signing dozens of executive orders aimed at ushering in his “golden age of America.” That’s how he described his plans in his inauguration speech, anyway, promising policies that would allow the United States to “flourish and be respected.” In reality, much of his agenda seemed engineered to settle old scores and nail down the framework for his ultraconservative vision. Trump promptly rolled back 78 of former president Biden’s executive orders only to replace them with a suite of new commands. Some, such as “ending the weaponization of the federal government,” are ominously nebulous. Others are painfully specific, particularly those aimed at dismantling civil rights. Here, what we know about all of them so far.
First, how enforceable are these executive orders?
Incoming presidents tend to kick off their terms with a document-signing spree, often addressing whatever they didn’t like about the previous administration. Executive orders do not alter existing law on their own but instead direct government officials to start making policy changes. They usually provide a picture of how the president intends to run things, as PBS notes.
In Trump’s case, that picture is frightening — not least because his party controls both chambers of Congress and holds a large number of federal-court appointments. The legislature and the judiciary exist as checks on the president’s power and can potentially block executive orders, but it does not seem likely that Republican lawmakers would, for example, legislate away a request for expanded drilling rights. Several of Trump’s orders — like his attempt to eliminate birthright citizenship in defiance of the Constitution — have already raised legal challenges, though, which could potentially tie them up in court for long periods of time and suspend their enforcement. We will have to wait and see.
What are Trump’s plans on immigration?
Trump is already making good on his campaign promise of a sweeping crackdown. He has announced that he would suspend entry along the U.S. border with Mexico under the guise of protecting the country against “invasion.” He also went so far as to declare a state of emergency at the southern border, trotting out some of his favorite bogeymen — “cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human-traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics” — to justify his actions. By invoking the National Emergencies Act, Trump attempted to sidestep Congress in securing funds to construct his border wall and mobilize the U.S. armed forces to implement his immigration policy (necessary to “seal the borders,” he argued in a separate order giving the Department of Defense 30 days to bring him a game plan).
At the same time, Trump halted the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and previewed stricter visa screenings to weed out alleged threats to national security. Having moved to designate drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump also laid the groundwork for renewed travel bans against countries that did not meet his new vetting requirements — and even the deportation of visa-holders from those countries.
Alongside his plans to prevent people from coming into the country, he outlined several maneuvers for ejecting immigrants who are already here. In an order entitled “Securing Our Borders,” Trump provided for the arrest, detention, deportation, and/or prosecution of immigrants suspected of breaking the law. This order aims to end the practice of allowing migrants to remain free while awaiting immigration hearings, and it puts an end to the CBP One asylum program. This means that people seeking entry into the U.S. via the southern border must wait in Mexico while their cases are processed.
But among the orders that have garnered the most attention is his attempt to revoke birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants on U.S. soil. Under the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the country automatically receives citizenship, regardless of whether or not their parents are citizens themselves. Under Trump’s new proposal, the government wouldn’t extend citizenship to the child of an undocumented mother or to the child of a “lawful but temporary” visitor, if the father is not a citizen or resident. While the order’s start date is 30 days from January 20, the American Civil Liberties Union has already filed a lawsuit to block it, labeling the order “unconstitutional” and an “attack on newborns.”
On civil rights?
In line with Trump’s belief that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives enable discrimination against straight white men, the president immediately axed DEI programs across federal agencies. According to Time magazine, the Office of Personnel Management has already set about putting DEI staffers on paid leave and wiping government websites of their work. DEI trainings are canceled, and the names of workers involved in DEI efforts are being recorded for imminent “reduction in force action.”
In the new Trump administration, federal agencies are not to consider any DEI principles in hiring new employees. Pursuant to another executive order, a new “Federal Hiring Plan” to be submitted within 120 days would “prevent the hiring of individuals based on their race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch.” In rolling back the alleged “discrimination” Trump believes affirmative action has enabled, the president is reaching all the way back to a 1965 executive order by Lyndon B. Johnson that safeguarded equal opportunity for women and people of color applying to federal jobs.
Even more chilling is Trump’s executive order on “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” This document states that the federal government will recognize only two sexes going forward — male and female — and attempts to revoke civil rights for transgender people. Falling back on a favored anti-trans talking point, the order argues that to preserve women’s “dignity, safety, and well-being” in bathrooms and shelters, the Trump administration will “defend women’s rights and protect freedom of conscience” by using “clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male” from conception, a medically inaccurate caveat that throws fetal personhood into the mix as well. There’s a lot going on in this order, but in short, “it directs all of the federal agencies in the executive branch to adopt new policies that pretend as if transgender people don’t exist,” Shawn Thomas Meerkamper, managing attorney at the Transgender Law Center, told the Cut.
Notably, the order mandates that all government-issued identification — think Social Security cards, visas, and passports, the last of which was updated in 2022 to include an “X” option — categorizes the holder as either male or female and requires the government to reclassify employees by the sex they were assigned at birth. It bars the use of federal funds and grants to “promote gender ideology” — a line item that presumably includes gender-affirming health care. It rolls back previous guidance on anti-trans discrimination, including an Obama-era rule stating that access to government-funded emergency housing and shelter be granted in accordance with applicants’ gender identity. Crucially, it also reclassifies federal prisoners in accordance with the sex they were assigned at birth, potentially placing trans women in male prisons and vice versa. Going even further, Trump’s order bars federal prisons from supplying inmates with medications in support of gender-affirming care like hormone-replacement therapy.
It is very likely that this and the DEI order will both meet legal challenges, rooted as they are in years of legal precedent and prolonged court battles.
On the climate crisis?
For the second time, Trump announced that the U.S. would no longer participate in the Paris Agreement, a multinational effort to keep global temperatures from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius within this century. Given that the overwhelming theme of Trump’s executive orders on the environment is “Drill, baby, drill,” his withdrawal is not surprising. More novel is his declaration of an energy emergency, an unprecedented step that may enable the administration to sidestep or expedite permits or to ignore environmental protections that stand between it and unharvested natural resources. Trump’s order argues “the harmful and shortsighted policies of the previous administration” have hamstrung the country when it comes to creating an adequate, affordable energy supply, driving up prices for cash-strapped Americans and forcing reliance on “hostile foreign actors.”
Having deemed this a national emergency, the order allows the army to get involved in the administration’s plans. Per Trump’s order entitled “Unleashing American Energy,” those plans seem to boil down to mining all desirable U.S. land — and Alaska in particular, per a separate order — for resources, whether that’s for fossil fuels, minerals, or anything else that might prove lucrative. That’s supposedly in service of job creation and bringing down energy costs, though given that he suspended, in a separate order, the leasing of land in offshore waters to wind farms, the primary goal seems to be a return to reliance on drillable energy. Unfortunately, according to one 2024 study, expanding liquefied-natural-gas exports and production could actually drive up consumer costs in addition to ravaging the environment. Anyway, Trump also rolled back Biden’s commitment to getting more electric vehicles on the nation’s roads — nominally to safeguard consumer choice but more likely to safeguard a market for all that oil and gas. Similarly, he axed energy-efficiency regulations for home appliances and placed under review all federal policy that imposes an “undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”
On health?
Arguing that the World Health Organization had “ripped us off” and claiming it had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the group. Though misguided, the move is expected: Faced with widespread criticism of his pandemic response, Trump added the WHO to his hit list in April 2020, escalating his attacks from publicly bad-mouthing the agency to beginning America’s withdrawal in July of that year. Trump didn’t stay in office long enough to realize his plan the first time around — per the New York Times, the U.S. must give a year’s notice before leaving and pay its dues for that time in addition to securing congressional approval — and so here we are. The U.S. does contribute about $1.25 billion of the WHO’s $6.8 billion budget, but public-health experts would stress that the expense is worth it. Without the WHO, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not have access to information and data on global health trends, which could have disastrous implications for future pandemics and disease outbreaks.
On the economy?
For months, Trump has been touting tariffs as an answer to all that ails the U.S. economy. Though he promised tariffs on day one, his lengthy executive order summarizing an “America-first trade policy” does not put any in place. It does sketch some wide-reaching changes to national trade policy, based on the outcome of several sweeping reviews. In the order, Trump directs government agencies to look out for areas where countries may be taking advantage of the U.S. by means of currency manipulation or other unfair tactics. It directs officials to seek out new trade partners, calls for an “External Revenue Service” to “collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues” from other countries, and dangles the possibility of tariffs on Canada and Mexico. As a candidate, Trump said he would impose a “25 percent tariff on ALL products coming into the United States” from those countries, starting on January 20. That didn’t happen, though Trump told reporters he might put them in place on February 1. Also absent: The oft-promised universal tariff on imports, something the president is purportedly still mulling.
For his own administration?
Several of Trump’s executive orders point to a desire to consolidate power among his yes-men in Washington. He fast-tracked certain White House staffers to receive high-level security clearance without undergoing the typical vetting — while freezing the implementation of any new regulations until a Trump-appointed administrator has had an opportunity to review them.
On the flip side, even as he ordered all federal employees to return to in-person work immediately, he implemented a hiring freeze on federal positions. Exceptions are allowed only for roles involved in public safety, national security, and enforcing his immigration policy. He also put federal workers on notice, reviving an order he implemented at the end of his first term that effectively empowered agency posts to reclassify career employees as political hires. Now, it paves the way for Trump to start firing people without grounds and replacing them with loyalists, allegedly as a means of dismantling the “deep state.”
Any other weird things he took the time to quasi-legislate?
He pledged an end to what he considers government-sponsored censorship, in the form of fact-checking misinformation on social media, and a restoration of the universal right to free speech. Sorry, but redundant! The broligarchy is already handling that for him.
He vowed retribution against political enemies, on the grounds that 51 intelligence officials purportedly engaged in election interference by signing a letter attributing all that business with Hunter Biden’s laptop to a possible “Russian information operation.” Trump also name-checked John Bolton, his national security adviser turned adversary following the publication of a memoir that painted Trump as an inept baby intent on sucking up to dictators. With one executive order, Trump revoked security clearances for the whole group.
He pardoned 1,600 January 6 rioters and commuted the sentences of those already serving time, regardless of the severity of the crimes committed. No surprises here.
He made a stunning commitment to the death penalty, ordering the attorney general to automatically seek it for federal crimes involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer or capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. Biden’s Justice Department stayed federal executions in 2021, and the former president issued pardons to 37 death-row inmates before leaving office. Naturally, Trump’s order commands the AG to revisit those pardons.
He delayed the TikTok ban. Although the effort to ban TikTok originated in Trump’s first administration, it has since been rebranded as a Democratic fumble, offering Trump the opportunity to swoop in and clean up a mess many forgot he actually made. Among his first orders of business, Trump decreed a 75-day stay on TikTok’s death sentence, in which time he charged his administration to find “an opportunity to determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
He renamed the Gulf of Mexico, sort of. It’s the “Gulf of America” now, at least as far as federal parlance is concerned. Similarly, Trump wants you to call Alaska’s Denali “Mt. McKinley.”
He placed foreign-aid programs under review and suspended activity for 90 days.
He officially established the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, giving Elon Musk yet another new job.
He required that anyone who might be flying an American flag at half-mast, as is the custom in periods of mourning, to hoist it high for the rest of Inauguration Day, even if they had lowered it out of respect for recently deceased former president Jimmy Carter and not as a commentary on the state of American democracy. The preservation of Trump’s fragile ego will always top his to-do list.