President Donald Trump set a breakneck pace on the first day of his second term, taking numerous executive actions and rescinding 78 executive orders from his predecessor, while also pardoning roughly 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, breach at the U.S. Capitol.
The commander-in-chief moved fast on the border, inflation, energy, government censorship, federal bureaucracy, and much more. He also officially renamed parts of the map, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and reverting Denali back to Mount McKinley. Here’s a rundown of Trump’s first moves upon his return to the White House.
Border and Immigration
Trump issued 10 executive actions on border security, including a national emergency declaration to pave the way for military deployment to the border and the completion of a border wall.Trump’s executive orders set the stage for deportation operations while cracking down on illegal immigration and crime.
With the end of “catch and release” and the return of policies such as “remain in Mexico,” those seeking asylum will no longer be able to live and work in the United States while awaiting adjudication of their claims.
Those policies under President Joe Biden were a significant factor in attracting some 11 million illegal immigrants into the country in four years, experts have said.
Another executive order directs the attorney general to seek capital punishment for the murder of law enforcement officers and for capital crimes committed by illegal immigrants.
Ending birthright citizenship will likely spark legal challenges.
Birthright citizenship is addressed in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
Trump also rescinded multiple Biden executive orders related to the border and immigration.
Reducing Inflation
Trump signed an inflation memorandum titled “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis,” which will assemble a whole-of-government approach to tackling high prices.In his executive action, Trump referenced “unprecedented regulatory oppression” from the previous administration, which he estimates has “imposed almost $50,000 in costs on the average American household.”
He ordered the heads of all executive departments and agencies to “deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people and increase the prosperity of the American worker.” The measures will include expanding the housing supply, eliminating administrative expenses and rent-seeking practices that add to health care costs, and removing requirements that raise the costs of home appliances.
Trump, according to the memorandum, will abolish “harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies that increase the costs of food and fuel.”
In his inaugural address, the president said that today’s high inflation rates had been caused by overspending and by ballooning energy prices.
Cumulative inflation has surged about 21 percent over the past four years. Trump will begin his second term with an annual inflation rate of 2.9 percent, compared to 1.4 percent when he left office.
Economists have said that Trump’s economic agenda, especially his proposed tariffs, could rekindle the inflation flame by making production more expensive and raising consumer prices.
U.S. Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent dismissed these concerns during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee last week, saying that a layered-in approach could offset a spike in prices. Additionally, he said that U.S. dollar appreciation, cheaper foreign exports, and changes to consumer preferences could counteract potential adverse effects.
Trade and Tariffs
A portion of Trump’s raft of executive orders focused on his trade agenda.Trump will not impose new levies on other nations.
This does not mean he will abandon his pursuit of tariffs. Speaking to reporters from the White House, Trump said he will consider imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1 because of their trade policies. The president said he will consider putting levies on the Chinese regime if it does not approve a TikTok deal.
In his inaugural address, he also pledged to overhaul the trade system.
“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” he said.
Trump told reporters: “You put a universal tariff on anybody doing business in the United States, because they’re coming in and they’re stealing our wealth, they’re stealing our jobs, they’re stealing our companies. They’re hurting our companies.”
The president reiterated his plan to establish an External Revenue Service to collect all tariffs, duties, and revenues from foreign businesses and countries.
Tariffs were a chief tenet of his election campaign. He vowed to impose 10 percent to 20 percent universal levies on all U.S. importers and 60 percent to 100 percent tariffs on Chinese products arriving in the United States. Shortly after the November 2024 election, Trump threatened 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico if they didn’t curb illegal immigration and fentanyl trafficking.
WHO Withdrawal
Trump also signed an executive order to remove the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), a U.N. agency.The order also ends any negotiations regarding the organization’s global pandemic treaty, and it instructs the secretary of state to inform the top ranks of the WHO and the United Nations. The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to that position earlier on Jan. 20.
Trump previously withdrew the United States from the WHO in 2020, against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden rejoined the organization soon after taking office. The order revokes the Biden administration communication to rejoin.
Climate Pact Exit
Trump has again withdrawn the United States from the Paris Agreement, essentially reissuing his 2017 executive order leaving the global accord.It will take a year to formally disenroll from the pact, but the move signals that the nation’s energy policy will no longer adhere to global carbon emission goals.
“The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Trump said on Jan. 20.
“You know, China, they use a lot of ‘dirty’ energy, but they produce a lot of energy and when that stuff goes up in the air, you know, [it] doesn’t stay there ... it floats into the United States of America.”
It is difficult to “fight for cleaner air” when “dirty air is dropping all over us,” Trump said. “Unless everybody does it, it just doesn’t work.”
Withdrawing from the climate pact will save taxpayers $1 trillion, according to the White House.
National Energy Emergency
In the first of many energy-related executive actions expected, Trump declared a national energy emergency and opened millions of acres in Alaska to fossil fuel development.“We will drill, baby, drill,” Trump said to rousing applause during his inaugural address, noting that the United States has more oil and gas than any country on Earth. “We are going to use it,” he said.
Under his “Unleash American Energy” executive order, the president can streamline permitting, loosen regulations, and “use all necessary resources to build critical infrastructure” such as pipelines and expanded electric grids.
“We will bring prices down, fill our strategic reserves up again, right to the top, and export American energy all over the world,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
Trump directed the Department of the Interior to restore oil and gas leasing on 13 million acres in Alaska’s 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve, reinstating an order from his first term that was reversed by Biden.
At least two orders unplugged Biden executive orders that placed restrictions on offshore drilling across 625 million acres off the East and West coasts only weeks ago.
Inflation Reduction Act
Three other orders reverse energy-related Biden orders that provide regulatory authority for implementing aspects of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).Trump and Republican congressional leaders have vowed to dismember the massive IRA, a signature bill of Biden’s “Green New Deal,” alongside the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 2022 CHIPS & Science Act.
Untangling the IRA will require legislation. Some of its provisions are popular, including in Republican congressional districts.
By repealing Biden’s three executive orders, the White House and Congress can chip away at the IRA by administratively tightening tax credits, clawing back some loans and grants, and revising unfinalized rules under the Congressional Review Act.
End of EV Agenda
In line with his vision for U.S. energy, Trump rescinded an executive order signed by Biden in August 2021 that set a target of 50 percent zero-emission new vehicle sales by the end of the decade. Electric vehicle sales in the United States reached 8.1 percent of sales in 2024, according to Cox Automotive.Another new executive order establishes as U.S. policy an intention to eliminate electric vehicle subsidies and to eliminate state fuel emissions waivers. California introduced its Clean Air Act waiver as a regulatory driver of electric vehicle adoption.
The president said his orders make good on his promises to U.S. autoworkers.
“You’ll be able to buy the car of your choice,” he said. “We will build automobiles in America again at a rate that nobody could have dreamt possible just a few years ago.”
Biden’s August 2021 executive order directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to work on new emissions standards.
Consequently, an EPA rule, finalized earlier this year, required automakers to tighten tailpipe emissions standards in a gradual fashion through 2032.
The regulation, which was less severe than one proposed by the same agency in 2023, set a target of 56 percent electric for all new vehicle sales by 2032.
Federal Bureaucracy, DOGE
Trump promised to reform and streamline government bureaucracy so that it will “work for the American people,” including by freezing “bureaucrat hiring except in essential areas.”He announced the rescission of a slate of executive orders, with the goal of improving government workers’ accountability. Another executive order requires that all federal workers return to in-person work, noting that “only 6 percent of employees currently work in person.”
It also mandates DOGE teams of at least four people across all federal agencies. Software modernization is a key focus of the DOGE executive order, in line with the tech-forward outlook of DOGE’s leader to date, Elon Musk.
No Government Censorship
Trump issued an executive order against government censorship, which he vowed would “bring back free speech to America.”“Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents, something I know something about,” Trump said in his inaugural address.
It also directs the attorney general to prepare a report to address abuses against U.S. citizens’ free speech under the Biden administration.
While on the campaign trail, the president outlined his plans for a day one executive order targeting restrictions on speech, often carried out by big tech firms under pressure from the federal government.
Trump added that he would swiftly purge the federal government of those who facilitated domestic censorship and would keep federal funds from going to initiatives that would empower certain groups to determine what qualifies as “misinformation” or “disinformation.”
While advocates of such programs say they combat falsehoods online, especially those spread by unfriendly state actors, opponents say that recent campaigns against misinformation and disinformation have targeted many U.S. citizens on political grounds.
The executive order calls government censorship “intolerable in a free society.”
“Under the guise of combating ’misinformation,‘ ’disinformation,‘ and ’malinformation,’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate,” the order states.
Exposing Abuse
Trump moved to prevent the destruction of records as his administration takes the helm, part of a broader executive order aimed at addressing what he has characterized as a partisan takeover of government institutions that should remain neutral.“To stop the weaponization of law enforcement and our government, I will also sign an order directing every federal agency to preserve all records pertaining to political persecutions under the last administration, of which there were many, and beginning the process of exposing any and all abuses of power, even though he’s pardoned many of these people,” Trump said shortly before signing that and other executive orders, and referring to Biden’s preemptive pardons.
It similarly directs the director of national intelligence to probe possible abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The executive order instructs the federal bureaucracy “to comply with applicable document-retention policies and legal obligations.”
Cases in which employees defy the order “will be referred to the attorney general,” it states.
Security Clearances Stripped
Trump’s executive actions also include an order targeting election interference. It cites the 2020 letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials who dismissed accounts of Hunter Biden’s laptop as “part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”The executive order criticizes a 2019 memoir by former national security adviser John Bolton, describing it as “rife with sensitive information drawn from his time in government.”
The order revokes the security clearances of Bolton as well as 49 intelligence officials involved in the 2020 Hunter Biden laptop analysis, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
It also instructs the director of national intelligence to produce a report on steps to take to prevent election interference in the future.
Pardons for Jan. 6
The president followed through on a promise to pardon participants in the U.S. Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021.“You’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” Trump said earlier in the day at the Capitol.
Trump’s pardons for Jan. 6 defendants were issued hours after Biden released a slew of his own preemptive pardons.
“Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley?” Trump asked on Jan. 20. “Why are we helping Liz Cheney?”
In the final minutes before Trump and Vance were sworn in, Biden preemptively pardoned his siblings and their spouses. In December 2024, Biden pardoned his son Hunter as the younger Biden faced sentencing for firearm and tax convictions.
TikTok Reprieve
Trump signed an executive order to give social media platform TikTok 75 days to secure a U.S. buyer. If TikTok doesn’t separate from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance, it faces a ban in the United States.Previous attempts by Oracle and Walmart to acquire ByteDance’s U.S. operations fell apart in 2021.
DEI Targeted
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies were the focus of another executive order.“This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will forge a society that is color-blind and merit-based.”
The new order ends all federal programs and preferences that are based on race, sex, gender, or any other immutable characteristics. It also instructs the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the attorney general to terminate all “discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
The Biden administration prioritized DEI efforts, which often encourage hiring practices that give advantages based on metrics including gender and race.
Another executive order seeks to ensure that merit guides hiring in the federal government rather than race, sex, or other factors.
2 Sexes Policy
Trump also signed an order to create a new U.S. policy on gender.“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 said in his inaugural address.
Trump’s executive order defines a female as “a person belonging at conception to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” which refers to eggs or ova.
The definition does not distinguish gender and sex based on chromosomes, bypassing the issue of those who may have an irregular combination of chromosomes.
The federal government will no longer “promote” gender ideology and will revoke the Biden administration’s efforts to expand Title IX to include gender identity.
The order also protects women’s privacy in intimate spaces such as bathrooms and changing rooms, while also safeguarding against enforcing pronoun policies that encroach on free speech.
Name Changes
Another executive order directs the Department of the Interior to rename both the nation’s tallest mountain and a massive Atlantic Ocean basin in the southeast.“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” Trump said in his inaugural address.
Mount McKinley received its original name in 1896 from prospector William Dickey, who named it after then-presidential candidate William McKinley. President Barack Obama renamed it Denali in 2015, a name long used by Native American tribes in the area.
Trump also said the Gulf of Mexico will be renamed the Gulf of America.
The Department of the Interior will oversee changes to any reference in laws, maps, regulations, documents, papers, or other U.S. records to ensure they refer to the basin as the Gulf of America.
