Trump Term Two, Day One, Executive Orders
Photo by The Trump White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
As promised, the second Donald Trump administration featured a cavalcade of executive orders on a wide swath of MAGA priorities. Here are some of them for discussion and review.
From the Washington Post:
Ending birthright citizenship in the United States
The U.S. government will no longer recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States to immigrants who lack legal status, according to an order Trump signed Monday. It also bars birthright citizenship for children born to people on temporary work, student and tourist visas. The order, which is expected to face legal scrutiny, reinterprets the words “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which grants citizenship to nearly all people born on U.S. soil, to exclude babies born to parents illegally in the country.
Declaring a ‘national emergency’ on the southern border and other major immigration orders
Trump declared a “national emergency” on the U.S.-Mexico border as part of immigration-related executive actions. He also declared in a separate order that “the current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion.”
He ordered a halt to refugee admissions in the United States for “at least four months” and said his administration would designate cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations.
He directed the military to make it a priority to “seal the borders” and end unlawful mass migration, drug trafficking and other crimes. And he directed the armed forces to provide troops, detention space, transportation — including aircraft — and other services to boost border security.
The United States will stop allowing migrants who cross the border illegally into the United States, even if they are seeking asylum, per one of Trump’s directives. He also ordered the restoration of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires migrants to await asylum hearings in Mexico.
Another order allows the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including capital crimes committed by undocumented migrants.
Making changes to the federal workforce
The president ordered federal workers to come back to their offices. The action Trump signed directs agency heads to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.”
Trump also issued a freeze on federal hiring with exceptions for military personnel and jobs “related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
He reinstated a policy that would strip employment protections from tens of thousands of federal workers. Trump stripped those protections in his first term in office, and Biden reinstated them. Another memorandum is aimed at “restoring accountability for career senior executives” in the federal government. The memo directs his administration to issue new performance plans for senior government officials who are not political appointees and reassign officials to ensure they are “optimally aligned to implement” his agenda. A different order makes changes to the federal government’s hiring plan.
Trump also signed an order that calls for the elimination of government diversity programs. It includes the termination of all federal offices and positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion as well as environmental justice. The order also directs his administration to review which federal contractors have provided DEI training materials to federal workers and which federal funding grantees have been given funds to advance DEI and environmental justice.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement
The president signed a letter to the United Nations to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement.
Trump initially withdrew the United States from the accords during his first term in office, but under Biden, the country had rejoined it.
Ending ‘weaponization’ of the federal government
A newly signed but vaguely written directive orders the U.S. attorney general and the director of national intelligence to review potential misconduct within the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the intelligence community that may have occurred in the last four years.
Delaying enforcement of a federal ban on TikTok
Trump ordered his administration to delay enforcing a federal ban against TikTok, giving the app’s Chinese parent company more time to broker a deal with a potential American buyer. Legislation signed into law and upheld by the Supreme Court required the Chinese parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a ban in the United States over concerns that the app poses a national security threat by potentially exposing American users to Chinese surveillance or propaganda. TikTok has said those claims are unfounded. China hawks, including some Senate Republicans, balked over the weekend at Trump’s plans, saying there is no legal basis to extend the divestiture window. The president cannot unilaterally overturn a law that was passed by Congress and affirmed in court, and his plans to halt enforcement are likely to face legal scrutiny.
Clemency for Jan. 6 defendants
Trump issued a presidential proclamation commuting the sentences of 14 individuals charged with crimes related to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The proclamation also granted pardons “to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Trump also ordered the attorney general “to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct” on Jan. 6.
Trump signed an order to officially recognize only two sexes (male and female), which would be defined based on the reproduction cells at conception. He directed agencies to issue government documents showing people’s sex at conception, stop using gender identity or preferred pronouns, and maintain women-only spaces in prisons and shelters.
The measure directs the attorney general to write new policies concerning the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found sex discrimination in employment includes gender identity and sexual orientation. It also directs the Bureau of Prisons to “ensure that no Federal funds are expended for any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
The action could prompt the Education Department to punish schools that recognize gender identity, for instance by allowing transgender girls access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms or sports teams. It also could affect teachers who, in some districts, are told to use students’ preferred names and pronouns.
A full list and running tracker of the first day Trump executive orders can be read here:
Lawlessness. Half of this he doesn’t have the authority to do and the other half is BS.Report
Who is going to stop him? Congress? The courts? Who?Report
Mount Denali got its name changed back to Mount McKinley.Report
GMC hardest hit.Report
Damn, there go my “Denali is not just a mountain in Alaska” jokes. Those always killed.Report
Trump has no idea how the McKinley presidency ended, does he….Report
Maybe he does, and that’s why he selected Vance.Report
I went and read the text and find it interesting that the name of the mountain is being changed, but the national park and preserve in which it is located explicitly retains the name Denali. Digging a little further, it turns out that “Denali National Park and Preserve” is a matter of statute. Several/many of the new EOs, including this one, have explicit language that says the order doesn’t apply if it violates statute.
This is the same EO that renames the Gulf of Mexico. “Gulf of Mexico” is a term used in a variety of international agreements and treaties.Report
I can understand the McKinley/Denali thing. When I was growing up, it was McKinley. Well, maybe the two times I heard it mentioned.
But if he thinks I’m going to stop calling it the Gulf of Mexico, he’s nuts.Report
Honestly they aren’t thinking very clearly if they want us to call it the Gulf of America. Calling it the Gulf of Mexico lets them blame Mexico for hurricanes. Who are they going to blame when the hurricanes are coming from inside the house?Report
I heard someone suggest “Gulf of the Americas” and I guess that that’s poetic and all that but I’m not calling it that either.Report
Let’s go with Mare Nostrum.Report
Nice, then we need a giant chain from Key West to Guantanamo … just like Constantinople.Report
Heh. That’s what radar is for.Report
drilling wasn’t banned in the Gulf of America.Report
JFC. If it’s this I’m going to be furious, so it’s probably this.Report
Ok, I can feel my anti-Trump non-Republican Solidarity party enjoyer calling balls and strikes credibility wearing off in the other thread… so here’s one we can all condemn as plain old bad.
And, not just the usual ‘dumb bad’ but actual bad bad… triple bad bad bad for the people actually convicted of Sedition.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/granting-pardons-and-commutation-of-sentences-for-certain-offenses-relating-to-the-events-at-or-near-the-united-states-capitol-on-january-6-2021/
In a properly functioning Republic, we’d impeach him for this.Report
We tried to impeach him twice. For critically important stuff. We failed.Report
Yes, I was there.
On this one, part of me suspects that someone (I’m assuming Susie Wiles… btw, notice how everything hinges on Susie Wiles existing — how long will that last?) said, um, for the tiniest shred of protection, let’s just commute the sentence of the Seditious Conspiracy boys. At least they’re still convicted felons then.Report
The House and Senate won’t impeach him over this or anything else.Report
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/day-two
After a morning meeting, I sat down to my computer around 11:30 a.m. ET and read two reader emails picked more or less at random out of my inbox. The first was from an American expat. The gist of his email was that American liberals — Blue America, for lack of a better descriptor — are totally unprepared for what’s coming down the pike toward them. The second was from a federal government employee reviewing the executive orders relevant to the federal workforce and explaining to me in so many words, ‘yeah, good luck with that.’ The expat’s email was generally more pessimistic and totalizing than I’m inclined to be. You may differ and you may be right; who knows? But in general the two emails together captured the moment as well or better than any report, essay or interview I might have read — a mix of actions and red flags almost unimaginable by any normal standard (though in virtually every case unsurprising) mixed with an underbrush of the sheer size, inertia and difficulty of whatever changes Trump is trying to make. They’re both true. Both true at once.
The best way to understand most of these executive orders is that they are statements of intent. That’s actually what an “executive order” is, in its origin: even in the much smaller federal government of a century ago, let alone two and a half centuries ago, the federal government was always a big thing — geographically if not in comparison to what we know today. The President can’t talk to everyone who works for him as head of the executive branch. So executive orders are ways of making clear, putting on paper, what his directions are.
At a fundamental level, they are, especially for Trump, performative. They become real when his appointees begin acting on them and they get litigated in courts, and validated or not validated. Pardons and commutations are real. Those things actually happened yesterday. They’re done. People are out of jail. That can’t be reversed. And Trump appears to have pardoned or commuted either every Jan. 6th convict/indictee or almost all of them. (This last marginal difference is unclear; but if a few stragglers weren’t released, he released the most dangerous and the most violent.) It’s important to understand the difference.
One thing I found interesting last night is that as lawyers began reading through the EOs, they noticed something pretty consistent. They were sloppy and contradictory, often doing things the authors hadn’t even intended. Is that a big deal? Well, yes and no. It’s the President’s will. So he can — mostly — express his will again or kind of as many times as he wants to. Fundamentally if President Trump wants to do X he’s not going to be stopped because an executive order was a sloppy cut and paste job, which many of these were. Success or failure is going to come down to three variables: 1) court action, 2) how much focus and determination his appointees have in putting them into effect and 3) public opinion. But it’s an indication that the belief that Trump’s team is more tried, tested and expert this time around may simply not be true. And that’s an important fact to know.Report
From inside – if only that were true. We are already getting very specific direction to implement many of his EOs. Direction from career civil servants acting as political appointees – as they do every transition. They got their direction from somewhere.
His team is more competent then you think.Report
The head of the FCC has an interesting thread about DEI and how one of the executive orders was to “end the promotion of DEI”.
It’s gone from the FCC’s budget. No more advisory groups, no more equity action plans, no more DEI analysis in the economic reports.Report
Good riddance.Report
Yup.Report
And fascism took hold of the land because lo, the centerist declare the woke was worseReport
“Is that a reason to stop being woke? Maybe be less woke?”
“LOL. LMAO.”Report
Well, to be clear, the centrists said “this seems not very helpful as a practical matter and pure poison as a political matter”, the idealists answered “even trying to assign a name to this, let alone critiquing it, is racist” and then the voters said “yup, woke is worse”. And here we are. Though, let us be clear, the question of wokeism is only one of many elements many of which make the centrists look bad too.Report
Woke is mainly ivory tower discussions that moved into online spaces with a slightly bigger number of speakers. The big problem with a lot of it is that it comes across as really doctrinaire to normies. I don’t think it turns people away from liberalism or leftism but it definitely can turn them off from politics. Take for example discussions about what books should be read in school. Real world people will speak about including non-white or LGBT authors. Online left edgelord people speak about cancelling white male authors with glee. Totally different ways of approaching the same topic.Report
DEI might be the closest thing the left as to a wingnut grift but it is more tedious than actually harmful and if done right, it could theoretically be beneficial (it will never be done right because that requires time, effort, and money that doesn’t produce a profit).
But this order is only limited to the federal government and it is really not worth getting underwear in a twist over DEI considering all the other damage Trump and Co. is going to do.
Coalition building means having to grin and bear some things you dislike sometimes.
How long before JB trolls on the sentence above?Report
I think it’s a fine observation. I think that Omnicause thinking is actively bad for the Democrats.
Do you think that the moral leadership will be willing to embrace some vulgar utilitarianism to get a handful more bedfellows? “Guys, guys, guys… we’re here to talk about fighting Trump. We’re not going to open with a Land Acknowledgment and we’re not going to talk about Gaza.”
Think you can get away with that?
Because I lean “no” for the moment.Report
I mean, you’re flagrantly wrong about that. Harris had multiple instances of doing this exact thing you’re describing during her campaign and she “got away with it” just fine from the Dems and even the identarian lefties. She lost, partially, because she hoped she didn’t have to go from mostly not talking about it to actively talking against it, sure, and couldn’t because of her mistakes in 2020 but she did do exactly what you’re referring to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1n7QBi53ZsReport
Do you think she got away with that?
Because I lean “no” for the moment.Report
She lost by a hair and suffered no particular revolt, defection or uprising from the intersectional left. So by your own terms, yes, she got away with it.
Likewise her convention was one giant celebration of doing exactly what you described and it’s generally viewed as one of the high points of her campaign so she definitely got away with it.Report
She never was ahead according to her internal polling. Not even for an hour.Report
You and I don’t disagree much Saul. DEI is assuredly, along with a terrifyingly large number of NGO’s and nonprofits, the left wing equivalent of the rights’ megapastor Christian circuit. And, much like the megapastor Christians before it, the whole thing has made the left look bad and steered the left in unproductive cul de sacs.
I would never, ever, say that Trump is worth getting rid of DEI. We seemed to be steadily rolling it back on our own. But I have no qualms about saying that Trump tossing it out is probably more good than bad. Those highly educated folks will simply have to find other jobs instead.Report
My reactions are as follows:
1. EO on Birthright citizenship- bad policy for reasons I went onto on other post, probably unconstitutional.
2. Border Emergency- unclear what this actually does, if anything. Seems likely to be empty posturing.
3. Getting rid of work remote bad, getting rid of DEI good, don’t know enough about the protections but my anecdotal experience from my brief stint as a federal employee was that there was little discipline or accountability anywhere.
4. Paris- bad, but probably doesn’t mean much given the chances of anyone meeting what they agreed to are already low. Climate will be mitigated (or not) by tech not treaties.
5. Weaponization of the government- unclear what this actually means.
6. TikTok- very bad if in fact unilaterally disregarding a law passed by Congress.
7. 1/6 Pardons- also very bad for reasons that seem too obvious to require further explanation.Report
1. Ending Birthright citizenship by EO isn’t unconstitutional if five out of four Supreme Court Justices say it is fine by sophistry.
2. It means that asylum seekers can’t enter the United States through the Mexican-US border along with other people even if they have visas and such.
3. I’m very meh on DEI but the right is not going after it in good faith but as a bogeyman. Getting rid of remote work is a way to exert dominance and insure compliance.
4, 5, and 6 agreee.
7. Trump needs his freikorps.Report
Trump just rescinded Lyndon Johnson’s EO 11246. That’s the Affirmative Action one.Report