President Donald Trump quickly flexed the sweeping powers of the presidency following his second inauguration at the Capitol on Monday, signing a slate of executive orders that would radically alter U.S. policy if allowed to stand.
He also pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of his loyalists — more than 1,500 people — who stormed the same Capitol building in a failed attempt to illegitimately keep him in power four years prior, repeatedly referring to them as “hostages.”
“We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump said during an evening signing ceremony at the Oval Office — a reference to the fact that many of those defendants were in prison for serious offenses such as assaulting police officers.
Trump’s orders reflected an aggressive start to the conservative agenda he promised on the campaign trail, aimed at reining in illegal immigration, strengthening U.S. manufacturing and the broader economy, rolling back LGBTQ+ rights, reinforcing American dominance abroad and bending the sprawling federal bureaucracy to his will.
At an evening rally in Washington, D.C., that was held in lieu of an outdoor parade because of frigid temperatures, Trump sat at a desk and used black markers to sign nine orders.
The first, he said, undid about 80 “destructive, radical actions” made by President Joe Biden — having to do with issues including immigration, the COVID-19 pandemic, voting rights, “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives, protections for LGBTQ+ people, the operation of prisons by private entities, tackling climate change and other environmental protections.
The other orders withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and informed the United Nations of that decision; placed freezes on new federal regulations and most federal hiring while his administration gets into place; mandated federal workers return to in-person work full time; and sent directives to federal agencies to protect free speech, end the “weaponization of government” for political purposes, and find ways to decrease inflation and high costs for average Americans.
Trump said he also would later sign other orders — such as one mandating that agencies preserve all records pertaining to his own prosecution on various federal charges under the Biden administration. And he renewed campaign promises to take other actions, such as ending federal taxes on tipped wages.
Trump concluded the event by tossing the markers he’d used to sign the orders into the crowd, to big cheers from his supporters.
Soon after, Trump was back in the Oval Office signing more orders and the pardons. One order announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the World Health Organization, while another purported to end the long-established constitutional guarantee of U.S. citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Trump commuted the sentences of 14 people — including some of the highest-profile Jan. 6 defendants — to time served, and granted full pardons to everyone else convicted of offenses from that day. The Justice Department recently estimated that it had charged more than 1,500 people, including 590 with assaulting, resisting, impeding or obstructing law enforcement.
As of November, nearly 1,000 had pleaded guilty, more than 200 had been found guilty at trial, and more than 600 had been sentenced to time behind bars.
Trump’s pardons followed a last-minute decision by Biden to flex the same power on his way out of the White House by pardoning members of Congress and their staffers who had investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, as well as other former U.S. officials who have drawn Trump’s ire for having challenged his authority in the past.
The orders, which Trump also described in some detail in his inaugural speech Monday morning, reflected just how starkly divided the nation has become politically — and the degree to which Trump feels emboldened to shirk tradition and legal precedent as the first president to win a nonconsecutive second term in the White House in the last 132 years.
While promising the return of a “golden age of America” under his watch, Trump declared two national emergencies — one to do with southern border crossings, and the other to do with energy independence. He promised several measures to address each, including closing the border entirely to asylum-seekers — in part by reinstating his “Remain in Mexico” policy and sending military troops to the border — and by clearing away federal energy regulations so that oil and gas producers can “drill, baby, drill.”
In an early sign of the policies being implemented, immigrants with asylum claims at the southern border were told Monday that scheduled interviews they had with U.S. Customs and Border Protection had been canceled.
Trump said he would declare that there are only “two genders” — a swipe at transgender people that echoed attacks by Trump’s campaign — and revoke regulations intended to transition the nation toward electric vehicles. He said he would institute many new tariffs on foreign goods, launch a new “external revenue service” to collect the associated revenue, and launch a new Department of Government Efficiency to reduce waste — the last of which would be led by Elon Musk, the owner of X and Tesla and the world’s richest man.
Trump also said he would rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, and take the Panama Canal from Panama.
“With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said during his inauguration speech in the Capitol rotunda. “It’s all about common sense.”
Whether Trump’s directives will survive and how quickly they will be implemented remains unclear. Survival of the most controversial and legally dubious decrees will depend on the courts, experts said. Implementation will depend in part on how quickly Trump can get his Cabinet appointments confirmed by the Senate and stand up his new government, they said.
Advocates for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and other targeted groups joined liberal leaders — including in California — in promising to fight back against Trump’s agenda, including in court if necessary.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said last week that his office would be watching what Trump does Monday and responding in kind — including with the help of prewritten legal briefs anticipating certain actions that the state will argue in court are illegal.
San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu said Monday that Trump had delivered a “dark, dangerous and authoritarian vision for our country,” and that his office would be analyzing Trump’s executive orders in coming days and weeks and “will do everything in our power to protect San Francisco and our residents from illegal federal action.”
The Jan. 6 pardons could result in swifter action, and less resistance — given that a president’s pardon powers are generally unquestioned.
Attorneys for some of the imprisoned defendants said before the inauguration that they were watching Trump’s actions closely and would be poised to respond with legal motions seeking their clients’ immediate release.
In addition to the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, Biden also pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who helped lead the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Mark A. Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who has called out Trump’s handling of the insurrection.
All had been threatened with potential criminal charges and investigation by Trump and his supporters. Biden called them public servants who “have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”
Trump called Biden’s pardons “unfortunate” and “disgraceful.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the former chair of the Jan. 6 committee, issued a statement on behalf of the committee’s former members, in which he said they were grateful to Biden.
“We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law,” Thompson said, “but for upholding it.”
One of the committee members, Sen. Adam B. Schiff of California, said he was proud of the committee’s work and believed Biden’s grant of pardons to its members was “unnecessary, and because of the precedent it establishes, unwise.”
However, Schiff — one of Trump’s favorite targets for derision — said he also understood why Biden had issued the pardons “in light of the persistent and baseless threats issued by Donald Trump and individuals who are now some of his law enforcement nominees.”
The exercise of presidential powers on a new president’s first day in office — or his last, in Biden’s case — is not new.
Presidents have often issued pardons on their way out of office, and they have always fought to meet campaign promises and show policy results quickly.
The notion that a president should be judged by their accomplishments within their first “100 days” in office has been a “touchstone” of American politics since at least the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congressional Research Service analyst Ben Wilhelm wrote in a formal analysis of executive orders and presidential transitions last year.
However, in recent decades, the number of executive orders issued early on in new administrations has increased, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, Wilhelm noted. That is in part as incoming presidents have issued orders undoing the orders of their predecessors.
Biden did it to undo orders by Trump. On Monday, Trump did it to undo orders by Biden.
Trump on Monday suggested his “Day 1” actions were especially warranted. He said he had been saved by God from assassination attempts during the campaign so that he could “make America great again,” and repeatedly cited a “mandate” from voters to carry out his agenda — suggesting his victory over Biden in November was monumental.
Trump did amass a sizable victory in the Electoral College, and swept to victories across the nation’s swing states. However, his popular vote margins — both as a percentage of overall votes and by raw votes — were historically small.
Out of more than 152 million votes cast, Trump won by just over 2 million. And he won fewer than 50% of the total vote — at 49.9%, compared to 48.4% won by Vice President Kamala Harris, according to The Associated Press. That means that while Trump does enjoy massive support for his agenda, there are also nearly as many Americans who voted against him and that agenda.
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