As he did during his first administration, Trump is pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization. He also ordered a comprehensive review of U.S. foreign aid spending. Both moves fit into his more isolationist “America First” approach to international affairs.
In more symbolic moves, Trump planned to sign an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making it the Gulf of America. The highest mountain in North America, now known as Denaliwill revert back to Mount McKinley, its name until President Barack Obama changed it. And Trump 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. Trump demanded they be moved up Monday. Another Trump order calls for promoting “Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.”
Trump reversed several immigration orders from Biden’s presidency, including one that narrowed deportation priorities to people who commit serious crimes, are deemed national security threats or were stopped at the border. It returns the government to Trump’s first-term policy that everyone in the country illegally is a priority for deportation.
The president declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico borderand he plans to send U.S. troops to help support immigration agents and restrict refugees and asylum.
Trump is trying end birthright citizenship. It’s unclear, though, whether his order will survive inevitable legal challenges, since birthright citizenship is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
He temporarily suspended the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, pending a review to assess the program’s “public safety and national security” implications. He’s also pledged to restart a policy that forced asylum seekers to wait over the border in Mexico, but officials didn’t say whether Mexico would accept migrants again. And Trump is ending the CBP One appa Biden-era border app that gave legal entry to nearly 1 million migrants.
Meanwhile, on national security, the president revoked any active security clearances from a long list of his perceived enemies, including former director of national intelligence James Clapper, Leon Panetta, a former director of the CIA and defense secretary, and his own former national security adviser, John Bolton.
Climate and energy
As expected, Trump signed documents he said will formally withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreements. He made the same move during his first term but Biden reversed it.
Additionally, Trump declared an energy emergency as he promised to “drill, baby, drill,” and said he will eliminate what he calls Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.
Overhauling federal bureaucracy
Trump has halted federal government hiring, excepting the military and other parts of government that went unnamed. He added a freeze on new federal regulations while he builds out his second administration.
He formally empowered the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is being led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Ostensibly an effort to streamline government, DOGE is not an official agency. But Trump appears poised to give Musk wide latitude to recommend cuts in government programs and spending.
Diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights
Trump is rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government. Both are major shifts for the federal policy and are in line with Trump’s campaign trail promises. One order declares that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. And they’re to be defined based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes, according to details of the upcoming order. Under the order, federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape victims would be segregated by sex as defined by the order. And federal taxpayer money could not be used to fund “transition services.”
A separate order halts DEI programs, directing the White House to identify and end them within the government.
