By Ben Johnson
The Washington Stand
In his second inaugural speech Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump promised that a series of forthcoming executive orders would implement the 2024 election’s “revolution of common sense.” He immediately proceeded to sign an avalanche of executive orders repealing the Biden-Harris administration’s promotion of transgender ideology, ending the weaponization of government against pro-life advocates, safeguarding freedom of speech, securing the southern border, emphasizing American energy independence, and ending imperious government decrees by the federal bureaucracy.
President Trump wasted no time signing executive orders on all these subjects, and many more, after being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. Trump began signing the first several executive orders in front of cheering MAGA supporters inside the Capital One Arena, throwing the pens he used to sign the orders — a cherished and sought-after collectible — into the audience.
Trump noted on Sunday that he would not wait, as he did in his first administration, to begin implementing the policies the American people voted for — and erasing the legacy of outgoing President Joe Biden. “Somebody said, ‘Sir, don’t sign so many in one day. Let’s do it over a matter of weeks.’ I said, ‘Like hell we’re gonna do it over weeks,’” said then-President-elect Trump on Sunday.
Executive Orders President Trump Signed on Day One
Flags fly full-staff on inauguration day: The first order the president signed impacted his own inauguration: President Biden had signed an executive order that all flags be flown at half-mast for 30 days following the death of former President Jimmy Carter. That would make it appear that the nation greeted the changing of the presidency in a state of mourning. President Trump issued a proclamation that, “on this and all future Inauguration Days, the flag of the United States shall be flown at full-staff” on all public buildings and grounds.
Undoing the Biden legacy: The first executive order President Trump signed publicly repealed 78 Biden executive orders. Among other things, this order:
- Eliminated the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the White House Gender Policy Council, the Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families, the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, the Climate Change Support Office, and the United States Council on Transnational Organized Crime;
- Ended policies forbidding oil drilling on the continental shelf;
- Ended the electric vehicle mandate; and
- Placed Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Repealing Gender Ideology, Wokeness, Censorship, and Weaponization of Government
President Trump’s executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” repeals Biden-Harris administration policies to place men in women’s intimate spaces, on the sports field, and even in women’s prisons. It begins by skewering the intellectual basis of gender ideology by officially defining a man and a woman in strictly biological terms:
“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
“‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”
It defines “gender ideology” as a worldview that “replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.”
From a legal standpoint, it reverses the Biden administration’s citation of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that the 1964 Civil Rights Act applies to “gender identity,” eradicating sex-specific spaces in private accommodations, public facilities, and sports competitions.
It also specifies that all intimate spaces shall be designated “by sex and not identity” and 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.” Title IX rules and federal publications promoting transgenderism will be repealed. The EO says the federal government “shall ensure that males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers,” where women have frequently been beaten, abused, raped, or impregnated by male prisoners who identify as women.
Nicole Neily, president of Parents Defending Education, told The Washington Stand she was “delighted that he kept his promise to the American people to put an end to this madness and look forward to the Department of Education putting in place policies and procedures that provide clarity to schools and families alike.”
Trump’s executive order “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing” demands “the termination of 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.”
President Trump’s executive order “Reforming the Federal Hiring Process and Restoring Merit to Government Service” seeks to repeal affirmative action programs that give preferential hiring treatment to less-qualified members of racial, sexual, or “gender identity” minorities. “Federal hiring should not be based on impermissible factors, such as one’s commitment to illegal racial discrimination under the guise of ‘equity,’ or one’s commitment to the invented concept of ‘gender identity’ over sex,” says the order. The federal government will instead prioritize merit and the “recruitment of individuals committed to improving the efficiency of the Federal government, passionate about the ideals of our American republic, and committed to upholding the rule of law and the United States Constitution.”
Trump’s executive order on “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” notes, “Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve,” under “the guise of combatting ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’” The order states that the government will attempt to “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct.”
“Under the Biden administration, federal officials established a censorship regime that aimed to shut down so-called ‘misinformation’ and any other speech that is unacceptable to the government. It also weaponized the law against American citizens, including colluding with Big Banks to surveil Americans’ private financial data and target them as ‘threats’ based solely on their speech. President Trump’s call to dismantle these tools of repression is something every American — and every other freedom-loving person — should celebrate,” Alliance Defending Freedom CEO, President, and General Counsel Kristen Waggoner told The Washington Stand.
Trump’s executive order “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” states, “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” including “investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions.” Late last December, the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government produced a 17,019-page report stating that the Biden-Harris administration singled out “pro-life, pro-family” advocates for legal harassment, among other outrages. The attorney general will review the actions of federal agencies — specifically including the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission — over the last four years and take “appropriate remedial actions.” The director of national intelligence will review the actions of the intelligence community and prepare a report.
The executive order “Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information” removes the security clearance of dozens of former intelligence officials who issued an erroneous document branding the Hunter Biden laptop story Russian disinformation. Also stripped of security clearance, by name, is John Bolton, a former Bush-41 administration official who briefly served as national security adviser to Trump; Bolton, a neoconservative keen on intervening in foreign wars, soon clashed with Trump’s America First foreign policy and refused to endorse Trump in 2024.
Ending Crime and Securing the Southern Border
President Trump’s “Securing Our Borders” executive order reinstates the Migrant Protection Protocols, conventionally known as the Remain in Mexico policy, requiring alleged asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their trial. The majority of asylum cases never reach a hearing (and the majority that reach a judge are denied). Meanwhile, the Biden administration released illegal immigrants into the American heartland.
His order “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship” would end birthright citizenship, the notion that if illegal immigrants give birth to an anchor baby on U.S. soil, that child is an American citizen. Legal scholars wrangle over the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment clause “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. government — a term some of the amendment’s authors explicitly limited to U.S. citizens. A legal challenge to this EO is inevitable.
Trump’s executive order “Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States” takes steps to secure the border, noting the harm caused to Americans by “cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics.” The emergency declaration allows the president to deploy the National Guard and other military units to the border, build the border wall, and patrol the border with aerial drones.
A related executive order “Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists” notes that drug cartels “functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States” and threaten “the stability of the international order in the Western Hemisphere.” The government may designate transnational criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) as foreign terrorist organizations within 14 days. When a reporter asked if President Trump might consider sending Special Forces troops into Mexico to target these duly designated terrorist organizations, he answered in a coy fashion, “I might.”
Trump’s executive order “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States” notes, “Unchecked unlawful mass migration and the unimpeded flow of opiates across our borders continue to endanger the safety and security of the American people and encourage further lawlessness.” The Secretary of Defense has 10 days to draw up a plan for the Unified Command Plan that assigns United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.”
The executive order “Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program” notes that Biden-Harris administration refugee policies streamed thousands upon thousands of “refugees” into cities such as Charleroi, Pennsylvania; Springfield, Ohio; and Whitewater, Wisconsin. The EO pauses all mass refugee programs beginning January 27, although the government may admit refugees on a case-by-case basis.
His executive order “Protecting the American People against Invasion” rescinds numerous Biden administration executive orders, ends catch-and-release, presses criminal charges against illegal immigrants, and makes it federal policy to “faithfully execute the immigration laws against all inadmissible and removable aliens, particularly those aliens who threaten the safety or security of the American people.”
Trump’s executive order “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats” requires “stringent” vetting of all would-be refugees, requires the government to identify nations whose public records are so deficient that vetting applicants is impossible, and (if necessary) removing aliens who have entered the U.S. from such nations. Federal leaders must also “protect the American people from the actions of foreign nationals who have undermined or seek to undermine the fundamental constitutional rights of the American people, including, but not limited to, our Citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment, who preach or call for sectarian violence, the overthrow or replacement of the culture on which our constitutional Republic stands, or who provide aid, advocacy, or support for foreign terrorists.”
Trump’s executive order “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety” promotes capital punishment as a deterrent, especially since “on December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on Federal death row: remorseless criminals who brutalized young children, strangled and drowned their victims, and hunted strangers for sport.” He encourages federal and state prosecutors to seek the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use” (such as killing police officers or a capital crime committed by an illegal immigrant) and “to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection.”
Restoring American Sovereignty and Withdrawing from Global Governance Bodies/Agreements
Trump’s executive order “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements” orders America’s U.N. Ambassador to notify the world body America will withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. “We’re going to save over $1 trillion by withdrawing from that treaty,” said President Trump at the signing ceremony.
His executive order “Withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization” indicates the United States will end its membership in the global health body and “pause the future transfer of any United States Government funds, support, or resources to the WHO” with “all practicable speed.”
Trump’s memo “The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal)” states that the Biden administration’s plan to adopt a “Global Minimum Tax” of approximately 15% “have no force or effect within the United States absent an act by the Congress.”
Trump’s executive order “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid” pauses foreign aid for 90 days. “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries,” says the order in an apparent nod to the Biden-Harris administration’s bountiful aid to Ukraine in its military struggle against Russia.
Trump’s executive order “America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State” states curtly, “From this day forward, the foreign policy of the United States shall champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.”
The memo “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California” orders the secretaries of the interior and commerce “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply. … The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply.”
Reigning in the Regulatory State
Trump’s executive order “Regulatory Freeze Pending Review” orders government agencies to suspend issuing any further regulations until approved by the Trump administration and to withdraw any regulations that have been submitted but not yet published in the Federal Register. Trump also required federal workers to return to in-person work.
Trump also signed an executive order “Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency,’” or DOGE.
Trump’s executive order “Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions within the Federal Workforce” reinstates the designation of “Schedule F” to exempted federal employees, making it easier to fire them. The order — which President Trump implemented in late 2020 but which the Biden-Harris administration reversed upon taking office — could apply to as many as 50,000 federal bureaucrats. A recent poll from the Napolitan Institute found 64% of federal workers who voted for Kamala Harris would “ignore” the lawful orders and policies of President Trump and “do what they thought was best” instead. The executive order aims to assure the federal bureaucracy responds to the policies supported by the American people. A related memo “Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives” empowers greater oversight and rigorous evaluations of career Senior Executive Service (SES) officials.
The president’s “Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel” immediately grants a six-month, temporary Top Secret clearance to officials caught in the Biden administration’s clearance backlog.
Lowering Prices and Supercharging U.S. Energy Independence
Trump’s outline on “Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis” orders a whole-of-government response to address the cost of living crisis. The Assistant to the President for Economic Policy will report to President Trump every 30 days on what the Cabinet has done to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply; eliminate unnecessary administrative expenses and rent-seeking practices that increase healthcare costs; eliminate counterproductive requirements that raise the costs of home appliances; create employment opportunities for American workers, including drawing discouraged workers into the labor force; and eliminate harmful, coercive ‘climate’ policies that increase the costs of food and fuel.”
The executive order “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” asks all department heads to “facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources” nationwide. It would expedite the completion of infrastructure, facilitate oil pipelines across the country, and allow the sale of E-15 gasoline year-round.
Trump’s executive order “Unleashing American Energy” states the Biden administration’s “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations” have “limited the generation of reliable and affordable electricity, reduced job creation, and inflicted high energy costs upon our citizens.” The order encourages the exploration of abundant energy sources, including drilling on the U.S. continental shelf; eliminates the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate that half of all new U.S. vehicles must be EV by 2030 and urges them to consider rescinding EV subsidies; and safeguard Americans’ ability to purchase such goods as gas stoves, incandescent lightbulbs, and gasoline vehicles. Within 30 days, federal agencies will begin to “suspend, revise, or rescind all agency actions identified as unduly burdensome” under the EO.
An executive order “Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential” encourages energy exploration on Alaskan state and federal lands, allows the building of a pipeline to transport energy, and aims to “prioritize the development of Alaska’s liquified natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region.”
A related memo on the “Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects” bans additional windmills from the continental shelf.
Trump’s “Application of Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to TikTok” paused the ban on TikTok for 75 days. Trump has floated the possibility of a “joint venture,” for an American company to own at least 50% of the company. “There’s no legal basis for any kind of ‘extension’ of its effective date,” noted Senators Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) in a joint statement.
President Trump’s memo on his vision for an “America First Trade Policy” asks the Secretary of the Treasury to consider establishing an External Revenue Service (ERS) “to collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues.” Federal officials will also seek to identify unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, and the adverse impact foreign trade policies impose on American workers and farmers.
Additional Day One Executive Orders
President Trump’s executive order “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness” would restore the name of Mount McKinley and change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”
In a nod to President Trump’s background in construction, his EO “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture” seeks to restore beauty in place of brutalist architecture when designing federal buildings.
Trump’s order “Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at Or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021” pardoned some 1,500 January 6 protesters and commuted the sentences of 14.
As of this writing, he has not yet pardoned peaceful pro-life advocates prosecuted by a weaponized Justice Department during the Biden-Harris administration. Pro-life advocates expect the pardon to be forthcoming soon.
Originally published at The Washington Stand
