Everything We Know About Trump’s First Flurry of Executive Orders

As Donald Trump resumes the powers of the presidency — declaring in his inaugural address that he was “saved by God to make America great again” — he’s poised to sign a slate of sweeping executive orders that reflect his ambition to be a dictator on “Day One.”

In his address Monday inside the Capitol Rotunda, Trump described his reactionary agenda — on climate and geography, immigration and citizenship, federal gender recognition, and more — as a “revolution of common sense.”

The anticipated executive orders reportedly include an effort to abolish the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship to children of undocumented parents. 

In the normal course of things, executive orders are subject to checks and balances. And Trump’s first-day batch is sure to invite litigation where they attempt to run roughshod over enacted regulation, law, treaty, or constitutional amendment. However Trump begins his term with the backing of an arch-conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, which has shown little appetite to overrule him and no interest in holding him accountable.

Immigration and the Border

In his inaugural address, Trump said: “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border.”

Trump reportedly intends to issue an executive order attempting to abolish “birthright citizenship.” (This has been guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the constitution, ratified in 1868: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”)

According to Trump’s inaugural and other news reports, Trump also intends to:

Trump also said he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to pursue immigrant immigrant “gangs and criminal networks” inside the U.S.

Gender 

Trump declared in his inaugural address: “As of today It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” 

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Trump intends to sign an executive order that prohibits federal recognition of transgender Americans. The anticipated order, leaked to the right-leaning Free Press, will reportedly bar government issued identification like passports from listing anything other than a person’s birth gender, remove transgender individuals from protection of laws barring sex-discrimination, end funding for transition surgeries for federal prisoners, and purport to protect the First Amendment and other rights of those who flout “preferred pronouns” or refuse to recognize the reality of transgender individuals. 

Energy and Transportation

Trump takes office with the nation reeling from climate-change related disasters including unprecedented flooding in mountainous North Carolina and ruinous fires in rain-starved Los Angeles. Heedless of carbon emissions, Trump vowed in his inaugural that he will declare a “national energy emergency” today and allow oil companies to “drill baby, drill” for the “liquid gold under our feet.” Trump also vowed to end the national “electric vehicle mandate” as part of his agenda to roll back predecessor Joe Biden’s signature climate legislation, which Trump shorthands as the Green New Deal. (It is not the Green New Deal.) 

Geography

“We are going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump declared in his inaugural, insisting he would also rename Alaska’s highest peak from its current indigenous name Denali to its previous moniker: “Mount McKinley.”

(Although it is not part of his Day One actions, Trump also vowed to seize the Panama Canal and extend America’s “manifest destiny” to outer space by sending astronauts to Mars, the latter of which is a key goal of Trump’s billionaire sidekick Elon Musk.)

This post will be updated as Trump’s executive orders are signed and published.