President Trump’s blunt message after a whirlwind week of executive orders and presidential proclamations may boil down to this: Take me at my word.
During four years in political exile after his first term, Mr. Trump vowed to radically reshape American life, culture and politics if he got another chance. His first week has demonstrated that he will seek to do just that — and fast — as he races to make good on the promises that vaulted him back into power.
Not all of his directives will succeed in the end. But already, the United States is a different place than it was a week ago.
Several efforts to address climate change have been rescinded, and more land opened to oil drilling. The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants — now referred to as “aliens” — are being turned away at the border, and immigration agents have been freed to target hospitals, schools and churches in search of people to deport.
Large-scale tariffs have yet to be imposed, but nations around the world are bracing for those that Mr. Trump says will come on Feb. 1. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled, and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will once again be barred from paying for abortions overseas. Mount Denali once again will be known as Mount McKinley, and the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America (at least, according to the U.S. government).
Career officials at agencies across the government have been let go as part of Mr. Trump’s pledge to get rid of what he considers disloyal members of the “deep state.” Security clearances and protection has been stripped from people Mr. Trump considers political enemies. TikTok was given a temporary reprieve from a forced shutdown, even as Mr. Trump rescinded his predecessor’s efforts to establish guardrails around the development of artificial intelligence.
New regulations and new federal hiring are frozen for now. More than 1,500 people who were convicted of crimes connected to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have been pardoned or had their sentences commuted, including those who assaulted police officers.
Here are some of the biggest policy changes Mr. Trump has made.
Immigration
No single issue received more attention in the first few days from Mr. Trump and his new administration than immigration. The issue has long been at the center of the president’s political identity, and he promised throughout the 2024 campaign to make far-reaching policy changes.
Mr. Trump issued more than a dozen immigration-related orders that included scores of policy overhauls based on the premise that the United States is being invaded by dangerous immigrants crossing over the border with Mexico. Many of the most aggressive changes — including new powers to deny asylum seekers from entering the country — are aimed at “aliens engaged in the invasion.”
Mr. Trump quickly eliminated policies that prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from raiding churches, schools and hospitals.
He blocked the entry of thousands of refugees who already had been cleared to come to America. And he began the process of expelling a million people President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had allowed in on a temporary but legal basis. And he made good on his longstanding promise to try to scale back birthright citizenship, an order that one federal judge quickly blocked, calling it blatantly unconstitutional.
The president also directed federal law enforcement officials to investigate and potentially prosecute local officials in cities and states who interfere with the government’s efforts to deport people who are in the country illegally. And he directed agencies to withhold funds from so-called sanctuary cities in which officials refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agents.
— Hamed Aleaziz
Mr. Trump issued a half-dozen executive orders related to energy aimed at expanding the use of fossil fuels, curbing renewable energy and abandoning the federal government’s efforts to address climate change.
He pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement. He shut down several efforts to prepare for the risks of a warming planet. He initiated plans to open larger areas in Alaska to oil drilling. And he ordered a freeze on federal permits for wind farms across the country.
Many of Mr. Trump’s promises to “unleash” American energy — which he defined as everything except wind and solar power — will take time to have an impact. He ordered agencies to streamline permitting for gas pipelines and mining and to repeal rules that promote electric cars. But there’s a legally required process for redoing federal regulations that can take years and has to pass muster with courts.
Other actions may end up being largely symbolic. Mr. Trump declared an “energy emergency” and has claimed he has authority to get power plants built quickly, but legal experts say the government’s emergency powers are often fairly limited.
It remains to be seen how drastically Mr. Trump can reshape the nation’s energy landscape. Many oil and gas companies are not looking to significantly increase output, which is already at record levels, since doing so could lower prices and squeeze profits. But the wind industry, a frequent target of Mr. Trump’s, is bracing for a backlash, and some companies have already delayed or canceled new investments.
— Brad Plumer
Mr. Trump had previously written on social media that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10 percent tariff on products from China on Day 1 of his administration, accusing those countries of not doing enough to stop flows of drugs and migrants into the United States. Instead, he released an executive order that requested reports on an exhaustive list of trade issues from various agencies by April 1.
Some business groups expressed relief, but that sentiment was short-lived. On Monday night, Mr. Trump told reporters he planned to put a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico beginning on Feb. 1, and on Tuesday night, he said he would also put an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese products by the same date.
It remains to be seen if those tariffs actually go into effect. But even if they do not, Mr. Trump will have plenty of opportunities in the coming months to make good on his campaign promises to impose sweeping tariffs on foreign products, including high levies on China and a universal tariff on most imports that could help raise money to offset tax cuts.
— Ana Swanson
Gender and Transgender Rights
With an executive order billed as protecting women from “gender ideology extremism,” Mr. Trump ordered the government to effectively recognize only two “immutable” sexes — male and female.
By proclaiming that a person’s sex must be a permanent gender identity, the administration reversed efforts by the Biden administration to accommodate people who are intersex or transgender, among others, and allow them to self-identify as such in interactions with the government. It also rejected the mainstream medical understanding among groups such as the American Medical Association, which recommends viewing gender and sex as falling along a spectrum.
The order has already prompted administrative changes. The State Department removed the “unspecified or another gender identity” category from passport applications. More broadly, it directs agencies to scrub any mention of nonbinary gender identity from official documents and memos.
Certain agencies were urged to “protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes,” in part by maintaining single-sex spaces such as prisons and shelters for women, from which transgender women will be denied access under the policy. And the order explicitly rejected the Biden administration’s interpretation of a Supreme Court ruling protecting transgender workers that was the basis for its extending protections to transgender students through Title IX last year.
— Zach Montague
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
After declaring in his inaugural address that he would usher in a “colorblind” and “merit-based” society, Mr. Trump ordered federal agencies to immediately purge the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion — or D.E.I. — from the federal government’s policies, programs and practices and targeted civil rights protections for government contractors.
He rescinded executive orders issued by Mr. Biden that sought to advance equity for women, Black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American people, as well as people with disabilities.
Mr. Trump then issued an order titled, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which halts all work in the federal agencies aimed at reversing systemic racism, sexism and other inequities.
The order required the shutdown of offices dedicated to D.E.I. work across all government agencies and the immediate dismissal of any employees working on such initiatives; the employees were placed on administrative leave this week and are to be laid off in the next month.
In an effort to root out any D.E.I. initiatives “in disguise,” federal employees were told to report any colleagues that attempted to circumvent the order to a newly created email address. Those who know of any such activity but do not report it within 10 days would face “adverse consequences,” according to emails that were sent by all agency heads.
Mr. Trump also revoked a civil rights-era order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 that banned discrimination in government contracting. The order was seen as the underpinning of the federal government’s commitment to affirmative action.
— Erica Green
Tech and Artificial Intelligence
Right after he was sworn into office, Mr. Trump rescinded a 2023 executive order that established guardrails around artificial intelligence. On Thursday, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing his staff to come up with a plan to pursue policy that would “sustain and enhance America’s global A.I. dominance.”
The president also issued an executive order to establish a group that would come up with policy proposals related to cryptocurrency, an industry Mr. Trump has personal investments in.
Mr. Trump intervened in the battle over the future of TikTok. Officials in Washington fear that the immensely popular video app could pose a national security threat. Congress passed a law last year that forces TikTok’s owner ByteDance to sell the app or face a ban from working with app stores and cloud providers. The Supreme Court upheld the law this month.
The ban took effect on Sunday. But Mr. Trump on Monday told the Justice Department not to enforce the law for 75 days and to instruct companies, like Apple, Google and the cloud computing provider Oracle, that during that period there is “no liability” related to their work to distribute and maintain the app. The app is currently working in the United States but is still unavailable in Apple’s and Google’s app stores.
— David McCabe
Hours after taking the oath of office, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization, a move that he pursued in the last year of his first term, as the coronavirus pandemic raged. On his first day in office four years ago, Mr. Biden blocked the withdrawal from going into effect.
As he did in 2020, Mr. Trump this week accused the agency of botching its response to the pandemic, and claimed that it asked for “unfairly onerous payments,” with China paying less than the United States.
The withdrawal means that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, considered the world’s leading infectious disease agency, would not have access to the global data the W.H.O. provides. It also would deprive the W.H.O. of a key funding source that it uses to protect public health programs in other countries, a shortfall that public health experts say could eventually hurt disease-fighting efforts of American health officials during international outbreaks.
Mr. Trump on his first day in office also rescinded a health order that called on federal agencies to expand access to coverage on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces, and in Medicaid, the joint federal-state insurance program for low-income Americans. Russell T. Vought, Mr. Trump’s nominee to run the White House budget office, told lawmakers this week that he supported the first Trump administration’s strategy of encouraging states to add work requirements to Medicaid.
Mr. Trump’s health department also asked officials to refrain from public communications, including publishing reports on the bird flu outbreak. Meetings of advisory panels on health issues were also canceled. Trump administration officials defended the move, saying it allowed them to catch up to activity in the department before signing off on new public messaging. But the scope and duration of the pause unnerved career officials and outside scientists.
— Noah Weiland
Federal Work Force
The administration issued one executive order that makes it easier to fire federal employees by subjecting them to the rules governing political appointees, who have much weaker due process rights. Mr. Trump also issued a memo asserting his authority to fire several thousand members of the so-called Senior Executive Service, top bureaucrats across the government, and the administration began to remove some of them.
Other memos told agencies to require employees to return to an office full time “as soon as practicable,” which some federal employees said had prompted them to look for new jobs outside government, and to list employees who are still completing the probationary period required of new hires — typically one or two years, depending on the role or category of employee.
This memo noted that employees could be terminated during their probationary period “without triggering appeal rights” and suggested that the administration would seek to thin the civil service ranks by eliminating many recent hires. Mr. Trump also initiated a 90-day hiring freeze, causing agencies to rescind job offers for candidates whose starting date was imminent.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which has about 90,000 active members across dozens of agencies, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday challenging the executive order making it easier to fire federal employees. Other unions they were still digesting the slew of orders and memos to understand the precise implications.
— Noam Scheiber
