What executive orders did Trump issue on his first day in office?

On January 21, 2025, President Trump began issuing a series of executive orders, opening his presidency with a forceful exercise of power, signaling his intention to make sweeping reversals of existing policies.

This series of executive actions was designed to overturn many of President Biden's most significant domestic policies, mainly in the areas of climate and immigration, while also re-implementing Trump's agenda, which would kick off drilling and extraction of natural resources and fundamentally upend America's global role as a refuge for refugees and immigrants.

In a speech on Monday evening, Trump said he would revoke nearly 80 "destructive and radical executive actions of the previous administration." The revoked Biden executive orders include directives for the federal government to rebuild the refugee program and to phase out the Justice Department's use of private prisons.

Some of Trump's orders will almost certainly be challenged in court, and some are largely symbolic. But taken together, they represent a deliberate departure from the direction of the Biden administration and a fulfillment of campaign promises to break what he and his aides have called the "deep state's" obstruction of his agenda.

Here are some of the executive orders Trump signed on his first day in office:

Federal Workforce
• Freeze federal hiring, except for military personnel or "positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety."
• Restore a category of federal workers known as Schedule F, who do not have the same job protections as career civil servants.
• Block new federal regulations from taking effect before they are reviewed by officials appointed by the Trump administration.
• Review the Biden administration's investigative actions "to correct past misconduct by the federal government in which law enforcement was weaponized and the intelligence community was weaponized."
• End remote work policies and order federal workers back to the office full-time.

Immigration and Border
• Take action to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. A president cannot unilaterally amend the Constitution, so it is unclear how Trump intends to deny this citizenship benefit to people born in the United States. Any move would almost certainly be challenged in court.
• Suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program "until further entry of refugees into the United States is in the interests of the United States."
• Declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border over migrant crossings, allowing Trump to unilaterally release federal funds for border wall construction without congressional approval, to step up enforcement.
• Restore the policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while immigration judges hear their cases.
• Designate cartels as "foreign terrorist organizations."

Gender and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives
• End DEI programs in the federal government.

Tariffs and Trade
• Direct federal agencies to begin investigating trade practices, including trade deficits and unfair currency practices, and to examine the flow of migrants and drugs from Canada, China, and Mexico into the United States.
• Assess China's compliance with a trade agreement Trump signed in 2020, and the implementation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement and was signed by Trump in 2020.
• Order the government to evaluate the feasibility of establishing an "External Revenue Service" to collect tariffs and other taxes and fees.

Energy and Environment
• Withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the accord nearly all nations have reached to address climate change.
• Declare a national energy emergency, the first in U.S. history, which could unlock new powers to suspend certain environmental regulations or speed up approvals for some mining projects.
• Attempt to overturn Biden's ban on offshore drilling in about 253 million hectares of federal waters.
• Begin dismantling Biden-era regulations on tailpipe pollution from cars and light trucks that encouraged automakers to produce more electric vehicles.
• Revoke energy efficiency rules for dishwashers, showerheads, and gas stoves.
• Open up Alaska's wilderness to more oil and gas drilling.
• Restart approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals.
• Stop leasing federal waters for offshore wind farms.
• Eliminate environmental justice programs in the government designed to protect poor communities from excessive pollution.
• Review all federal regulations that place an "undue burden" on the development or use of various energy sources, especially coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric, and biofuels.

TikTok Ban
• Consult federal agencies about any national security risks posed by the social media platform, and then "seek a solution that protects national security while saving a platform used by 170 million Americans." Trump ordered the attorney general not to enforce the law banning the site for 75 days, to give the Trump administration "the opportunity to determine the appropriate path forward."

Other
• Withdraw from the World Health Organization.
• On this Monday and future Inauguration Days, the U.S. flag will not be flown at half-staff.
• Launch Elon Musk-led cost-cutting initiative, the Department of Government Efficiency.
• Revoke the security clearances of the 51 signatories of a joint letter that suggested the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop might be Russian disinformation.

Source: New York Times