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The dizzying array of executive actions President Donald Trump issued on Monday, the first day of his second term, show that he is increasingly willing to push the envelope, challenging both laws and norms in an effort to get the government to do what he wants.
His pardons of January 6 rioters are far more sweeping than many predicted. His immigration actions go much further than those he took in his first term, some in ways that seem blatantly illegal. And he laid the groundwork to push out many federal government employees who he thinks might get in his way.
Other actions raised more questions than they answered. Trump punted his promised tariffs off to February, and mostly avoided weighing in on major foreign policy hotspots. And it’s still very unclear what, exactly, is going on with Elon Musk’s DOGE.
But we arguably got a lot more insight into what Trump’s second term will bring on his first day than we’ve gotten in the past year. He’s rushing headlong into some confrontations — while holding off, for the time being, on others. Here’s what we learned.
1) The January 6 pardons were remarkably extreme
Just over a week ago, soon-to-be-Vice President JD Vance opined that nonviolent trespassers prosecuted for entering the Capitol on January 6, 2021, should be pardoned — but that day’s violent rioters “obviously” should not be.
Trump had other ideas when he issued his sweeping clemency for those he called the “J6 hostages.” He did separate out 14 members of two far-right groups, the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who had been convicted of seditious conspiracy, commuting their sentences instead of giving full pardons. But “all other individuals convicted” of offenses related to the Capitol chaos that day received full unconditional pardons — including those who assaulted police officers, and including the Proud Boys’ leader, Enrique Tarrio.
Trump, it has always been clear, was “delighted” by the storming of the Capitol on January 6; he doesn’t care that his supporters assaulted police, terrorized members of Congress, and threatened to hang his own vice president. What mattered to him was that they were his supporters. So he handed them a get-out-of-jail-free card, even to those who violently tried to overthrow democracy.
2) It’s Stephen Miller’s America now
Trump’s Day 1 executive orders were most numerous and detailed on the topic of immigration. The president revived previous hard-line administration policies, such as a refugee admissions freeze, deportation orders, and border wall construction. He also rolled back some Biden policies intended to let more migrants come in legally if they followed an orderly process, ending Biden’s “parole” program and shutting down an app created for migrants to schedule appointments to make asylum requests.
But on some fronts, Trump’s orders already went much further than he did in his first term and showed a newly emboldened willingness to defy legal caution. For instance:
- He ordered that the US military would now be responsible for the “mission” of closing the border.
- He used a public health emergency rationale to shut down the asylum system even though there’s no public health crisis at the moment.
- He ordered that federal prosecutors recommend the death penalty for any unauthorized immigrant convicted of a capital crime.
- He fired several top officials in the US immigration court system, including the system’s acting head.
- And he declared that despite what the Constitution says, birthright citizenship would no longer apply to children born in the US to unauthorized immigrants or visa-holders (unless one parent was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident).
Most of these will likely be the subject of lawsuits, with the birthright citizenship order generally believed to be highly unlikely to withstand court scrutiny (the ACLU already sued over it). And all of these have the fingerprints of Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant hardliner who now once again wields immense power as deputy White House chief of staff and Homeland Security adviser.
Trump and Miller likely think aggressive and seemingly illegal policies like the birthright order are worth a shot and may have some effect at deterring future migrants from coming even if they’re eventually struck down. What’s clear is that Trump’s team is not asking for permission to do sweeping restrictionist policies — they’re going as hard as they can right out the gate.
3) The groundwork was laid for a civil service purge
Though Trump fired some federal employees Monday, the first day did not seem to bring a mass firing of federal bureaucrats, but the groundwork was laid for something like that to happen in the future.
First off, Trump restored what was previously known as his “Schedule F” executive order, issued in late 2020 shortly before he left office (it was never really implemented and Biden soon revoked it). The idea behind Schedule F — now rebranded as “Schedule Policy/Career” — is to reclassify various important civil servant jobs as exempt from civil service hiring rules and protections, making it easier for those workers to be fired.
Secondly, Trump took aim at part of the federal workforce known as the Senior Executive Service (SES). These are, basically, the top jobs at agencies in the civil service, which liaise with the political appointees to run things. Trump’s order demanded plans from his agencies for making SES more “accountable” (easier to fire). His order also said hiring for SES jobs would now be done by panels composed mostly of political appointees, rather than civil servants as is currently the case.
Third, the Office of Personnel Management issued a memo letting agencies hire unlimited “Schedule C” appointees — another class of political appointees that don’t go through the civil service hiring process. And fourth, another order instructed Trump appointees to come up with plans for reforming the civil service hiring process itself.
Altogether, this shows an intense focus from Trump’s people on wresting agency authority away from civil servants and toward greater numbers of political appointees — and though mass firings haven’t happened yet, it may be only a matter of time.
4) A DOGE may be hidden in sheep’s clothing
Since Trump announced he would appoint Elon Musk to chair a new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), it’s been unclear what exactly this supposed new department would be or how it would work.
A Trump order Monday made the unexpected announcement that, in fact, an existing part of the executive branch — the US Digital Service, set up during the Obama administration to modernize government IT — would become the US DOGE Service.
Now, this executive order laid out a surprisingly limited mission of “modernizing federal technology and software,” rather than DOGE’s previously announced remit of overhauling government spending, regulations, and personnel. Liberals on social media crowed at this apparent demotion for Musk.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Reports on Musk’s planning, and public statements from people in contact with his team, suggest they are planning to go very big indeed, in ways that haven’t yet been revealed. With a new report that Musk is likely to get a West Wing office, it’s hard to believe he’s scaled back his grand ambitions.
5) Trump wants to reshape the US energy industry
Trump has long vowed to roll back Biden’s efforts to fight climate change and unleash fossil fuel production, so it’s no surprise that he withdrew from the Paris climate agreement, gave the green light to drilling in Alaska, and tried to roll back funding for green energy projects in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. He also pursued his longtime vendetta against the wind energy industry with an order halting all wind energy permitting for projects on federal lands and in the ocean.
Yet Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” executive order made another big policy move — it aggressively took aim at the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a longtime bugaboo of Republicans, and even some Democrats, who view it as a major reason why it’s become so difficult to build things in the US.
In theory, NEPA makes the government consider the environmental impact of projects; in practice, critics argue, its convoluted process makes projects more time-consuming and bogs them down with delays. Trump’s order proposes taking NEPA enforcement out of the hands of the Council of Environmental Quality, rescinding existing regulations about it, and coming up with a new and more streamlined process for how to enforce the law and ease permitting.
6) Lots remains TBD
With Trump doing so much on his first day, it’s also interesting to read tea leaves about what he didn’t do.
On economic policy, he issued a brief, vague order instructing agencies to try and lower the cost of living, and he signed a trade order that had lots of phrases like “undertake a review of” and “investigate the feasibility of.” But he did not issue the Day 1 tariffs that he promised for Canada and Mexico (in a press conference, he set a new deadline of February 1 for that). Translation: His tariff policies are not yet ready for prime time, and perhaps still the subject of wrangling among his economic advisers over how sweeping they should be.
On foreign policy, too, Trump issued a brief and vague “America First Policy Directive” for his first confirmed Cabinet appointee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He also announced he’d pause foreign aid for 90 days and designate Latin American drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. But he did little about the rest of the world, not making any big Day 1 announcements on, for instance, Ukraine, Israel, or China.
We shouldn’t read too much into these omissions — perhaps Trump is simply waiting until his team is confirmed and in place. But, notably, those are two areas where his coalition is genuinely torn — between tariff superfans and skeptics who fear economic disruption, and between internationalists and isolationists. To find out what Trump will do on these topics, we’ll just have to wait a bit longer.
