Trump’s Executive Orders: Reversing Biden’s Policies and Attacking the ‘Deep State’
Follow live updates on the start of the Trump administration.
President Trump on Monday issued a barrage of executive orders, kicking off his presidency with a muscular use of power intended to signal a sharp reversal from existing policies on issues including immigration, the environment and diversity initiatives.
The flurry of executive actions was an effort to roll back many of President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s most significant domestic policies, primarily on climate and immigration, while also reimposing a Trump agenda that would launch drilling and mining on natural resources and fundamentally upend the United States’ global role as a sanctuary for refugees and immigrants.
In a speech on Monday evening, Mr. Trump said he was also revoking almost 80 “disruptive, radical executive actions of the previous administration.”
Among those revoked Biden orders were directives that the federal government rebuild the refugee program, and gradually end the Justice Department’s use of private prisons.
Some of Mr. Trump’s orders are almost certain to be challenged in court, and others will be largely symbolic. But taken together, they represent his intention to sharply turn away from the direction of the Biden administration, and to make good on his campaign promises to break what he and his aides cast as a “deep state” effort to thwart his agenda.
Here are some of the orders Mr. Trump signed on his first day in office:
Federal Work Force
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Freeze federal hiring, except for members of the military or “positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.”
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Restore a category of federal workers known as Schedule F, which would lack the same job protections enjoyed by career civil servants.
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Halt new federal rules from going into effect before Trump administration appointees can review them.
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Review the investigative actions of the Biden administration, “to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the intelligence community.”
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Grant top secret security clearances to White House staff without going through traditional vetting procedures.
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End remote work policies and order federal workers back to the office full time.
