President Trump marked his first week in office by signing executive orders aimed at implementing much of the agenda he ran on. The orders included closing the southern border, suspending refugee and asylum programs, setting in motion efforts to deport unauthorized immigrants, and ending federal diversity programs.
He pardoned more than 1,500 people for their roles in attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, protesting what they claimed was a stolen election after his 2020 loss. Federal Judge Beryl Howell said the pardons undermine the rule of law and could promote lawless conduct.
Why We Wrote This
Donald Trump’s first-week executive orders back up his campaign promises. But some drew criticism, and the momentum may be hard to sustain.
On Friday, his schedule included travel to areas hit by natural disasters.
The point “is to say he’s checked the boxes and kept his promises,” says Kenneth Lowande, a political scientist at the University of Michigan.
Mr. Trump did not act on one promise: to institute tariffs of 10% or 20% on imports. He may be acknowledging they could be inflationary, possibly harming blue-collar voters who aided his election win.
The president’s first-week actions may invite followers to believe he’ll solve all their problems, says Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on presidential communication at Texas A&M University. But, she says, they are “unrealistic expectations that will be difficult to satisfy.”
President Donald Trump’s second term has started with a bang. From the profoundly impactful to the merely performative, the newly reinstalled president’s executive actions have captured the attention of Washington, the nation, and the world.
Nobody should be surprised. During the 2024 campaign, he promised pardons to the legions who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, protesting what they claimed was a stolen election after his 2020 loss. He promised to close the southern border, suspend refugee and asylum programs, and set in motion efforts to deport unauthorized immigrants. He promised to end federal diversity programs.
This week, President Trump signed orders aimed at implementing much of his agenda. He also directed “all executive departments and agencies to deliver emergency price relief” to Americans, a Day 1 action that highlighted his goal of bringing down inflation – but is clearly something that can’t be accomplished by presidential fiat.
Why We Wrote This
Donald Trump’s first-week executive orders back up his campaign promises. But some drew criticism, and the momentum may be hard to sustain.
By week’s end, the firehose of blockbuster executive actions seemed a blur, almost impossible to absorb amid the jarring shift from the mostly Washington-establishment ways of President Joe Biden to the norm-defying return of Mr. Trump.
In his opening days, Mr. Trump has taken a near daily barrage of reporter questions – more, it seems, than President Biden took in the past year – holding impromptu press conferences in the Oval Office as he signed orders. On Friday, he embarked on a trip to North Carolina, California, and Nevada to focus on disaster relief and tax cuts.
In fact, this week’s furious pace is by design, presidential scholars say.
“The firehose is the point,” says Kenneth Lowande, a political scientist at the University of Michigan. “The point of all of it is to say he’s checked the boxes and kept his promises.”
Notably, one campaign pledge Mr. Trump has kept in reserve is his vow to institute tariffs of 10% or 20% on imports. This caution suggests an acknowledgment that tariffs are risky – potentially inflationary, and thus could be especially harmful to the blue-collar voters who helped Mr. Trump win last November.
In his confirmation hearing this week, Treasury Secretary-designate Scott Bessent touted the potential benefits of tariffs as a spur to domestic production, a revenue raiser, and a point of leverage in negotiations with other countries.
Ambitious actions – and divisive ones
But this week’s “Trump-quake” isn’t about the finer points of economic policy. It’s about the bold return to office of a man who has pledged to shake up business as usual and reestablish himself as a forceful presence on a global stage increasingly dominated by strongmen. As his supporters cheer, many other Americans are recoiling at the return of a deeply divisive figure.
The week has been marked by one remarkable image after another. Witness that of Stewart Rhodes, founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, who showed up in the U.S. Capitol Wednesday after his release from prison. He had been convicted of seditious conspiracy for helping direct the attack on the Capitol and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
On Monday, Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Rhodes’ sentence to time served, part of the president’s order of clemency to the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 rioters prosecuted. Most received full pardons.
Among the more than 130 law enforcement officers injured in the riot, as well as federal judges who presided over the trials of rioters, the pardons and commutations elicited cries of frustration.
“I feel betrayed by my country,” said former D.C. police officer Michael Fanone, whose attackers were pardoned.
In his executive order aimed at Jan. 6 rioters released late Monday, Mr. Trump said he was ending a “grave national injustice” to begin a “process of national reconciliation.” Judge Beryl Howell, chief of the D.C. District Court at the time of the Jan. 6 attack, rejected the characterization.
“That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law,” Judge Howell wrote Wednesday.
Trump defenders raise Mr. Biden’s last-minute, preemptive pardons of prominent Trump critics as well as Biden family members as a counter to the current president’s pardon gambit. Ultimately, says Professor Lowande at the University of Michigan, the burst of pardons from both men reflected one of the few unchecked powers that presidents enjoy.
“It was a whiplash moment,” says Mr. Lowande, author of the new book “False Front,” which analyzes presidential power and its limits. But the pardon power, he says, “illustrates that these people are human, and when you have power like that, it’s very difficult to refrain from using it.”
How sweeping will the effects be?
In contrast, many of Mr. Trump’s other executive actions will face constraints, either via litigation, the need for congressional action, or bureaucratic hurdles. Mr. Trump’s order Monday ending “birthright citizenship,” a feature of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, was blocked temporarily by a federal judge. The order would deny automatic citizenship to children born to parents living in the U.S. illegally.
Other Trump orders aimed at unauthorized immigrants also face litigation and a motivated sanctuary movement. Still, the moves have already had a chilling effect – on everyone from would-be border-crossers and refugees to people already in the country without legal status. This week, Mr. Trump suspended migrants’ ability to seek asylum via the southern border, a move that will be fought in court.
In addition, Mr. Trump’s promised efforts to attack the “deep state” and “wokeness” have taken shape quickly. He has reinstituted his Schedule F plan that would allow for the firing of thousands of federal civil servants. And he has ordered the closing of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices in the federal government – placing DEI employees on administrative leave as of Jan. 22. He has also ordered federal agencies to identify the most “discriminatory DEI practitioners” in corporations and nonprofits in their jurisdiction.
By taking such bold action on Day 1 and beyond, using his Oval Office bully pulpit and an ever-present White House press corps to spread the word, Mr. Trump has established “heroic expectations” for his presidency, says Jennifer Mercieca, an expert on presidential communication at Texas A&M University.
In his inaugural address Monday, Mr. Trump claimed a mandate from God after surviving a would-be assassin’s bullet, and vowed nothing short of remaking the entire federal government, Professor Mercieca notes in an email. And he has declared a new “manifest destiny” for the nation, promising national expansion.
“He has promised his followers that he’ll solve all of their problems and restore their hope for the nation,” Ms. Mercieca writes. But, she adds, these are “unrealistic expectations that will be difficult to satisfy.”
