Trump leaves WHO and climate accord, among massive changes to US policy on first day

Executive orders aimed at wiping out Biden’s legacy include freezing TikTok ban, rolling back transgender rights, limiting immigration, halting foreign aid spending

US President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, January 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
US President Donald Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House, January 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump began his promised flurry of executive action on the first day of his second term.

With his opening rounds of memoranda and executive orders, Trump repealed dozens of former president Joe Biden’s actions, began his immigration crackdown, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords and sought to keep TikTok open in the US, among other actions.

He also pardoned hundreds of people for their roles in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Here’s a look at some of Trump’s initial actions and upcoming plans:

The economy and TikTok

In a made-for-TV display at Capital One Arena on Monday evening, Trump signed a largely symbolic memorandum that he described as directing every federal agency to combat consumer inflation. By repealing Biden’s actions and adding his own orders, Trump is easing regulatory burdens on oil and natural gas production, something he promises will bring down the costs of all consumer goods. Trump is specifically targeting Alaska for expanded fossil fuel production.

US President Donald Trump signs an executive order on the US withdrawal from WHO (World Health Organization) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Jim WATSON / POOL / AFP)

On trade, the president said he expects to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting February 1 but declined to flesh out his plans for taxing Chinese imports.

Trump also signed an order intended to pause Congress’s TikTok ban for 75 days, a period in which the president says he will seek a US buyer in a deal that can protect national security interests while leaving the popular social media platform open to Americans.

America First

As he did during his first administration, Trump is pulling the US out of the World Health Organization. He also ordered a comprehensive review of US foreign aid spending, temporarily suspending all US foreign assistance programs for 90 days pending reviews to determine whether they are aligned with his policy goals.

Both moves fit into his more isolationist “America First” approach to international affairs.

In more symbolic moves, Trump planned to sign an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making it the “Gulf of America.” The highest mountain in North America, now known as Denali, will revert back to Mount McKinley, its name until former president Barack Obama changed it. Trump also signed an order that flags must be at full height on every future Inauguration Day. The order came because former president Jimmy Carter’s death had prompted flags to be at half-staff. Trump demanded they be moved up Monday. Another Trump order calls for promoting “Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.”

Immigration and national security

Trump reversed several immigration orders from Biden’s presidency, including one that narrowed deportation priorities to people who commit serious crimes, are deemed national security threats or were stopped at the border. It returns the government to Trump’s first-term policy that everyone in the country illegally is a priority for deportation.

Colombian migrant Margelis Tinoco, 48, left, cries after her CBP One appointment was canceled at the Paso del Norte international bridge in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, on the border with the US, January 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

The president declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, and he plans to send US troops to help support immigration agents and restrict refugees and asylum.

Trump is also trying to end birthright citizenship. It’s unclear, though, whether his order will survive inevitable legal challenges since birthright citizenship is enshrined in the US Constitution.

He temporarily suspended the US Refugee Admission Program, pending a review to assess the program’s “public safety and national security” implications. He’s also pledged to restart a policy that forced asylum seekers to wait over the border in Mexico, but officials didn’t say whether Mexico would accept migrants again. And Trump is ending the CBP One app, a Biden-era border app that gave legal entry to nearly 1 million migrants.

Meanwhile, on national security, the president revoked any active security clearances from a long list of his perceived enemies, including former director of national intelligence James Clapper, Leon Panetta, a former director of the CIA and defense secretary, and his own former national security adviser, John Bolton.

He also signed an executive order saying the United States would designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in a move that could push a militarized agenda for the border and Latin America.

Climate and energy

As expected, Trump signed documents he said would formally withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement. He made the same move during his first term but Biden reversed it.

US President Donald Trump gestures as he signs executive orders during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

The pact is aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels or, failing that, keeping temperatures at least well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.

Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations indicating his intention to withdraw from the 2015 agreement, which allows nations to provide targets to cut their own emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Those targets are supposed to become more stringent over time, with countries facing a February 2025 deadline for new individual plans. The outgoing Biden administration last month offered a plan to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% by 2035.

Additionally, Trump declared an energy emergency as he promised to “drill, baby, drill,” and said he would eliminate what he calls Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.

Overhauling federal bureaucracy

Trump has halted federal government hiring, excepting the military and other parts of government that went unnamed. He added a freeze on new federal regulations while he builds out his second administration.

He formally empowered the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is being led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Ostensibly an effort to streamline government, DOGE is not an official agency, but Trump appears poised to give Musk wide latitude to recommend cuts in government programs and spending.

Elon Musk listens as US President Donald Trump speaks after taking the oath of office at the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, January 20, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Pool Photo via AP)

Diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights

Trump is rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government. Both are major shifts for the federal policy and are in line with Trump’s campaign trail promises. One order declares that the federal government would recognize only two immutable sexes: male and female. And they’re to be defined based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes, according to details of the upcoming order. Under the order, federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape victims would be segregated by sex as defined by the order. And federal taxpayer money could not be used to fund “transition services.”

A separate order halts DEI programs, directing the White House to identify and end them within the government.

Pardons in the January 6 US Capitol attack

As he promised repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, the president issued pardons late Monday for about 1,500 people convicted or criminally charged in the January 6 attack on the US Capitol as Congress convened to certify Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.

Separately, Trump ordered an end to federal cases against “political opponents” of the Biden administration — meaning Trump supporters. He said Monday that he would end “weaponization” of federal law enforcement but his actions seemed targeted only to help his backers.

Free speech

Trump ordered that no federal officer, employee or agent may unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen, an early step toward his campaign promise to dismantle what he called government “censorship” of US citizens.

The order also instructs the attorney general, in consultation with other executive agency heads, to investigate how federal government actions over the four years of the Biden administration could have infringed on free speech and propose “remedial actions” based on the findings.

Trump’s executive order does not acknowledge the gravity of harmful online falsehoods, which have increasingly snowballed into real-world threats, harassment and targeted violence.

US President Donald Trump speaks during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, January 20, 2025. (Chip Somodevilla/Pool Photo via AFP)

It’s not yet clear how the order could affect the work that several US agencies do to track false claims that pose threats to election security, including the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA.

Death penalty

Trump signed a sweeping execution order Monday on the death penalty that directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions.

Trump’s order compels the Justice Department to not only seek the death penalty in appropriate federal cases but also to help preserve capital punishment in states that have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs.

Trump had been expected to restart federal executions, which have been on hold since a moratorium was imposed by former attorney general Merrick Garland in 2021. Only three defendants, including Robert Bowers, who carried out the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, remain on federal death row after Biden recently converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison.

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