Second Trump Presidency Begins with Burst of Executive Orders

Shortly after his inauguration address, President Donald Trump moved quickly to begin enacting his agenda through executive orders. Among his first actions, Trump revoked dozens of executive orders issued by President Joe Biden, including a 2023 order on artificial intelligence and various orders focused on climate change, pandemic response, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. He also ordered federal agencies to terminate all DEI programs, policies, positions, and equity-related grants and contracts, “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” and he began the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization.

Another group of orders fleshed out his stance on energy and environmental policy. Trump declared a “national energy emergency” to expedite approvals of projects related to developing domestic energy resources, and he withdrew from the Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation and any other agreements made under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. He also revoked Biden’s 2021 memorandum on scientific integrity as well as all products of the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases as part of an executive order focused on “unleashing American energy.” The order also directs agencies to devote “particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.”

Among various actions on immigration and trade policy, Trump directed agencies involved in visa processing to enhance screening procedures and to “evaluate all visa programs to ensure that they are not used by foreign nation-states or other hostile actors to harm the security, economic, political, cultural, or other national interests of the United States.” He also ordered recommendations on ways to “enhance our nation’s technological edge and how to identify and eliminate loopholes in existing export controls — especially those that enable the transfer of strategic goods, software, services, and technology to countries to strategic rivals and their proxies.”

Turning to the federal workforce, Trump set in motion a process to designate certain federal staff into a classification within the civil service that is under more direct political control. He also froze most federal hiring and regulatory actions pending a government-wide review and ordered the creation of a Federal Hiring Plan. In addition, he directed agencies to require that employees work in-person on a full-time basis “as soon as practicable,” while permitting agency leaders to make exceptions. Setting up a confrontation with Congress over federal spending, he paused all disbursement of funds provided by the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Trump also formally established his cost-cutting effort, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, by restructuring the U.S. Digital Service into the U.S. DOGE Service.

This news brief originally appeared in FYI’s newsletter for the week of Jan. 20.