A Look at Trump’s Day One Actions With Security Implications
U.S. President Donald J. Trump was sworn in for a second term on 20 January, and he got right to work on the issues he campaigned on. Here’s a look at his day one actions and comments with significance to the security community.
Immigration
Trump took several actions designed to limit migration into the United States. His executive order titled "Securing Our Borders" said the United States had been invaded by “millions of illegal aliens from nations and regions all around the world…including potential terrorists, foreign spies, members of cartels, gangs, and violent transnational criminal organizations.” The sweeping order instructed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to erect barriers on the southern border, ended use of the CBP One app, reinstated the “remain in Mexico” policy from Trump’s first term, and ended what immigration critics call “catch-and-release,” which releases undocumented migrants in the country pending a parole hearing.
As part of ending catch-and-release policies, the order calls for all undocumented migrants to be detained.
The CBP One app was developed by the Biden Administration to allow migrants to submit their information to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in advance to streamline entry into the country. The app switched off soon after Trump took office, leaving tens of thousands of migrants with existing appointments in limbo.
The order also calls on both the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take all appropriate and lawful action to deploy sufficient personnel along the southern border of the United States to ensure complete operational control.” That is related to a subsequent executive order, "Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States," which states, “Because of the gravity and emergency of this present danger and imminent threat, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border. … The Secretary of Defense shall further take all appropriate action to facilitate the operational needs of the Secretary of Homeland Security along the southern border, including through the provision of appropriate detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services in support of civilian-controlled law enforcement operations.”
Several of the directives in these two orders are likely to face legal challenges. Use of the U.S. military on the southern border is one primary area. The Posse Comitatus Act puts restrictions on domestic use of the military. Likely in an attempt to overcome that legal barrier, the national emergency declaration instructs the Secretary of Defense to recommend if the Insurrection Act of 1807 needs to be invoked to protect the border.
Another order also would seem to pave the way for the Trump Administration to use the military in novel ways. The "Designating Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists" executive order named Tren de Aragua (which operates primarily out of Venezuela) and MS-13 (which operates primarily out of El Salvador) as likely terrorist organizations, as well as the less-well-defined “Mexican cartels.” The order does not mention the U.S. military, but Trump’s standard rhetoric leading up to Inauguration included calls to use the military against cartels in Mexico. The order also lays the groundwork for the president to detain or deport large groups of people using the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were last used to mass incarcerate Japanese Americans during World War II.
One order declared that an invasion was taking place on the southern border and attempted to bolster the legal rights of states, notably Texas and Arizona, to take action in response.
In addition, another order sure to be challenged in court is the "Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship" order that reinterprets the Fourteenth Amendment in a way designed to end the practice that children born in the United States are automatically granted citizenship even if the mother was not in the country lawfully and was not married to a U.S. citizen.
The plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The order says that if the mother is not in the United States legally, then she and the newborn are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. The order appears to be intended to draw lawsuits (which it already has), though even with the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, experts say that the order’s legal arguments are likely dubious.
Trump signed several other orders related to border security. Read summaries by the Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Hill for more on the topic.
Pardons
In "Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021," Trump commuted the sentences of 14 named people and ordered the Justice Department to issue a “full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol” on 6 January 2021.
This order washed away the sentences and convictions of more than 1,500 people, including many who were convicted of violent beatings of police and security personnel during the riot and storming of the Capitol building.
Included in the pardons are former leaders of the Proud Boys, including Enrique Tarrio, who had been sentenced to 22 years in prison for insurrection. Other Proud Boys leaders with multiple-year sentences pardoned include Zachary Rehl, Joseph Biggs, and Ethan Nordean. The Southern Poverty Law Center designated the Proud Boys as a hate group, and the Anti-Defamation League say “the Proud Boys are a right-wing extremist group with a history of using violence, targeted harassment, and intimidation” serving as a place espousing “misogynistic, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and anti-LGBTQ ideologies and other forms of hate.”
Voice of America, which is published by the U.S. government, covered how people gathered outside D.C. prisons to praise the pardons.
For more on the pardons, see the Associated Press and Wired.
Tariffs
In the “America First Trade Policy” executive order, Trump directed the State, Treasury, Defense, Commerce, and Homeland Security, as well as the Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Trade Representative, and others to study trade practices and develop recommendations that establish “a robust and reinvigorated trade policy that promotes investment and productivity, enhances our nation’s industrial and technological advantages, defends our economic and national security, and—above all—benefits American workers, manufacturers, farmers, ranchers, entrepreneurs, and businesses” by addressing what it calls unfair and unbalanced trade. The recommendations are due 1 April.
Among the remedies to address the unfair trade, the order expressly tells the Treasury and Commerce Secretaries to examine a “global supplemental tariff”—Trump’s campaign promise of universal tariffs. The order also establishes an External Revenue Service to reorganize the governmental functions that collect tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues, and to examine flows of migrants and drugs from Canada, Mexico, and China.
Trump also told reporters that the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on products from Canada and Mexico beginning on 1 February. However, there is no official announcement of what this would entail or how it would be implemented.
“Both Canada and Mexico have said they’d retaliate against American goods if Trump slaps tariffs on them,” Bloomberg reported. “Any volley of new border taxes threatens to set off a trade war among the signatories of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the successor to NAFTA [that was] negotiated at Trump’s insistence during his first term.”
Other than the executive order and the comment about Canada and Mexico, no specific actions were taken on trade during Trump’s first day.
Climate
Trump issued six different executives covering the climate change and energy on his first day in office. Two of the measures—one declaring a “national energy emergency,” the other called “Unleashing American Energy,”—attempt to reorient U.S. policy to be allied with the interests of fossil fuel companies.
The national energy emergency declaration says: “Energy security is an increasingly crucial theater of global competition. In an effort to harm the American people, hostile state and non-state foreign actors have targeted our domestic energy infrastructure, weaponized our reliance on foreign energy, and abused their ability to cause dramatic swings within international commodity markets. An affordable and reliable domestic supply of energy is a fundamental requirement for the national and economic security of any nation.”
Like many other of the first day orders, this one lacks specifics. Rather, it calls for a variety of agencies to study the issue and report back, but it appears to be setting the stage to use the emergency status to facilitate quick approval of pipelines, drilling permits, and other fossil fuel infrastructure.
The other order says it is the policy of the United States “to encourage energy exploration and production on federal lands and waters, including on the outer continental shelf, in order to meet the needs of our citizens and solidify the United States as a global energy leader long into the future.” It also seeks to end the ability of U.S. states to impose “emissions waivers that function to limit sales of gasoline-powered automobiles” and eliminate incentives to purchase electric vehicles.
The order also rescinds 12 specific Biden Administration executive orders designed to protect the environment or decrease America’s contributions to climate change.
One more notable energy-related order specifically calls for extracting energy resources from Alaska, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Another highly consequential order called for withdrawing the United States from environmental agreements. As part of the order, the United States withdrew again from the Paris Climate Agreement, rescinded any commitments made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and revoked the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan. All of these actions were ordered to happen within days and would be effective as soon as written notice was given to the organizations involved.
"Embracing (the global clean energy boom) will mean massive profits, millions of manufacturing jobs and clean air,” said U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell in a statement reported by Reuters. “Ignoring it only sends all that vast wealth to competitor economies, while climate disasters like droughts, wildfires, and superstorms keep getting worse, destroying property and businesses, hitting nation-wide food production, and driving economy-wide price inflation. The door remains open to the Paris Agreement, and we welcome constructive engagement from any and all countries."
For more on the climate and energy orders, see Columbia University’s overview and an article in The Washington Post.
Foreign Affairs
Trump has long promised an “America First” policy agenda, and his early swath of executive orders seems to have followed that pledge when it comes to foreign affairs. Although many of his earliest orders related to domestic policy, there are several foreign relations actions that could affect security professionals worldwide.
As Trump attempted in 2020, he has once again declared the United States’ intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO). He cited the WHO’s response to COVID-19 and how much funding the United States contributes to the organization, which monitors disease outbreaks worldwide. Roughly one-fifth of the WHO’s budget (about $1.28 billion) comes from the United States. If it withdraws, the United States would lose access to WHO’s resources, including global data about diseases and health, The Hill reported. The U.S. withdrawal from the organization will be a yearlong process.
In an executive order, Trump directed the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs to “establish directorates and coordinating mechanisms within the National Security Council apparatus as he deems necessary and appropriate to safeguard public health and fortify biosecurity.” Trump also ordered officials to recall any U.S. government personnel working with the WHO and identify credible U.S. and international partners to assume any necessary activities that the WHO previously undertook.
In another executive order yesterday, Trump ordered a 90-day pause in U.S. foreign development assistance until programs can be assessed for efficiencies and consistency with U.S. foreign policy. Existing foreign assistance programs must be reviewed as well, and officials will determine within 90 days whether to continue, modify, or cease each foreign assistance program. In previous speeches, Trump complained that the U.S. is the world’s largest foreign aid donor, getting little in return, Reuters reported. It is not immediately clear how much assistance would be affected, because funding for many programs was already appropriated by Congress.
Trump also declared yesterday that a landmark 2021 arrangement between 137 countries setting a global corporate minimum tax has “no force or effect” in the United States, effectively pulling the country out of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal.
Trump claims that the deal puts U.S. companies at risk of “retaliatory” actions and taxes from other nations. The deal was intended to stop countries from competitively reducing corporate tax rates—the EU, Britain, and other countries adopted a 15 percent global corporate minimum tax, but the U.S. Congress never approved measures to bring U.S. company tax rates into compliance with the deal. The U.S. has a roughly 10 percent global minimum tax, Reuters reported.
Trump also issued an order to protect the United States from “foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats,” especially calling for more vigilance during the visa issuance process “to ensure that those aliens approved for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests” and that foreigners admitted to or currently present in the United States “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security.”
The order demands that the Secretary of State “re-establish a uniform baseline for screening and vetting standards and procedures consistent with the Uniform baseline that existed on January 19, 2021”—which is, before Trump left office after his first term. Within 60 days of the order, officials must submit a report identifying countries where vetting and screening information is “so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
There were two orders aiming at policies sometimes criticized as too “woke,” one addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and initiatives in the federal government and the other directed at the transgender and gender nonconforming community.
The DEI order appears limited to dismantle DEI policies in the federal workforce itself and does not extend to the programs federal agencies oversee that may also relate to DEI or address contractors that may have DEI policies. However, since Trump’s election, many companies have abandoned their DEI programs.
The other order says that according to the U.S. government, there will be two sexes, male and female, and they are defined by whether a child was born with eggs or born with the capability to produce sperm later in life. It says all federal agencies will use the term “sex” and not use the term “gender,” both for its internal processes and systems as well as any official forms or interactions with the public.
It also says all federal government-issued individual identification documentation, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, will reflect the sex of the individual using the egg or sperm at birth definition. It does not expressly say identifications reflecting something different than this definition—such as the gender “X” designation that has been allowed on passports since 2022—are invalid or must be replaced. The order also rescinds a variety of previous orders and directives related to transgender issues.
See The New York Times article for more on the orders.
TikTok and Other Miscellaneous
Trump also issued an executive order instructing the Department of Justice to delay enforcement of the U.S. ban of TikTok for 75 days, “to permit my Administration an opportunity to determine the appropriate course of action with respect to TikTok.”
The ban of TikTok, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last week, began on 19 January, the day before Trump was sworn in. TikTok users in the United States who tried to use the app saw a message saying the app had been banned and Apple and Google app stores had removed the ability to download the app.
After the order, TikTok is again available to use for those who had previously downloaded, but as of the morning of 21 January, it still was not available for new downloads.
The new deadline for TikTok is 5 April. It is not known what will transpire now, though the company controlling the application, ByteDance, could pursue a sale as U.S. law requires for it to remain available. Or the Trump Administration could try to find new arguments before the court to overturn the law on constitutional grounds.
Trump also directed several executive orders at the federal workforce, including formally creating the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) within the executive office of the president, supplanting what was formerly called the the United States Digital Service. He also ordered an end to remote work in the federal workforce, an expansive hiring freeze, and orders to make it easier for the administration to fire workers who disagree with the administration and hire ones who agree.
Orders also were designed to make easier for the administration to revoke security clearances for people the administration thinks should not have clearance while making it easier to obtain clearances for those the administration thinks should have it.
Time compiled a list of the first day executive orders with descriptions and links.
