Jan. 20, 2025, 8:54 p.m.
The new Trump administration announced a slew of executive orders Monday, including ones declaring an emergency at the southern border, declaring a national energy emergency, and rolling back the rights of transgender and gender-diverse individuals.
President Trump described a plethora of executive orders after he was sworn into office on Martin Luther King Jr. Day—a rare year when the holiday and the inauguration converged on the same day. “With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said during his inaugural speech. “It's all about common sense.”
Those actions included directives dedicating Defense Department resources to the southern border and creating new task forces to expedite the removal of undocumented immigrants.
White House senior officials also announced a series of executive orders that would be “unleashing American energy,” declaring a national energy emergency, and opening up Alaska’s resources. Officials connected the need for electricity and power expansion to fueling American innovation in artificial intelligence.
Some of the executive orders were also targeted at culture-war touchstones. Administration officials discussed directives across federal agencies to recognize only two sexes: male and female.
Here is a roundup of some of the vital executive actions President Trump announced Monday:
Immigration
Immediately following the inauguration Monday, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, allowing incoming administration officials to deploy the armed forces and the National Guard to the border with Mexico. It’s unclear exactly how many U.S. servicemembers will be sent to the border. That decision will be left up to the incoming Defense secretary. Trump’s nominee, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, participated in a contentious Senate hearing last week. Lawmakers will vote on his confirmation sometime in the coming week after the Senate Armed Services Committee forwarded his nomination to the floor Monday.
Trump also signed an executive order ending catch-and-release, a practice whereby migrants are released into the community while they await their immigration hearings. Once released, many seeking to stay in the U.S. have ample time to find work and build a life in the country, since immigration courts often face several years of delays. Republicans have long criticized the practice, but Congress has failed to allocate more funding to immigration courts.
Trump’s executive orders will reinstate the controversial Remain in Mexico policy from his first term. The policy requires migrants to stay in Mexico while they wait for their asylum cases to be heard. Experts say that it puts vulnerable migrants at risk.
The administration’s executive orders will also make it nearly impossible for migrants to apply for asylum. Refugee resettlement will be suspended for at least four months, and the U.S. southern border will be closed via proclamation, allowing for an immediate removal process without the possibility of asylum.
Another executive order allows for the development of federal and state partnerships to crack down on undocumented migrants. The orders will establish federal homeland security task forces to cooperate with state and local law enforcement for the expedited removal of gangs, criminals, and undocumented migrants.
The administration also designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Specifically, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua will be defined under the Alien Enemies Act as an irregular armed force of Venezuela’s government that is conducting a predatory incursion and invasion into the U.S.
A separate executive order directs the federal government not to recognize the automatic birthright citizenship of children born in the United States to undocumented migrants. Some lawmakers have already questioned the legality of that move, since the right to birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution.
Energy
White House officials told reporters Monday morning that Trump’s orders will unleash “affordable and reliable American energy.” One executive order will cut the red tape and regulations that “have held back our economy, have held back investment, job creation and natural resource production.” Officials said natural resource production is important to lowering costs for American consumers at the pump and with their utility bills.
The order would end what the official called the “electric vehicle mandate,” without going into details. Republican members have used this term to refer to a Biden administration regulation to get car manufacturers to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by nearly 50 percent by 2027 in light-duty vehicles. Trump’s order would also stop efforts to “curtail consumer choice,” such as restrictions on gas stoves, dishwashers, and showerheads, officials said.
Trump declared a national energy emergency to address the high cost of energy. “We will drill, baby, drill,” he said during his inaugural speech.
A White House official said the emergency declaration “is crucial because we are in an AI race with China, and our ability to produce domestic American energy is so crucial such that we can generate the electricity and power that’s needed to stay at the global forefront of technology.”
Another order will “unleash Alaska’s natural resource potential,” a White House official said, noting that Alaska was abundant with oil, gas, timber, and critical minerals. Earlier last year, the Interior Department finalized a regulation to limit oil and gas leasing from more than half of the Naval Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, which encompasses about 23 million acres of public land. It also codified a ban on new leasing in more than 10 million acres, or 40 percent, of the area.
Trump signed an order in front of his supporters at Capital One Arena to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords, a treaty signed in 2015 where nations committed to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius “above pre-industrial levels.” President Biden rejoined the climate agreement when he assumed office after Trump’s first withdrawal in 2017.
“I think it feels to me like the Paris accord is very symbolic. It doesn't really change anything,” Sen. John Curtis told National Journal when asked about it late last year. “The countries that originally signed up for that, most of them aren’t meeting targets. The United States is probably doing better than anybody, and yet we weren't part of it for many years.”
Transgender rights
President Trump plans to fulfill his campaign promise to address “left-wing gender insanity” by issuing directives to roll back the rights of transgender and gender-diverse people Monday. The order will make it U.S. policy to recognize two sexes: male and female, and they are not changeable, according to White House officials.
“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said during his speech.
Federal employees will be directed to use the term “sex” and not “gender,” and all official government documents such as passports will “reflect sex accurately,” said White House officials Monday.
The attorney general is also directed to reevaluate how a key Supreme Court case, which provided protections to workers based on sexual orientation and gender identity, would affect other laws. The Biden administration had pointed to this case as justification to include sexual orientation and gender identity under anti-discrimination protections in the Affordable Care Act.
Taxpayer dollars cannot fund transition services, the officials said, pointing specifically to the Bureau of Prisons. The attorney general will be asked to ensure federal funds aren’t being used in prisons for these services.
Technology policy
Fulfilling a campaign pledge, Trump repealed Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence before the raucous crowd at Capital One Arena.
Biden’s AI executive order tasked the National Institute of Standards and Technology to create “rigorous standards” by which to test the most advanced AI programs and required companies developing those programs to notify the government on how their programs did on the tests. It also required federal agencies to designate chief AI officers in charge of coordinating both the internal use of AI for an agency and the agency’s potential regulatory role in regards to AI.
The executive order had been criticized by some as amounting to executive overreach, and on the campaign trail, Trump promised to revoke it and replace it with an AI “Manhattan project.”
Trump also signed an executive order that formalized his promise not to enforce the TikTok forced-divestiture bill.
The law, passed with broad bipartisan support last year, required ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, to divest from the app or face a ban in the U.S. that started on Jan. 19.
Prior to the ban going into effect, both Biden and Trump said they would not enforce the law. Despite the reassurances, TikTok went offline for several hours the night of Jan. 18 and through most of the day on Jan. 19 before coming back online.
The executive order formalizes Trump’s commitment by directing the attorney general not to enforce the law for 75 days while his administration determines “the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”
The executive order does not negate the law in any way, and some Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Tom Cotton, have warned American companies that working with TikTok to keep the app running in the U.S. makes them potentially liable for billions of dollars in fines.
Lauren Green contributed to this article.
