List: The executive orders, actions, and proclamations Trump has made as president

Here’s the rundown of the actions Trump took in his first hours, as well as in the days since:

Immigration

This order is meant to reverse Biden administration border policies by ending what Trump has described as “catch and release.” The order also restarts the “Remain in Mexico” policy Trump implemented in his first term and directs further construction of a wall on the southern border.

The order also immediately ended the use of the CBP One app’s immigration functions. The phone app was expanded by the Biden administration to allow more than 730,000 noncitizens to fly into the country from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, as well as apply for appointments at ports of entry.

It also provides for the collection of DNA from illegal immigrants in custody, as well as to determine if migrants are related and family members and to prosecute adults who are not related to children they claim to be related to. 

• An executive order empowering agencies to remove illegal immigrants. Read the order here.

This order revokes Biden administration orders on handling migrants who cross the southern border and might claim asylum. It instead orders agencies to execute laws allowing for the removal of inadmissible migrants.

A Trump official described it as equipping agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection with the authorities needed to deport illegal immigrants.

It also establishes federal Homeland Security Task Forces to cooperate with state and local law enforcement in the removal of gangs and criminals from the United States.

This action will allow the Department of Defense to deploy active-duty and National Guard military to the southern border, erect barriers, and work on ways to take down enemy drones.

• An executive order “clarifying the military’s role in protecting the territorial integrity of the United States.” Read it here. 

This order assigns the military the mission of sealing the border and institutes campaign planning requirements. 

This order declares an emergency under national security law to designate cartels as terrorist groups. It also does the same for the gangs Tren de Aragua and La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. It will allow Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act against cartels and gangs. 

This order suspends refugee resettlement for at least four months. 

This order is meant to deny citizenship based on being born in the U.S. Democratic states, and the American Civil Liberties Union sued almost immediately to stop the order. 

This order directs agencies to improve the screening and vetting of migrants on the grounds of preventing terrorism and crime. 

This proclamation establishes that the situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion under Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution.

• An executive order restoring the death penalty. Read it here.

This order restores the use of the death penalty. It had been paused under Biden. It directs the attorney general to pursue capital punishment for the murder of law enforcement officers and capital crimes committed by illegal immigrants.

This order pauses foreign aid for 90 days to make sure it aligns with Trump’s foreign policy. 

Economics

• A memorandum requiring a return to work for federal workers. Read it here. 

This memo ends working from home for federal employees and requires a return to work in offices as “soon as practicable.” It allows exemptions based on the judgment of agency leaders. 

• A memorandum imposing a regulatory freeze. Read it here. 

This memo halts all agency rules until a Trump official can review them. It also directs agencies to consider delaying rules already put in place. 

• A memorandum imposing a hiring freeze. Read it here. 

This memo freezes hiring for federal positions. It does not apply to military, immigration enforcement, or public safety and allows for exemptions determined by the director of the Office of Management and Budget. 

It also requires a report within 90 days from the OMB on reducing the workforce and bans the use of contractors to circumvent the freeze. 

Trump also imposed a hiring freeze in his first term. 

• An executive order giving Trump more power over career federal workers, previously known as “Schedule F.” Read it here. 

This order reinstates an order issued in the last days of the previous Trump administration and was subsequently undone by Biden that would create a new class of career federal workers that could be removed based on policy considerations. Previously, they would have been labeled “Schedule F” employees. This order would categorize them as “policy/career” employees. 

The order is meant to make government employees more responsive to the president and to prevent what Trump has termed “the deep state” from obstructing his agenda. Critics have argued it would undermine the quality of the bureaucracy. 

This memo directs agencies to take actions that would lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply, cut “counterproductive” requirements that raise the costs of home appliances, slash “unnecessary” administrative expenses that raise healthcare costs, and create employment opportunities for American workers, among other broad directives.

• A memorandum establishing an “America First” trade policy. Read it here. 

This memo establishes Trump’s trade policy but stops short of starting the process of implementing new tariffs, as he has promised. Instead, it directs officials to pursue an “America First” trade policy. 

It also calls for a review of certain critical and controversial trade policies, including the China trade deal Trump signed in his first term and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement he negotiated. 

It also calls for a review of the “de minimis” rule that allows for imports of less than $800 to be duty-free. The order notes that the exception could be used to bring in counterfeits or drugs. 

The order also asks the treasury secretary and other members of the administration to consider the feasibility of the External Revenue Service, the agency Trump has proposed to collect tariff revenues. Today, such revenues are collected by Customs and Border Protection.

• A memorandum exiting the global minimum deal. Read it here.

This memo withdraws the U.S. from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s global tax deal, which was pursued by Biden Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to impose a global minimum tax of 15% on businesses. Republicans have long opposed the effort. 

• A memorandum on career senior executives. Read it here.  

This memo requires performance plans for Career Senior Executive Service officials, who are high-level government administrators who manage major programs within agencies and often interact between agency officials appointed by presidents and career employees. 

• An executive order establishing the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Read it here. 

This order relates to the DOGE, touted by Trump and Elon Musk. 

The DOGE will be extremely limited in terms of its government footprint, according to the order. Basically, it will rename the United States Digital Service, or the USDS, a small organization founded by the Obama administration to aid agencies with tech services, the United States DOGE Service (also USDS). 

It also creates a temporary organization within the USDS to carry out the DOGE agenda in the next 18 months, permitting it to establish small teams in each agency.

Musk and other Trump allies associated with DOGE have said the DOGE primarily will be outside the government and that its actual government authority will be limited. 

• An executive order for an Artificial Intelligence Action Plan. Read the order here.

This order requires the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto (the tech investor David Sacks), and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs to work with agency heads to develop a plan to “sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” The report is due within 180 days. 

The order also tells agencies to carry out the reversal of Biden’s order on AI, which was revoked by a different Trump order. 

• An order re-chartering the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Read the order here. 

This order gives a new charter to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a group of tech and science experts that advises the president that has served all presidents since George W. Bush. Trump’s order adds the Special Advisor for AI & Crypto, David Sacks, to the council. It also warns that “across science, medicine, and technology, ideological dogmas have surfaced that elevate group identity above individual achievement, enforce conformity at the expense of innovative ideas, and inject politics into the heart of the scientific method.”  

• An order boosting cryptocurrencies and banning a Central Bank Digital Currency. Read the order here. 

This order repeals an order signed by Biden directing more research into a Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC. Free-market advocates have warned that a CBDC could allow the government far-reaching ability to engage in financial surveillance. 

The order also establishes a Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, to be headed by the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, David Sacks. The group has 180 days to make recommendations about the crypto regulatory framework, including for stablecoins, which are digital currencies that tie their value to an underlying asset, such as the dollar. The group is also supposed to explore the idea of a strategic bitcoin reserve. 

Lastly, the order prohibits the creation of a CBDC.

Anti-DEI

This is a far-reaching executive order billed as rooting out diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives undertaken by the Biden administration. Trump officials framed it as a move to restore equal treatment and uphold the vision of civil rights leaders by focusing on character rather than race, sex, or other identity-based characteristics. It creates a process to “end federal implementation of unlawful and radical DEI ideology.”

It also reverses 78 orders and memos promulgated by Biden. Many of the orders had to do with DEI and related topics, such as LGBT issues and “environmental justice.” 

Others, though, had little to do with DEI. For example, the Trump order reverses the Biden administration order on artificial intelligence, which many in Silicon Valley had said was too onerous. It also undoes the ethics rules imposed by Biden on the executive branch. 

In short, the order is a massive change in administrative policy on a host of topics. 

• An executive order ending DEI programs and preferences. Read it here. 

This order is meant to terminate all DEI programs and environmental justice programs. Any positions associated with those programs are also meant to be eliminated where possible or redirected to non-DEI purposes. 

• An executive order reforming federal hiring. Read it here. 

This order requires a new federal hiring plan that prevents hiring based on “race, sex, or religion, and prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling to defend the Constitution or to faithfully serve the Executive Branch.”

• An executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, Denali, and other important sites. Read it here. 

This order renames Denali, the tallest mountain in North America, as Mount McKinley. It had been named Mount McKinley from 1917 until 2015, when the Department of Interior changed it in accordance with Alaska natives’ wishes.

The order also renames the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.” 

It sets up a process to review appointments to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names.

• An executive order defining sex as based on biology. Read it here.  

This order defines “sex” in federal policy as based on biology, not gender identity, a reversal of Biden administration policies. 

It defines “female” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” It defines “male” as “a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

All agencies are supposed to use these definitions in interpreting laws and in documents and must get rid of all language pertaining to gender identity. 

The order also provides that passports and government personnel documents will only allow for the options of two sexes: male or female. 

It also calls on the attorney general to reverse the Biden administration’s interpretation of the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which found gender identity is a protected category under employment discrimination law. The Biden administration sought to apply that ruling to other areas of law, such as education. 

The order also directs federal agencies to ensure that biological males are not included in women’s spaces, such as in prisons or in public housing. 

• A memorandum ending DEI at the Federal Aviation Administration. Read it here. 

This memo orders the FAA to end all DEI programs and hiring practices, and to “return to non-discriminatory, merit-based hiring.”

• An executive order targeting DEI in contracting, the private sector, and higher education. Read it here. 

This far-reaching order extends the anti-DEI effort beyond the federal government itself, to contractors and private entities. 

It revokes an executive order signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965 that mandated affirmative action in federal contracting, which President Barack Obama in 2014 amended to include gender identity. 

The order instead requires every entity that gets a federal contract or grant to certify that it does not engage in DEI. 

It further tasks the heads of agencies to oppose DEI in the private sector where applicable. Each agency is tasked with coming up with a list of up to nine large corporations, nonprofit organizations, or universities under their jurisdiction that engage in DEI and might be targets for regulation or litigation. Lastly, the AG and Secretary of Education are supposed to come up with guidance to universities and colleges that get federal funding for compliance with the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-based affirmative action programs.

Government reforms

• An order ending the “weaponization” of the federal government. Read it here. 

This order finds that the Biden administration used federal agencies and the intelligence community to punish political opponents. 

It requires a report from the attorney general on any abuse of government power in the past four years. It also mandates a similar report from the director of national intelligence on the intelligence community. 

• An order against federal censorship. Read it here. 

This order finds that the government infringed speech rights under the guise of combating “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation.” It’s a response, in particular, to the content moderation practices of Big Tech companies in recent years, as platforms limited controversial content related to the pandemic, race, gender, and more.

The order mandates a report from the attorney general on any censorship done by the government in the past four years.

This proclamation grants pardons and commutations to all of the defendants convicted over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, marking one of the most expansive clemency announcements in history.

This order suspends the security clearances of dozens of former intelligence community officials who wrote an infamous letter about Hunter Biden ahead of the 2020 election. Among the letter’s signatories were three former CIA directors, including John Brennan, as well as former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

• A memorandum giving Trump officials security clearances. Read it here. 

This memo grants immediate security clearances for Trump personnel. 

This order declassifies the government files regarding the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. 

A 1992 law ordered the release of the files related to the JFK assassination, but the publication of the documents has been delayed several times as the agencies have reviewed the required redactions. 

Trump’s order requires the attorney general and director of national intelligence to present a plan for the release of the JFK files within 15 days. It gives them 45 days to do the same for RFK and MLK. 

• A memo recognizing the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Read it here. 

This order would grant full federal benefits associated with being a federally recognized tribe to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, which Trump promised on the campaign trail. The order gives the secretary of the interior 90 days to present a plan to help the tribe obtain full benefits, whether by legislation or another “legal pathway.” The House did pass legislation granting benefits in December, but it wasn’t taken up by the Senate.

Energy and environment

• An executive order “unleashing American energy.” Read it here. 

This major order is meant to undo many of the rules put in place by the Biden administration to promote clean energy, limit carbon emissions, increase efficiency rules for appliances, and boost electric vehicles. 

It sets up reviews by agencies to find ways to undo clean energy rules and promote energy production. 

It undoes a dozen Biden climate-related orders and terminates the American Climate Corps started by Biden. 

It orders the Council on Environmental Quality to speed up permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act, the bedrock environmental law that requires environmental reviews of projects. It also orders other agencies to put forward recommendations to Congress for overhauling permitting laws.

It limits agency environmental reviews to just what is required by the underlying laws. Specifically, it undoes the Biden administration’s “social cost of carbon” calculation, which was used to guide the cost-benefit analyses of various federal rules. 

The order also ends the pause on approvals of new exports of liquefied natural gas put in place by the Biden Energy Department. 

The rule also calls for accelerating mining for critical minerals. 

• An executive order declaring a national energy emergency. Read it here. 

This order directs agencies to find ways they can use emergency powers to produce energy and build energy infrastructure. 

Among other provisions, it asks the Environmental Protection Agency to consider allowing year-round sales of gasoline with a higher blend of ethanol, known as E15. 

This order withdraws the U.S. again from the Paris Agreement, the 2016 agreement by countries to aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The order tells agencies to undo any policies they put in place to work toward the goal. 

Trump had withdrawn from the agreement in 2016, and then Biden rejoined it. 

This memo blocks all lease sales for offshore wind projects and pauses any new approvals, permits, leases, or loans for wind projects both on and offshore. It follows Trump’s campaign pledges to stop the construction of wind turbines. 

• A memorandum on water use in California. Read it here. 

This order directs relevant agencies to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state. It’s responsive to Trump’s feud with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) about his management of water in the state. Trump has criticized Newsom’s administration for opposing his water management plans on the grounds of protecting the Delta smelt, an endangered species of fish. 

This order is meant to unleash all of Alaska’s “natural resource potential,” including timber, seafood, and critical minerals. It specifically supports projects exporting LNG from the state, prioritizing any necessary permitting and pipeline construction to transport LNG to the U.S. and abroad. 

The order also calls on the U.S. to “fully avail” itself of Alaska’s lands and resources, maximize the development of natural resources, and expedite permitting and leasing for energy projects in the state. Trump’s action additionally withdraws a number of Biden administration policies related to the region, including its cancellation of any leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

National security and foreign policy

This order extends the deadline for compliance with the TikTok divestment law, a move that effectively halts the app’s shutdown in the U.S. for 75 days.

The law, which went into effect Sunday, is meant to sever ties between the Chinese-owned platform and its parent company, ByteDance, over national security concerns. The new executive order seeks to address the “unfortunate timing” of the law going into effect one day before Trump took office, which was also the deadline to find a U.S. buyer for the Chinese-owned social media app.

• An executive order withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization. Read it here. 

This order withdraws the U.S. from the WHO. Trump had sought to exit the organization in his first term over its handling of the pandemic and its investigation into the outbreak of COVID-19 in China. But Biden reversed that effort. 

The order tasks the secretary of state and OMB director with finding alternatives to the WHO for coordinating among countries. 

• An executive order telling the secretary of state to pursue “America First.” Read it here. 

This order directs the secretary of state to provide guidance on an “America First Policy” that will “champion core American interests and always put America and American citizens first.”

Federal buildings

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This order requires the administrator of the General Services Administration to produce recommendations for policies to ensure that federal buildings are “visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.”

The order continues a quest Trump began during his first term to ensure new federal buildings are not just functional but also follow a traditional style of architecture. The president and others have expressed their dissatisfaction with some modernist architecture.