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President Trump stormed into office for his second term with soaring rhetoric and sweeping orders that shattered records for Day 1 executive action.
Borders are closed. More oil and gas drilling. Halts to “government censorship” as well as new outer continental shelf offshore wind leases. Trump issued pardons and commuted some sentences for most of the nearly 1,600 rioters he has called “patriots” who were sentenced after the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021. (Read the executive order HERE.)
Trump, ever the storyteller, flooded the zone and dominated news media coverage both in imagery and deeds.
Among Trump’s clemency recipients: Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of helping to mastermind the Jan. 6 insurrection and was serving a 22-year sentence. He was released Monday from a federal prison in Louisiana and heads today to Miami. Trump commuted the sentence of Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia group Oath Keepers.
With his eyes on voters’ worries about inflation, Trump on Monday issued vague instructions to his Cabinet to “rapidly bring down costs and prices.”
Meanwhile, former Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) became the president’s first confirmed Cabinet secretary. Trump’s picks to be CIA director and secretary of Defense cleared Senate committees Monday, a necessary step before floor votes anticipated this week.
On a bipartisan vote of 64-35, senators also agreed to send Trump a bill to crack down on migrants without legal status who commit serious crimes. Democrats complained that Trump and GOP allies outmaneuvered them on an emotional national issue that will provide the new president with a high-profile bill signing.
During a peaceful inaugural ceremony that shifted from the cold outdoors to the warm security of the Capitol rotunda, Trump, reading from a teleprompter, declared just feet away from a seated former President Biden that “America’s decline is over.” Republicans, elated by their party’s political comeback, applauded. Biden cupped his chin with one hand, his gaze impassive and lowered.
The Hill staff: Photos captured during Inauguration Day.
The outgoing chief executive saved his applause for Trump’s mention of the release Sunday by Hamas of three Israeli hostages as part of a ceasefire agreement that took months to negotiate.
Trump depicted the nation in disrepair and laid out what he called “golden age” policy changes he believes are validated by the more than 77 million voters who returned him to the White House, The Hill’s Brett Samuels reports.
“Our recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal, and all of these many betrayals that have taken place, and to give the people back their faith, their wealth, their democracy and, indeed, their freedom,” Trump said.
The Hill’s Niall Stanage in the Memo: Five takeaways as Trump returns to power.
Now comes the hard part. Plenty was woven into the president’s remarks, but specifics are ahead. Trump pumped the brakes on his promise to deliver wide-ranging tariffs as soon as he took office, wielding threats Monday with a Feb. 1 trigger date. He ordered reviews of law enforcement and intelligence agencies, searching for evidence of “weaponization.”
He will need Congress to enact major tax changes, a challenge because of Republicans’ wafer-thin majorities in Congress. He vows to forge a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Trump wants to expand U.S. territory, shrink government and replace civil servants throughout government with loyal political appointees.
The Hill: Trump signs executive orders on federal workforce, telework.
Here’s a list of Trump’s key executive initiatives, as described by the administration on Monday. And a list of existing executive orders Trump rescinded.
Trump embraced a declaration of a national energy emergency as his umbrella authority to ease regulatory requirements to “drill, baby, drill” and to increase exports.
“It’s not clear what the emergency is,” Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told The New York Times. “The U.S. is producing more oil and gas than ever before, more than any other country in the world. We have no gas lines, we have no widespread electricity blackouts.” He described Trump’s emergency order as “mostly performative.”
The Hill: Trump for a second time as president withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement to combat climate change.
Here’s a transcript of Trump’s address.
The Hill: Highlights from the president’s speech.