By AP and published by Yahoo!News
Washington – US President Donald Trump on Monday (Jan. 20) said he was pardoning about 1,500 of his supporters who have been charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, using his sweeping clemency powers on his first day back in office to dismantle the largest investigation and prosecution in Justice Department history.
The pardons were expected after Trump’s years-long campaign to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack that left more than 100 police officers injured and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Yet the scope of the clemency still comes as a massive blow to the Justice Department’s effort to hold participants accountable over what has been described as one of the darkest days in American history.
Trump said he was also commuting the sentences of six defendants, though the White House did not immediately provide further details.
Trump had suggested in the weeks leading up to his return to the White House that he was going to look at the Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis. Vice President JD Vance had said just days ago that people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot “obviously” should not be pardoned.
Here’s a look at some of Trump’s initial actions and upcoming plans:
The economy
In a made-for-TV display at Capital One Arena on Monday evening, Trump signed a largely symbolic memorandum that he described as directing every federal agency to combat consumer inflation.
He is expected to add orders to ease regulatory burdens on oil and natural gas production, including an order tied to Alaska. But he appears to be holding off at the moment on his threat to issue tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada and other countries. He also appears to be holding off on higher taxes on imports, with an incoming official pointing reporters to a Wall Street Journal story saying he will only sign a memorandum telling federal agencies to study trade issues.
America First
Trump will sign an order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, making it the Gulf of America. And the highest mountain in North America, now known as Denali, will revert back to Mount McKinley, its name until President Barack Obama changed it. The renaming is to honour “American greatness,” according to a preview of the orders posted online by Trump’s incoming press secretary.
He signed an order that flags must be at full height at every future Inauguration Day. The order came because former President Jimmy Carter’s death had prompted flags to be at half-staff. Trump demanded they be moved up Monday.
Immigration
Much of the executive action on the border is ripped from Trump’s first-term playbook. He will declare a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, send US troops to help support immigration agents and restrict refugees and asylum. He’s also pledged to restart a policy that forced asylum seekers to wait over the border in Mexico, but officials didn’t say whether Mexico would accept migrants again. During the previous effort, squalid and fetid camps grew on the border and were marred by gang violence. Trump is also promising to end birthright citizenship, but it’s unclear how he’d do it — it’s enshrined in the US Constitution.
He ended the CBP One app, a Biden-era border app that gave legal entry to nearly 1 million migrants.
Climate and energy
As expected, Trump signed documents he said will formally withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreements. He made the same move during his first term but Biden reversed it.
Additionally, Trump plans to declare an energy emergency as he promises to “drill, baby, drill,” and says he will eliminate what he calls Biden’s electric vehicle mandate.
Overhauling federal bureaucracy
Trump has halted federal government hires, excepting the military and other parts of government that went unnamed. He added a freeze on new federal regulations while he builds out his second administration. Additionally, he is expected to make it easier to fire thousands of federal workers by reclassifying certain employees as political appointees rather than merit system employees whose jobs are protected through changes in administrations.
Trump also is set to formally empower the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is being led by megabillionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. Ostensibly an effort to streamline government, DOGE is not an official agency. But Trump appears poised to give Musk wide latitude to recommend cuts in government programs and spending.
Diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights
Trump is rolling back protections for transgender people and terminating diversity, equity and inclusion programmes within the federal government. Both are major shifts for federal policy and are in line with Trump’s campaign trail promises. One order would declare that the federal government would recognise only two immutable sexes: male and female. And they’re to be defined based on whether people are born with eggs or sperm, rather than on their chromosomes, according to details of the upcoming order. Under the order, federal prisons and shelters for migrants and rape victims would be segregated by sex as defined by the order. And federal taxpayer money could not be used to fund “transition services.”
A separate order halts DEI programs, directing the White House to identify and end them within the government.
CAPTIONS:
Top: US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. Photo by Jim WATSON / Pool / AFP and published by Fox5ny.com
First insert: US President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office as he is sworn in as president during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Pool Photo via AP and published by CNA
Second insert: US President-elect Donald Trump kisses Melania Trump before the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the US Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: Saul Loeb/Pool photo via AP and published by CNA
Front Page: Newly sworn-in President Donald Trump takes part in a signing ceremony in the President’s Room following the 60th inaugural ceremony on Jan. 20, 2025, at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Photo: Melina Mara/Pool via Reuters and published by CNA
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