President-elect Donald Trump will immediately unleash an onslaught of actions when he takes command at the White House on Monday, sealing the southern border, barring transgender individuals from women’s sports and taking a sledgehammer to most of President Biden’s policies.
Republican senators who met with the incoming president at Mar-a-Lago said Mr. Trump has roughly 100 executive orders ready for Day One. This flex of power will quickly implement much of his agenda as Congress takes up his legislative priorities.
“I don’t think it’s hyperbole. Is it ambitious? Yes. But it’s absolutely doable,” said E.J. Antoni, public finance economist at the Heritage Foundation, who has reviewed executive orders. “When you think about the amount of time his team has had to prepare those executive orders, it’s perfectly reasonable to think those orders will be on the Resolute Desk on the day of the inauguration.”
The stack of executive orders is likely to face challenges both in the courts and elsewhere. Politicians, advocacy groups, and concerned citizens will likely file lawsuits to prevent some of the orders from taking effect.
It also falls upon government agencies to carry out the directives, but bureaucrats tasked with implementing the president’s agenda can drag their feet.
Mr. Trump tackled that problem during his first administration with an executive order stripping civil servants of their protections by classifying some as Schedule F, a new category. Mr. Biden, when he took office, quickly authored a new rule shielding federal workers from a potential revival of Schedule F.
Still, Mr. Trump has pledged to bring it back through an executive order on his first day.
“Schedule F reform is the most important executive order Mr. Trump can sign,” said Mr. Antoni. “He was terribly undermined during his first administration and this gives the executive branch the ability to clean house and get rid of a lot of those people.”
The rest of Mr. Trump’s executive orders will fall into two buckets, those aimed at expanding Mr. Trump’s MAGA agenda and those reversing or stopping actions taken by Mr. Biden.
Mr. Trump has said he will use executive orders to roll back many of the climate-related policies implemented by Mr. Biden. He has pledged to end the electric vehicle mandate, which caps tailpipe emissions so automakers are compelled to sell more electric and hybrid vehicles.
Withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement is also a first-day priority, a move Mr. Trump made in 2017 when he took office. On his first day, Mr. Biden rejoined the agreement.
Mr. Trump also is expected to issue orders lifting restrictions on fossil fuel production and expanding domestic oil drilling, including the reversal of offshore drilling bans that Mr. Biden imposed in his final days at the White House.
Other planned orders would overhaul immigration enforcement in the U.S., including restoring Mr. Trump’s travel ban that barred people from predominately Muslim countries and expanding it to include refugees from war-torn Gaza and suspend refugee admissions into the U.S.
Stephen Miller, who will serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, said Mr. Trump will issue a series of executive orders to begin “the largest deportation operation in American history.”
Mr. Trump has pledged to end birthright citizenship, the principle that declares anyone born on U.S. soil is an American citizen.
Mr. Trump called the idea “ridiculous” and pledged to end it through executive order. However, birthright citizenship is explicitly guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, meaning it can only be changed under specific circumstances, which do not include executive orders. He would need a constitutional convention or a two-thirds vote in Congress to change it.
Most of the immigration executive orders will restore the immigration policies from Mr. Trump’s first administration that were overturned by Mr. Biden on his first day in 2021.
“It’s going to be a bit of ping-pong because Biden reversed a lot of Trump executive orders and now Trump is going to reverse those reversals,” said Sharece Thrower, a Vanderbilt University professor who studies executive orders. “It’s basically Trump restoring his original executive orders.”
In a bid to lower the cost of living for Americans, Mr. Trump will eliminate slews of federal regulations, which he blames for increasing the cost of consumer goods.
At a campaign rally in October, Mr. Trump said one of his first orders would be to direct every federal agency to “remove every single burdensome regulation.”
Mr. Anotni said removing red tape combined with reversing the Biden-era drilling bans could be enough to jump-start an economy.
The Biden administration added a record number of federal rules and regulations during its four years, adding more than 100,000 pages to the Federal Register to beat President Obama’s record increase in federal red tape.
On the trade front, Mr. Trump plans to wield his pen to impose tariffs on imports, especially those coming from China. He said it would help keep manufacturing jobs in the U.S. He has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China.
Tariffs don’t need congressional approval and would likely be enacted through the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which empowers a president to impose tariffs on goods that could impact U.S. security.
Mr. Trump is also expected on Day One to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports and bar transgender individuals from serving in the military. The military ban was in place during Mr. Trump’s first term but was overturned by Mr. Biden through executive order.
Mr. Trump said he would convene a Food and Drug Administration panel to review whether hormone treatments for transgender individuals are linked to violent behavior or depression.
Not all of the executive orders will result in immediate action or any action at all. Several of Mr. Trump’s executive orders will serve to signal the values he promised to uphold. For example, Mr. Trump is expected to issue an order supporting parents’ rights.
The order would decry the Biden White House’s partnership with the National School Boards Association to investigate parents who spoke out at school board hearings.
“We’ll change that on the first day, I promise,” Mr. Trump said during the campaign.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.