Donald Trump’s Busy First Day
How much does the incoming president hope to get done on January 20? Much more than he will.
WHATEVER ELSE YOU MIGHT SAY ABOUT HIM, Donald Trump does not lack ambition. For him, making vast, sweeping promises to solve every problem the country has ever faced comes as naturally as, well, lying. Here is a partial list of things he has promised to make happen “on Day One” of his second administration.
Be a dictator
Asked about his authoritarian tendencies, candidate Trump declared that he would not rule as a dictator “except for Day One.” He identified two goals he intends to use dictatorial power to attain: “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.” Possible problem with this picture: Dictatorships are not like temp agency jobs. Once tyrants take total control, they tend to stick around for Day Two and even longer.
Close the border
The plan, as Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller has explained it, will be to immediately restore the border policies of his first term: “He can simply flip the switch and put those back in place just like they were before.” This can be done through executive orders, with no involvement from Congress, which would probably go along with whatever Trump wanted to do anyway. But, in fact, Trump did not completely close the border at any point during his first term and will not be able to do so in a single day now. (His belief that he can has drawn flak even from members of his own party, with Rep. Chip Roy of Texas rebuffing the notion that “all a president has to do is declare the border’s closed, and it’s closed,” since “that didn’t happen in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.”)
“Drill, drill, drill”
Alternately expressed as “drill, baby, drill,” this pledge would entail reversing climate policies that seek to reduce planet-altering greenhouse gas emissions, rolling back environmental protections, withdrawing from international climate accords, halting alternative energy projects, and revoking incentives to switch to electric cars. But this will almost certainly not cut gas prices or eliminate inflation, as Trump has claimed, and it will contribute powerfully to climate change and its attendant ravages.
End the Russia-Ukraine war
Trump has stated, again and again, that his powers of persuasion are so great he will settle Russia’s nearly three-year-old war against Ukraine (almost eleven years long if you date it to Russia’s annexation of Crimea) in a single day. “They’re dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I’ll have that done—I’ll have that done in twenty-four hours,” he said at a town hall meeting in 2023. During a Fox News appearance the day after the election, his national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, specified that Trump would, “on Day 1, [be] bringing Ukraine and Russia to the negotiating table to end this war.” Expect this goalpost to have wheels.
Pardon the hooligans who ransacked the U.S. Capitol
Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon most if not all of the more than 1,500 persons charged with crimes for, at his instigation, attacking the Capitol and seeking to overturn the will of the voters four years ago. He has called these January 6th lawbreakers, many of whom assaulted law enforcement officers and at least 159 of whom have past criminal records, “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” As The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol has noted, this will open the door to unparalleled lawlessness: “What constraints would there be on those who would serve in a Trump second term? The rule of law? The courts? No problem. Go ahead, follow Trump’s wishes rather than the law’s constraints. Here’s a presidential pardon.”
Impose tariffs on imported goods
Trump has called for a 60 percent tariff on imports from China, 25 percent tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico, and 10 to 20 percent tariffs on imports from all other countries. He seems not to understand that the added cost from these tariffs would be passed on to American consumers. For instance, 60 percent of the fresh fruit and 40 percent of fresh vegetables eaten in the United States are imported, and at least half of these imports come from Mexico. (Also, much of the merch Trump sells to his followers is made in China.) Another downside: The targeted countries will likely impose retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States. It’s a lose-lose situation.
End protections for transgender students
Trump, who made hostility to transgender rights a key prong of his 2024 campaign, has pledged to roll back Biden administration efforts to protect transgender students from discrimination in schools “on Day One” of his second term. He has also vowed to bar transgender women from competing on women’s sports teams and punish healthcare providers who administer gender-affirming medical care to minors. This, presumably, will make non-trans people feel better.
Begin mass deportations
Here’s how Trump put it at his nativist Madison Square Garden rally in October: “On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out. . . . We will put these vicious and bloodthirsty criminals in jail. We’re gonna kick them the hell out of our country as fast as possible.” That, it turns out, may not be all that fast. Deporting the nearly 11 million people believed to be in the United States illegally, note the good folks at PBS News, “would require a huge, trained law enforcement force, massive detention facilities, airplanes to move people and nations willing to accept them.” But the bigger problem may be that, once these efforts begin in earnest, the forced removal of friends, neighbors, caregivers, and essential workers will be keenly and negatively felt.
Kill offshore wind projects
As a subset of his “drill baby drill” agenda, Trump has promised to use an executive order to end the nation’s offshore wind projects “on Day One.” He said this has to be done because of the enormous harm he believes wind turbines cause, including killing whales, a claim that’s been debunked. He’s also irked at offshore wind turbines for spoiling the view from his golf course in Scotland. But, as Tina Zappile, director of the Hughes Center for Public Policy at New Jersey’s Stockton University, has pointed out, “the economics of offshore wind are in alignment with his overall strategies of returning manufacturing to America and becoming energy-independent.” D’oh!
Fire Jack Smith
Get out your stopwatches. Trump has stated that, upon his return to the presidency, he intends to fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought two federal cases against him, both now kaput, “within two seconds.” And while he claims he won’t order former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, his nominee for U.S. attorney general, to bring criminal charges against Smith for doing what he was tasked to do, he will not stand in the way, saying “I want her to do what she wants to do.” And what Bondi wants to do is already a matter of public record: “The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi said on Fox News in 2023. “The investigators will be investigated.” The witch hunts will begin.
Eliminate birthright citizenship
In a 2023 post on his campaign website, Trump said that on the first day of his presidency, he will “direct federal agencies to require that at least one parent be a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident for their future children to become automatic U.S. citizens.” But the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship clause states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Getting rid of this constitutional right is not something that can be repealed with an executive order, at least without a legal fight that will almost certainly last more than one day.
Dismantle initiatives to promote diversity
Trump has pledged to use Day One to issue an executive order ending diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives embraced by his predecessor, President Joe Biden. Steps like this are needed, he told Time magazine last May, because “I think there is a definite anti-white feeling in this country, and that can’t be allowed.” While the diversity, equity, and inclusion model is not above criticism, Trump’s plan would throw the baby and the basin itself out with the bathwater. As journalist Shari Dunn has pointed out in Salon, “This is not a neutral policy proposal but the blueprint for a modern-day colorblind Jim Crow 2.0.” It perpetuates racial injustice by failing to acknowledge its existence. Plus it deprives agencies and institutions of valuable employees.
Punish schools that teach critical race theory or have a vaccine mandate
This is a promise Trump has made again and again. As he put it to “cheering and applause” on the campaign trail in June, “And on day one, I will sign a new executive order to cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, and I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate or a mask mandate.” The problem with the first pledge is that the teaching of critical race theory is simply not happening in elementary or secondary schools. The problem with the second is that it’s bad public policy, as laws in all fifty states requiring students entering public schools to have at least some vaccinations continue to save lives, which Trump has shown he does not care about.
Study whether transgender hormone treatments cause violence
Trump told the National Rifle Association in April 2023 that “upon my inauguration, I will direct the FDA to convene an independent outside panel to investigate whether transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence.” This was shortly after a transgender shooter killed six people at a school in Nashville. In further evidence of Trump’s commitment to sound logic and science, he also told the gathering that school shootings are a “spiritual problem” and not, perish the thought, a “gun problem.”
Promote tooth decay
Here’s one that comes not from the former and future president but from his pick to head the Department of Health and Human Services. On November 2, three days before the election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said a Trump administration would, on its first day in power, “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” Kennedy holds the extreme and unsubstantiated belief that this use of fluoride is linked to various illnesses, when in fact it is, like the polio vaccine, one of the nation’s greatest public health successes. (While consuming an excessively large amount of fluoride can cause medical problems, it is safe to consume in the amounts typically added to public drinking water. You could check it out.) But banning fluoride fits squarely within Trump’s promise to “let [RFK] go wild on health.” We can hardly wait.
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