THE WASHINGTON POST: The Trump executive orders and actions that are having immediate impacts

Since taking office on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump and his administration have unleashed a blizzard of executive orders and policies that will have a fundamental impact on American lives across many areas including health care, education and immigration.

Some of the orders are already in effect — such as a sweeping stoppage on U.S. foreign aid and an end to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in the government, as well as a stiffening of security at the southern border. Others, such as tariffs on imports that could raise the price of consumer goods, are in limbo or under construction.

Below, The Washington Post’s staff has tried to separate what is happening from what is not, and to explain what may happen in the future.

Immigration

On his first day in office, Trump signed a number of immigration-related executive orders. One declared a national emergency at the southern border in order to restart border wall construction and allow the U.S. armed forces to provide troops, detention space and transportation - including aircraft - to boost border security.

The Defense Department is sending 1,500 active-duty ground troops to the southern border to bolster about 2,500 already there. The administration is prepared to send as many as 10,000. Trump also restarted the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which requires asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory for their court hearings. He expanded the fast-track deportation authority known as “expedited removal” for recent border crossers.

Trump said during his inaugural speech that he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority, to deploy the “full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement” to eradicate foreign gangs and criminals from the United States. He gave the secretary of state 14 days (from Jan. 20) to come up with a list of drug cartels and transnational gangs to be designated as terrorists, and to work with other federal agencies on a plan to go after them.

His administration halted use of the CBP One mobile app, which the Biden administration used as an interview scheduling tool for asylum seekers. Trump directed border agents to block entry to migrants on the grounds that they have passed through countries where communicable diseases are present.

Trump also ended all “categorical” parole programs that under President Joe Biden allowed 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua to enter the country each month via U.S. airports. And he suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, starting Jan. 27. Under the Biden administration, the annual refugee cap was 125,000. Trump also directed U.S. government agencies to no longer issue citizenship documentation to babies born in the United States to parents who lack legal status. That executive order was temporarily halted by a federal judge.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has aggressively increased its number of arrests and has launched several targeted operations in major cities that decline to formally coordinate on immigration enforcement. ICE officials have been directed to aggressively ramp up the number of people they arrest, from a few hundred a day to at least 1,200 to 1,500. The Trump administration also has begun to use military planes to deport migrants.

The administration revoked a memo, in place since 2011, that directed immigration agents to avoid “sensitive locations,” including schools, colleges, hospitals and churches.

Federal grants

The White House budget office rolled back, one day after it was proposed, a sweeping, temporary stop to federal grants and loans that would have affected a wide swath of programs and sparked chaos across Washington. That order said each agency should perform a “comprehensive analysis” to ensure that its grant and loan programs are consistent with Trump’s executive orders, which are aimed at banning federal DEI initiatives and limiting clean-energy spending, among other measures. The rescission of the government order followed a temporary block from a federal judge.

If the halt had gone into effect, experts said, it could have affected funding for items such as health grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; aid to homeless shelters; financial aid for college students; and federal grants for the nation’s energy supply and other services.

The administration clarified that it meant a halt to funding for things inconsistent with Trump’s mandate, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organisations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Social Security and Medicare spending were exempted, but there was some question about whether Medicaid - the health insurance program used by more than 70 million Americans - would see a pause in payments, which are distributed from the federal government to the states. The Office of Management and Budget clarified that directives weren’t intended to cover direct payments to individuals under those entitlement programs or for items such as food stamps.

International trade and tariffs

In the first days of his second term, Trump promised, or threatened, to impose tariffs on more than $2 trillion in foreign products, roughly two-thirds of everything Americans buy from abroad.

The first new import taxes could come as soon as Feb. 1, the president said, and raise the price of goods from Canada, Mexico and China. He also threatened Colombia with tariffs and financial sanctions during a brief dispute over scheduled migrant deportation flights to that close U.S. ally.

He ordered his Cabinet deputies to complete a comprehensive analysis of U.S. trade policy by April 1, including deals he negotiated during his first term with China, Canada and Mexico; global taxation; and currency values, all with an eye toward developing a “robust and reinvigorated” new approach. This week, he upped the ante, musing about additional tariffs on steel, copper and aluminum while making clear that his campaign promise for a universal tariff on all $3 trillion in annual goods-imports remains alive.

Health care

On health care, the action so far has been centered on pausing - sometimes purposely, in other cases mistakenly - the work of the enormous government bureaucracy that carries out that mission.

A spending pause mistakenly held up Medicaid payments to states for much of Jan. 28. Another order purposely halted meetings of researchers to discuss issuing federal grants; stalled scientific reports; and forced cancellation of private briefings for congressional staffers.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ abrupt halt of external communication includes that of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. The pause extends through Feb. 1. The Trump administration also issued a second order indefinitely halting most travel of HHS personnel.

“HHS has issued a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health,” Stefanie Spear, an HHS spokesperson and longtime ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to run HHS, said in a statement. “This is a short pause to allow the new team to set up a process for review and prioritization. There are exceptions for announcements that HHS divisions believe are mission critical, but they will be made on a case-by-case basis.”

Federal government and workers

The White House has offered the majority of the federal workforce - some 2.3 million people - a “deferred resignation” offer that would allow them to keep working with pay through a fixed resignation date of Sept. 30, 2025. Workers were instructed to reply to the offer, which expires Feb. 6. Those who take the offer might see their duties changed or reassigned, although they would not be subject to new in-person work requirements.

The offer is part of a sweeping effort by the Trump administration to remake the federal workforce that includes a return-to-work mandate that could affect 1 million people, the firing and reassigning of key personnel and a general move to transform the civil service into a leaner operation packed with political loyalists.

Other actions have resulted in thousands of employees in DEI offices being put on paid leave, with the expectation that they will be laid off soon. The administration has made lists of thousands across the government who are on probation, which can last one or two years depending on the job, and made it clear that some will be terminated. Those employees have fewer job protections while on probation and are easier to fire.

Trump has also enacted a plan that will shift large swaths of civil servants into a new job category with no job protections. Originally called Schedule F, the plan could allow the administration to replace nonpartisan career civil servants, who traditionally stay on from administration to administration, with political loyalists.

Diversity and transgender rights

Trump has signed several executive orders seeking to roll back transgender rights, including one issued on his first day in office that called for the federal government to recognise gender as only male or female. The order could affect people’s passports and other official documents, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed his department to immediately stop issuing new passports with X gender markers.

Trump’s order also led to incarcerated trans people being moved to solitary confinement in federal prisons. At least one federal inmate has sued the administration, seeking to block the new rules.

A separate order issued the following week moved to bar transgender troops from serving in the military, something Trump also did during his first term. The new order faced an immediate legal challenge. Trump followed that action with an order aimed at ending federal support for gender-transition care for people younger than 19. That order is also expected to face legal challenges.

Foreign policy

Trump paused nearly all U.S. foreign aid for 90 days by executive order during his first week in office. Under the order, more than $60 billion in U.S. aid will be subjected to review and evaluated against America’s foreign policy goals.

Trump issued a waiver for Israel and Egypt - among the top recipients of U.S. aid - that will allow funding to continue. He also has issued an exemption for global emergency food aid, which represents a small but lifesaving portion of the country’s aid portfolio. Shortly afterward, Secretary of State Rubio issued another waiver for humanitarian assistance defined as “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.”

Programs will not be waived, he said, if they involve “abortions, family planning conferences … gender” or diversity programs, “transgender surgeries, or other nonlife saving assistance.”

In an executive order, Trump also suspended the refugee admissions program and left tens of thousands of refugees around the world in limbo. This has particularly affected Afghans, many of whom had worked for the U.S. military, American diplomats or government-funded organisations.

Around the world, 40,000 to 60,000 Afghans are actively seeking resettlement in the United States, and thousands had already received U.S. government approval, estimated Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, a volunteer organization formed during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that has helped Afghans flee the country. About 1,700 people were expected to be moved out of Afghanistan over the next four months, he added.

Justice Department

Justice Department leaders have ordered a pause on nearly all litigation in the department’s civil rights and environmental divisions until the new administration can review those cases and set its own priorities. That has left the future of high-profile police reform agreements in Minneapolis and Louisville in limbo, as well as other, more routine litigation targeting polluting companies and discriminatory lenders. The department’s new leaders have given no indication of how quickly that freeze might be lifted.

They have directed prosecutors to investigate and potentially charge local police and government officials who defy the president’s plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.

They have transferred or fired key career officials, including some senior leaders overseeing the nation’s immigration courts and more than a dozen career staffers who worked on special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal investigations of Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election results. Longtime division heads have been moved from overseeing national security, public corruption investigations and environmental and civil rights work to positions seen as less desirable, including a newly created division focused on enforcing federal immigration policy inside sanctuary cities. Some moves could draw court challenges.

They have also announced a rollback of sentencing and prosecutorial priorities from the Biden administration, including its plan to prosecute demonstrators who interfere with patient access to abortion clinics. Three such pending cases have been dropped, meaning those people are no longer facing civil penalties. Department leadership has also advised U.S. attorney’s offices across the country to pursue “the most serious, readily provable” charges in all criminal cases and those that carry the most significant possible sentences.

Climate

Trump signed a flurry of Day 1 executive orders aimed at boosting domestic fossil fuel production and undoing Biden’s climate agenda.

He moved to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement - a shift that will take effect in one year. He signed orders declaring a national “energy emergency,” increasing exports of liquefied natural gas, boosting oil and gas drilling in Alaska, and pausing wind energy development on federal lands and waters nationwide.

Some actions, such as ending Biden’s pause on approving new facilities that export liquefied natural gas, will have immediate consequences for the energy sector. Many of these decisions could face legal challenges from environmental groups and Democratic attorneys general. In particular, the offshore wind directive could draw a challenge from New England states that have made offshore wind power central to their ambitious climate goals.

Natural disasters

Touring disaster sites in North Carolina and California, Trump repeatedly criticised the Federal Emergency Management Agency and suggested he would prefer to see it “go away,” leaving states in charge of the response to hurricanes, wildfires and other catastrophes. So far, the president has not imposed significant change at the 20,000-person agency, which is tasked with helping states and localities affected by weather-related disasters. But Trump did sign an executive order that creates an advisory council to conduct “a full-scale review” of FEMA over the coming months, and to recommend improvements or structural changes to the agency.

After the wildfires in California, Trump has taken aim at the state’s handling of its water supply in two ways, by issuing a memo that places blame on the endangered delta smelt, a minnow-size fish found only in Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta; and an executive order that instructs several Cabinet officials to take action “to ensure adequate water resources in Southern California.”

Trump has long maintained that removing federal rules protecting the delta smelt from extinction - which require water managers to keep a certain amount of water flowing through its habitat during times of drought - would solve California’s water woes. In reality, Southern California doesn’t lack water - its reservoirs are above historical levels. And experts say the delta smelt’s protections have nothing to do with the water shortages firefighters faced in Los Angeles.

While the executive order instructs the commerce and interior secretaries to “override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries,” it’s unclear what actions officials could take in the near term given the protections the fish enjoys under the Endangered Species Act. Any effort to revisit the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation policies would require a lengthy rulemaking process.

Education

The Trump administration has taken several actions that directly affect education: the federal loan and grant freeze that was quickly rescinded; a policy reversal making it easier for immigration agents to enter schools; and orders ending DEI programs and declaring that only two genders exist.

The funding freeze applied to discretionary grants issued by the Education Department, according to a spokeswoman, which are normally doled out to school districts, colleges, universities and nonprofits to support a wide variety of initiatives including after-school programming, charter schools and the Special Olympics. It did not affect the agency’s largest programs, including federal student loans and Pell grants, which are given to eligible low- and moderate-income college students, or the major grant programs that support K-12 districts.

The executive order on DEI, meanwhile, has led the Education Department to archive hundreds of pages of reports and training materials, as well as place on leave employees responsible for leading DEI initiatives. It also spurred the Education and Justice departments to issue guidance to educational agencies and universities on how they could comply with the Supreme Court’s landmark decision striking down race-conscious admissions. The order on two genders could ultimately imperil policies, maintained by dozens of states and thousands of school districts, that permit transgender students to use bathrooms and join sports teams that match their gender identities.

One prominent Trump campaign promise has not been pushed forward, though. Trump repeatedly vowed to abolish the Education Department, but the administration has said little about that since the inauguration. Closing the department would require a supermajority in the Senate - 60 votes - which the Republicans do not have.

Military

Trump has issued a flurry of executive orders involving the U.S. military, calling for everything from a new space-based missile defense system to a broad effort to overturn the so-called woke policies of the Biden administration.

Trump has called the missile defense plan “Iron Dome for America,” borrowing the name from the Iron Dome system that Israel uses to protect against short-range missile threats in the Middle East. But the concept for this system is much different, calling for protection against longer-range ballistic, hypersonic and cruise missile threats. The White House compared the endeavor to President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan to counter nuclear threats from space and called for the Pentagon to provide several policy documents within 60 days, including a plan to create a “next-generation missile defense shield” and deploy space-based interceptor missiles.

Trump issued an executive order paving the way, it would appear, for the Pentagon to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military. Criticizing trans people in pointed terms, it called for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to update within 60 days existing Defense Department policy on medical standards for the enlistment, recruitment and retention of service members. The effort was challenged in court Jan. 28, with organizations that advocate for trans service members questioning whether the order is constitutional. They sought an injunction that would block a policy change.

Trump also sought to quash diversity programs within the military, claiming they are “race-based and sex-based discrimination.” The order directed Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Coast Guard, to abolish every office overseeing DEI work, conduct an internal review documenting actions taken “in support of DEI initiatives” and deliver a report about it to Hegseth within 90 days. The order also directed the two departments to scrutinize the curriculum at service academies for “divisive concepts” that teach “race or sex scapegoating,” and to submit guidance for a policy change within 30 days.

The president also ordered the Pentagon on Jan. 27 to make reinstatement in the military available to individuals who were discharged during the Biden administration for refusing to receive the coronavirus vaccine. Service members who accept reinstatement will be eligible to take on their former rank and receive “full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation,” something that could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for each person reinstated. DHS and Defense must report back on their progress within 60 days.

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