By Susan Ferrechio The Washington Times Friday, January 24, 2025

President Trump’s dizzying array of executive actions signed during his first week back in office quickly extinguished many of the initiatives of the Biden administration, from closing the wide-open borders to reducing the number of federally recognized genders to just two.

Trump’s week of action, which included declassifying documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, left supporters euphoric and critics appalled and fighting back. 

“What the world has witnessed in the past 72 hours is nothing less than a revolution of common sense,” Mr. Trump said in an address to the World Economic Forum on Thursday. “My administration is acting with unprecedented speed to fix the disasters we’ve inherited from a totally inept group of people and to solve every single crisis facing our country.”

The country learned quickly on Monday that Mr. Trump wasn’t kidding around on the campaign trail when he promised to move immediately to reshape the federal government with a blizzard of executive actions as soon as he took the oath of office.

He signed dozens of executive orders, memoranda and proclamations hours after taking office to secure the southern border, deport criminal illegal aliens and open up the nation to more oil and gas production among many other actions.

“Amazing change for the first day,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said. “It’s going to be a remarkable four years.”

Mr. Trump’s actions have already spurred lawsuits and other resistance. On Capitol Hill, Democrats are purposely slowing down the confirmation of his cabinet while Mr. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance were lectured about the plight of immigrants and the LGBTQ community by an activist clergywoman at the traditional post-inaugural prayer service on Tuesday.

Liberal activist Al Sharpton called on people to boycott companies that adhere to Mr. Trump’s new directive to drop diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer of New York summed it up this way: “President Trump’s Executive Orders make it obvious that no Golden Age is coming to America — unless you’re one of the wealthiest few, you’re well-connected, or you own a Big Oil or Big Pharma company.”

Mr. Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship was quickly taken to court in a lawsuit filed by 22 states, with a federal judge in Seattle blocking the order Thursday with a temporary restraining order.

But Mr. Trump isn’t slowing down. 

He carried out a promise to quickly pardon most of the people convicted or charged under the Biden administration for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol that Democrats accuse him of instigating.

Mr. Trump, as soon as he entered the Oval Office, pardoned more than 1,500 J6 “hostages,” as he labeled them, and commuted the jail sentences of 14 others. Democrats denounced the move but Mr. Trump shrugged it off. Next, he pardoned 23 pro-life activists convicted of protesting at and in some cases blocking access to abortion clinics.

He also established a government efficiency agency, headed by Elon Musk, to reduce waste and cut spending. And he declared a restoration of “biological truth” to the federal government by establishing that there are only male and female sexes, not the multitude of genders recognized under President Biden.

Mr. Trump quickly dumped the Biden administration’s work-from-home policies, ordering all federal employees to return to the office. He eliminated every DEI policy and sent all the federal employees in those offices home on paid leave on Wednesday. A final decision on whether they get fired or get new government jobs is still to come.

The president announced more government changes in a series of lengthy press conferences. He dangled the threat of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada as soon as Feb. 1 in response to their lax efforts to stop illegal immigration and drugs from flowing into the U.S. Mr. Trump unveiled a $500 billion investment from a trio of billionaires for the development of U.S. data centers to power AI technology.

“I’m not tired of winning!” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, gleefully posted on social media late in the week.

By Friday, he was jetting on Air Force One to tour the long-delayed recovery from hurricane flooding in North Carolina and then the ongoing fire disaster around Los Angeles.

In California, Mr. Trump won’t just promise the federal government’s help. Instead, he will push the state’s Democratic leaders to reverse decades of water and forest management policies that have left the state vulnerable to devastating infernos. Mr. Trump has already signed a memorandum calling on the Interior Department to reroute water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the water-starved Central Valley and Southern California. 

Mr. Trump also found time this week to fulfill one of the more oddball promises made on the campaign trail: a pledge to release the documents relating to the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

“That’s a big one,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “A lot of people are waiting for this one. For years, for decades. And everything will be revealed.”