The New York Times is tracking the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration during the first days in office.
Jan. 20: Day 1
— Granted clemency to everyone charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021
— Moved to end birthright citizenship. (A president cannot amend the Constitution on his own, and any executive order to restrict or abolish birthright citizenship is almost certain to be challenged in court as a violation of the 14th Amendment.)
— Rescinded 78 of President Joe Biden’s executive orders
— Restored the federal death penalty
— Delayed enforcing a federal ban on TikTok
— Ordered a 60-day pause on approvals for all “renewable energy development” on public lands
— Terminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the federal government
— Renamed Gulf of Mexico to “Gulf of America.” (Trump also said he would return Denali, North America’s tallest peak, which has an Alaska Native name, to its earlier name, Mount McKinley.)
Jan. 21: Day 2
— Ordered diversity efforts to be shut down. (Agencies were ordered to place all DEI staff on paid administrative leave, effective immediately, by 5 p.m. Jan. 22.)
— Directed the Federal Aviation Administration to halt DEI hiring practices
— Announced a $100 billion artificial intelligence initiative called Stargate
— Promised to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico
Jan. 22: Day 3
— Pardoned creator of Silk Road, a dark web marketplace. (Ross Ulbricht was convicted on charges including distributing illegal drugs on the internet. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2015.)
— Canceled flights for refugees already approved to travel to the U.S.
— Said U.S. would send 1,500 troops to southern border
— Threatened to prosecute local officials who obstruct immigration enforcement
Jan. 23: Day 4
— Said California should not get federal aid for wildfires. Trump said he did not think the state should receive aid unless it changed environmental policies he has criticized. (He also suggested he might withhold money from cities that do not cooperate with his immigration crackdown.)
— Required transgender women to be housed in prisons for men
— Vowed to release records on the killings of President John F. Kennedy, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
— Pledged to retake the Panama Canal
Jan. 24: Day 5
— Ordered removal of third-gender option on IDs. (The administration ordered the removal of “X” as a third-gender option for U.S. government-issued identification, including passports.)
— Suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be shut down
— Ended government security protection for Dr. Anthony Fauci
— Fired more than a dozen inspectors general. (The firings defied a law that says presidents have to give Congress 30 days’ notice and a written “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” before any such removal.)
Jan. 25: Day 6
— Halted global mine-clearing programs
— Insisted the U.S. will acquire Greenland
Jan. 26: Day 7
— ‘DoD ≠ DEI*’ (In one of his first directives, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sent a handwritten note on his official letterhead that said: “DoD ≠ DEI*.” The asterisk, he added below, denoted “no exceptions, name-changes or delays. Those who do not comply will no longer work here.”)
Jan. 27: Day 8
— Paused federal grants and loans. (The directive from the White House budget office threatened to paralyze a vast swath of federal programs.)
— Reinstated service members dismissed for refusing COVID vaccine
— Moved toward pushing transgender people out of the military
— Ordered development of a missile defense system like Israel’s. (Experts immediately raised questions about whether an Iron Dome-style system was feasible for the United States, which is more than 400 times the size of Israel.
— Joked about running for a third term
Jan. 28: Day 9
— Tried to entice millions of federal workers to resign. (The administration offered roughly 2 million federal workers the option to resign but be paid through the end of September.)
— Removed Gen. Mark Milley’s security detail and revoked his clearance
— Restricted gender-affirming treatments for minors
— Revoked deportation protections for Venezuelans. (Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem repealed an 18-month extension of deportation protections that Biden had granted to more than 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States.)
Jan. 29: Day 10
— Sought to expand access to private school vouchers
— Said U.S. will hold migrants at the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
— Signed the Laken Riley Act into law. (The bill requires the detention of migrants who enter the country without authorization and are arrested or charged with certain crimes.)
— Rescinded the freeze in federal grants and loans
— Falsely claimed U.S. sent $50 million in condoms to the Gaza Strip
Jan. 30: Day 11
Blamed DEI for deadly midair collision over the Potomac River. (Trump cited no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the fatal crash of a military helicopter and a passenger jet.)
Jan. 31: Day 12
— Pushed out Treasury official for denying access to Elon Musk’s team. (The official refused to let Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team into the government’s payment system, part of its bid to choke off federal funding.)
— Gave Musk’s team access to federal payment system
— Removed thousands of government webpages
— Required federal workers to remove pronouns from email signatures
— Planned possible FBI purge. (Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, ordered acting FBI leadership to compile a list of all agents and FBI staff members who worked on Jan. 6 investigations.)
Feb. 1: Day 13
— Punished U.S. Agency for International Development officials for denying access to Musk’s team. (The agency’s two top security officials were put on administrative leave after they refused to give representatives of Musk access to internal systems.)
Feb. 2: Day 14
— Said USAID was run by “radical lunatics”
Feb. 3: Day 15
— Delayed tariffs on Canada and Mexico
— Ordered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop most work. (Employees were instructed not to issue or approve any proposed or final rules. They were also instructed not to start new enforcement investigations or work on existing ones.)
— Said Canada should become part of the U.S. (“I’d like to see Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said from the Oval Office.)
— Moved to dismantle USAID
— Proposed a “sovereign wealth fund” to buy TikTok. (It is unclear how the United States, which spends more money than it collects in taxes, would finance such a fund.)
— Offered assistance to Ukraine in exchange for rare-earth minerals. (Trump has long voiced reluctance to continue sending billions of dollars in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine, arguing that it costs the U.S. too much.)
Feb. 4: Day 16
Proposed that the U.S. take over Gaza. (Trump did not cite any legal authority giving him the right to take over the territory, nor did he address that forcible removal of a population violates international law and decades of U.S. foreign policy consensus in both parties.)
Feb. 5: Day 17
— Disbanded a task force intended to prevent foreign influence in U.S. elections. (The memo, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, also limits criminal enforcement of foreign lobbying cases.)
— Claimed that Panama had agreed to stop charging fees for U.S. government vessels to traverse the Panama Canal. (The Panama Canal Authority denied these claims.)
— Reversed decision to halt deliveries from China and Hong Kong. (The reversal showed how crucial parts of global delivery systems are grappling with sudden changes in U.S. trade policy, sowing confusion among businesses and potentially delaying shipments.)
— Offered National Security Agency workers the option to resign
— Three government unions sued the U.S. Office of Personnel Management — the federal government’s human resources division — to block the effort to persuade roughly 2 million federal employees to resign from their jobs early.
— Aimed to prevent transgender students from participating in women’s sports. (The directive relies on the Education Department — which Trump has pledged to eliminate — to achieve its end, through a revised interpretation of federal civil rights laws.)
— Provided an unclassified list of new CIA employees to the Office of Personnel Management. (The spy agency normally would prefer not to put these names in an unclassified system.)
Feb. 6: Day 18
— Planned to reduce the workforce at USAID to 290 from more than 10,000
— Said that more than 40,000 federal workers had accepted the resignation program
— Opened investigations related to executive order on transgender athletes
— Appointed the attorney general to lead a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in the federal government. (Trump also said he would create a new “presidential commission on religious liberty,” and he set up a White House faith office.)
— Said that CBS should lose its broadcast license. (Trump claimed that the news program “60 Minutes” had edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in her favor.
Feb. 7: Day 19
— Fired the nation’s archivist
— Halted financial aid to South Africa and called for the resettling of white “Afrikaner refugees” into the U.S. (The president has echoed conspiracy theories about the mistreatment of white South Africans in the post-apartheid era.)
— Revoked Biden’s security clearances (Trump suggested the decision was retribution for Biden’s curtailing of Trump’s access to classified information after the Jan 6. Capitol riot.)
— Announced Trump would install himself as chair of the Kennedy Center (He also said he would dismiss several members of its board in a move to bring another Washington institution under his control.)
— Floated privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (The two giant mortgage finance firms have been controlled by the federal government for nearly 17 years.)
Feb. 8: Day 20
— Announced he would strip security clearances of top Biden officials and prosecutors who brought cases against him. In an interview with The New York Post, Mr. Trump said he would withdraw the clearances of former Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken; Letitia James, the New York attorney general; and Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, among others.
— Attacked a judge as an “activist” after Elon Musk’s team was blocked from gaining access to a Treasury payment system
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, called the judge’s decision “absurd and judicial overreach.”
• This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
