Donald Trump’s Disruptive First Days

Hit the ground running. Get off to a flying start. Start with a bang. Burst out of the gate. Shock and awe. Whatever your favorite adage might be to describe a quick and decisive beginning, they all apply to Donald Trump’s first four days in office. He promised to disrupt the way Washington does business, and this week he moved quickly to make good on his pledge.

To put Trump’s start in perspective, the Office of the Federal Register lists just two presidents in recent years besides Trump who issued executive orders on their first day in office: Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Clinton issued one, Biden issued nine. Trump himself issued just one executive order on his first day in office in 2017. This time around, he issued “26 executive orders, 12 legally binding memoranda, and four presidential proclamations.” As of yesterday, the number of executive orders had risen to thirty-two. In comparison, Trump averaged fifty-five executive orders a year during his first term—and that was a high compared to every president dating back to Ronald Reagan.

Much of the media coverage has focused on the actions Trump took on the domestic front, whether it was suspending birthright citizenship, ordering U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, terminating the government’s affirmative action programs, or declaring a national energy emergency. But he was busy on the foreign policy side of the house as well. Here are some of the steps he took:

• Initiated the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO), which will become effective next January. Trump said he made the decision because the “World Health ripped us off. Everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore.” Experts criticized the decision, and some legal scholars argue that Trump cannot terminate U.S. participation in the WHO without the consent of the Senate or Congress as a whole.
• Ordered the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. Trump issued the same order during his first term in 2017. Biden directed that the United States rejoin the Paris Agreement when he took office in 2021. As with the decision to withdraw from the WHO, Trump’s decision will formally take effect in one year. However, his administration is unlikely to cooperate in the interim with international efforts to cut carbon emissions.
• Designated drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). The directive mentioned Salvadoran and Venezuelan drug gangs by name, but not Mexican drug cartels. The executive order instead directed cabinet secretaries to make recommendations on which groups to target within two weeks. Experts disagree over the significance of the move
• Directed the Justice Department not to enforce the congressionally-mandated ban on TikTok, which went into effect on Sunday, for seventy-five days. Trump issued the directive even though the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban, and the law authorizes him to waive it only if a deal to sell the media platform to a U.S. owner is being negotiated. No such deal was in the works when Trump halted enforcement of the ban.
• Ordered cabinet agencies to conduct an extensive review of U.S. trade policy generally and trade policy with China specifically. The reviews, which are set to be completed by April 1, are legally necessary to invoke the provisions in U.S. trade law that authorize retaliation against unfair trading practices.
• Imposed a ninety-day pause on all U.S. foreign development assistance, which he argued is “not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”
• Relieved the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Admiral Linda Fagan, of her duties. Fagan was the first woman to lead one of the nation’s military services. No official reason was given for her firing. An unnamed Homeland Security official said she had been ousted for failing to take border security seriously and for focusing too much on diversity and inclusion efforts.
• Revoked security protection for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, his former National Security Adviser John Bolton, and his former Iran negotiator Brian Hook. The three had security protection because the U.S. intelligence community determined that Iran was seeking to kill them for their support for hardline policies toward the Islamic Republic. When asked about the decision, Trump responded: “When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life.” He added: “I mean, there’s risks to everything.” The outgoing Biden administration had judged that the threat to the lives of Pompeo, Bolton, and Hook remained active.
• Revoked the security clearances of fifty-one former senior officials in the U.S. intelligence community who signed a letter in 2020 arguing that the materials found on Hunter Biden’s stolen laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a “Russian information operation.” 
• Removed former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and thousands of other Biden appointees from a range of advisory councils. The Pentagon also took down Milley’s official portrait just two hours after Trump was inaugurated. The portrait had gone up only ten days earlier. Trump has long been critical of Milley, whom he nominated for the chairman’s job, calling him a moron (and worse) and saying he should be executed for treason. 
• Canceled the travel plans for as many as 10,000 refugees who had been authorized to come to the United States as refugees. Those with canceled flights included Aghan refugees whose lives were endangered by the Taliban regime because they aided U.S. forces before their withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

• Renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” to recognize “this flourishing economic resource and its critical importance to our Nation’s economy and its people.” As of this morning, Google Maps had not changed its designation for the Gulf of Mexico. The AP, whose style guide is widely followed, has said it will continue to use “Gulf of Mexico.” Other international waters have multiple names. The “Persian Gulf,” for example, is known as the “Arab Gulf” in many Middle Eastern countries. It is unusual, though, for a country to change what it calls an international body of water after using another term for hundreds of years.

• Directed that only the U.S. flag can fly over U.S. facilities at home and overseas. The only exceptions to the rule are flags with the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action (POW/MIA) emblem or the Wrongful Detainees emblem. The move barred U.S. facilities from flying LGBTQ+ pride or Black Lives Matter flags.

In addition to these actions, Trump gave an inaugural address in which he pledged to pursue a policy that “expands our territory”; gave an Oval Office interview to Fox News’ Sean Hannity in which he said that “we’re gonna have to take” the Panama Canal “back” and called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “no angel”; posted on Truth Social that if Russia does not agree to a deal “soon” on Ukraine, “I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States”; and gave a virtual address to the World Economic Forum in which he, among other things, urged OPEC to bring down oil prices and called on NATO countries to spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense.

As busy as Trump was, there were some things he did not do this week. He did not impose tariffs on Canada, China, or Mexico. He did tell reporters that he would do that on February 1, in retaliation for what he argues is the failure of all three countries to halt the flow of migrants and fentanyl into the United States. He also did not impose new sanctions on Iran to renew the “maximum pressure” policy of his first administration.

Trump rapid-fire moves delighted his base. Many of his supporters no doubt have in mind the adage, “He who hesitates is lost.” Perhaps. But another adage is worth keeping in mind: “Act in haste, repent at leisure.”

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post.