In his first month since returning to the White House for a second term, President Donald Trump has used his presidential powers to issue dozens of executive orders.
As of February 20, Trump has signed a total of 73 orders, 68 of which have been published and gone into effect, that are intended to transform the government, American society and how the U.S. collaborates with the rest of the world. These orders cover a range of policy areas, including initiatives to curb illegal immigration, efforts to downsize the government and reforms that impact public health.
On Trump’s inauguration day, January 20, he signed a total of 26 orders. In one of his first acts as president, making good on his campaign promise to repeal birthright citizenship, Trump signed the Protecting The Meaning And Value of American Citizenship action, which said children born to parents who are not legal or permanent residents should not be considered U.S. citizens.
Although dozens of actions Trump has signed since Jan. 20 have gone into effect, many have faced legal challenges and criticism from advocacy groups and civil rights leaders.
As Ben Michael, Attorney at Michael & Associates told The Latin Times, not every single one of Trump’s executive orders can be enforced instantly. “There can be circumstances in which these orders are challenged, for example, if an order is thought to be outside the purview of the executive branch or unconstitutional,” Michael said. “That’s how his executive order about birthright citizenship actually ended up getting blocked by a federal court.”
Birthright citizenship
Trump’s Protecting The Meaning And Value of American Citizenship order, signed on Jan. 20, was temporarily blocked by federal courts in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maryland. It was also challenged by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). According to Cody Wofsy, Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, the ACLU has sued over various issues including birthright citizenship and access to asylum.
“The Trump administration very much wants people to be afraid and remove themselves from American society. Many of the things they are doing are illegal and unconstitutional and there have been a wide range of lawsuits already,” Wofsy told The Latin Times.
In May of 2023, the Trump campaign released a video renewing his intentions of ending the constitutional right, although he has been pushing for it since his first presidential term back in 2018.
“The United States is among the only countries in the world that says even if neither parent is a citizen or even lawfully in the country, their future children are automatic citizens the moment the parents trespass onto our soil,” Trump said in 2018.
Immigration
One of his best-kept campaign promises has been immigration. In his first month, President Trump signed several orders to regulate and curb illegal crossings. On January 20, he repealed several Biden-era initiatives, which included shutting down the CBP One app, ending parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, and calling for a “physical wall and other barriers” on the southern border.
During his campaign, Trump promised to conduct “the largest mass deportation plan” in American history and one month into his presidency, he has passed several measures that include mass arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and housing undocumented immigrants in detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay.
When asked if Trump’s crackdown on immigration came as a surprise, Wofsy said “It is unprecedented and it isn’t. We have been here before during Trump’s first administration. A lot of the things that we have seen over the last month were test-driven during his first administration…we have seen some of this playbook before,” he added.
In addition, his executive order titled Securing Our Borders pushed for a prompt removal for individuals who violate federal or state laws, including immigration laws.
Wofsy says that the Trump administration is “engaging in very aggressive immigration enforcement” and using different tools to “avoid giving people a basic and fair hearing.”
Other immigration executive orders signed by Trump include:
Trade
Another one of the talking points during Trump’s first month in office has been the trade wars between the U.S., Mexico, Canada and China. During the last months of his campaign trail, Trump warned he’d introduce elevated tariffs to North American trade partners as part of his broader plan to curb undocumented immigration and illicit drug trafficking from both countries.
Trump first introduced the idea of implementing tariffs at a campaign rally in Savannah, Georgia, in September 2024, where he said he planned to “put a 100% tariff on every single car coming across the Mexican border.”
In October, at another rally, he threatened to increase the tariffs as high as 200% on vehicles imported from Mexico. “We’ll put a tariff of 200% on if we have to,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let it happen. We’re not letting those cars come into the United States.”
Although he has signed multiple executive orders to implement the tariffs, he paused them on February 3 after reaching an agreement with Canada and Mexico that included thousands of Mexican troops being mobilized to the southern border and the introduction of a “fentanyl czar” in Canada. The 10% tax on all Chinese goods is still in effect.
Actions against gender identity, gender-based rights and gender-affirming medical care
A few of Trump’s flurry of executive orders targeted gender identity and federal support for gender-affirming medical care, abolishing policies established during the Biden administration.
One of the orders he signed on January 20 was the Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government, which declared that U.S. policy only recognizes two sexes, male and female, and directed federal agencies to use the term “sex” instead of “gender” and to ensure federal personnel records and government issued documents, such as passports, “accurately reflect the holder’s sex.”
His Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Mutilation action states that federal funds should not be used for gender-affirming medical care for minors and bars federal employee health insurance plans from covering surgeries and hormone treatments.
Additionally, he signed an order that prohibited transgender people from serving in the military as well as the use of pronouns in the Defense Department. It also bars transgender women from female facilities for sleeping, changing or bathing and transgender men from such male facilities.
Trump also signed an executive order requiring the enforcement of the Hyde Amendment, which restricts government funding for most abortions.
His latest action against the LGBTQ community came on Feb. 5, with an order that bars federal funds from educational programs that allow transgender women and girls to participate in women’s sports.
According to NPR, the Trump campaign spent at least $17 million on ads highlighting Democrats’ taking transgender rights to extremes. Anti-transgender rhetoric was frequently used by the Trump campaign throughout the trail, including during one of Trump’s last appearances at the Madison Square Garden rally, in November.
“We will get … transgender insanity the hell out of our schools, and we will keep men out of women’s sports,” Trump said.
Crime
During his first month back in office, Trump signed a couple of executive orders related to crime. To start, he called on key cabinet secretaries to create a list of cartels and similar groups to be designated as foreign terrorist organizations. On Feb. 20, the Department of State fulfilled that request by designating six Mexican cartels and two other Latin American criminal groups as FTOs and Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGTs).
Throughout his campaign, Trump also signaled he would resume federal executions and make more people eligible for capital punishment, including people convicted of drug and human trafficking and migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers.
During his first day in office, Trump signed the Restoring Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety order, which in part defends the use of capital punishment “where possible” and directs the attorney general to seek the death penalty if a law enforcement officer is murdered or if someone illegally in the U.S. commits a capital crime.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said of traffickers when he announced his 2024 candidacy. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he added.
Education
In the education sector, Trump’s Ending Radical Indoctrination In K-12 Schooling order called for Cabinet heads to develop strategies to eliminate federal funds from being used for “discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
He also passed an order that directs the education secretary to issue guidelines to educational institutions to end COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
During his campaign, Trump’s Agenda47 proposed eliminating the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) which, according to the DOE website, “establishes policy for, administers and coordinates most federal assistance to education.” In one of his campaign videos, he said states should be the ones with control over schools and not the federal government.
In 2019, his administration tried to decrease the DOE’s funding by up to $7.1 billion. Among the proposals, he suggested eliminating 29 programs, including after-school and summer programs for students in high-poverty areas.
Foreign affairs
As part of his “Make America Great Again” slogan, Trump introduced the order Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness, which pushed for the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America in federal references, as well as reverting the name of the nation’s tallest mountain in Alaska, which was renamed Denali in 2015 (though it was already referred to as such by Native Americans for thousands of years) to Mount KcKinley.
Another one of his Jan. 20 orders stated the U.S.’s intent to withdraw from the World Health Organization (WHO) and paused funds, support and resources given to the WHO.
On February 12, he signed the One Voice For America’s Foreign Relations order, which declared all foreign policy officials must “faithfully implement the President’s policy” and called on agencies to ensure they follow through.
Trump attempted to remove the U.S. from the WHO during his first presidential term, but the withdrawal process requires one year of advance noticed, and six months later Biden revoked Trump’s action before it took effect.
In the past, Trump has said his withdrawal from the WHO was about “being ripped off.”
“Everybody rips off the United States and that’s it — it’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said last month.
Energy
On Jan. 20, he signed the Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements order, which called for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to submit a withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. For Janelle Kellman, global climate leader and candidate for California’s lieutenant gubernatorial position in 2026, pulling from the Paris Agreement signals that the U.S. is “retreating from global leadership.”
“Whether it is global climate leadership, or innovation or the economy…we are kind of losing our status,” she said. “What this does is it strains our clean energy sector while also straining our international alliances. On the flip side, who does this benefit? Does it benefit the everyday person? No,” Kellman said.
She added that in her opinion, Trump’s executive orders “do nothing to solve things like more good-paying jobs, improve public safety…these are the real problems for Americans across the country.”
Trump has been a climate-change skeptic for years and his decision to encourage the production of fossil fuels comes as no surprise.
Back in June 2024, Karoline Leavitt, who was then Trump’s campaign national press secretary, said Trump wanted to withdraw the U.S. from the climate agreement. Trump himself railed against the Paris Accord during a debate with former President Joe Biden, saying the agreement was “a rip off of the United States” and “a disaster.”
Government efficiency
Trump has been in constant communication with SpaceX owner and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Elon Musk to downsize of the government.
He renamed the United States Digital Service the U.S. DOGE Service and created guidelines for the new organization aimed at “modernizing federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency.”
The idea to create DOGE and cut government spending came from a conversation between Musk and Trump on X in August, in which Musk proposed a “government efficiency commission” to ensure taxpayers’ money would be well spent.
According to The New York Times, Trump and Musk held regular meetings with hopes that the SpaceX founder would be part of the second Trump administration. On Nov. 12, he named Musk head of DOGE.
For a full disclosure of all executive orders Trump has signed during his presidency, click here.
Originally published on Latin Times
