Donald Trump plans to issue a flurry of executive orders and directives after he is sworn in as U.S. president on Monday to put his stamp on his new administration on matters ranging from energy to immigration.
Two sources familiar with the planning said more than 100 such orders and directives could be released starting on Day One in what is known internally as a “shock and awe” effort.
Transition advisers have been preparing drafts for Trump to choose from. Decisions have yet to be made on which will be released on Monday and which in the days that follow.
Here is what we know about the executive orders so far:
IMMIGRATION
Many of the actions that Trump plans on his first day as president are aimed at ramping up immigration enforcement and following through on his pledge to deport record numbers of immigrants in the U.S. illegally.
The executive actions would give federal immigration officers more latitude to arrest people with no criminal records, send more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, and restart construction of the border wall, Reuters reported in November.
Trump is expected to declare illegal immigration a national emergency to unlock military funds for border wall construction. He also signaled in a Truth Social post in November that he would shift military resources to assist with his deportation plans.
“We’re going to make it so if you’re illegal, you’re not coming in through a port of entry or even if you’re trying to come into a port of entry illegally, you’re not going to be allowed in,” Trump adviser Jason Miller told National Public Radio.
Trump also plans to end temporary “parole” programs, which under President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants from certain countries to enter legally on humanitarian grounds and access work permits, Reuters reported.
In addition, Trump has vowed to end automatic citizenship for those born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally, and advisers say his team is working on an executive order to this effect.
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The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 in the post-Civil War period, provides for granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”
Any move by Trump to end birthright citizenship would face a legal challenge.
“We have to end it. It’s ridiculous,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in December.
ENERGY
Sources familiar with the plans of members of Trump’s transition team have said that Trump is considering a suite of executive orders to roll out within days of taking office targeting everything from electric vehicles to withdrawing again from the Paris climate agreement, an action he took in his first administration.
Members of his transition team are recommending sweeping changes to cut off support for electric vehicles and charging stations and to strengthen measures blocking the import of cars, components and battery materials from China, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The transition team also recommends imposing tariffs on all battery materials globally, a bid to boost U.S. production, and then negotiating individual exemptions with allies, the document shows.
Trump’s executive orders will also likely seek to roll back Biden’s climate regulations on power plants, end his pause on liquefied natural gasexports, and revoke waivers allowing California and other states to have tighter pollution rules.
TARIFFS
One move that Trump could take on his first day or early in his new administration is to follow through on his threats to increase tariffs on imported goods from America’s biggest trading partners.
Trump believes tariffs would help boost economic growth in the United States, although opponents warn that the costs would likely be passed along to consumers.
PARDONS
Trump has also said he will take action immediately on taking office to issue pardons for some of the hundreds of people convicted or charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.
GENDER-AFFIRMING CARE
Trump said in a campaign video in 2023 that on his first day in office he would revoke the Biden administration’s policies that provide information and resources to those seeking medical care so they can align their bodies with the gender they identify with.
That care can include hormone therapy and surgery.
“On Day One, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called gender-affirming care,” Trump said.
TRANSGENDER RIGHTS
Trump has vowed to sign an executive order ending transgender rights in the U.S. military and inside U.S. schools.
As for transgender athletes, he told a rally on Sunday that he would act on his first day to stop the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports.
DIVERSITY PROGRAMS
During his first term, Trump signed an executive order to curtail efforts to address racial disparities in the workplace, through programs including diversity training inside companies.
Biden reversed that executive order on his first day in office in January 2021, and Trump is likely to reinstate his original order early in his second term, and perhaps on his first day in office.
Trump has also criticized “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies inside universities.
DRUG CARTELS
Trump plans to classify drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations in an early executive order, Punchbowl News reported on Sunday, fulfilling a promise he made on the campaign trail to crack down on the sources of the lethal opioid fentanyl.
REQUIRING FEDERAL WORKERS TO RETURN TO THE OFFICE
Trump has railed against work-from-home arrangements for tens of thousands of federal employees, which were greatly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and he has vowed to end them.
In December, Trump said if federal workers refuse to return to the office, “they’re going to be dismissed.”
By forcing government workers back into the office Trump and his allies hope it could trigger large-scale resignations, which would assist in their goal of reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy.
Donald Trump’s newly launched cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, achieved a market valuation of over $8 billion within two hours of its debut, according to press reports early Saturday.
The president-elect announced the memecoin on X, urging supporters to join the “Trump Community.”
“My NEW Official Trump Meme is HERE! It’s time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!” Trump stated in his post, directing followers to the coin’s official website.
The rapid surge in valuation highlights the growing influence of memecoins in the cryptocurrency market, with $TRUMP quickly emerging as a notable contender.
Financial analysts have urged caution, noting that memecoins are highly volatile and prone to sudden value shifts.
Despite these concerns, Trump supporters have embraced the cryptocurrency enthusiastically, propelling its valuation to $8 billion within hours.
The success of $TRUMP demonstrates the increasing impact of branding and community loyalty in the evolving digital economy.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after then-President Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot.
It had been three days since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for more than eight minutes until the 46-year-old Black man lost consciousness, showing no signs of life. A video taken by a bystander had been viewed millions of times online. Protests had taken over Minnesota’s largest city and would soon spread throughout cities across America.
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd and I won’t let that happen,” Trump wrote at 9:53 a.m. on May 28 from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts the shooting starts!”
The former president has since been suspended from both Twitter and Facebook.
Leaked Facebook documents provide a first-hand look at how Trump’s social media posts ignited more anger in an already deeply divided country that was eventually lit “on fire” with reports of hate speech and violence across the platform. Facebook’s own internal, automated controls, meant to catch posts that violate rules, predicted with almost 90% certainty that Trump’s message broke the tech company’s rules against inciting violence.
Yet, the tech giant didn’t take any action on Trump’s message.
Offline, the next day, protests — some of which turned violent — engulfed nearly every U.S. city, big and small.
“When people look back at the role Facebook played, they won’t say Facebook caused it, but Facebook was certainly the megaphone,” said Lanier Holt, a communications professor at Ohio State University. “I don’t think there’s any way they can get out of saying that they exacerbated the situation.”
Social media rival Twitter, meanwhile, responded quickly at the time by covering Trump’s tweet with a warning and prohibiting users from sharing it any further.
Facebook’s internal discussions were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Trump was one of many high-profile users, including politicians and celebrities, exempted from some or all of the company’s normal enforcement policies.
Hate speech and violence reports had been mostly limited to the Minneapolis region after Floyd’s death, the documents reveal.
In this June 3, 2020, file photo, a demonstrator stares at a National Guard soldier as protests continue over the death of George Floyd, near the White House in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
“However, after Trump’s post on May 28, situations really escalated across the country,” according to the memo, published on June 5 of last year.
The internal analysis shows a five-fold increase in violence reports on Facebook, while complaints of hate speech tripled in the days following Trump’s post. Reports of false news on the platform doubled. Reshares of Trump’s message generated a “substantial amount of hateful and violent comments,” many of which Facebook worked to remove. Some of those comments included calls to “start shooting these thugs” and “f—- the white.”
By June 2, “we can see clearly that the entire country was basically ‘on fire,’” a Facebook employee wrote of the increase in hate speech and violence reports in the June 5 memo.
Facebook says it’s impossible to separate how many of the hate speech reports were driven by Trump’s post itself or the controversy over Floyd’s death.
In this May 30, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks with members of the press on the South Lawn of the White House, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
“This spike in user reports resulted from a critical moment in history for the racial justice movement — not from a single Donald Trump post about it,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “Facebook often reflects what’s happening in society and the only way to prevent spikes in user reports during these moments is to not allow them to be discussed on our platform at all, which is something we would never do.”
But the internal findings also raise questions about public statements Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made last year as he defended his decision to leave Trump’s post untouched.
On May 29, for example, Zuckerberg said the company looked closely to see if Trump’s words broke any of its policies and concluded that they did not. Zuckerberg also said he left the post up because it warned people of Trump’s plan to deploy troops.
In this May 28, 2020, file photo, protesters and residents watch as police in riot gear walk down a residential street, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
“I know many people are upset that we’ve left the President’s posts up, but our position is that we should enable as much expression as possible unless it will cause imminent risk of specific harms or dangers spelled out in clear policies,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebookaccount the night of May 29, as protests erupted around the country.
Yet, Facebook’s own automated enforcement controls determined the post likely did break the rules.
“Our violence and incitement classifier was almost 90% certain that this (Trump) post violated Facebook’s … policy,” the June 5 analysis reads.
That contradicts conversations Zuckerberg had with civil rights leaders last year to quell concerns that Trump’s post was a specific threat to Black people protesting Floyd’s death, said Rashad Robinson, the president of Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group. The group also spearheaded a boycott of Facebook in the weeks following Trump’s post.
“To be clear, I had a direct argument with Zuckerberg days after that post where he gaslit me and he specifically pushed back on any notion that this violated their rules,” Robinson said in an interview with the AP last week.
In this April 11, 2018, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes a drink of water as he testifies before a House Energy and Commerce hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
A Facebook spokesperson said that its internal controls do not always correctly predict when a post has violated rules and that human review, which was done in the case of Trump’s post, is more accurate.
To curb the ex-president’s ability to stoke hateful reactions on its platform, Facebook employees suggested last year that the company limit reshares on similar posts that may violate Facebook’s rules in the future.
But Trump continued to use his Facebook account, which more than 32 million follow, to fire up his supporters throughout much of the remainder of his presidency. In the days leading up to a deadly siege in Washington on Jan. 6, Trump regularly promoted false claims that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the White House, spurring hundreds of his fans to storm the U.S. Capitol and demand the results of a fair election be overturned.
It wasn’t until after the Capitol riot, and as Trump was on his way out of the White House, that Facebook pulled him off the platform in January, announcing his account would be suspended until at least 2023.
There’s a reason Facebook waited so long to take any action, said Jennifer Mercieca, a professor at Texas A&M University who closely studied the former president’s rhetoric.
“Facebook really benefited from Trump and Trump’s ability to draw attention and engagement through outrage,” Mercieca said. “They wanted Trump to keep going on.”
In this June 20, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump arrives on stage to speak at a campaign rally at the BOK Center, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
Former US President Donald Trump has announced plans to launch a new social media network, called TRUTH Social.
He said the platform would “stand up to the tyranny of big tech”, accusing them of silencing opposing voices in the US.
Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which he chairs, also intends to launch a subscription video-on-demand service.
Mr Trump was banned or suspended from social networks like Twitter and Facebook after crowds of his supporters stormed the US Capitol in January.
He and his advisers have since hinted that they were planning to create a rival social media site.
Earlier this year, he launched From the Desk of Donald J Trump, which was often referred to as a blog.
The website was permanently shut down less than a month after it launched. His senior aide Jason Miller said it was “just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on”.
An early version of his latest venture, TRUTH Social, will be open to invited guests next month, and will have a “nationwide rollout” within the first three months of 2022, according to a statement by TMTG.
“We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favourite American President has been silenced,” wrote Mr Trump.
“Everyone asks me why doesn’t someone stand up to Big Tech? Well, we will be soon!” he added.-BBC.
Tomorrow, Sunday 3rd, a new policy change affecting green card applicants will be rolled out by the US government and its embassies.
In the set policy, foreign Visa and Green card Applicants will be compeled to prove to consular officers that they will have unsubsidized health insurance within 30 days of arriving in the US. Alternatively, prove that they will have enough money to pay for reasonably foreseeable medical costs if allowed in the United States.
The new policy will only affect folks applying for immigrant Visas from outside the US and it does not apply to those already living in the country but applying for green cards or renewal of Visas.
Parents of adult US citizens are exempt from the rule, but will need to prove to a consular officer that they will not become a substantial burden on the US healthcare system.
Here are a list of classes of immigrants that are also exempt from the new health insurance rule:
Anyone with an immigrant visa issued before the effective date of the proclamation (Nov. 3, 2019)
Green card holders seeking reentry under SB-1 (returning resident) visas
Refugees and asylum seekers
Iraqi or Afghan nationals entering using Special Immigrant visas
Unmarried children (under the age of 21) of U.S. citizens
Orphans or other children being adopted by U.S. citizens
Immigrants admitted in the national interest, or to further law enforcement goals
Here are the health insurance plans passed by the Trump administration after they fulfilled the new requirement:
Employer-sponsored plans, including retiree plans, association health plans, and coverage under COBRA
Any unsubsidized health plan bought through an Obamacare marketplace
Short-term insurance covering at least 364 days, or until the start of a planned period of travel outside the United States
Catastrophic plans
Coverage under a family member’s health insurance
Certain military health insurance programs, including TRICARE
Medicare plans
Other plans approved by the Department of Health and Human Services
According to Migration Policy Institute, the new health insurance rules will see more than 375,000 green card applications rejected.
The main critics of the rule that takes effect from midnight are Immigration advocates. According to them, the set policy is Trump’s way of legally “illegally” doing away with family-based migration.
On their response to allegations, Trump’s administration stated that uninsured immigrants fall back on taxpayer-funded health care, driving up costs for Americans by $35 billion each year. A figure that Immigration advocates and healthcare experts have refuted saying that Trump has not only exaggerated but also failed to prove.
Michael Baden, a pathologist contracted by the late dollar billionaire Jeffrey Epstein’s brother has said that the financier did not commit suicide in his jail cell as reported earlier. Baden states that his private study reveals that Epstein was murdered.
“I study evidence points toward homicide rather than suicide. The injuries are pointing to homicidal strangulation” Baden, a former New York City medical examiner who conducted private autopsy said.
According to Baden, the multiple fractures found in Epstein’s neck, specifically the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage, were very rare for suicide.
On August 10th this year, Dollar Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who was on suicide watch, was found dead in New York’s high-security Metropolitan Correctional Center as he awaited trial on allegations that he trafficked girls as young as 14 for sex.
Barbara Sampson, New York’s chief medical examiner ruled that Epstein had killed committed suicide. Barbra’s ruling has since been disputed by Epstein’s lawyers and his brother Mark.
Epstein, 66, was a billionaire fund manager and proprietor in Banking who had deep connections with myriad of celebrities for years. He was a close buddy of Britain’s Prince Andrew and US President Donald Trump.
His demise fuelled numerous conspiracy theories with most of them speculating that he had been murdered to stop him from revealing compromising information about some of his wealthy acquaintances and US political elites like the Clintons.
For example, days after his arrest online memes and Facebook statuses claimed the Obama administration, in order to protect former President Clinton, forged a once-secret deal in 2008 in Florida that allowed him to plead guilty to soliciting a minor for prostitution to avoid more serious charges.
Epstein must be really good at suicide if he can kill himself while on 24/7 Suicide watch.
Epstein was charged with one count of sex trafficking of minors and another of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors. He denied the charges but faced up to 45 years in jail if found guilty.
After news about Jeffrey Epstein’s death went viral globally, dozens of women came out and alleged that they had been sexually abused by him and several have sued his estate for damages.
