President Trumpimmediately after taking office, he expanded his presidential powers while fulfilling some of the key promises he made during his campaign.
“Today I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin America’s full recovery and the revolution of common sense,” the country’s 47th president promised during his speech. inauguration address Monday at the U.S. Capitol.
Hours later, Trump pressed on, with an avalanche of signings at Washington’s Capitol One Arena in front of thousands of supporters — a first in the country’s history — and later in the more traditional Oval Office setting at the White House.
“It’s just pure Trump. He is the first president in a new connected world in which you have to govern from the outside in. You have to build support and bring the people along,” veteran Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told Fox News Digital.
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President Donald Trump shows his signature to an executive order he signed in front of supporters at the Capital One Arena during ceremonies on the Inauguration Day of his second presidential term, in Washington, on January 20, 2025. (REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli)
Trump’s immigration promises were a centerpiece of his successful presidential campaign to reclaim the White House.
“On day one, I will launch the largest criminal deportation program in the history of America,” the then-Republican presidential candidate promised at a late October rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
And Trump took immediate action in his first hours back in power.
FIRST ON FOX: TRUMP PROMISES MORE THAN 200 EXECUTIVE ACTIONS ON DAY 1
The new president declared a national emergency along the southern border with Mexico and ordered the deployment of U.S. troops to help support immigration agents. Trump also ordered the restart of a policy from his first administration that forced asylum seekers to wait across the border in Mexico. But it is unclear whether Mexico would accept migrants again.
Trump also ordered the federal government to resume construction of the border wall, which he started during his first term but was halted by President Biden.
President Donald Trump discusses the troops during his inauguration ceremony in the Emancipation Hall of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. (Greg Nash/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
And Trump signed an order ending the birthright rights of children born to illegal immigrants. But now that birthright rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, Trump’s executive order will undoubtedly face immediate legal challenges in court from civil rights groups and immigration activists.
“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will be stopped immediately. And we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to the places they came from. We will restore my stay in Mexico. I will end the practice of catch and release and I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country,” Trump emphasized in his inauguration speech.
TRUMP PROMISES TO ACT WITH ‘HISTORIC SPEED’ AS INAUGURATION BRINGS REDEMPTION
And the president also announced that “we will also designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eradicate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Uniondale, New York on Wednesday, September 18, 2024. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
During his two-year bid to return to the White House, Trump repeatedly promised “drill, baby, drill” and pledged to end the Biden administration’s electric vehicle mandate.
On Monday, Trump continued, tying his implementing decisions in the field of energy to his efforts to keep inflation under control.
“I will task all members of my Cabinet to pool the vast powers they have to beat record inflation and quickly bring down costs and prices. The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices,” Trump argued.
And he said, “That’s why today I’m also going to declare a national energy emergency. We’ll drill, baby, drill. America will be a manufacturing nation again, and we’ll have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have. The greatest amount of oil and gas of any country on earth.”
During the 2024 cycle, Trump and Republicans repeatedly targeted Democrats during the Biden administration’s vote on transgender student protections.
“We’re going to end it on day one,” Trump promised last May. “Remember, this was done by order of the president. That amounted to an executive order. And we’re going to change it – it’s going to be changed on day one.”
Trump pressed ahead, taking executive action based on what the president’s advisers said would “defend women against gender, ideology, extremism and restore biological truth to the federal government.”
President Donald Trump sings a second executive order during the inaugural parade at the Capital One Arena on Inauguration Day of his second presidential term, in Washington, on January 20, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
“Starting today, it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” he said.
The president also signed orders ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs — best known by the acronym DEI — across the federal government. The orders direct the White House to identify and end the programs within the government.
Another promise from the campaign trail: pardoning the defendants and commuting the sentences of many of those convicted on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who unsuccessfully tried to halt congressional certification of to halt President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Trump made no mention of the pardon in his inauguration speech, but minutes later, speaking to supporters gathered in an overflow room in the U.S. Capitol, he repeated his long-standing, unproven claim that the 2020 presidential election was “totally rigged” ‘.
A few hours later, in front of cheering supporters gathered in downtown Washington, DC, Trump touted that he would “sign a pardon for a lot of people… to get them out immediately.”
He wasn’t kidding.
The president, back in the White House, ultimately pardoned about 1,500 people — including some convicted of assaulting police officers — slowing the Justice Department’s efforts to punish those who stormed the Capitol on one of its darkest days of America, were annihilated.
“These people have been destroyed,” Trump argued as he signed the pardon. “What they did to these people is outrageous.”
President Donald Trump signs a pardon for the January 6 defendants in the Oval Office of the White House on Inauguration Day in Washington, January 20, 2025. (REUTERS/Carlos Barria)
Trump also took action on something that was not discussed during the campaign.
“In short order, we will be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump declared in his inauguration speech.
And pointing to Alaska’s Mount Denali, North America’s highest mountain, the president said, “We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.”
“He floods the area. He calls for action. He demonstrates action. He is rallying a wave of American support for a massive government transformation,” Castellanos, a veteran of numerous Republican Party presidential campaigns, told Fox News. “I think it’s overwhelming and the Democrats just don’t know what’s happening to them.”
“Can you imagine Biden doing this. I don’t think so,” the president said as he signed executive orders in front of thousands of his supporters.
But Trump did not fulfill all his campaign promises.
TRUMP HEALTH SETS LONGER TIMETABLE TO END RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR
One of his most prominent vows that he failed to follow through on his first day on the job was to immediately end a deadly war in Eastern Europe.
Trump repeatedly praised during his campaign that he would end the nearly three-year war between Russia and Ukraine “in one day.”
“They are dying, Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. And I will make that happen within 24 hours,” Trump promised during a town hall in May 2023.
And in September, during his only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump promised: “I will get it done before I even become president.”
That obviously didn’t happen.
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And earlier this month, retired Gen. Keith Kellog, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, offered a longer timeline.
“I would like to set a goal on a personal level, on a professional level, I would say let’s set it at 100 days,” he said in an interview with Fox News Channel.
