During his first term in office, U.S. President Donald Trump applied his particular brand of diplomacy with Washington's adversaries, publicly befriending Russia and North Korea while separately piling pressure on China and Iran.
PEELING ALLIES AWAY FROM CHINA
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday vowed to hit the European Union with tariffs and said his administration was discussing a 10% punitive duty on Chinese imports because fentanyl is being sent from China to the U.S. via Mexico and Canada.
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SOFTER TONES
President Donald Trump‘s administration moved Tuesday to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off.
The moves follow an executive order Trump signed on his first day ordering a sweeping dismantling of the federal government’s diversity and inclusion programs that could touch on everything from anti-bias training to funding for minority farmers and homeowners. Trump has called the programs “discrimination” and insisted on restoring strictly “merit-based” hiring.
The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them.
The Office of Personnel Management in a Tuesday memo directed agencies to place DEI office staffers on paid leave by 5 p.m. Wednesday and take down all public DEI-focused webpages by the same deadline. Several federal departments had removed the web pages even before the memorandum. Agencies must also cancel any DEI-related training and end any related contracts, and federal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face “adverse consequences.”
By Thursday, federal agencies are directed to compile a list of federal DEI offices and workers as of Election Day. By next Friday, they are expected to develop a plan to execute a “reduction-in-force action” against those federal workers.
The memo was first reported by CBS News.
The move comes after Monday’s executive order accused former President Joe Biden of forcing “discrimination” programs into “virtually all aspects of the federal government” through “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, known as DEI.
That step is the first salvo in an aggressive campaign to upend DEI efforts nationwide, including leveraging the Justice Department and other agencies to investigate private companies pursuing training and hiring practices that conservative critics consider discriminatory against non-minority groups such as white men.
The executive order picks up where Trump’s first administration left off: One of Trump’s final acts during his first term was an executive order banning federal agency contractors and recipients of federal funding from conducting anti-bias training that addressed concepts like systemic racism. Biden promptly rescinded that order on his first day in office and issued a pair of executive orders — now rescinded — outlining a plan to promote DEI throughout the federal government.
While many changes may take months or even years to implement, Trump’s new anti-DEI agenda is more aggressive than his first and comes amid far more amenable terrain in the corporate world. Prominent companies from Walmart to Facebook have already scaled back or ended some of their diversity practices in response to Trump’s election and conservative-backed lawsuits against them.
Here’s a look at some of the policies and programs that Trump will aim to dismantle:
Diversity offices, training, and accountability
Trump’s order will immediately gut Biden’s wide-ranging effort to embed diversity and inclusion practices in the federal workforce, the nation’s largest at about 2.4 million people.
Biden had mandated all agencies to develop a diversity plan, issue yearly progress reports, and contribute data for a government-wide dashboard to track demographic trends in hiring and promotions. The administration also set up a Chief Diversity Officers Council to oversee the implementation of the DEI plan. The government released its first DEI progress report in 2022 that included demographic data for the federal workforce, which is about 60% white and 55% male overall, and more than 75% white and more than 60% male at the senior executive level.
Trump’s executive order will toss out equity plans developed by federal agencies and terminate any roles or offices dedicated to promoting diversity. It will include eliminating initiatives such as DEI-related training or diversity goals in performance reviews.
Federal grant and benefits programs
Trump’s order paves the way for an aggressive but bureaucratically complicated overhaul of billions of dollars in federal spending that conservative activists claim unfairly carve out preference for racial minorities and women.
The order does not specify which programs it will target but mandates a government-wide review to ensure that contracts and grants are compliant with the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance. It also proposes that the federal government settle ongoing lawsuits against federal programs that benefit historically underserved communities, including some that date back decades.
Trump’s executive order is a “seismic shift and a complete change in the focus and direction of the federal government,” said Dan Lennington, deputy council for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which has pursued several lawsuits against federal programs. The institute recently released an influential report listing dozens of programs the Trump administration should consider dismantling, such as credits for minority farmers or emergency relief assistance for majority-Black neighborhoods.
He acknowledged that unwinding some entrenched programs may be difficult. For example, the Treasury Department implements housing and other assistance programs through block grants to states that have their own methods for implementing diversity criteria.
Pay equity and hiring practices
It’s not clear whether the Trump administration will target every initiative that stemmed from Biden’s DEI executive order.
For example, the Biden administration banned federal agencies from asking about an applicant’s salary history when setting compensation, a practice many civil rights activists say perpetuates pay disparities for women and people of color.
It took three years for the Biden administration to issue the final regulations, and Trump would have to embark on a similar rule-making process, including a notice and comment period, to rescind it, said Chiraag Bains, former deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Biden and now a nonresident senior fellow with Brookings Metro.
Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates, said that she was hopeful that the Trump administration “will not go out of its way to undo the rule,” which she said has proved popular in some state and cities that have enacted similar policies.
And Biden’s DEI plan encompassed some initiatives with bipartisan support, said Bains. For example, he tasked the Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council with expanding federal employment opportunities for those with criminal records. That initiative stems from the Fair Chance Act, which Trump signed into law in 2019 and bans federal agencies and contractors from asking about an applicant’s criminal history before a conditional job offer is made.
Bains said that’s what Biden’s DEI policies were about: ensuring that the federal government was structured to include historically marginalized communities, not institute “reverse discrimination against white men.”
Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, Farrell said, “the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.”
“Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,” she added.
President Donald Trump on his first full day in office Tuesday defended his decision to grant clemency to people convicted of assaulting police officers during the 2021 attack on the Capitol and suggested there could be a place in American politics for the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, extremist groups whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the U.S.
The president also continued to dismantle the government’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion, known as DEI. The White House issued a memo placing on paid leave all federal staff who work on those efforts, with plans to lay them off soon. DEI trainings were also canceled.
Trump’s actions were the latest step in his drive to overhaul Washington and erase the work of President Joe Biden’s administration.
A priority for Trump has been helping supporters who laid siege to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, making their pardons his first official action once he returned to the White House after his inauguration on Monday.
Among the roughly 1,500 people pardoned by Trump were more than 200 who pleaded guilty to assaulting police. At least 140 officers were injured during the riot — many beaten, bloodied, and crushed by the crowd — as Trump’s supporters tried to overturn Biden’s election victory.
Before the Capitol attack, the Proud Boys was a group best known for street fights with anti-fascist activists when Trump infamously told the group to “stand back and stand by” during his first debate in 2020 with then-presidential candidate Biden.
The group’s former top leader, Enrique Tarrio, and three of his lieutenants were convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election. Tarrio was serving a 22-year prison sentence, the longest of any Capitol riot case before Trump pardoned him on Monday. Some members of the group marched in Washington on Monday as Trump was sworn into another term.
When pressed by a reporter about the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and whether there was a place for them in politics, Trump said, “Well, we have to see. They’ve been given a pardon. I thought their sentences were ridiculous and excessive.”
Trump spoke to reporters at the White House as he highlighted an investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure and declared, “We’re back.”
“I think we’re going to do things that people will be shocked at,” he said.
When pressed about his decision to free people from prison who were shown on camera viciously attacking Capitol police officers, Trump declared, “I am a friend of police, more than any president who’s ever been in this office.”
The president on Tuesday said he thought the sentences handed down for actions that day were “ridiculous and excessive” and said, “These are people who actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate.”
Two major law enforcement groups, The International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police, issued a joint statement saying they were “deeply discouraged” by the pardons and commutations and believed those convicted should serve their full sentences.
The president was also asked about his personal net worth benefitting from his launch of a new cryptocurrency token the day before he was sworn into office, and whether he would continue to sell products to benefit himself while in office.
“I don’t know much about it other than I launched it,” he said. “I heard it was very successful. I haven’t checked it. Where is it today?”
Trump had opened his first full day back in office by demonstrating one of his favored expressions of power: firing people.
The new president posted on his Truth social media network early Tuesday that he would fire more than 1,000 presidential appointees “who are not aligned with our vision,” including some high-profile names.
Trump fired chef and humanitarian José Andrés from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, retired Gen. Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, former State Department official Brian Hook from the board of the Wilson Center and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council.
“YOU’RE FIRED!” Trump said in his post — his catchphrase from his reality TV show, “The Apprentice.”
Andrés and Bottoms disputed Trump’s assertion that they were fired, saying in posts on social media that they had already submitted their resignations.
Biden also removed many Trump appointees in his first days in office, including former press secretary Sean Spicer from the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Academy.
Three major business leaders — SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison — joined Trump on Tuesday afternoon to announce the creation of a new company called Stargate, which would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in AI infrastructure, according to the White House.
Initial plans for Stargate, which is beginning construction in Texas, date back to Biden’s time in office. Tech news outlet The Information reported on the project in March 2024.
Trump also attended a national prayer service Tuesday morning at Washington National Cathedral, a customary visit for new presidents and one that wrapped up four days of inauguration-related events.
One of the speakers at the interfaith service, the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, used her sermon to send a message to Trump, urging compassion for LGBTQ+ people and undocumented migrant workers.
“You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” said Budde, who has criticized Trump before.
Asked afterward by a reporter what he thought of the service, Trump said: “Not too exciting was it. I didn’t think it was a good service. They could do much better.”
Later in the day, the president met with House Speaker Mike Johnson Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and other GOP legislators. It was the first formal sit-down for the GOP leadership teams, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Senate GOP Whip John Barrasso, and the new president, as they chart priorities for using Republican power in Washington.
It was more of a date than a marriage, said one person familiar with the private meeting, and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Trump floated many ideas on the priorities ahead — for tax cuts, disaster aid, regulatory reforms, and the upcoming March deadline to fund the government — with no clear preference for their various strategies, only that they get the job done. Policy aides Stephen Miller and James Braid joined the talk.
The GOP leaders were given chocolate chip cookies and commemorative coins.
After the meeting, Senate Republicans raised the threat of recess appointments to install Trump’s Cabinet. Thune pushed for a quick confirmation, but Trump has demanded that Republicans prepare to put the Senate in recess, allowing Trump to appoint his picks to Cabinet posts without Senate confirmation.
Trump mused Tuesday that the Los Angeles wildfires would give Republicans leverage with Democrats over budget negotiations because Los Angeles is “going to need a lot of money. And generally speaking, I think you’ll find that a lot of Democrats are going to be asking for help.”
Democrats knew this was coming.
President Donald Trump promised a shock-and-awe campaign to deliver major policy victories immediately after he took office. Much of it was outlined in the Project 2025 document that Democrats predicted he would adopt.
But in the hours since Trump’s inauguration, Democrats are struggling to confront the sheer volume of executive orders, pardons, personnel changes and controversial relationships taking shape in the new administration.
In less than two days, the Republican president has moved to end diversity and inclusion programs across the federal government, withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris climate accords, blocked a federal law banning TikTok, and sought to end the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. He has also pardoned the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and granted unprecedented access to some of the world’s richest men, raising questions about his commitment to the working-class voters who enabled his election.
Each of those actions enrages part of the Democratic base. Together, they make it difficult to formulate a response by an already fractured party.
“It is a fire hose right now. That’s what he does. He creates a ton of chaos so it’s hard to keep up with it,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, who instructed her staff to track Trump’s executive orders, so her constituents could keep up. “Everything is overloaded.”
Democrats warn of Trump’s ‘plans to screw over America’
The Democratic National Committee, under the direction of retiring chair Jaime Harrison, has been running an active rapid response this week, issuing press releases and social media posts to push back against Trump’s actions. That stands in contrast to the party’s operation following Trump’s 2017 inauguration, which was largely dark as a far more active protest movement became the focal point of the Democratic resistance.
For now, the Democratic establishment is largely focused on the prominent role of billionaires in Trump’s nascent presidency, which follows Biden’s farewell warning about the rise of oligarchs.
The DNC shared talking points with its allies on Tuesday, encouraging them to focus on “Trump’s plans to screw over America.” Specifically, the talking points focus on the new president’s move to rescind a Biden order designed to limit the cost of prescription drugs.
The DNC guidance also seizes on ultra-wealthy tech executives like Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and Space X, and Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and Blue Origin, who were seated in front of some of Trump’s Cabinet picks during his inauguration. On Musk, the talking points accuse him of giving multiple Nazi salutes during Trump’s inauguration parade.
Right-wing extremists are celebrating Musk’s straight-arm gesture during a speech Monday, although his intention wasn’t totally clear and some hate watchdogs are saying not to read too much into it.
The seating for some of the world’s richest men at the inauguration — with big-state governors and major allies relegated to an overflow area — initially offered Democrats an issue to rally around. Beyond the tech leaders featured at the inauguration, the Republican president has tapped more than a dozen billionaires for prominent roles.
Democratic strategist Andrew Bates, who left his job as a White House spokesman on Friday, attacked Trump’s GOP for “partying with rightwing billionaires” on their first day in control of Washington and “plotting tax welfare for the super-rich” on Day 2.
“Republicans have revealed their establishment-bought true colors and are selling out every American except their well-connected donors,” Bates said.
The party remains fractured
Crockett, who has become one of her party’s most visible messengers on Capitol Hill, is concerned that the focus on billionaires might not resonate with average voters, who likely didn’t recognize Bezos or other tech executives at the inauguration.
“I’m not sure average people know that’s not normal,” Crockett said of the seating arrangement. “The brilliance of Trump, if I had to give him accolades, is that he understands how much people don’t understand.”
Even under normal circumstances, a transition to a new presidential administration would bring a flurry of executive orders and personnel changes that would be difficult to track. But little is normal about the second incarnation of President Trump, a 78-year-old term-limited outsider at the height of his political power with little regard for political norms or legal consequences.
“Everyone’s reeling and trying to process the information coming at them,” said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Our Revolution. “People are not confident that the Democratic Party knows what to do in this moment.”
Some prominent allies of the Democratic Party aren’t especially engaged either.
Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban, who was among Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ most visible surrogates last fall, downplayed the impact of Trump’s early moves when asked to weigh in.
“He hasn’t really done anything yet,” Cuban told The Associated Press. “I’ll pay attention to what he does. But my focus is figuring out healthcare rather than getting mad about what he does.”
“Just getting angry,” Cuban continued, “is not the way to go.”
Faiz Shakir, a candidate for DNC chair and a longtime ally of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, said he was shocked by the prominent placement of the billionaires in the nationally televised event, which he said threatened to undermine Trump’s popularity with working-class voters.
“He has given people a window into how he’s going to govern,” Shakir said.
Still, he acknowledged that Democrats must confront “fatigue and exhaustion” within their own ranks that lingers two months after Trump’s victory: “There’s a creeping hopelessness that needs to be fought against.”
Crockett encouraged her party to adopt a much more organized campaign to educate the public about Trump’s three most egregious moves. What are they? She’s not sure yet.
“But in my opinion, we can’t fight it all,” she said.