President Trump signed a suite of executive orders before a cheering crowd of tens of thousands of supporters at the Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C., Monday evening, rolling back nearly 80 Biden-era orders with a stroke of his pen just hours after being sworn in as the 47th president of the United States.
The public signing ceremony kicks off a flurry of day-one executive action that’s expected to include 200 executive orders that will fulfill Trump’s campaign promises on immigration, climate policy, and the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
In addition to rolling back 78 executive orders issued by President Biden, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreements, froze federal hiring and the drafting of new regulations, and mandated that all federal workers return to the office full time. He also signed orders barring the “government censorship of free speech” and the “weaponisation of government” against “political adversaries of the previous administration.”
The orders that Trump rescinded included broad orders aimed at ensuring equity in Covid-19 pandemic recovery, the federal workforce, and through support for “underserved communities,” along with Biden-era orders aimed at advancing equity for specific minority groups –Asian Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, blacks, and sexual minorities.
Trump was expected to take aim with some of his first executive orders at ending the federal government’s DEI bureaucracy that ballooned under Biden. Conservative civil rights lawyers and activists who spoke to National Review after Trump’s win in November said that rooting out illiberal and unconstitutional racial preferences would be years long effort and will require more than executive orders –it will likely also require congressional action, rulemaking, and continued lawsuits from civil rights groups opposed to the measures.
