WASHINGTON — Within hours of taking office as president, Donald Trump plans to implement a series of executive actions consistent with his campaign promises, introducing more socially conservative health care policies to the US military and launching large-scale deportations of people living in the US. illegal country.
NBC News spoke with more than a half-dozen people familiar with the transition plan, which outlined a series of swift actions Trump plans to take to mark a dramatic break from President Joe Biden’s administration. country to destroy.
Americans will see changes under the new Trump administration at a pace “unlike anything you’ve seen in history,” a Trump campaign official said.
Two people familiar with the plans said Trump is set to roll back specific policies put in place by Biden on Day One, including plans to end travel reimbursements for service members who need abortion care and limit transgender service members’ access to gender-affirming care.
But much of the first day will focus on stopping illegal immigration — the centerpiece of Trump’s candidacy. Trump is expected to sign at least five executive orders aimed at dealing with the issue on his own after he is sworn in on Jan. 20, three of Trump’s allies said on condition of anonymity.
Rather, it’s the number of executive orders he signed on all issues in the first week of his last term.
“Certainly on the immigration front, there will probably be a lot of movement quickly on Day One,” said a Trump ally. “There will be a push to make a big early showing and assert himself to show that his campaign promises are not empty.”
“The American people can count on President Trump to use his executive authority on day one to fulfill the promises he made to them on the campaign trail,” transition spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement.
Trump’s advisers, based at his Mar-a-Lago resort or nearby offices in West Palm Beach, Florida, are also strategizing about ending the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and preparing for Trump’s return to the world stage after a four-year absence.
During the election campaign, Trump promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine in just 24 hours — Time frame questioned by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump’s transition team is also fielding requests from abroad to host his first foreign trip.
Having won a decisive victory on November 5th, Trump made rapid progress Establishing the Cabinet of Ministers and the senior White House team that will carry out their plans.
As of Wednesday, he had picked 32 people for top jobs in his administration, compared with just three at a similar point in his transition in 2016. At this point four years ago, Biden had only picked one person for a top job in his incoming administration: Ron Klein as White House chief of staff.
Trump may enter the White House better than he did in his first visit, but he can also articulate his agenda in detail.
A government of sorts, made up of alumni and allies of the Trump administration, has spent years working in Washington think tanks to craft policies to implement upon his return from office. A group launched after Trump left office drafted the proposed executive orders for review by an America First Policy Institute transition team led by several of his former appointees.
While Trump’s eldest son attends some of the staffing meetings, transition aides are sorting through the many proposed orders. He said the two men were close to the crossing.
Donald Trump Jr. was among those who opposed the rehiring of Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state and director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the first Trump administration, a person close to him said.
“He considered it ideologically incompatible with foreign policy. “Extremely hawkish and internationalist,” the person said. “Don would like to see more people in leadership who reflect his father’s worldview because he believes that is the best way to protect his father’s interests.”
Trump must move quickly to approve his agenda, given the realities of the election calendar. According to the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution, he can serve only one term. In 2026, Congress will turn its attention to midterm elections that could erode or wipe out Trump’s narrow GOP majority.
“The thing to understand is that Trump is not a dummy,” said Stephen Moore, Trump’s chief economic adviser. “He knows that he has at most two to three years to do everything. And then he becomes a lame duck and we start talking [the presidential election in] 2028.”
“So he really wants to get Secretariat out of the gate,” Moore said, referring to the champion thoroughbred racehorse.
It’s easy enough to announce new policies when the starting gun sounds; it takes time to realize them. The key questions surround parts of Trump’s agenda, including his promised package of tax cuts. Will Trump follow through on his promise and repeal taxes on tips or not Social security benefitsfor example?
“We’re not even sure what the plan is going to be,” Moore said.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a Trump ally, said the tax cut would be so difficult to pass that Trump should make it a top priority after securing the border.
Gingrich said he was talking to Trump advisers about making the tax cut package a centerpiece of the new administration.
“You’re amazed at how much you’ve done,” Gingrich told NBC News. “They should take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book and direct the entire Cabinet to pass the tax cuts.”
Deporting people at scale, Trump says, is a logistical challenge that will take years to implement in numbers. What he comes up with goes way beyond what he did last time.
During the first term, the Trump administration deported approximately 1.4 million people. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, Biden is on track to deport about 1.6 million people by the end of his term.
“The president has been clear and purposeful in his choices around DHS and the border in general,” said Chad Wolf, the Trump administration’s acting homeland security secretary. “It was a campaign promise, and I think the polls show that the American people didn’t like the direction of the Biden-Harris administration on this issue, so it made perfect sense to put together a team and do it quickly. Let that team go.”
A key figure in these efforts will be Trump’s choice of Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem. As governor of South Dakota, he has not remotely managed a bureaucracy like the Department of Homeland Security, which employs more than a quarter of a million people and whose portfolio includes cyber threats and terrorism.
Noem campaigned for Trump, although one person close to Trump was surprised that she tapped him for the job. After her book came out in the spring, Trump “didn’t speak very positively about her.” killed an overly aggressive dogThe man said cricket.
Trump didn’t believe people would choose to write about the episode given their emotional attachment to their pets, the person added. She was surprised that he “didn’t understand what the reaction was going to be.” Trump is “not a dog person, but he is a ‘Good Lord!’ like”
Trump campaigned on a promise of mass deportations and will be judged on how he handles an issue he claims threatens American sovereignty. If the number of undocumented immigrants in the United States increases, he may face ridicule for failing to keep his promise.
At the same time, he faced a fierce crackdown on separating families who entered the country illegally during his first term, potentially inviting a similar backlash if he resumes such an approach in his second term.
“I don’t think there’s any question that Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is not only a priority, but a huge success. the priority,” said one Trump donor who spoke with the transition team.
Another Trump ally said the focus would be on how to speed up deportations through the executive order, but the details of the policy were still being ironed out.
“That’s our focus. We ran on it,” he said. “It’s going to be fast, but I think it’s still up for debate as to what that looks like.”
Advisers are trying to figure out how to repatriate deportees, said a person working on Trump’s transition. This will be difficult.
Among the first people to be targeted for deportation are those believed to pose a threat, including Chinese men Those of military age living in the United States illegally
But sending them back to China will involve diplomatic negotiations involving give and take. Another possibility Trump advisers are considering involves deporting people to third-party countries.
As Trump navigates these issues, his allies have an advantage that all of his predecessors lacked except for the last president, Grover Cleveland, who lost an election and returned to the White House after four years. Both in 19th century Cleveland and in 21st Trump, there were pauses to consider what went wrong and what went right.
“These are the only two guys who have four years to think about their first four years and then come back and play,” Gingrich said.