Trump's 5 Most Troubling Executive Orders
On his first day back in office, Trump issued 26 executive orders—the most on record.

How much damage can you do in a day? Quite a bit if you’re Donald Trump.
On the first day of his renewed presidency, Trump issued a record 26 executive orders, well surpassing the previous high of 15 Joe Biden signed on his first day in 2021, which surpassed the previous record of 14 Trump signed in 2017.
Trump followed the executive orders he signed on Jan. 20 with four more throughout the rest of his first week back in office.
An executive order provides the president’s directive to the entire government on how to approach a certain set of issues, not to be confused with proclamations and memorandums, executive actions which are geared towards more specific orders of government.
George Washington University political historian Matthew Dallek told the Washington Post that Trump is engaged in “an executive-order shock-and-awe campaign … to send a message to his critics and most importantly to his voters” that he’s going to pursue his policy agenda “aggressively.”
According to analysis from online news site the Lever, 16 of the 26 first-day executive orders “seem torn straight from the pages” of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025—a 900-page blueprint the influential conservative think tank drafted for reshaping the federal government along authoritarian lines.
During his campaign, Trump called some of its proposals “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” insisting he had “nothing to do with it,” despite at least 140 of his former staffers having helped write the document.
The guidebook calls “for aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch to return power—including power currently held by the executive branch—to the American people.”
Below are the five most dangerous, cruel and authoritarian of Trump’s first-day executive orders.
1. Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety
This order calls the death penalty “an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens,” and seeks to expand its applicability.
It directs the attorney general to seek federal jurisdiction and pursue the death penalty, “regardless of other factors,” for cases where a person is found guilty of killing a cop and for capital crimes committed by those who are in the country illegally.
Capital crimes are crimes eligible for the death penalty in jurisdictions in which it hasn’t been outlawed, including murder, kidnapping, drug trafficking, treason and espionage, among others.
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Centre, told the Marshall Project that seeking the death penalty for every capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant would be “unprecedented and contrary to established law.”
The order also directs the attorney general “to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection,” and to attempt to overturn Supreme Court rulings that “limit the authority” of state and federal governments to conduct executions.
In 2024, there were 26 death sentences imposed across 10 states, with three-quarters of them concentrated in four states—Florida (7), Texas (6), Alabama (4) and California (3).
2. Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship
With the stroke of a pen, Trump sought to end birthright citizenship, including for babies whose mother is in the U.S. legally with a travel, work or student visa.
This executive order must be viewed within the context of Trump’s broader assault on immigration rights.
The U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment states unequivocally: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
The Trump administration argues that the people impacted by the order aren’t actually “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. government.
This one is already being challenged in court, with a federal judge in Washington granting the state’s request for a two-week halt to its implementation in a scathing ruling.
Judge John Coughenour, a Ronald Regan appointee, said it “boggled” his mind that any lawyer would have signed off on the “blatantly unconstitutional” order.
The order is also being challenged in federal court in Maryland and New Hampshire.
3. Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions within the Federal Workforce
Trump issued several executive orders targeting the federal bureaucracy, with most of the media attention focused on the president’s efforts to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
This one, however, is in my mind the most concerning, because it allows Trump to bend the civil service to his will by stripping job protections from bureaucrats who are perceived as “resisting and undermining the policies and directives of their executive leadership.”
The order does so by reintroducing a new category of bureaucrats, dubbed “Schedule F,” which allows the administration to categorize certain career civil servants as political appointees and purge them from the bureaucracy, replacing them with Trump loyalists.
Late in his first term, Trump issued an executive order introducing Schedule F, only for Biden to reverse it early in his term.
The goal, University of Texas at Austin political scientist Donald Kettl told the Guardian, isn’t necessarily to fire every Schedule F employee, but “to make the point that this could happen to you if you’re not careful.”
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 workers across 37 federal agencies, has filed a lawsuit against this order in the D.C. District Court, arguing Trump’s directive amounts to “a political loyalty test.”
4. Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government
Of course, the president who spent $19 million USD on election ads saying, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” was going to waste no time at all in seeking to erase trans people from public life.
This order says “the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female, [which] are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
It prohibits government funding for not just for gender affirming care but anything that the government deems to be “gender ideology,” and prohibits government documents from listing a person’s sex as anything other than what they were born into.
While the text claims that the order is protecting women’s “dignity, safety, and well-being,” and raises the spectre of men identifying as trans women to infiltrate “women’s domestic abuse shelters [and] women’s workplace showers,” its definitions of the two sexes appeal anti-choice advocates.
The order states [emphases added]:
(d) “Female” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) “Male” means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.
So in addition to targeting trans people, especially trans women, the order subtly attacks cisgendered women who might need an abortion.
5. Declaring a National Energy Emergency
Trump signed several orders reversing Biden’s limited climate commitments and opening up more fossil fuel production, but this one is the most far-reaching.
By declaring the first-ever “national energy emergency,” Trump is tapping into expanded executive powers under the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which doesn’t clearly delineate what constitutes an emergency.
The order claims that an “inadequate energy supply and infrastructure causes and makes worse the high energy prices that devastate Americans, particularly those living on low- and fixed-incomes,” and that this constitutes an “active threat to the American people.”
While it’s short on specifics, Trump’s order instructs the heads of various government agencies “to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources,” including on federal and private lands.
To facilitate more extraction, the order allows authorities to seek exemptions from parts of the Clean Water Act, Rivers and Harbors Act, Marine Protection Research and Sanctuaries Act, and Endangered Species Act.
While the order talks about energy, its definition includes two notable omissions—solar and wind, which compose 14% of the U.S energy grid.
Trump issued a presidential memo the same day blocking offshore wind projects that his predecessor had approved.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Energy Information Administration boasts that the U.S. is producing “more crude oil than any country, ever,” and has, since 2019, been a net exporter of energy.
It’s probably worth noting that oil and gas companies donated $75 million USD to Trump’s campaign that we know of.
While none of this is surprising.......thanks for clarifying the details for us. As our own Brett Wilson argued for a few years ago..........the gloves are off now, and its going to go hard on anyone who wants to protect the future from the growing devastation being caused by growing extreme weather.
The victims of fire and flood, drought and hunger can just 'go quietly into that good night'. We don't want to hear any of their whining. Finally, a strong man is making it possible for Petrostates to be proud again, and the climate disaster loonies to be silenced permanently.
If we love our children, we have to do what we can.....preferably something other than rant against the bully. He like our own Danielle, works for the oil and gas cartels.....those of us who can, should consider finding other employment.
Re: "... oil and gas companies donated $75 million USD to Trump’s campaign that we know of." Albertans take note: The fossil companies also love and support Alberta's version of MAGA, aka UCP. We need to remember that at election time. Unless we transition off of fossils we're doomed.