What Trump Has Done in His Second Term

Before President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, a blogger I follow wrote the following:

My take on Trump post-election has been to stop paying attention, as best I can, to anything he says. I’m only paying attention to what he does. With any other national leader, there’s a correlation between their words and their eventual actions that makes paying attention to what they say worthwhile. With Trump, there’s almost no correlation, and his endless stream of outrageous proclamations are nothing but a distraction.

I thought that was a great piece of advice, and so, to that end, I aim to keep a running list of what President Trump actually does.

January 2025

1. President Trump rescinded 78 executive orders and presidential memoranda signed by President Biden between 2021 and 2025. The rescinded items addressed a diverse range of issues such as advancing racial equity, managing the COVID-19 pandemic response, climate change initiatives, immigration policy reforms, economic relief measures, and the establishment of various councils and task forces.
2. President Trump ended remote work for the Federal workforce.
3. President Trump ordered a freeze on the hiring of Federal civilian employees and gave the OMB 90 days to submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.
4. President Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as all similar pacts under the same framework.
5. President Trump revoked and rescinded roughly $3.3 billion from the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan, which has delivered financial and technical assistance for climate change initiatives in the developing world through a variety of bilateral and multilateral channels, with appropriations enacted by Congress.
6. President Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of over 1,000 individuals who had been charged with a crime related to the insurrection that the President inspired on January 6, 2021.
7. President Trump withdrew the United States from the World Health Organization.
8. President Trump reclassified the designation of thousands of federal employees, changing them from civil service workers to political appointments, thereby making it easier to fire and replace the federal workforce with people who are loyal to his administration. This particular executive order is his method for eradicating “the deep state,” which is a bogeyman of conspiracy theorists.
9. President Trump revoked the security clearances of fifty different individuals who warned the public of the dangers of re-electing President Trump in 2020.
10. President Trump declared a national emergency taking place at the southern border, which allows the United States military to establish “complete operational control of the southern border of the United States,” including providing as many troops as necessary, building as many barriers as necessary, and using unmanned aerial vehicles if necessary.
11. President Trump bypassed the need for an FBI background check before giving Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance to anyone he wants.
12. President Trump ordered the United States Northern Command to seal the borders of the United States and repel unlawful mass migrants, narcotics traffickers, human smugglers and traffickers, and other criminal actors who seek to enter the country.
13. President Trump “unleashed American energy,” which tells the United States government to prioritize fossil fuel development, deregulation, and consumer “freedom” over environmental protections, renewable energy investment, and climate action.
14. President Trump suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, which has been in place since 1980 to identify, screen, and resettle refugees in the United States who are fleeing persecution, war, or violence in their home countries.
15. President Trump attempted to unilaterally overturn the 14th Amendment by revoking birthright citizenship.
16. President Trump tried to make Delta smelt go extinct…or something like that(?). This is a weird one.
17. President Trump reinstated enforcement of the Federal death penalty and instructed his Attorney General to take all appropriate action to seek an overruling on Supreme Court precedents on the death penalty.
18. President Trump declared a national energy emergency to “facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources, including, but not limited to, on Federal lands.”
19. President Trump stopped the government from allowing new offshore wind energy projects in the ocean areas around the United States.
20. President Trump halted new foreign aid spending for 90 days to ensure whatever the nation spends aligns with his goals.
21. President Trump redesigned the National Security Council. In the redesign, the National Security Advisor is granted authority to determine meeting agendas and attendee lists, which concentrates influence within the advisor’s role.
22. President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the OECD Global Tax Deal, an agreement signed by 139 countries, and primarily driven by the U.S., that created a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15%, ensuring that multinational companies pay at least this rate, regardless of where they operate​, and that corporations pay taxes wherever they have customers.
23. President Trump rescinded a series of Executive Orders signed by the Biden Administration that attempted to provide humane solutions to issues arising from undocumented immigration, including policies that align with the values of due process and the well-being of families and communities, collaborative attempts to address the root causes of migration, and an attempt to reunite migrant children with their parents after being separated at the border by Federal agents. President Trump’s new directive shifts the focus back to strict enforcement of immigration laws, prioritizing the removal of individuals deemed inadmissible or removable, and emphasizing national security and public safety concerns over the rights and needs of vulnerable people.
24. President Trump permitted energy companies to rape the state of Alaska.
25. President Trump implemented stricter vetting and screening processes for individuals seeking admission into the country, or you might call it, the revival of the “Muslim Ban,” because it will allow his administration to restrict entry from specific countries under the guise of national security.
26. President Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to modernize Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity (i.e., he gave Musk the keys to government oversight).
27. President Trump made trans individuals invisible in the eyes of the Federal government and revoked all attempts by the previous administration to protect their civil rights.
28. President Trump made the Federal government racist again.
29. President Trump set up the groundwork for all newly hired Federal employees to take a loyalty oath to his administration, as the order puts it, “prevent the hiring of individuals who are unwilling…to faithfully serve the Executive Branch.”
30. President Trump designated “the Cartels” as foreign terrorist organizations.
31. President Trump changed the name of the highest peak in North America to Mt. McKinley and the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. I should note that President Obama changed Mt. McKinley to Denali in 2012 following a request from the Governor of Alaska (originally made in 1975). The governor reasoned that Denali was the local Athabascan name for the mountain and President McKinley had no connection to the mountain, the state of Alaska, or any of its people (native or otherwise).
32. President Trump declared the existence of an invasion at the southern border and ordered the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take all appropriate action to repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States.”

The President signed all of the above executive orders and presidential memoranda on his inauguration day. I will revisit this post at the end of each month between now and January 2029, updating it as best I can.