President TrumpUpon assuming office, he flexed his presidential powers while following through on some of the key pledges he made during his election campaign.
“Today I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the full restoration of America and the common-sense revolution,” the country's 47th president pledged during his presidency. Opening address Monday at the U.S. Capitol.
Hours later, Trump followed up on the executive order, with a torrent of signatures for the executive order at Washington's Capitol One Plaza, in front of thousands of supporters — a first in the country's history — and later in the more traditional Oval Office of the White House.
“He's just pure Trump,” veteran Republican strategist Alex Castellanos told Fox News Digital. “He's the first president in a new, connected world where you have to govern from the outside in. You have to rally support and bring people with you.”
Head here for the latest Fox News reports on President Trump's first day in office
President Donald Trump shows his signature on an executive order he signed in front of his supporters inside Capital One Arena during celebrations on the day of his second presidential inauguration, in Washington, on January 20, 2025. (Reuters/Amanda Berobelli)
Trump Immigration promises It was the centerpiece of his successful presidential campaign to regain the White House.
“On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history,” the then-Republican presidential nominee pledged during a late October rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden.
Trump took immediate action within the first hours of his return to office.
FIRST ON FOX: Trump pledges more than 200 executive actions on day one
The new president declared a national emergency along the southern border with Mexico and ordered the deployment of US troops to help support immigration agents. Trump also ordered the reinstatement of a policy of his first administration that forced asylum seekers to wait across the border in Mexico. But it is unclear whether Mexico will accept migrants again.
Trump also directed the federal government to resume border wall construction, which began during his first term but was halted by President Biden.
President Donald Trump reviews troops during his inauguration ceremony in Emancipation Hall of the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2025. (Greg Nash/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump signed an order ending the birthright of citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. But with birthright citizenship guaranteed in the US Constitution, Trump's executive order is certain to face immediate legal challenges in court from civil rights groups and immigration activists.
“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entries will be stopped immediately. We will begin the process of returning millions upon millions of criminal aliens to the places they came from. We will restore residency in Mexico.” Trump asserted in his inauguration speech: “I will end the practice of detention and release and will send troops to the southern border to repel the catastrophic invasion of our country.”
Trump pledges to move with “historic speed” as his inauguration brings salvation
The President also announced that “we will also designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and overwhelming authority of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign cartels and criminal networks.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Uniondale, New York on Wednesday, September 18, 2024. (Julia Bonavita/Fox News Digital)
During his two-year return to the White House, Trump repeatedly vowed to “drill, baby, drill” and vowed to end the Biden administration's mandate for electric vehicles.
On Monday, Trump followed up, linking his move Energy Executive Orders For his efforts to control inflation.
“I will direct all members of my Cabinet to deploy the broad powers at their disposal to defeat record inflation and quickly reduce costs and prices,” Trump said. “The inflation crisis was caused by massive overspending and escalating energy prices.”
“And that's why today I'm also declaring a national energy emergency,” he said. “We're going to drill, baby, drill. America is going to be an industrial nation again, and we have something no other industrial nation will ever have. The largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth.” “
During the 2024 cycle, Trump and Republicans repeatedly targeted Democrats up and down the ballot over the Biden administration's protections for transgender students.
“We'll get it over with on day one,” Trump pledged last May. “Don't forget, this came as an order from the president. This came as an executive order. We will change it — on Day One, it will be changed.”
Trump followed through, taking executive action that the president's advisers said would “defend women from sex, ideology, and extremism and return biological truth to the federal government.”
President Donald Trump sings a second executive order during the inaugural show inside Capital One Arena on the day of his second presidential inauguration, in Washington, on January 20, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
“As of today, the official policy of the United States government will henceforth be that there are only two sexes, male and female,” the president said.
The president also signed orders to end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs — known by their acronym DEI — within the federal government. The orders direct the White House to identify and terminate programs within the government.
Another promise from the campaign trail – pardons and commutations for several of those convicted of the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters who tried unsuccessfully to stop Congress' certification of President Biden's 2020 election victory.
Trump did not mention the pardon in his inaugural address, but minutes later when he spoke to supporters gathered in a packed room at the US Capitol, he repeated his long-standing unsubstantiated claim that the 2020 presidential election “was completely rigged.”
A few hours later, Trump announced to cheering supporters gathered in a downtown square in Washington, D.C., that he would be “signing pardons for a lot of people…to get them out” immediately.
He wasn't kidding.
When the president returned to the White House, he ended up pardoning about 1,500 people — including some convicted of attacking police officers — obliterating the Justice Department's efforts to punish those who stormed the Capitol on one of America's darkest days.
“These people are devastated,” Trump said as he signed the pardon. “What they did to these people was horrific.”
President Donald Trump signs pardons for those charged on January 6 in the Oval Office of the White House on Inauguration Day in Washington, January 20, 2025. (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
Trump also took action on something that had not been brought up during the campaign.
“Shortly from now, we will change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to America’s Gulf,” Trump announced in his inaugural address.
Referring to Alaska's Mount Denali, the highest peak in North America, the president said, “We will return the name of a great president, William McKinley, to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs.”
“He's flooding the district. He's calling for action. He's showing action. He's galvanizing a wave of American support for a massive change in government,” Castellanos, a veteran of several GOP presidential campaigns, told Fox News. “I think it's overwhelming and Democrats don't know what's hitting them.”
“Can you imagine Biden doing that? I don't think so,” the president said as he signed executive orders in front of thousands of supporters.
But Trump did not implement all of his campaign promises.
Trump's envoy sets a longer timetable for ending the war between Russia and Ukraine
One of his most prominent promises that he did not implement during his first day in office was to immediately end the deadly war in Eastern Europe.
Trump repeatedly promoted during his election campaign that he would end the nearly three-year-long war between Russia and Ukraine “in one day.”
“They're dying, the Russians and the Ukrainians,” Trump pledged during a town hall in May 2023. “I want them to stop dying. And I'll do it — I'll do it within 24 hours.”
In September, during his only debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump pledged, “I will settle this before I'm even president.”
Clearly that did not happen.
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Earlier this month, retired Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, offered a longer timeline.
He said in an interview with Fox News: “I would like to set a goal on a personal and professional level. I would say let's set it in 100 days.”
