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Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t be a dictator—“except for Day 1.” According to his own statements, he’s got a lot to do on that first day in the White House.
His list includes starting up the mass deportation of migrants, rolling back Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government by firing potentially thousands of federal employees he believes are secretly working against him, and pardoning people who were arrested for their role in the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he said of his Day 1 plans.
When he took office in 2017, he had a long list, too, including immediately renegotiating trade deals, deporting migrants and putting in place measures to root out government corruption. Those things didn’t happen all at once.
How many executive orders in the first week? “There will be tens of them. I can assure you of that,” Trump’s national press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox News on Sunday.
Here’s a look at what Trump has said he will do in his second term and whether he can do it the moment he steps into the White House:
Trump has said that “within two seconds” of taking office that he would fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who has been prosecuting two federal cases against him. Smith is already evaluating how to wind down the cases because of long-standing Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Smith charged Trump last year with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Trump cannot pardon himself when it comes to his state conviction in New York in a hush money case, but he could seek to leverage his status as president-elect in an effort to set aside or expunge his felony conviction and stave off a potential prison sentence.
A case in Georgia, where Trump was charged with election interference, will likely be the only criminal case left standing. It would probably be put on hold until at least 2029, at the end of his presidential term. The Georgia prosecutor on the case just won reelection.
More than 1,500 people have been charged since a mob of Trump supporters spun up by the outgoing president attacked the Capitol almost nearly four years ago.
Trump launched his general election campaign in March by not merely trying to rewrite the history of that riot, but positioning the violent siege and failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of his bid to return to the White House. As part of that, he called the rioters “unbelievable patriots” and promised to help them “the first day we get into office.”
As president, Trump can pardon anyone convicted in federal court, District of Columbia Superior Court or in a military court-martial. He can stop the continued prosecution of rioters by telling his attorney general to stand down.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump said on his social media platform in March when announcing the promise. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”
Trump could begin the process of stripping tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections, so they could be more easily fired.
He wants to do two things: drastically reduce the federal workforce, which he has long said is an unnecessary drain, and to “totally obliterate the deep state”—perceived enemies who, he believes, are hiding in government jobs.
Within the government, there are hundreds of politically appointed professionals who come and go with administrations. There also are tens of thousands of “career” officials, who work under Democratic and Republican presidents.
