Donald Trump’s measures | Shock and amazement

(New York) Shock and amazement. The phrase refers to the military doctrine deployed by the United States at the start of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It resurfaces in 2025 to describe the cannonade of measures that Donald Trump will order on the first day of his return at the White House.

Joe Biden’s successor has prepared more than 100 presidential decrees in order to be able to quickly fulfill his electoral promises. He will not be able to sign them all on Monday, but his intention is clear: to amaze his supporters and destabilize his opponents, including the media, who will not know where to turn.

“When President Trump takes office next Monday, there will be shock and awe with executive orders, a blizzard of executive orders, on the economy, as well as on the border,” Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso said during a recent interview on the CBS show Face the Nation.

Certain presidential decrees will be the subject of legal action, of which Donald Trump is well aware. During his first term as president, the federal courts notably blocked the first two versions of his migration decree targeting nationals of certain Muslim-majority countries.

But all the actions of the 47^e President will not require the signing of decrees, as demonstrated by some of his priorities among the approximately 60 initiatives he promised to adopt on the first day of his second term.

Prices

Canadians still hold out hope that Donald Trump will listen to reason and abandon his threat to sign, as part of one of his first presidential decrees, “all the documents necessary to impose tariffs of 25% on Mexico and Canada.” % on ALL products entering the United States.”

But the president-elect does not seem to be giving up. And he is continuing preparations ahead of his tariff regime, which on Monday is set to include a 10% hike in tariffs on Chinese goods entering the United States.

He announced last week the upcoming birth of a new federal agency – the External Revenue Service – whose mission will be: “ [percevoir] our tariffs, duties and all other revenues from foreign sources.”

This birth will take place on the day of his inauguration.

Immigration

It is under the heading of immigration that Donald Trump could sign the greatest number of presidential decrees on Monday. One of them could define the “national emergency” to set in motion the largest expulsion of illegal immigrants in history.

According to the Wall Street Journalthe first expulsions should take place on Tuesday in Chicago and target some 300 illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States. They could continue throughout the week and spread to other cities, including New York and Miami, according to Reuters.

Other executive orders could restart wall construction, suspend the refugee program and close the southern border by bringing back “Title 42.” This health system allows for the immediate expulsion of visa-free migrants to Mexico, including asylum seekers, in the name of public health. Donald Trump implemented it during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A presidential decree could also end automatic citizenship for children born on American soil to illegal parents.

6-January

Donald Trump does not need to sign an executive order to fulfill his promise to grant presidential pardons to people convicted for their role in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. He will only have to resort to this sovereign power conferred on him by the Constitution.

The question is whether he will follow through on that promise on his first day back in the White House and extend clemency to those who have committed acts of violence.

If Donald Trump has not himself ruled out the possibility of pardoning people convicted of violent crimes, JD Vance did so during a recent interview. “I think it’s very simple: If you protested peacefully on January 6 and Merrick Garland’s Justice Department treated you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” he said on Fox News.

Sentenced to 22 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy, Enrique Tarrio, leader of the far-right group Proud Boys, asked the president-elect to pardon him. Will his wish be granted?

Energy

Donald Trump swore it to Fox News host Sean Hannity in December 2023. He will not be dictator, “except for day one,” during which he not only promised to close the southern border, but also from “drill, drill, drill”.

To fulfill this second promise, he could sign presidential decrees putting an end to the restrictions imposed by Joe Biden on the production of fossil fuels. These executive orders could notably reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and reverse Joe Biden’s recent decision to permanently ban oil and gas extraction off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the Gulf of Mexico and of Alaska.

Other decrees could sound the death knell for certain green initiatives of the 46^e President, including the new standards on polluting emissions from automobiles announced last March, the strictest ever adopted.

Further environmental rollbacks could be confirmed by presidential executive orders, including the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.

Bureaucracy

While presidential decrees can be subject to legal action – and be invalidated by the courts – they can also be overturned with a simple signature by another president. This notably happened on January 22, 2021 when Joe Biden, on his third day in the White House, repealed Presidential Executive Order 13,957 signed by his predecessor a few days before the 2020 presidential election.

However, four years later, Donald Trump promised to resurrect this decree on Monday, which aims to change the tenure of some 50,000 federal civil servants in order to facilitate their dismissal and their replacement by executives loyal to his cause.

Transidentity

“I will remove men from women’s sports, 100%, immediately, from day one. » By making this promise last October, Donald Trump exploited a marginal but divisive issue which should occupy part of his time this Monday.

During the same speech, the Republican candidate pledged to sign, on the first day of his return to the White House, a presidential decree to end federal funding for schools that teach “transgender madness.” He also promised to revoke Joe Biden’s policies intended to ease access to gender-affirming care.

And he will have at his disposal an executive order that could force some 15,000 transgender service members out of the military for medical reasons and ban transgender people from joining the military.

Ukraine

This is another issue where Donald Trump will not need to sign a presidential decree to fulfill an electoral promise. During his presidential campaign, he repeatedly expressed his belief that he could resolve the war between Ukraine and Russia within 24 hours.

During a recent press conference, the president-elect called this promise into question by speaking of his wish to see this war end within six months. We can therefore already conclude that he will renege at least one of his promises from the first day of his return to the White House.

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