President-elect Trump is planning a barrage of executive actions on energy, border and immigration enforcement on his first day in office, four sources told The Hill.
Stephen Miller, incoming White House deputy chief of staff for policy, briefed Republican congressional leaders about a number of planned actions on Sunday, according to three sources. Trump will sign dozens of executive orders on Monday, a fourth source said. The orders will also touch upon bringing back the federal workforce to offices.
While Trump has long forecasted a number of the coming actions, the swath of proposals is historically ambitious for first-day executive actions. President Biden signed a total of 22 executive orders during his first week in office, marking a modern record at the time.
In actions relating to border and immigration, Trump plans to declare an emergency at the border and classify drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, among other immigration enforcement related orders, according to three sources. Trump will also move to reinstate the Remain in Mexico policy, sources said.
Trump will make a number of major actions on deregulating energy production, such as repealing rules on electric vehicles. And he plans to declare a national emergency related to energy, two sources said.
In planned reforms to the federal workforce, Trump is planning to end Biden-era diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, three sources said. And he plans to reinstate the Schedule F classification for federal employees in policymaking positions, which would give the president more power over the hiring and firing of those employees.
“Somebody said yesterday, ‘Sir, don’t sign so many in one day. Let’s do it over a period of weeks,’” Trump told supporters at a rally Sunday in Washington. “I said, ‘Like hell we’re going to do it over a period of weeks.’ We’re going to sign them at the beginning.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser for Trump, teased on Sky News on Sunday that Trump could sign some executive orders inside the Capitol Rotunda shortly after being sworn in and then sign some additional actions later at Capital One Arena, where the presidential parade is now set to take place.
Various details about the planned executive orders were reported earlier Punchbowl News and Wall Street Journal.
