WASHINGTON — Within hours of taking office, Donald Trump plans to roll out a series of executive actions in line with his campaign promises, imposing more socially conservative health care policies on the U.S. military and initiating the wholesale deportation of those who are alive. illegally in the country.
NBC News spoke to more than a half-dozen people familiar with transition planning who outlined some of the quick actions Trump plans to take to signal a dramatic break from President Joe Biden’s administration, which Trump says is moving the country toward would lead to destruction.
Americans will see the new Trump administration implement changes at a pace that is “like nothing you’ve seen in history,” a Trump campaign official said.
Trump is preparing on day one to undo specific Biden policies, with plans to end travel reimbursement for military members seeking abortion care and limit transgender service members’ access to gender-affirming care, two people familiar with the matter said were with the plans.
But much of the first day will likely be about stopping illegal immigration — the centerpiece of Trump’s candidacy. After he is sworn in on Jan. 20, he is expected to sign at least five executive orders aimed at tackling the issue alone, three Trump allies said on condition of anonymity.
By contrast, that is as many orders as he signed on all issues in the first week of his last term in office.
“No doubt there will be a lot of movement soon, probably on day one, on the immigration front,” said a key Trump ally. “There will be a push to make a huge early showing and assert himself to show that his campaign promises were not hollow.”
Transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “The American people can be confident that on day one, President Trump will use his executive authority to fulfill the promises he made to them during the campaign.”
Advisors based at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort or in nearby offices in West Palm Beach, Florida, are also strategizing how to end the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and prepare for Trump’s return to power. world stage after an absence of four years.
During the campaign, Trump pledged to end the war between Russia and Ukraine within just 24 hours — a time frame about which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has sown doubt.
Trump’s transition team is also fielding requests from abroad to organize his first trip abroad.
After a decisive victory on November 5, Trump has moved quickly to build out the Cabinet and a senior White House team that will carry out his plans.
As of Wednesday, he had selected 32 people for senior positions in his administration, compared to just three at a similar point during his transition in 2016. Four years ago, Biden had selected just one person for a senior role in his new administration at that point: Ron Klain as White House Chief of Staff.
Trump could enter the White House in a better position to formulate and implement his agenda than in his first round.
A kind of waiting government of Trump administration alumni and allies have been working at Washington think tanks for years since he left office to craft policies he would implement upon his return. A group formed after Trump left office, the America First Policy Institute, which is led by some of his former appointees, has drafted proposed executive orders for the transition team to consider.
Transition officials are working through dozens of proposed orders, while Trump’s eldest son is taking part in a series of meetings devoted to choosing personnel, two people close to the transition say.
Donald Trump Jr. was among those who secretly spoke out against the rehiring of Mike Pompeo, secretary of state and CIA director in the first Trump administration, the person close to him said.
“He viewed him as ideologically out of sync on foreign policy. Too aggressive and internationalist,” the person said. “Don would like to see as many people in government as possible who reflect his father’s worldview, because he believes this is the best way to protect his father’s interests.”
Trump must move quickly to implement his agenda, given the realities of the election calendar. Under the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, he can serve only one term. In 2026, Congress will focus on midterm elections that could erode or completely wipe out Trump’s slim Republican majority.
“You have to realize that Trump is not a dummy,” said Stephen Moore, a senior economic adviser to Trump’s campaign. ‘He knows he has a maximum of two to three years to get something done. And then he becomes a lame duck and we start talking about it [the presidential election in] 2028.”
“So he really wants to run Secretariat right out of the gate,” Moore added, referring to the champion thoroughbred racehorse.
It’s easy enough to announce new policies as soon as the starting gun sounds; it will take time to bring them to fruition. There are big questions surrounding several parts of Trump’s agenda, including the tax cut package he promised. Will Trump keep his promise and, for example, abolish taxes on tips or social security benefits?
“We’re not even sure what the plan will say,” Moore said.
Passing a tax cut will be such a challenge that Trump should make it a higher priority after securing the border, said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a Trump ally.
Gingrich said he has spoken with Trump advisers about making the tax cut package a centerpiece of the new administration.
“You get overwhelmed by how many things you’re doing,” Gingrich told NBC News. “They need to take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book and focus the entire cabinet on implementing the tax cuts.”
Deporting people on the scale that Trump envisions is a logistical challenge that would take years. What he has in mind goes far beyond what he did last time.
During its first term, the Trump administration deported approximately 1.4 million people. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, Biden is on track to deport about 1.6 million people by the time his term ends.
“The president is acting with clarity and determination in his choices around DHS and the border generally,” said Chad Wolf, acting secretary of homeland security in the Trump administration. “It was a campaign promise, and I think polls show that the American people didn’t like the direction of the Biden-Harris administration on this issue, so it made perfect sense to put a team together and do it quickly.” do and that team starts to move.
A key figure in this effort will be Trump’s pick for Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. As governor of South Dakota, she has not remotely headed a bureaucracy like the Department of Homeland Security, which employs more than a quarter of a million people and whose portfolio also includes cyber threats and terrorism.
Noem campaigned for Trump, although a person close to Trump was surprised he asked her for the job. Trump had “not spoken very favorably of her” after her book came out in the spring and revealed that she had killed her overly aggressive dog, Cricket, the person said.
Trump was incredulous that she would choose to write about the episode, given people’s emotional attachment to their pets, the person added. He was surprised that she “didn’t understand what the response would be,” the person said. Trump is “not a dog man, but he says, ‘Good Lord!’”
Trump has campaigned heavily on the promise of mass deportation and will be judged in part on how he handles an issue he says threatens American sovereignty. If the number of undocumented immigrants in the US rises, he will likely be ridiculed for not keeping his promise.
At the same time, he faced intense backlash for separating families who entered the country illegally during his first term, and is likely to provoke a similar backlash if he adopts such an approach again in the second term.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Trump won and won big on the idea that cracking down on illegal immigration is not only a priority, but the priority,” said a Trump donor who has held talks with his transition team.
Another Trump ally said the focus will be on expediting deportations through an executive order, but policy details are still being worked out.
“This is our focus. This is what we started working with,” the person said. “It will happen quickly, but I think a lot of what that looks like is still being discussed.”
Advisers are trying to figure out how to repatriate those who would be deported, said a person working on the Trump transition. That will be difficult.
Among the first people who could be targeted for deportation are those deemed to pose a threat, which could include military-age Chinese men living in the U.S. illegally.
But sending it back to China would involve diplomatic negotiations that would likely involve give and take. Another option Trump advisers are considering is deporting people to third countries.
As Trump navigates these issues, he has what his allies see as an advantage that all his predecessors lacked except Grover Cleveland, the last president to lose an election and return to the White House four years later. Both Cleveland in the 19th century and Trump in the 21st century had pauses to reflect on what went wrong and what went right.
“These are the only two guys who had four years to think about their first four years and then get back to playing,” Gingrich said.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
