Get the best experience and stay connected to your community with our Spectrum News app. Learn More
Continue in Browser
Get hyperlocal forecasts, radar and weather alerts.
Please enter a valid zipcode.
Save
President Donald Trump signs executive orders undoing Biden policies, and former Sen. Marco Rubio is sworn in as Secretary of State.
Hours after taking the oath of office, President Donald Trump signed a slate of executive orders in front of a cheering crowd at a watch party for his inauguration and modified parade at Capital One Arena in Washington on Monday.
He also said he was returning to the Oval Office on Monday evening to sign additional executive orders as well as pardons "for a lot of people" charged or convicted with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
After addressing his supporters and running down a list of executive actions he was set to take on his first day back in office, Trump signed numerous documents, holding them up to the roaring crowd each time, and at one point, stopping to ask those in the arena if they could imagine former President Joe Biden doing this.
The first document he signed was designed to undo nearly 80 of Biden’s own executive orders put in place during his four years in the White House. During his remarks before the signing ceremony, Trump referred to the order as “ destructive and radical,” touting that they would all be “null and void” within minutes.
The next focused on what Trump called a regulation freeze, describing it as a way to “stop Biden bureaucrats from continuing to regulate.”
“Most of those bureaucrats are being fired,” Trump, who pledged on the campaign trail to cut back on the size of the federal government, added. “They’re gone.”
Among other actions taken was implementing a temporary hiring freeze in a bid, Trump said, to ensure that only competent people are being hired as well as an order mandating federal workers return to work in-person full time.
Meanwhile, the president also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Agreement for the second time. He also withdrew the country from the pact during his first term before Biden rejoined.
The last set of orders included one that, as the president described, seeks to prevent government censorship as well as another aimed at cracking down on what Trump and his allies have referred to as the weaponization of the federal government.
Fresh off becoming President Donald Trump’s first cabinet nominee to be confirmed, Secretary of State Marco Rubio embarked on his first day as America’s top diplomat on Tuesday, hosting a trio of counterparts from so-called Quad nations and laying out his vision for U.S. foreign policy under his guidance.
After being sworn in by Vice President JD Vance in the morning, the new secretary and former Florida senator officially took his place at the helm of the influential State Department — one at the center of America’s foreign relations — in the afternoon when he delivered welcome remarks to employees.
Rubio pledged that his mission, as directed by Trump, is to carry out a global policy agenda that puts the national interests of the U.S. first.
“That will be our job around the world — ensure that we have a foreign policy that advances the national interest of the United States,” Rubio said.
He added that the “overriding goal” of U.S. foreign policy under his and Trump’s leadership will be the promotion of peace and avoidance of conflict.
“No agency will be more critical in that regard than this one,” he said.
At the same time, Rubio acknowledged significant challenges on the world stage, saying that in dealing with foreign relations there are often no good options and calling his role a “tough job.”
"There will be conflicts,” Rubio said. “We will seek to prevent them and avoid them but never at the expense of our national interests.”
The secretary also noted that there will be changes in the department in order to make it a “21st century agency” that can move “faster than we ever have.” He did not elaborate on such changes, but added that the world is changing faster than ever before and the department needs to be operating with where things will stand in the years ahead in mind.
"I want the Department of State to be at the center of how America engages the world — not just how we execute on it but how we formulate it,” he said.
Rubio spent the rest of the afternoon sitting down with his counterparts from Japan, Australia and India — the three countries that, along with the U.S., make up the so-called Quad. The alliance — which represents nearly 2 billion people and more than a third of global GDP — was established in 2007 and has recently become an essential part of America’s approach to the Indo-Pacific, particularly as it looks to counter China’s growing assertiveness and vast territorial claims in the region.
President Donald Trump has pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, including people convicted of assaulting police officers, using his clemency powers on his first day back in office to undo the massive prosecution of the unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy.
Trump’s action, just hours after his return to the White House on Monday, paves the way for the release from prison of people found guilty of violent attacks on police, as well as leaders of far-right extremist groups convicted of failed plots to keep the Republican in power after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The pardons are a culmination of Trump’s yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 attack, which left more than 100 police officers injured as the angry mob of Trump supporters — some armed with poles, bats and bear spray — overwhelmed law enforcement, shattered windows and sent lawmakers and aides running into hiding. While pardons were expected, the speed and the scope of the clemency amounted to a stunning dismantling of the Justice Department’s effort to hold participants accountable over what has been described as one of the darkest days in the country’s history.
Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that are pending before judges stemming from the largest investigation in Justice Department history.
Casting the rioters as "patriots" and "hostages," Trump has claimed they were unfairly treated by the Justice Department, which also charged him with federal crimes in two cases he contends were politically motivated. Trump said the pardons will end "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years" and begin "a process of national reconciliation."
The pardons were met with elation from Trump supporters and lawyers for the Jan. 6 defendants. Trump supporters gathered late Monday in the cold outside the Washington jail, where more than a dozen defendants were being held before the pardons.
