WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump took the oath of office Monday morning, starting his second term with a triumphant and decisive comeback.
The 47th president didn’t miss a beat in getting his government up and running.
He moved back into the White House residence and launched a hailstorm of executive orders to kick off his presidency.
His Cabinet is beginning to come together, with the first member, Marco Rubio, quickly and decisively confirmed by the Senate Monday evening.
Trump is not the only one gearing up for a new chapter in Washington. Republican lawmakers are working on legislation to advance Trump’s agenda while figuring out how to navigate ultra-thin margins in both chambers.
Once his presidency became official, Trump could formally nominate members of his Cabinet. Senators must review and approve these nominations.
The second Trump administration got a quick and resounding win scored away with Rubio’s unanimous confirmation as Secretary of State hours after the inaugural ceremony.
Rubio, who is expected to embody his and Trump’s peace-through-strength mentality and take a hawkish approach to foreign policy, said the incoming administration wants to see a ceasefire in Ukraine but that negotiations would be “complicated.”
“Russia’s the aggressor in this conflict, but this war needs to end, and ultimately that’s the complexity of foreign policy,” Rubio told reporters Monday after the vote. “You don’t always get a choice between a great choice and a bad one. Sometimes you get two bad choices, and you’re trying to figure out which is the one that will save the most lives and preserve the most stability.”
More confirmations are expected to follow this week, putting additional personnel in place to carry out Trump’s agenda. And it looks like even some of Trump’s more controversial Cabinet picks may fare okay.
Trump’s nominee for Defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, entered the confirmation process amid allegations of sexual assault, financial mismanagement and drinking on the job. Democrats laid into him about these concerns and other issues at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last week.
But Republicans, including Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa who had previously been seen as a potential swing vote, offered mostly softball questions and high praise, signaling that Hegseth stands a decent chance at confirmation in the GOP-controlled chamber. The panel met Monday evening and voted his nomination out of committee 14-13 along party lines.
When asked whether he was worried about Hegseth’s relative inexperience, Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said he was not.
“I think he’s got a lot of knowledge and, frankly, we need to shake things up in the Pentagon,” he said.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former environmental lawyer up for secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard, nominated for director of National Intelligence, are among the nominees still expected to face scrutiny in their confirmation processes.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a flurry of executive orders.
He started by freezing additional regulations until he has more control of the vast federal government, which he aims to fill in the coming months with political appointees. He then put a freeze on hiring for federal jobs.
Then he rescinded 78 of President Joe Biden’s executive orders and withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accords, an agreement among most nations to fight climate change. He also signed orders preventing “government censorship of free speech” and the “weaponization of the government.”
After he returned to the White House, he pardoned around 1,500 people charged with crimes related the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol; declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border; changed the constitutionally mandated right to birthright citizenship; and designated cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Like most presidents, expect Trump to continue to sign executive orders in his first days in office, as it is the fastest way to start implementing his goals in the federal government, especially on major campaign promises.
He has held off on immediately imposing tariffs on trade partners such as China, Canada and Mexico – an often-repeated campaign pledge that he mentioned again during his inaugural address.
“I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families,” Trump said during his inaugural speech. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
After all the pomp and circumstance, Congress will turn to putting Trump’s agenda into law under the new GOP trifecta.
The lawmakers plan to pass legislation to restrict migration across the southern border, boost domestic energy production, extend Trump’s 2017 tax policies and implement new ones.
“Republicans are hard at work on our legislative priorities,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told Trump during a speech at the inaugural luncheon Monday. “Among other things, we’re focused on extending tax relief for American families, lifting burdensome Biden administration regulations, building up our military and securing our border.”
However, the House and Senate have been at odds about how to advance the bills. The members will use a process called “reconciliation” which allows them to pass laws without Democratic support in the upper chamber as long as the policy is related to revenue or spending.
Given the tiny margins in the lower chamber, House leaders want to pass the whole agenda in one big bill, while the Senate has been pushing for two bills that would allow members a quick win on border and energy bills and give them time to navigate tricky taxation questions. But leaders on both sides say they will try to pass one bill and switch to two if that fails.
Lawmakers also face the additional challenge of dealing with the debt limit, which is expected to be met on Tuesday. House Speaker Mike Johnson agreed to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion and cut spending by $2.5 trillion, along with passing Trump’s agenda. That’s going to be a tricky needle to thread, as raising the debt ceiling is always politically fraught – and dozens of sitting members that Johnson will need to rely on have never voted for such an increase.
Johnson has said he wants to pass the package by April. In the meantime, the majority is moving forward on legislation that meets its goals and can get Democratic support. The Senate finalized the Laken Riley Act on Monday night, which would require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain noncitizens who commit certain crimes. It is expected to become the first law of this Congress.
Trump’s first day in the White House, which took up less than 24 hours, was pedal down from the outset. Day two won’t likely be any slower.
