BY EMERSON LAYNE

On Monday, January 20th, Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States. Just on Day One in office, President Trump enacted a bustle of executive orders ranging from announcing the end of birthright citizenship, withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization, and the US recognizing only two sexes, male and female. Trump made a record breaking accomplishment by having 26 executive orders signed on Day One in office. For the purposes of time, this article will go over these few executive orders and some key events that happened during and around Trump’s inauguration.

One of Trump’s executive orders would effectively end birthright citizenship for immigrants. Which in practice would have families deported together, including the infant that was born in the US. Over 20 states so far have sued Trump for what they claim is  an unconstitutional overreach by Trump as this executive order would alter the 14th Amendment. Changing constitutional amendments requires a two-thirds vote from both the House and the Senate plus three-fourths of state legislatures must ratify the change. If all 20 of the states suing would not ratify it would make earning a three-fourths majority of states impossible. It also means this  executive order is likely to end up being argued in the Supreme Court.

Another one of Trump’s executive orders is pulling the US from the World Health Organization. The executive order claims that WHO mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and WHO cannot separate itself from political figures and biases. Many people found this executive order strange and unexpected, since there hadn’t been any clues by the Trump campaign they were planning on pulling out of WHO. 

Another one of Trump’s executive orders is that the US will only recognize two genders, male and female. The executive order states that gender ideology is running rampant throughout the US, so it ensures to protect women and to instill “biological fact” of there only being male and female individuals. Ignoring the difference between gender and sex, this unusual order ignores biologically intersex individuals, of which there are over 30 known variations of. Many people found this order to be strange and confusing, due to the fact that gender identity and sex are two separate things, and for the fact it ignores intersex people. The language in the order is also weirdly about defining gender at conception which is quite impossible as human embryos don’t show sexual differentiation at that stage and all embryos develop along ‘female’ lines until later in development. So, there is a way to read the bill that would say everyone is now female.

Some major events that happened around the time of Trump’s inauguration was on Tuesday, January 21st, when Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde made an appeal directed towards Trump, asking him to be merciful towards LGBTQ+ children and migrants. The next day on January 22nd, on Truth Social, Trump made a post demanding that Reverend Budde make an apology and stating “she wasn’t very good at her job”. Another event that happened on January 20th, inauguration day, Elon Musk while addressing a crowd made a gesture that resembled a Nazi salute, causing immediate backlash. Many alt-right groups praised and defended Musk, stating that with Musk’s well known diagnosis with Asburgur’s syndrome, caused him to make the gesture “in the moment”. Musk made a post on X, referring to Democrats, that they were “up to their old tricks again”, in response to the backlash of his gesture. 

Trump’s first few days in office have already featured lawsuits, backlash, and controversial orders. With Trump’s incoming plans of increasing tariffs, rollbacks on climate change policies, minimizing the DOE, and many more, it’s reasonable to think this rocky start might continue throughout Trump’s presidency.