WASHINGTONĀ ā Donald TrumpĀ has said he wouldnāt beĀ a dictatorĀ ā āexcept for Day 1.ā According to his own statements, heās got a lot to do on that first day in the White House.
His list includes starting up theĀ mass deportation of migrants, rolling backĀ Biden administration policies on education, reshaping the federal government byĀ firing potentially thousands of federal employeesĀ he believes are secretly working against him, andĀ pardoning peopleĀ who wereĀ arrested for their role in the riotĀ at theĀ Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
āI want to close the border, andĀ I want to drill, drill, drill,ā he said of his Day 1 plans.
When he took office in 2017, he had a long list, too, including immediately renegotiating trade deals, deporting migrants and putting in place measures to root out government corruption. Those things didnāt happen all at once.
Hereās a look at what Trump has said he will do in his second term and whether he can do it the moment he steps into the White House:
Make most of hisĀ criminal casesĀ go away, at least the federal ones
Trump has said that āwithin two secondsā of taking office that heĀ would fire Jack Smith, the special counsel who has been prosecutingĀ two federal cases againstĀ him. Smith is already evaluatingĀ how to wind downĀ the cases because of long-standing Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
Smith charged Trump last year withĀ plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential electionĀ andĀ illegally hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estateĀ in Florida.
Trump cannot pardon himself when it comes to his state conviction in New York in a hush money case, but he could seek to leverage his status as president-elect in an effort to set aside or expungeĀ his felony convictionĀ and stave off a potential prison sentence.
A case in Georgia, where Trump was charged with election interference, will likely be the only criminal case left standing. It would probably be put on hold until at least 2029, at the end of his presidential term.Ā The Georgia prosecutor on the case just won reelection.
Pardon supporters who attacked the Capitol
More than 1,500 people have been charged since a mob of Trump supporters spun up by the outgoing president attacked the Capitol almost nearly four years ago.
Trump launched his general electionĀ campaign in March by not merelyĀ trying to rewrite the history of that riot, but positioning the violent siege and failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a cornerstone of hisĀ bid to return to the White House. As part of that, he called the rioters āunbelievable patriotsā and promised to help them āthe first day we get into office.ā
As president, Trump can pardon anyone convicted in federal court, District of Columbia Superior Court or in a military court-martial. He can stop the continued prosecution of rioters by telling his attorney general to stand down.
āI am inclined to pardon many of them,ā Trump said on his social media platform in March when announcing the promise. āI canāt say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.ā
Dismantle the ādeep stateā of government workers
Trump could begin the process of stripping tens of thousands of career employees of their civil service protections, so they could be more easily fired.
He wants to do two things: drastically reduce the federal workforce, which he has long said is an unnecessary drain, and to ātotally obliterate the deep stateā ā perceived enemies who, he believes, are hiding in government jobs.
Within the government, there are hundreds of politically appointed professionals who come and go with administrations. There also are tens of thousands of ācareerā officials, who work under Democratic and Republican presidents. They are considered apolitical workers whose expertise and experience help keep the government functioning, particularly through transitions.
Trump wants the ability to convert some of those career people into political jobs, making them easier to dismiss and replace with loyalists. He would try to accomplish that by reviving aĀ 2020 executive order known as āSchedule F.ā The idea behind the order was to strip job protections from federal workers and create a new class of political employees. It could affect roughly 50,000 of 2.2 million civilian federal employees.
Democratic President Joe Biden rescinded the order when he took office in January 2021. But Congress failed to pass a bill protecting federal employees. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal governmentās chief human resources agency, finalizedĀ a ruleĀ last spring against reclassifying workers, so Trump might have to spend months ā or even years ā unwinding it.
Trump has said he has a particular focus on ācorrupt bureaucrats who have weaponized our justice systemā and ācorrupt actors in our national security and intelligence apparatus.ā
Beyond the firings, Trump wants to crack down on government officials who leak to reporters. He also wants to require that federal employees pass a new civil service test.
