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Here are all the changes Donald Trump signed during his first day as US president
It was anticipated Mr Trump would sign up to 100 orders on his first day back in the White House.
In the end, the figure was just shy of 50.
Mr Trump has spoken openly about his plans to grow domestic energy production, crack down on the Mexican border and end diversity, equity and inclusion programs within the federal government.
Here’s what we know.
What is an executive order?
They are essentially statements about how the president wants the federal government to be managed, which can mean instructions to federal agencies or requests for reports.
Executive orders can also play an important role in laying out major policy agendas.
While these orders are legally binding, they are not legislation as they don’t require approval from Congress.
It doesn’t necessarily mean the president can enact orders without challenge, as Congress could still block an order from being fulfilled by removing funding or creating other hurdles.
Only a sitting US president can overturn an existing executive order.
New presidents will often issue orders to cancel the orders of their predecessors.
Other presidential documents — such as proclamations and political memorandums — can also be similar to executive orders, but have different purposes.
However, all three are used by presidents to pursue actions they can’t get through Congress.
What are the limitations to executive orders?
There have been several thousand executive orders signed throughout US history, according to data collected by the American Presidency Project at the University of California.
During his first term, Mr Trump signed 220 orders and Joe Biden had signed 160, as of December 20.
But there are limitations to executive orders, as both Congress and the courts can potentially block orders.
In 1992, Congress revoked an executive order by then-president George HW Bush that would establish a human foetal tissue bank for scientific research.
Congress did this by passing a measure that meant the order would “not have any legal effect”.
And, Congress can also deny funding to agencies and those behind the enforcement of an order.
These orders could also be legally challenged based on the argument that a president went beyond their legal authority.
This was seen when the US Supreme Court said then-president Harry Truman lacked the authority to take private property without authorisation from Congress, when he tried to seize steel mills during the Korean War.
What executive orders has Donald Trump signed so far?
Mr Trump has signed a wide-ranging number of executive orders, with some aimed at walking back from climate action and others focused on “restoring free speech” in the US.
National ‘border emergency’
Mr Trump’s rhetoric around migration continued with the signing of an executive order that declared a “national emergency” at the US and Mexico border.
“America’s sovereignty is under attack,” the order said.
“Our southern border is overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries, and illicit narcotics that harm Americans, including America.
“To protect the security and safety of United States citizens, to protect each of the states against invasion, and to uphold my duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, it is my responsibility as president to ensure that the illegal entry of aliens into the United States via the southern border be immediately and entirely stopped.”
Mr Trump rolled back a number of immigration policies announced by the Biden administration, and ordered the shut down of the CBP One app.
The app allowed migrants to schedule appointments to gain entry into the US and was previously credited by officials as streamlining the border crossing process.
Mr Trump also ordered an end to releasing migrants in the US while they await immigration court hearings — part of his Remain in Mexico policy — and an end to asylum.
It is expected his border policies could result in mass deportations, and Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum has previously signalled her desire to help those impacted by the changes.
He also moved to consider designating cartels as “foreign terrorist organisations”, and called them an international security threat.
Mr Trump said securing the southern border was a part of his plan to bring them under control.
‘Only’ two genders
Mr Trump has declared the federal government would recognise only two genders — male and female — and would roll back previous legislation that enshrines the protection of transgender people.
The order would also remove the word “gender” from federal documents, and replace it with “sex”.
While the federal government has no control over how people identify, it can enforce the declaration on documents such as passports and visas.
American civil rights organisation focused on LGBTQI+ activism Lambda Legal said it would look to sue over the order.
“While much of what is called for by the executive orders signed today will take time to implement, we will vigilantly monitor and be ready to challenge when they take effect,” a spokesperson said.
“We are exploring every legal avenue to challenge these unlawful and unconstitutional actions. This is not only about politics and ideology — but also about real people’s lives.”
End to automatic citizenship
Mr Trump has ordered the overturning of birthright citizenship.
Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, and dictates:
“All persons born or naturalised in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”
It was adopted in 1868 to ensure citizenship for Black people.
Mr Trump said automatic citizenship was “just ridiculous” and said he was on “good legal ground” to change it.
However he has already been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates.
They have initiated a lawsuit over the order, arguing Mr Trump would be wrongly denying a right enshrined in the constitution.
The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU, Asian Law Caucus, State Democracy Defenders Fund and Legal Defense Fund on behalf of organisations with members whose children were born on US soil and would be denied citizenship.
“Birthright citizenship embodies America’s most fundamental promise: that all children born on our soil begin life as full and equal members of our national community, regardless of their parents’ origins, status, or circumstances,” according to the complaint filed in Concord, New Hampshire.
“This principle has enabled generations of children to pursue their dreams and build a stronger America.”
Pardoned January 6 convictions
Mr Trump will pardon or commute the sentences of 1,500 people in connection with the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021.
Hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol after he made baseless claims that an election victory had been “stolen” from him.
The Capitol riots were widely condemned by those on both sides of politics, and people were arrested in connection with the attack.
Mr Trump has commuted the sentences of 14 people so far — including those of far-right activists — making them eligible to be freed straight away.
He called the arrests and convictions a “grave national injustice”.
The order has already been condemned by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
“The people who invaded the Capitol on January 6th, whether they committed violence or not, should not have been pardoned,” he said.
“Donald Trump is ushering in a Golden Age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government.”
Republican Senator Mike Rounds said while January 6 was a “bad day for America”, he respected Mr Trump’s right to issue pardons.
Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement
The Paris Climate Agreement is an international treaty which legally binds its signatories to fight climate change.
It is the second time Mr Trump has withdrawn the US from the agreement.
“The United States will not sabotage our own industries while China pollutes with impunity,” Mr Trump said.
Amnesty International has already condemned the order as “reckless” and “short-sighted” while the World Resources Institute said the Paris Agreement remained essential to combating climate change.
“It simply makes no sense for the United States to voluntarily give up political influence and pass up opportunities to shape the exploding green energy market,” an institute spokesperson said.
“Sitting on the sidelines also means the United States will have fewer levers to hold other major economies accountable for living up to their commitments.”
The ‘restoration of free speech’
Mr Trump has been supported throughout his campaign and inauguration events by social media giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.
Mr Trump said the administration over the last four years had restricted free speech, particularly online.
“[The administration] trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the federal government did not approve,” the order said.
The order highlighted particular concerns over the government censoring information ‘under the guise’ of misinformation.
Mr Trump’s order comes just weeks after Meta announced it would no longer continue with its fact-checking service, with chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg claiming he had been inspired by Elon Musk’s work at X — formerly known as Twitter.
Mr Musk will head up a role in Mr Trump’s government, responsible for the Department of Government Efficiency.
The order also called for an investigation into the Biden administration’s impact on freedom of speech.
Keep TikTok online
Despite previously proposing a law to shut down social media app TikTok, Mr Trump has now extended it a lifeline.
TikTok went dark earlier this week in the US after continued discussions about its Chinese ownership.
Under a law passed last year, the platform was ordered to cut ties with ByteDance or shut down its US operation to resolve concerns it posed a threat to US national security.
When it failed to do so, the app went dark on Sunday with a message about working with Donald Trump to ensure a possible solution.
It quickly came back online on Monday, with the app again posting a message thanking the incoming president for his support.
Mr Trump said the app had a short reprieve, and had 75 days to find a US-based buyer.
Mr Trump previously suggested that an American buyer should purchase half of the company and run it as a 50-50 joint venture with its current owners, on his Truth Social account.
However US outlets said it would remain unclear if this ownership arrangement could satisfy those in Congress who have ongoing national security concerns.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico
Mr Trump said it was appropriate to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, because “we do most of the work there”.
The Gulf is an ocean basin bounded by the US, Cuba and Mexico, and is an important centre of economic activity including maritime transport and oil and gas production.
The name would be changed on US-used maps and in federal references, but other nations would not have an obligation to follow suit.
Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has previously signalled her support for the move, saying her staff would be working on the legislation.
“Mexican cartels currently use the Gulf of Mexico to traffic humans, drugs, weapons, and God knows what else while the Mexican government allows them to do it,” she said.
The Mexican government has previously taken action against drug cartels in the Gulf region.
“The American people are footing the bill to protect and secure the maritime waterways for commerce to be conducted,” Ms Taylor Greene said.
No more work-from-home
Mr Trump ordered all federal employees return to work “as soon as practicable”.
The order is despite a report by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which found a majority of federal employees already work in their offices full-time.
The report found about 10 per cent of federal employees work remotely.
American Federation of Government Employees president Everett Kelley said the move would not be helpful in attracting new employees.
“To justify this backward action, lawmakers and members of President Trump’s transition team have spent months exaggerating the number of federal employees who telework and accusing those who do of failing to perform the duties of their jobs,” he said.
“The truth is that less than half of all federal jobs are eligible for telework, and the workers who are eligible to telework still spend most of their work hours at their regular duty stations.
“Rather than undoing decades of progress in workplace policies that have benefited both employees and their employers, I encourage the Trump administration to rethink its approach and focus on what it can do to make government programs work better for the American people.”
Mr Trump also announced the termination of a number of diversity, inclusion and accessibility programs in workplaces.
Other executive orders signed by Mr Trump in his first day include:
- Withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization.
- Ensuring states carrying out the death penalty have a “sufficient supply” of lethal injection drugs.
- Rescinding 78 Biden-era orders, including a ban on off-shore drilling.
ABC News
Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.
In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.
In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.
Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.
Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.
Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.
In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.
No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.
The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.
Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.
But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.
Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.
On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)
The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.
The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.
At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.
The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.
The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.
An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.
Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.
Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.
A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.
The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.
The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.
The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”
The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.
– Payments –
Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.
Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.
However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.
In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.
Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.
The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.
An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”
The mother of a black woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in Jackson, Mississippi, has told the BBC she is still waiting for answers from officials more than a month later.
Her demands have been echoed by a community in the southern US state that has been left shocked and angry.
After weeks of silence, police on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that they were investigating the death of Tasia Fortune, 29, as a potential homicide – while clarifying that her official cause of death has yet to be confirmed.
Authorities discovered Fortune’s body on 3 August, hanging from a tree in the lot of an abandoned home.
Local concern over her death has been heightened by the fact that the state has a dark history of racial violence and lynchings.
The majority-black city has been left on edge. As the question lingers as to how Fortune died, petitions online signed by tens of thousands of people have called for more transparency, and members of US Congress have asked for federal intervention.
“It’s making me angry,” Fortune’s mother, Christy Spivey, said. “What is the hold up?”
Spivey described desperate attempts to understand the status of the investigation and how multiple enquiries to police had gone unanswered.
The first update she had received from authorities in weeks came in a public city meeting on Tuesday evening as Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney discussed the case and said the department “has been investigating this case from day one as a homicide”.
Brackney, in a statement to the BBC, elaborated and said the department always treats any pending death case as a “potential homicide” so that crucial evidence is not lost as police wait on autopsy results.
The department, though, had only previously described the case as a death investigation.
Tuesday’s statement from Brackney said “we are conducting the investigation at the highest appropriate level while we await the medical examiner’s findings”, which would include an official cause and manner of death.
The medical examiner’s office said it would not comment on the pending case.
Christy Spivey Tasia Fortune holds a finger to her lips and smiles in a family handout photoChristy Spivey
Spivey last saw her daughter alive on 26 July, when Fortune had travelled from Mississippi, where she had lived for roughly the last decade, to Kentucky, where Spivey lives, for a family reunion.
The next time she saw her daughter – in a funeral home, days before her burial – she could barely look at her body.
“I didn’t look straight at her. Her daddy did,” she said. “I kind of looked from the side.”
Spivey remembered their last conversation. “She was talking about, you know, maybe even coming home,” she explained.
Fortune’s death has left the community concerned that racial violence in Mississippi could be on the rise again. And in the absence of concrete details about the case, their suspicions are left to fester.
Fortune’s death was the third incident in Mississippi in less than a year where police found someone dead and hanged from a tree.
The other two bodies – one black male, one white – were discovered in September 2025, on the exact same day.
Both were ruled a suicide, though the mother of one of the deceased – Trey Reed – contests those findings.
Fed-up residents have launched an online petition, which has gathered more than 50,000 signatures, for an independent investigation into the state’s chief medical examiner, Dr Staci Turner, over the handling of a recent spate of cases involving people of colour. Another petition asks for the FBI to launch an investigation into Fortune’s death
The BBC has asked Turner for comment.
Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes has also expressed concerns about the police investigation, saying he’d been outside the home where Fortune was thought to have lived multiple times and has never seen officers.
“All cases are important, but this one – a hanging in Mississippi – should rise to the top of the food chain,” Stokes said.
He told the BBC he sent letters to both federal prosecutors at the Mississippi US attorney’s office and the FBI weeks ago, urging that the investigation was “in dire need of assistance”. He has yet to hear back from either.
“Nothing from nobody,” Stokes said. “It’s like nobody cares.”
The BBC has reached out to the Mississippi US attorney’s office and the local FBI office for comment.
US Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has similarly requested federal intervention. In a letter to the US Department of Justice, she asked for an investigation into recent deaths in Mississippi – including that of Tasia Fortune – calling them “possible cases of modern-day lynchings”. She cited the state’s “appalling historical reputation of violent terrorism against black Americans”.
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In addition to Mississippi, there have been multiple other cases nationally of black Americans found hanged from trees, including four in North Carolina this year alone. Three were ruled a suicide. An autopsy is pending for the fourth death.
The BBC has reached out to the justice department for comment.
Stokes is clear that he does not know whether Fortune’s death was a lynching, or whether race played a part at all. Nor does he care. He just wants answers.
Brandon King, president of the student National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter at nearby Jackson State University, said the mystery of Fortune’s death, combined with minimal updates from police, has led him and others to be “extra cautious” around campus.
The feeling, King said, was that “hey, you could be next. This is in Jackson. This is in your backyard”.
The thought is extra worrying, he continued, because “this is supposed to be the capital. This is where I’m supposed to feel the most safe”.
As for Spivey, she cried before heading to a funeral home for her daughter, dreading having to fill out a death certificate and decide whether to cremate or bury her firstborn child.
She wanted to cremate her daughter but decided, in the end, for a burial. She said she was holding out hope there would be updates in the investigation, which might mean needing to exhume her corpse. BBC
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