Donald Trump’s call for sweeping change puts Washington on notice

President Donald J. Trump began his second term with a dramatic pledge to sweep away the liberal gains made by Democrats under Joe Biden, saying in his inaugural address Monday that he planned to sign a historic number of executive orders right away to begin reshaping American society in his image while ushering in a new “golden age” for the nation.

Trump, who is expected to sign as many as 100 executive orders on his first day in office, said he’d focus immediately on his main campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration and deport millions of undocumented people.

The president said he would declare a national emergency at the southern U.S. border, and a separate “national energy emergency” to increase domestic oil and gas production, part of an effort to roll back policies enacted by his predecessor to fight climate change.

With his second inaugural speech and the deluge of promised executive orders, Trump put Washington on notice that he plans to move swiftly on several major policy fronts at once, while also taking steps to put conservative values around diversity and inclusion at the center of government and public life.

Trump enters office riding a wave of political momentum with a Republican Party that’s largely united behind his policy proposals — unlike the start of his first term, when the GOP controlled Congress but was divided over his status as a political outsider and neophyte.

Now, Republicans also control the House and Senate, but the party’s leadership and rank-and-file is filled with MAGA loyalists.

Trump also now enjoys the support of powerful tech executives who are expected to have an influential voice in his administration. The list of business leaders on hand to watch Trump get sworn in included the billionaire Tesla CEO turned close Trump ally Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The tech titans were part of a paired-down group of dignitaries who packed into the Rotunda at the U.S. Capitol to attend the inaugural ceremony after it was moved indoors due to extreme cold — the first time that has happened since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural in 1985.

The formal transfer of power Monday completed one of the most remarkable political comebacks in the country’s nearly 250-year history. Trump is just the second American president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. The other is Grover Cleveland, who accomplished the feat back in the late 19th century.

Trump made history in other ways as well. He is now the first occupant of the Oval Office with a felony conviction. Trump, who turns 79 in June, also became the oldest president at the time of his swearing-in ceremony, beating by approximately six months the record Biden set when he took office in 2021.

Trump’s return to power comes after an embattled four-year hiatus out of office following his failed effort to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Biden.

The setting of the swearing-in ceremony offered a stark reminder of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when an angry mob of Trump supporters took over the building — including the Rotunda, where Trump was sworn-in for his second term — in an unsuccessful attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.

The violent insurrection overshadowed the final days of Trump’s first term and seemed at the time almost certain to rule out any future bid for the presidency.

But now, instead of ending his political career on a losing note — as a twice-impeached, one-term president — Trump will have four more years to put his stamp on the nation and a chance to further cement his legacy as the most consequential Republican president since Reagan.

Trump’s relatively brief remarks felt at times more like a wishlist-laden State of the Union speech to Congress than an inaugural address.

In addition to the plans to declare states of emergency around immigration and energy, Trump also said he would designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations; bring back “law and order” to American cities; end what he called the “chronic disease epidemic,” and send U.S. astronauts to Mars.

Trump said his administration would “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public life,” adding, “we will forge a society that is color blind and merit-based.” He also declared it would be official U.S. government policy that there are “only two genders, male and female.”

The vision Trump laid out amounted to a stark repudiation of Democrats and represented a reversal of a yearslong effort by the party to address systemic racism, sexism and other societal issues in the economy, education and other areas.

Trump also warned the rest of the world to prepare for a return to the “America First” approach to foreign affairs that defined his first term as president. He said he would strengthen the U.S. military and claimed that “our power will stop all wars,” while saying he hoped he would be remembered as a “peacemaker and a unifier.”

That point was driven home by a ceasefire and hostage deal in the process of being carried out thousands of miles away in Gaza, which was said to be heavily influenced by Trump’s return to power and the behind-the-scenes machinations of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who worked closely with the Biden administration in its final days to secure the deal.

Trump’s speech differed from his first inaugural address in 2017 in other ways as well. When he took office eight years ago as a political outsider, Trump painted a dark picture of a failing nation crippled by poverty and crime. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump famously said at the time.

The president echoed that message to some degree in his second inaugural address, but in other moments he sought to strike a more optimistic tone. “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history,” Trump said, then added, “We’re going to win like never before.”

The smaller indoor ceremony meant that thousands of people who traveled to the capital for the inauguration missed out on seeing Trump take the oath of office in person from the National Mall. But Trump supporters still blanketed the city at parties and events in his honor that will continue through the night Monday, signaling the changing of the guard.

After Trump was sworn in, Biden departed the Capitol to deliver the traditional farewell address before leaving Washington to start his post-presidency. After speaking to supporters downstairs from the Rotunda, Trump was set to attend a Congressional luncheon before signing the first of his many expected executive orders from the Capital One Arena across town, where thousands of his supporters had gathered in anticipation.