After oath, Trump faces ambitious Day 1 to-do list

WASHINGTON: Donald Trump took power as the 45th president of the United States on Friday and campaigned on a detailed and extensive to-do list for his first day in office.
As he has assembled his new government, Trump has backed off some of his promised speed, downplaying the importance of a rapid-fire approach to complex issues that may involve negotiations with Congress or foreign leaders. On others issues, he has affirmed his plan, indicating significant policy announcements may be teed up in the first hours and days of the Trump administration.
On Thursday, transition spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump would issue two executive orders on trade soon. On his Day One list, Trump said he would formally declare the United States’ intention to withdraw from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which he vigorously opposed during his campaign as detrimental to US businesses and workers. He also promised to declare his intention to renegotiate the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement or withdraw from the deal.
“I think you will see those happen very shortly,” Spicer said.
Other issues likely to see early action include energy, where he is likely to undo regulations on oil drilling and coal, and cybersecurity, where he has already said he will ask for a report on the strength of the nation’s cyber defenses within 90 days of taking office.
He has also made broad promises to upend immediately Former-President Barack Obama’s immigration policies, although some of those vows may be difficult to keep.
Trump has said he sees Monday as the first big work day of his administration, his effective Day One. Trump said at his first post-election news conference last week that people would “have a very good time at the inauguration” but his team planned “some pretty good signings on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, and then also the next week.”
Trump’s Day One plan was an ambitious and specific list. It includes proposing a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress, imposing a hiring freeze for federal workers, and beginning to remove immigrants who are criminals and living in the country unlawfully.
The list includes “cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by Former-President Obama.” Given Trump’s objections to many of Obama’s policies, that category could involve some dramatic changes.
Among those would be cancelation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which has protected about 750,000 young immigrants from deportation. The program also offered those immigrants work permits.
Trump has said he plans to focus immigration enforcement efforts first on criminals, a group he said could including 2 million to 3 million people.
Trump also pledged to “move criminal aliens out day one” in operations with state, local and federal authorities. That promise will be harder to keep on his first few days in office. Jurisdictions around the country objected to helping enforce federal immigration laws. He will also face a shortage of jail space. The government has enough money to keep 34,000 people in immigration jails at a time and has recently detained more than 40,000 people because of a surge of immigrants arrested at the Mexican border last year.
Also on Trump’s list was labeling China a currency manipulator. But Trump said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week that he no longer planned to do that on the first day. “I would talk to them first,” he said. Instead of unveiling an updated series of policies, Trump devoted part of his transition to meeting with prominent CEOs and touting jobs announcements by their companies. His team has also spent weeks reviewing Obama’s executive actions to determine which ones can be eliminated quickly.