What Trump has promised to do on ‘day one’ as president
"Trump has made 41 distinct promises for his first day in office, including mass deportations and banning transgender women from sports.
Donald Trump has a long list of executive actions he says he wants to carry out on his potential first day back in the White House. Among them: Begin mass deportations, eliminate perks for electric vehicles and ban transgender women from women’s sports.
Since launching his bid for a second term, Trump has made 41 distinct promises about what he says he wants to do “on day one” as president, and he has mentioned those promises more than 200 times on the campaign trail, according to a Washington Post analysis of his speeches.
While presidential candidates often trumpet their plans for their first day in the White House, Trump has leaned especially hard on this rhetorical device when he’s behind the teleprompters. His proposals often envision stretching the powers of the Oval Office beyond how previous presidents — including Trump himself — have invoked them.
Many of Trump’s promises fall outside the scope of a president’s authority under the Constitution, according to legal experts. Even some of those that are within his purview would face legal or logistical challenges that would make them all but impossible to carry out on a short timeline.
But Trump has tried to bulldoze past such constraints before, and he may try again in a potential second term. Pressed late last year to promise not to abuse power if he were to return to the White House, Trump said that he would not be a dictator “except for Day One,” vowing to close the southern border and expand oil drilling.
“A lot but not all of what Trump says he wants to do on day one is going to be illegal or impractical,” said Steve Vladeck, a constitutional law expert at Georgetown University Law Center and a critic of how Trump has wielded executive power. “But even the illegal stuff might go into effect for some time, and he might actually succeed in pushing the law in his direction.”
Trump made sweeping promises in his 2016 campaign, too. On his first day in the White House, he signed a largely symbolic order kicking off his attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and ordered a freeze on all pending government regulations until his administration could review them. He also nixed a plan to reduce fees on certain federal mortgages. Soon after, he rolled out more-aggressive policies, such as his restrictions on travel from countries with substantial Muslim populations.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in a statement that Trump “delivered on his first term promises to build the wall, rebuild the economy, and make America respected again on the world stage — and he will deliver on his promises in a second term as well.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, has said comparatively little about what she would do on her possible first day as president. She has alluded to her day-one plans a handful of times, including in an August interview with CNN in which she said she would focus on setting her economic policies in motion, with the goal of bringing down consumer prices and strengthening the middle class.
Trump centered his 2016 campaign on anti-immigrant rhetoric, and he is doing so again this year. He has made more unique day-one promises related to this topic than any other, according to The Post’s analysis.
The two promises he brings up most often — “begin the largest deportation operation in American history” and “eliminate every open borders policy of the Biden administration” — signal a harsh crackdown on immigration but offer few details on what specific actions he’d take in the White House.
Presidents have broad power to shape immigration policies under the Constitution and federal immigration law, so the fact Trump is making broad promises on this issue isn’t surprising, especially given its importance to voters.
But presidents must adhere to constitutional protections such as due process when enacting immigration policies. His promise to conduct mass deportations would face legal challengeson this front, as well as logistical hurdles that would make an immediate large-scale deportation infeasible. Advocates have also condemned the plan as inhumane.
Another day-one promise Trump has made on immigration is to end birthright citizenship, a bedrock principle of American civil rights enshrined in the 14th Amendment. Experts broadly agree that such a move would require a constitutional amendment proposed by Congress and ratified by three-fourths of the states.
And even if Trump attempted to eliminate birthright citizenship for certain groups through executive actions — by directing states not to issue birth certificates, for example — it would probably be immediately halted in court, said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.
“There are a bunch of ways you could try it,” Jadwat said, “but it’s impossible to imagine any court allowing something so blatantly unconstitutional to happen.”
Trump has more leeway when it comes to rolling back executive actions on immigration, such as Biden’s protections for the undocumented immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens. Even there, however, his decisions would have to comply with federal administrative law, which sets forth requirements for changing government regulations.
Trump has stumbled here before. He tried twice as president to dismantle the Obama administration’s program protecting undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children but was blocked by the Supreme Court.
In 2023, as a national debate over the teaching of race and gender heated up, Trump began making two distinct day-one promises about education in his rally speeches.
On at least 45 occasions he has threatened to cut federal funding for schools that allow discussions about race, gender or sexual orientation that he objects to. Similarly, he has said 37 times that he’ll cut funding for schools that have vaccine or mask mandates. Trump staked out his opposition to these public health requirements during the coronavirus pandemic and has clung to this line even as school districts have eased or entirely erased pandemic rules.
Neither promise is actionable for Trump, however; he would need congressional approval to cut funding because there are no such conditions on federal education funding in current law.
Trump has promised 31 times to repeal what he describes as Biden’s “electric vehicle mandate.” Biden hasn’t issued any specific “mandate” on electric vehicles, but the phrase has become a buzzword among Republicans, generally referring to the Biden administration’s fuel emissions standards and a set of incentives — some of them approved by Congress — to promote electric-vehicle production.
Trump has also said nine times that he will “repeal the Green New Deal.” The term “Green New Deal” originated in a 2019 climate change resolution proposed by liberal congressional Democrats. Republicans have since used it to refer to the environmental components of the Inflation Reduction Act and other environmental policies they disagree with.
None of these policies can be repealed unilaterally on day one by Trump because they either involve legislation passed by Congress or agency rulemaking that would be subject to litigation if Trump tried to revoke them.
In addition to his threats to cut school funding over discussions of gender identity, Trump has vowed on day one to enact policies that would affect the personal lives of transgender Americans.
His most frequent promise on this front is to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports — a remark he has made 18 times. He has also proposed a national ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors, which he calls “child sexual mutilation.” Trump could attempt to chip away at these goals through executive actions, but, as with other promises, these aren’t policies a president can enact unilaterally, and he would probably be immediately challenged in court.
Other day-one proposals from Trump are more of a grab bag, spanning a range of topics and receiving mostly passing mention in his speeches.
He has vowed to repeal three of Biden’s executive orders on his first day — one related to the growth of AI, one expanding background checks for gun purchases, and one promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the federal workforce. Here, he could make some immediate change. Presidents aren’t bound by their predecessors’ executive orders, so it’s likely that he could start unraveling these quickly.
“That’s just about the easiest thing a president can do on his first day,” said Vladeck, of Georgetown Law. “The lowest-hanging fruit is revoking executive orders.”
Trump has also floated more than a dozen other day-one promises including veterans’ issues and Justice Department prosecutions. He has made at least seven day-one remarks related to easing various fishing commercial regulations, and three references to eliminating taxes on tips, a proposal both he and Harris have brought up on the campaign trail.
The Post compiled a database of Trump’s speeches from his campaign launch on Nov. 15, 2022, through Sept. 10, 2024, from his Rumble live stream history. The Post extracted every reference he made to “day one” or “first day” and determined which topics were mentioned, and which distinct promises, if any, were made. For curating distinct promises only references to Trump’s potential first day in office in 2025 were included."
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