47th president of the United States Donald Trump, only days after being found guilty on all counts of falsifying business records, spent his first 24-48 hours in office signing over 30 executive orders, an unprecedented number in all American history. An executive order is not an absolute decision, and congress can still refuse to provide funding to program changes or pass legislation directly opposing an executive order but given that both the senate and house of representatives are majority republican, it’s unlikely most of these orders will receive any opposition.
Among these new executive orders, Trump ended all DEI hiring programs for government agencies and encouraged companies the government partially owns to do the same. He removed legal recognition for transgender or nonbinary Americans, removed any and all climate protections or business regulations for oil drilling in Alaska, classified those suspected, not proven to be, members of a cartel of being international terrorists which the CIA and secret service can target, and began mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Trumps “mass deportations”, despite sensationalist news coverage, have so far been minimal and may never expand to cover the whole country based on cost alone. The cost of extraditing only 80 undocumented individuals to Mexico was about 700,000 dollars out of the federal government’s budget. The United States of America is estimated to contain 11-13 million undocumented individuals out of its population of 330 million, meaning the cost of extraditing all these individuals would be about 300 billion dollars, funds that the current government budget simply does not have, especially ICE, who is already running a 230-million-dollar budget deficit.
The only program like this that has taken place in American history was the removal of the five native nations in the south, Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminoles, onto reservations in present-day Oklahoma. In the early 1800’s the governments of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren spent what would today be billions of dollars removing natives into the west. But in that case, their governments managed to profit from the program by selling former native land to southern slave owners to establish plantations on. In this case though, there will be no such spoils for the government to receive, given that the majority of these individuals do not own land or businesses that could be sold.
The only way the government could even hope to break even would be from slashing funding to social programs like healthcare and education which are provided to non-citizens, but that also won’t be nearly profitable enough given that most of those programs are already partially privatized.
Trump has attempted to paint the ending of DEI programs to return meritocracy to government jobs, painting DEI as a way for unqualified racial or sexual minorities to gain high-paying jobs. In reality, DEI covers veterans, senior citizens, and physically or mentally disabled people. Ending DEI means that many groups who would be overlooked otherwise, whether they were disabled in combat or in workplace accident, suffer from mental conditions like PTSD, autism, or bipolar disorder, or were unfairly fired now will have a much harder time finding jobs and holding them, making them unable to support themselves. Ending DEI will only foster meritocracy in the sense of forming a Darwinist economy, where those who are able-bodied and mentally healthy can support themselves, and anyone else falls behind with no safety nets to help them.
Finally, and possibly most importantly, Trump has, for the moment, suspended Medicaid and government loans. This is of course incredibly distressing for those who cannot afford privatized healthcare or to pay for college tuitions for their children. Possibly millions of people will be harmed, either medically or economically by this decision, being prevented from receiving medical care or prevented from attending college simply because they cannot afford it despite their academic achievements.
During his campaign, Trump claimed to be unaware of the Heritage foundation’s Project 2025 (see my other article for information on that) but he seems to be following its playbook and plans step by step. These orders, along with Trump’s cabinet appointments have proven many assumptions people had about what his presidency would mean. Loyalists and corporate lobbyists have been appointed to key influential positions despite their lack of qualifications, showing the revolving door between corporate scheming and the republican administration.
Wall street billionaire Howard Lutnick has been chosen as commerce secretary, fracking CEO Chris Wright for energy secretary, hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for treasury secretary, Elon Musk as co-chairmen of DOGE, and Pete Hegseth, a former FOX news host who is a member of a church who has described American intervention in the middle east as a modern day crusade, as secretary of defense. All of these choices have been either directly put forward by or explicitly approved by the Heritage foundation.
While we can only hope there is some kind of blowback to these decisions, the next four years of a Trump presidency have been clearly outlined in his first 48 hours in office. The wealthiest 5% of the country have received an even more thorough tax cut while programs to treat the sick, feed and house the poor, help pay for exorbitant college tuitions, and help those who are unable to help themselves due to conditions that are no fault of their own have all been slashed to line the pockets of the rich.
America still has not recovered economically from the 2008 financial crisis, the largest economic depression since the great depression in the 1930’s. The great depression began in 1929 and was nominally ended by 1936 due to government social and employment programs. But the upper class of America today have shown their true colors. This depression has been ongoing for 16 years and shows no sign of stopping. Instead of trying to revitalize and repair our country, the wealthy and influential figures who were seen attending Trump’s inauguration have decided to squabble over the scraps of the mess they themselves have created for us, leaving us, their workers and employees, behind to fill their own bellies as much as they can manage.
Every American, and especially graduating students of CMW going out into the world for the first time, will have to prepare for a far less prosperous, far less equal, far less healthy, far hungrier America, and an America which can only focus on the moment at hand, never having any plans for improving or bettering itself in the future. We are all going to have to help and support each other even more than we do already, showing as much kindness and understanding as we can manage, since our government has clearly shown that they will show none to us.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/28/nx-s1-5276293/trump-executive-orders
